Various disciplines, including evolutionary biology, anthropology, archaeology, and psychology, have studied the evolution of rituals. Archaeologists have typically argued that burial practices are one of the most prominent manifestations of ritual practices in the past and have explored various aspects of burial practices, including burial directions. One of the important hypotheses on the cultural evolution of burial practices in Japan is the kitamakura hypothesis, which claims that burial directions (including Kofuns and current burials) were intended to be oriented toward (...) the north after the Kofun period under the influence of Confucianism or Buddhism. This hypothesis would be more plausible if burial directions were not oriented northward before the Kofun period. This research focused on the burial directions in the northern Kyūshū area of the Yayoi period, i.e., the directions of the kamekan jar burials. The results are almost consistent with the hypothesis, although one notable exception is found, and its possible interpretations and implications are discussed. (shrink)

The present research used archaeological data, i.e., the data obtained from kamekan jar burials in the Mikuni Hills of the northern Kyushu area in the Mid- dle Yayoi period, to test the parochial altruism model. This model argued that out-group hate and in-group favor coevolved via prehistoric intergroup conflicts. If this model is accurate, such an out-group hate and in-group favor could be re- flected in the archaeological remains, such as pottery making; the more frequent intergroup conflicts are (...) and the more each group is opposed, the more independent and coherent each group will be and more evident cultural identity could be estab- lished within each group. We employed an elliptic Fourier analysis for the shapes of kamekan jar burials. We examined whether frequent intergroup conflicts in the period influenced kamekan jar pottery between subareas of the Mikuni Hills. The results suggested that the shapes of kamekan jar burials after the KIIIa type are slightly different between subareas, which is partially consistent with the model. However, the results do not support the model directly. (shrink)

The corpus of late antique Babylonian incantation bowls comprises a class of double-bowl sets, consisting of two bowls facing each other, fastened together with bitumen. Occasionally, such bowl sets have been found to contain inscribed egg shells or human bones. The double-bowl configuration is highly reminiscent of the double-jar burial practice attested in Mesopotamia from the second millennium to the sixth century BCE. The double-jar burial involved placing the deceased between two wide-mouthed jars, occasionally joining them with bitumen at the (...) rims. This article explores the double-bowl configuration and suggests a connection between double-jar burials and the later ritual artifacts of the Sasanian period. The double-bowl sets attached with bitumen may have originated on analogy to the ancient burial practice, intending symbolically to bury evil entities or human adversaries. (shrink)

The causes of prehistoric inter-group violence have been a subject of long-standing debate in archaeology, an- thropology, and other disciplines. Although population pressure has been considered as a major factor, due to the lack of available prehistoric data, few studies have directly examined its effect so far. In the present study, we used data on skeletal remains from the middle Yayoi period of the Japanese archipelago, where archaeologists argued that an increase of inter-group violence in this period could be explained (...) by a population-pressure hy- pothesis. We quantitatively examine the effect of population pressure on the frequency of inter-group violence by compiling an exhaustive data set. We collected demographic information based on burial jars (kamekan) and the frequency of violence based on the ratio of injured individuals. The results are consistent with the hypothesis, i. e., high population density can promote inter-group violence. (shrink)

Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra has presented an objection to the co-intension problem. According to this objection, the examples of properties often cited to motivate the co-intension problem are actually relational properties, and so turn out not to be co-intensional. In this essay, I want to revisit Rodriguez-Pereyra’s objection and explain why I find it defective.

The author considers ethical obligations in relation to all living beings. As a result, he formulates the guiding principle of our actions - a bioethical imperative «Respect each living being as an end in itself and, if possible, treat it, as yourself». Based on this principle, you can pedagogically influence morality with the help of various scientific disciplines.

