Dynastic politicians, defined as those whose family members have also served in the same position in the past, occupy a sizable portion of offices in many parts of the world. We develop a model of how dynastic politicians with inherited political advantages affect electoral outcomes and policy choices. Our model predicts that, as compared with non-dynastic legislators, dynastic legislators bring more distributions to the district, enjoy higher electoral success, and harm the economic performance of the districts, despite the larger amount (...) of distributive benefits they bring. We test the implications of the model using data from Japan between 1997 and 2007. (shrink)

トリアージ、ワクチンの分配、ゲノム編集、さらに倫理、思想、文学、政治社会まで、様々な領域の喫緊の問題として「尊厳」を論じる。.

This article examines the concept of void with the question of whether the concept forms a sign. A void in this article is defined as a spatio-temporal empty space existing in a representation. The aim of the analysis is to consider the hidden nature of signs, which cannot be highlighted only through an analysis of typical signs within social convention. As a semiotic tool to conduct the discussion, the notion of a zero sign of Lévi-Strauss is introduced. The article considers (...) all possible zeros that can exist within the Saussurian sign model and introduces three cases: an omitted sign, an ambiguous signified, and an ambiguous sign. After examining the features of each kind, the concept of void is considered in these terms, with the conclusion that it belongs to the ambiguous sign case. Analysis of void with respect to the zero sign highlights the nature of signs as being reflexive, holistic and speculative. Because the signifier is barely delimited, it influences the surrounding sign systems, including the one existing at the meta-level. An ambiguous sign is deemed to allow for concept sharing among people even when the signifier and the signified remain ambiguous. (shrink)

This paper discusses what constitutes good teaching, taking as its cue the ‘aesthetic’ concept treated in everyday aesthetics and ‘internal good’ accounted by McIntyre. Teaching is viewed as practice, not merely as a basic action, due to its epistemological nature as everyday work. What everyday aesthetics teaches us is that even in the practice of teaching, sensory experiences such as comfort, familiarity, discomfort, ordinariness, etc. can be viewed as aesthetic experience. This kind of aesthetic experience constitute intuition supporting ’good teaching’ (...) that confirmed by examining Dreyfus et al. This ‘good teaching’ sensitivity is not specific to the individual practitioner, but is considered to be an ‘in-practice value (internal good?)’ (McIntyre) shared by the community of practice. From the aesthetic perspective, this value could be called ‘aesthetic value in practice’. In the teaching community of practice, ‘good teaching’ is both ‘beautiful teaching’ and ‘ethically good’ teaching. Teaching should be seen as a relational practice, and for this reason, The Ethico-Aesthetics of Teaching should be constructed. (shrink)

Ascidian tadpole larvae, composed of only about 2500 cells, have a primitive nervous system which is derived from the neural plate. The stereotyped cell cleavage pattern and well characterized cell lineage in these animals allow the isolation and culture of identified blastomeres in variable combinations. Ascidian embryos express cell‐type‐specific markers corresponding to their cell fates, even when cultured under cleavage‐arrest by cytochalasin B. This system provides us with a unique opportunity to study the roles of cell lineage and cell contact (...) in early neuronal differentiation in the absence of events associated with complex morphogenesis. In addition, the isolated, cleavage‐arrested blastomeres are ideally suited to electrical recording, permitting the use of ionic channels as specific markers for differentiation. In the cleavage‐arrested embryos, suppression of one type of K+ channel, and induction of two types of Na+ channels, occur following cell contact with the vegetal blastomere. The combination of molecular and electrophysiological analyses on this simple animal system may provide insights into the nature of the cell interactions important in early neurogenesis, both in ascidians and in vertebrates. (shrink)

大阪大学大学院文学研究科が所蔵する、会沢正志斎書簡を活字翻刻。会沢正志斎は、後期水戸学を代表する儒学者の一人。本書簡群は、会沢が、弟子で甥でもある寺門政次郎およびその父喜太平に対して宛てた書簡を主とし 、江戸に滞在していた寺門が水戸の会沢に対して定期的に府下の情報を送り続けた、その返答としての性格をもっている。また、会沢著作の書肆とのやりとりに関する記述が多く存在するのも特徴。緊迫する幕末の情勢と、 そのなかで行われた思想の営為を解明するための一級史料。.