Background: Magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging is a neuroimaging technique that may be useful for non-invasive mapping of brain temperature over a large brain volume. To date, intra-subject reproducibility of MRSI-based brain temperature has not been investigated. The objective of this repeated measures MRSI-t study was to establish intra-subject reproducibility and repeatability of brain temperature, as well as typical brain temperature range.Methods: Healthy participants aged 23–46 years were scanned at two time points ~12-weeks apart. Volumetric MRSI data were processed by reconstructing (...) metabolite and water images using parametric spectral analysis. Brain temperature was derived using the frequency difference between water and creatine for 47 regions of interest delineated by the modified Automated Anatomical Labeling atlas. Reproducibility was measured using the coefficient of variation for repeated measures, and repeatability was determined using the standard error of measurement. For each region, the upper and lower bounds of Minimal Detectable Change were established to characterize the typical range of TCRE values.Results: The mean global brain temperature over all subjects was 37.2°C with spatial variations across ROIs. There was a significant main effect for time [F = 37.0, p < 0.0001] and for brain region [F = 2.66, p < 0.0001]. The time*brain region interaction was not significant [F = 0.80, p = 0.83]. Participants' TCRE was stable for each ROI across both time points, with ROIs' COVrep ranging from 0.81 to 3.08% ; majority of ROIs had a COVrep <2.0%.Conclusions: Brain temperature measurements were highly consistent between both time points, indicating high reproducibility and repeatability of MRSI-t. MRSI-t may be a promising diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic tool for non-invasively monitoring brain temperature changes in health and disease. However, further studies of healthy participants with larger sample size and numerous repeated acquisitions are imperative for establishing a reference range of typical brain TCRE, as well as the threshold above which TCRE is likely pathological. (shrink)

It has been commonly claimed that prehistoric warfare in Japan began in the Yayoi period. Population increases due to the introduction of agriculture from the Korean Peninsula to Japan resulted in the lack of land for cultivation and resources for the population, eventually triggering competition over land. This hypothesis has been supported by the demographic data inferred from historical changes in Kamekan, a burial system used especially in the Kyushu area in the Yayoi period. The present study aims to (...) examine the previous claim by using an expanded dataset of human skeletal remains and Kamekan. First, in order to quantify the intensity of warfare, we developed a database of injured individuals found in the middle phase of the Yayoi period in two large populations in the northern Kyushu area, the Fukuoka plain and the upperand middle-stream of the Homan River. Second, we collected Kamekan data from site reports published after 1990 and constructed a comprehensive database to infer the demography in these areas. Finally, we compared the frequency of injured individuals and the inferred demography. The results suggest that the frequency of injured individuals and the population increase tended to be higher at the upper- and middle-stream of the Homan River than on the Fukuoka plain. Different assumptions of the lifetime of each type of Kamekan can produce mixed results on the relationship between demography and the frequency of injured individuals. They were positively correlated under the traditional assumption of constant time intervals, while there was no correlation using time intervals based on carbon dating by the National Museum of Japanese History. Thus, our results are partially consistent with the previous claim that the population increase and the lack of land and resources due to the introduction of agriculture were causes of warfare in the northern Kyushu area in the middle phase of the Yayoi period. (shrink)

The essays in this volume share an ambitious interest in investigating death as an individual, social, and metaphorical phenomenon that may be exemplified by themes involving burial rituals, identity, and commemoration. The disciplines represented are as diverse as art history, classics, history, music, languages and literatures, and the approaches taken reflect various aspects of contemporary death studies.

Burial in the forest is a recent, non-confessional alternative to the established cemeteries owned and run by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark. Danish forest burials fulfil common criteria for non-religion and they are an example of institutionalized non-religion. Their non-confessional character is emphasized in the information material directed towards potential buyers of forest burial plots. Forest burials appeal to both non-members and members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church; in fact, nearly two-thirds of those who had a forest (...) burial by the end of 2021 were members of the church. I have participated in seven tours conducted at different forest burial sites, and I have interviewed nearly fifty participants about their motives for considering buying a forest burial plot. In my analyses, I structure the interviews along the three dimensions, knowing, doing, and being. I found that the motives for people to choose a forest burial reflected both non-religious and religious/spiritual considerations. Forest burials exemplify a religious complexity where nature, non-religion, religion, and spirituality intersect. In this complexity, I see the institution of forest burial as a non-religious vessel, which the buyers fill with their individual thoughts and acts. (shrink)

This article uses Egyptian burials of the Roman period as an entry point for considering aesthetics in relation to archaeology, ancient art, and human remains. Although some archaeologists and Egyptologists reject or ignore the concept of aesthetics, this article argues that it complements questions of ontology, materiality, and social practice that concern much contemporary archaeological thought. Moreover, engaging with aesthetics in the study of the ancient world requires archaeologists to reflect critically on the relationship between disciplinary histories and knowledge (...) production, and to recognize the influence that earlier aesthetic models, such as racial science, continue to exert in current aesthetic encounters with ancient Egypt and its dead. (shrink)