This volume brings Bergson's key ideas from Matter and Memory into dialogue with contemporary themes on memory and time in science, across analytic and continental philosophy. Focusing specifically on the application of Bergson's ideas to cognitive science, the circuit between perception and memory receives full explication in 15 different essays. By re-reading Bergson through a cognitive lens, the essays provide a series of alternative analytic interpretations to the standard continental approach to Bergson's oeuvre, without fully discounting either approach. The relevance (...) of philosophies of mind and memory sit alongside the role of a metaphysics of time in exploring connections to psychology, biology, and physics. This eclecticism includes an exciting focus on numerous topics that are not given sufficient attention in extant studies of Bergson, including the precise nature of his ideas on dualism, memory, and ecological theories of perception, especially in relation to his contemporaries. Led by leading Bergson scholars from France and Japan, this book maps the rich terrain of Bergson's contemporary relevance alongside the historical context of his ideas. (shrink)

Teaching has been one of the central themes in educational research. Not only empirical researchers of education but also philosophers of education inquire into the activity. Philosophers used to analyse the concept of teaching. The merely analytic approach, however, is no longer the main one in educational research. Will philosophical consideration of teaching, then, never contribute to our educational activity or any other activities in our life at all? In order to explore the possibilities for philosophical consideration of teaching, I (...) will examine three philosophers' distinction between teaching and telling. The philosophers are Israel Scheffler, Karatani Kojin, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. I will conclude that Wittgenstein deconstructs the distinction between teaching and telling, and that he requires us to change our attitude to the recognition of the others. (shrink)

Teaching has been one of the central themes in educational research. Not only empirical researchers of education but also philosophers of education inquire into the activity. Philosophers used to analyse the concept of teaching. The merely analytic approach, however, is no longer the main one in educational research. Will philosophical consideration of teaching, then, never contribute to our educational activity or any other activities in our life at all? In order to explore the possibilities for philosophical consideration of teaching, I (...) will examine three philosophers' distinction between teaching and telling. The philosophers are Israel Scheffler, Karatani Kojin, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. I will conclude that Wittgenstein deconstructs the distinction between teaching and telling, and that he requires us to change our attitude to the recognition of the others. (shrink)

This article argues how one problem of computing lies in realizing a significant instance given a class or type. Analysis of a case study on digital narrative suggests two general processes for instantiating significant instances: interaction and optimization. The article then explains how the problem of universals needs to be deconstructed when trying to understand what type of entities significant instances are and what the process for obtaining them is.

Ethics education for professionals has become popular in Japan over the last two decades. Many professional schools now require students to take an applied ethics or professional ethics course. In contrast, very few courses of professional ethics for teaching exist or have been taught in Japan. In order to obtain suggestions for teacher education, this paper reviews and examines practices of ethics education for engineers and nurses in Japan that have been successfully implemented. The paper concludes that difficulties in professional (...) ethics education in Japan are caused by the fact that both teachers and students lack experience in leading and participating in discussion‐based classes and misunderstand the effectiveness of a case‐based pedagogy. It also suggests that we need to offer teachers systematic opportunities to be trained to be proficient in enabling students to be active and critical in class. (shrink)

Previous findings in cultural psychology indicated that East Asians are more likely than North Americans to be attentive to contextual information (e.g., Nisbett & Masuda, ). However, to what extent and in which conditions culture influences patterns of attention has not been fully examined. As a result, universal patterns of attention may be obscured, and culturally unique patterns may be wrongly assumed to be constant across situations. By carrying out two cross-cultural studies, we demonstrated that (a) both European Canadians and (...) Japanese attended to moving objects similarly when the task was to simply observe the visual information; however, (b) there were cultural variations in patterns of attention when participants actively engaged in the task by constructing narratives of their observation (narrative construction). These findings suggest that cultural effects are most pronounced in narrative construction conditions, where the need to act in accordance with a culturally shared meaning system is elicited. (shrink)

Thomas Nagel's conservative position of the political conception for world politics and his insightful ?Minimum Humanitarian Morality? (MHM) view on global justice are laudable. He admits that the path from anarchy to justice must go through injustice. But Nagel does not clearly identify the conditions under which we put up with global injustice. This paper reviews the conception of MHM through the lens of the institutional political economy. In my view, to recognize the degree of structural failure (weakness in governance) (...) as well as the degree of transition failure (elite bargain or personalization of power being interlocked) in each state can give us a hint on how to conceptualize and apply Nagel's MHM. We also argue that the scope and degree of humanitarian aid may vary in accordance with the options to global justice open to each state. (shrink)

Surface and line elements in three-dimensional space are given in terms of the delta function. We extend the representation to N-dimensional phase space to obtain the relation between the equi-energy surface and the density of states.

I explore options for a plenitudinarian solution to the Paradox of Flexible Origin Essentialism, taking as my unlikely starting point the views of Sarah-Jane Leslie, who holds that if plenitudinarianism is true, then there is in fact no paradox to be solved, only the illusion of one. The first three sections are expository: Sect. 1 on plenitudinarianism, Sect. 2 on the paradox, and Sect. 3 on Leslie’s views about how plenitudinarianism bears on the paradox. In Sect. 4, I reject the (...) contention that there is no paradox and critically explore three options for a plenitudinarian solution. In Sect. 5, I argue that the plenitudinarian ought to endorse a fourth option. In Sect. 6, I consider an objection. I endorse neither plenitudinarianism nor its denial; the main aim of the paper is to argue that for one who does endorse plenitudinarianism, the best solution to the Paradox of Flexible Origin Essentialism is clear. (shrink)

Individual differences in moral views are often explained as the downstream effect of ideological commitments, such as political orientation and religiosity. Recent studies in the U.S. suggest that moral views about recreational drug use are also influenced by attitudes toward sex and that this relationship cannot be explained by ideological commitments. In this study, we investigate student samples from Belgium, The Netherlands, and Japan. We find that, in all samples, sexual attitudes are strongly related to views about recreational drug use, (...) even after controlling for various ideological variables. We discuss our results in light of reproductive strategies as determinants of moral views. (shrink)

Recent fMRI studies have shown that functional networks can be extracted even from resting state data, the so called “resting state networks” (RSNs) by applying independent component analysis (ICA). However, compared to fMRI, EEG and MEG have much higher temporal resolution and provide a direct estimation of cortical activity. To date, MEG studies have applied ICA for separate frequency bands only, disregarding cross-frequency couplings. In this study, we aimed to detect EEG-RSNs and their interactions in all frequency bands. We applied (...) low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography-ICA (LORETA-ICA) to resting-state EEG data in 80 healthy subjects using five frequency bands (delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma band) and found five RSNs in alpha, beta and gamma frequency bands. Next, taking into account these frequency properties, five RSNs were identified; 1) the visual network, 2) dual-process of visual perception network, characterized by a negative correlation between the right ventral visual pathway (VVP) and left posterior dorsal visual pathway (DVP), 3) self-referential processing network, characterized by a positive correlation between the medial PFC and right VVP, 4) dual-process of memory perception network, functionally related to a negative correlation between the left VVP and the precuneus and 5) sensorimotor network. To detect aging-related changes of these five RSNs, the subjects were divided into three age groups: younger, middle aged, and elderly group, and Student's t test with Bonferroni correction on each coefficient of five independent components were performed. We found a significant attenuation in dual-process of visual perception network in elderly relative to middle aged subjects. Overall findings indicate that LORETA-ICA with EEG data can precisely identify five RSNs in their intrinsic frequency bands, and correct correlations and aging-related changes between and within RSNs. (shrink)

Adopting a modified Stroop task, the authors tested the hypothesis that processing systems brought to bear on comprehension of emotional speech are attuned primarily to word evaluation in a low-context culture and language (i.e., in English), but they are attuned primarily to vocal emotion in a high-context culture and language (i.e., in Japanese). Native Japanese (Studies 1 and 2) and English speakers (Study 3) made a judgement of either vocal emotion or word evaluation of an emotionally spoken evaluative word. Word (...) evaluations and vocal emotions were comparable in extremity in the two languages. In support of the hypothesis, an interference effect by competing word evaluation in the vocal emotion judgement was significantly stronger in English than in Japanese. In contrast, an interference effect by competing vocal emotion in the word evaluation judgement was stronger in Japanese than in English. Implications for the cultural grounding of communication, emotion, and cognition are discussed. (shrink)

Long-range correlation, a property of time series exhibiting long-term memory, is mainly studied in the statistical physics domain and has been reported to exist in natural language. Using a state-of-the-art method for such analysis, long-range correlation is first shown to occur in long CHILDES data sets. To understand why, Bayesian generative models of language, originally proposed in the cognitive scientific domain, are investigated. Among representative models, the Simon model was found to exhibit surprisingly good long-range correlation, but {\em not} the (...) Pitman-Yor model. Since the Simon model is known not to correctly reflect the vocabulary growth of natural language, a simple new model is devised as a conjunct of the Simon and Pitman-Yor models, such that long-range correlation holds with a correct vocabulary growth rate. The investigation overall suggests that uniform sampling is one cause of long-range correlation and could thus have a relation with actual linguistic processes. (shrink)