Participants in cognitive psychology experiments on reasoning and problem solving are commonly sequestered: Efforts are made to impoverish the physical context in which the problem is presented, decoupling people from the richer and modifiable environment that naturally instantiates it outside the lab. Sense-making activities are constrained, but this conforms to the strong internalist and individualist commitments implicit to these research efforts: Cognition reflects internal computations and the scientists’ toils must focus on the individual and what she is thinking, decoupled from (...) the world. We contrast this position with one that identifies cognition as the product of a cognitive system that is configured and enacted by, minimally, an agent and the world in which she is embedded. We review work on the psychology of hypothesis testing and problem solving and argue that refocusing research efforts on the dynamic agent-environment couplings that generate cognitive products — such as a problem representation, a hypothesis or a problem solution — offers a much richer set of methodological opportunities to unveil how people actually think outside the cognitive psychologist’s laboratory. We conclude by exploring the ontological implications of a systemic perspective on cognition. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to explore cultural factors affecting burial rituals in Poland. Thirty-four university students collected data from their relatives and created written narratives about deaths in their families or community. Ten additional interviews were conducted with community members, a priest, and medical personnel as part of theoretical sampling and verification of emerging theories. The qualitative material was administered with NVivo and analysed using the Grounded Theory techniques to produce a complex description of folk beliefs, superstitions, as (...) well as symbolic and psychological meaning ascribed to traditional customs. Some of the practices were found susceptible to extinction due to industrialisation, globalisation, and cultural development. (shrink)

Spectrality has always been a threat to order, to the logic of difference and binary opposites — a threat therefore to the classic law of ontology, which deconstructionist thinkers and writers have consistently sought to subvert, prominently among them Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous. While also engaging in an implicit dialogue with Louis Althusser's theory of ‘interpellation’, Cixous and Derrida have reinvented the psychoanalysis of gender-production through their reading of each other. Spectrality is for them an injunction to preserve otherness (...) and safeguard the presence/absence of what in fact does not yet exist, the almost unnameable which pushes at the boundaries of language and thought, and whose mystery writing aspires to attend to. Burials should not thus be performed according to established practice: they must be faulty. (shrink)

Participants in cognitive psychology experiments on reasoning and problem solving are commonly sequestered: Efforts are made to impoverish the physical context in which the problem is presented, decoupling people from the richer and modifiable environment that naturally instantiates it outside the lab. Sense-making activities are constrained, but this conforms to the strong internalist and individualist commitments implicit to these research efforts: Cognition reflects internal computations and the scientists’ toils must focus on the individual and what she is thinking, decoupled from (...) the world. We contrast this position with one that identifies cognition as the product of a cognitive system that is configured and enacted by, minimally, an agent and the world in which she is embedded. We review work on the psychology of hypothesis testing and problem solving and argue that refocusing research efforts on the dynamic agent-environment couplings that generate cognitive products — such as a problem representation, a hypothesis or a problem solution — offers a much richer set of methodological opportunities to unveil how people actually think outside the cognitive psychologist’s laboratory. We conclude by exploring the ontological implications of a systemic perspective on cognition. (shrink)

In The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith, Dr. James F. McGrath seeks to introduce a general audience to the methods historians apply to the study of the life of Jesus. Topics addressed include: how historical study work ; why Jesus' disciples would have wanted to steal his body from the tomb; why later Gospel authors changed elements in Mark's earlier version; and why Christian faith in the resurrection cannot be about what happened to a body almost 2,000 years ago.

In Phaedo 115c-e Socrates scornfully rebukes Crito for enquiring how Socrates should be buried for Crito had not been persuaded by the previous arguments that burying Socrates’ body is not equal to burying Socrates. A parallel account is found in Aelian and Diogenes Laertius where Apollodorus is rebuked for attempting to persuade Socrates that he should be bothered how his remains would be clothed when laid out. Several scholars have suggested this should not be considered a copy of Plato but (...) an early proto-type written by one of his contemporaries with particular regard to Euclides of Megara. While this thesis has been criticized, further evidence will be examined in this article where the character of Apollodorus cites an unnamed Megarian examining this same argument but with conclusions different from those in Plato. Here the Megarian concludes that though the body may be separate from the soul we still show care and grief for the remains. The argument is both cogent and non-metaphysical in approach but characterized from a Socratic perspective. In the conclusions, I will attempt to reopen the case for a Euclidean origin of the Crito vignette in Phaedo 115c-e. (shrink)

Jar Jar Binks might be the most hated individual in the Star Wars universe. He should feel a great deal of guilt over his actions in the Senate, though well meaning, because they caused so much strife. This chapter considers how Darth Vader would reflect on his own actions: it is unlikely that he feels particularly good about inadvertently provoking Leia's confession of love. The chapter now talks about Immanuel Kant. Kant's ethics are focused on intentions, the reasons why people (...) choose to act as they do. Jar Jar was, like most of the Senate, a victim of Palpatine's deceptions. The author highlights that it is fair to say that Jar Jar did not make the choice to grant Palpatine emergency powers because he could not do otherwise. So, even though the consequences were grave, and Jar Jar's decision hasty, he can be absolved for what he did. (shrink)

I TRY TO EXPLAIN WHY THE "ESSAY OF MIRACLES" DID NOT APPEAR IN THE "TREATISE" BUT DID IN THE "ENQUIRY". I ARGUE THAT THE ESSAY WAS ORIGINALLY DIRECTED AGAINST REVEALED KNOWLEDGE; SO DIRECTED, IT FITTED INTO THE TIGHTLY ORGANIZED PROGRAM OF THE "TREATISE", BUT HAD TO BE SUPPRESSED FOR PRUDENTIAL REASONS. RECONSTRUCTED AS AN ESSAY DIRECTED MERELY AGAINST NON-SCRIPTURAL MIRACLES ITS APPEARANCE IN THE "ENQUIRY" PRESENTED NO PHILOSOPHICAL OR PRUDENTIAL DIFFICULTIES.

Burial rites are very common among many Africa communities. In the African context, burials are not the end of life but rather the beginning of another life in the land of the ancestors. In spite of the importance of the African funeral rites, the missional role of the church in mourning and the burial of the dead in the African communities, the COVID-19 pandemic led protocols and restrictions placed a huge challenge on the African religious and cultural practices.Contribution: In (...) the light of the above-named challenges, the article discusses the religious-cultural effect of the pandemic with special focus on the African liturgical and missiological challenges in the context of the COVID-19 restrictions on funerals and burial rites. (shrink)

Philosophy, Socrates declared, is the art of dying. This book underscores that it is also the art of learning to live and share the earth with those who have come before us. Burial, with its surrounding rituals, is the most ancient documented cultural-symbolic practice: all humans have developed techniques of caring for and communicating with the dead. The premise of Being with the Dead is that we can explore our lives with the dead as a cross-cultural existential a priori out (...) of which the basic forms of historical consciousness emerge. Care for the dead is not just about the symbolic handling of mortal remains; it also points to a necropolitics, the social bond between the dead and living that holds societies together—a shared space or polis where the dead are maintained among the living. Moving from mortuary rituals to literary representations, from the problem of ancestrality to technologies of survival and intergenerational communication, Hans Ruin explores the epistemological, ethical, and ontological dimensions of what it means to be with the dead. His phenomenological approach to key sources in a range of fields gives us a new perspective on the human sciences as a whole. (shrink)

Ethical questions have traditionally been approached through conceptual analysis. Inspired by the rapid advance of modern brain imaging techniques, however, some ethical questions appear in a new light. For example, hotly debated trolley dilemmas have recently been studied by psychologists and neuroscientists alike, arguing that their findings can support or debunk moral intuitions that underlie those dilemmas. Resulting from the wedding of philosophy and neuroscience, neuroethics has emerged as a novel interdisciplinary field that aims at drawing conclusive relationships between neuroscientific (...) observations and normative ethics. A major goal of neuroethics is to derive normative ethical conclusions from the investigation of neural and psychological mechanisms underlying ethical theories, as well as moral judgments and intuitions. The focus of this article is to shed light on the structure and functioning of neuroethical arguments of this sort, and to reveal particular methodological challenges that lie concealed therein. We discuss the methodological problem of how one can—or, as the case may be, cannot—validly infer normative conclusions from neuroscientific observations. Moreover, we raise the issue of how preexisting normative ethical convictions threaten to invalidate the interpretation of neuroscientific data, and thus arrive at question-begging conclusions. Nonetheless, this is not to deny that current neuroethics rightly presumes that moral considerations about actual human lives demand empirically substantiated answers. Therefore, in conclusion, we offer some preliminary reflections on how the discussed methodological challenges can be met. (shrink)