Against the Newtonian view of color, according to which the world is colorless and colors are subjective sensations, phenomenologists keep insisting that colors are in the world. In order to defend this view of the “being in the world” of colors, this paper tries to elucidate the essential spatiality of colors on the basis of James’s thesis of the intrinsic spatiality of sensation, Katz’s phenomenological description of various spatial characters of color, and Gibson’s ecological optics. The noticeable correspondence between Katz’s (...) phenomenology and Gibson’s ecological optics indicates to us a possible way to an ecological phenomenology of colors. (shrink)

This chapter, which describes the spatiality of conscious phenomena, such as colours and sounds, addresses James Gibson’s ecological approach to confirm and develop further the Husserlian phenomenological view of colours and sounds. The ecological approach to perception could be regarded as an attempt to undertake empirical research corresponding to the phenomenological insight of perception. In this context, in addition to the Husserlian concept of “adumbration” and the Gibsonian concept of “ecological optics,” the differentiation of various modes of colour appearances, which (...) David Katz explicated, is focused on, developed and applied further to the phenomena of sounds. On the basis of these discussions, the multi-dimensional character of colours and sounds are explicated, and traditional views on colours and sounds, which neglect this character, are criticized. The concept of multi-dimensionality discovers the remarkable diversity of the world of colours and sounds, which demonstrate the diversity and multiple dimensionality of the field of consciousness. (shrink)

There are few things in our lives we dislike or hate so strongly as pain. On the other hand, the symptoms of the patients suffered from so-called congenital analgesia teach us that if we are deprived of the ability to feel pain, our lives would be unbelievably miserable and disastrous. In this way, if we try to understand the meaning and the value of pain, it seems we immediately find a paradox. The paradoxical character of pain is reflected in philosophical (...) discussions between subjectivist’s and objectivist’s view of pain. In this paper, I try to show that the seemingly paradoxical character emerges because we are obsessed by groundless prejudice that the concept of pain must have one definite single meaning and that if phenomena of pain can be understood as multidimensional, the various characteristics of pain can be interpreted as various aspects of multi-dimensional pain experiences.Hay pocas cosas en nuestras vidas que nos desagraden u odiemos tan fuertemente como el dolor. Por otro lado, los síntomas de los pacientes que padecen la llamada analgesia congénita nos enseñan que, si nos privamos de la capacidad de sentir dolor, nuestras vidas serían increíblemente miserables y desastrosas. De esta manera, si tratamos de comprender el significado y el valor del dolor parece que encontramos inmediatamente una paradoja. El carácter paradójico del dolor se refleja en discusiones filosóficas entre la visión del dolor subjetivista y objetivista. En este trabajo, trato de mostrar que el carácter aparentemente paradójico surge porque estamos obsesionados por el prejuicio infundado de que el concepto de dolor debe tener un único significado definido; y que, si los fenómenos de dolor pueden entenderse como multidimensionales, las diversas características del dolor pueden ser interpretadas como varios aspectos de expe-riencias de dolor multidimensionales.Palabr. (shrink)

The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which occurred on the occasion of the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, caused enormous damage to the political, social, cultural and natural environments in Japan and still continues to create problems.What can we learn from the case of Fukushima from the viewpoint of the philosophy of technology?First, I emphasize that technology is not considered a closed system constituted only of a technological factor in the narrow sense of the (...) term, but must be considered an open system related to and constituted of various factors, including social, cultural, and natural environmental factors. In this sense, technology is inherently multidimensional.Second, as there is no guarantee that multiple factors maintain a harmonious and stable unity under various circumstances, technology inevitably brings about unintended consequences. We must always consider the unmanageable and unpredictable character of technology, which can be characterized as the “otherness” character of technology and is to be considered a central problem of the philosophy and ethics of technology. (shrink)

One of the most important tasks of engineering ethics is to give engineers the tools required to act ethically to prevent possible disastrous accidents which could result from engineers’ decisions and actions. The space shuttle Challenger disaster is referred to as a typical case in almost every textbook. This case is seen as one from which engineers can learn important lessons, as it shows impressively how engineers should act as professionals, to prevent accidents. The Columbia disaster came seventeen years later (...) in 2003. According to the report of the Columbia accident investigation board, the main cause of the accident was not individual actions which violated certain safety rules but rather was to be found in the history and culture of NASA. A culture is seen as one which desensitizedmanagers and engineers to potential hazards as they dealt with problems of uncertainty. This view of the disaster is based on Dian Vaughan’s analysis of the Challenger disaster, where inherent organizational factors and culture within NASA had been highlighted as contributing to the disaster. Based on the insightful analysis of the Columbia report and the work of Diane Vaughan, we search for an alternative view of engineering ethics. We focus on the inherent uncertainty of engineers’ work with respect to hazard precaution. We discuss claims that the concept of professional responsibility, which plays a central role in orthodox engineering ethics, is too narrow and that we need a broader and more fundamental concept of responsibility. Responsibility which should be attributed to every person related to an organization and therefore given the range of responsible persons, governments, managers, engineers, etc. might be called “civic virtue”. Only on the basis of this broad concept of responsibility of civic virtue, we can find a possible way to prevent disasters and reduce the hazards that seem to be inseparable part of the use of complex technological systems. (shrink)

One of the most important tasks of engineering ethics is to give engineers the tools required to act ethically to prevent possible disastrous accidents which could result from engineers’ decisions and actions. The space shuttle Challenger disaster is referred to as a typical case in almost every textbook. This case is seen as one from which engineers can learn important lessons, as it shows impressively how engineers should act as professionals, to prevent accidents. The Columbia disaster came seventeen years later (...) in 2003. According to the report of the Columbia accident investigation board, the main cause of the accident was not individual actions which violated certain safety rules but rather was to be found in the history and culture of NASA. A culture is seen as one which desensitizedmanagers and engineers to potential hazards as they dealt with problems of uncertainty. This view of the disaster is based on Dian Vaughan’s analysis of the Challenger disaster, where inherent organizational factors and culture within NASA had been highlighted as contributing to the disaster. Based on the insightful analysis of the Columbia report and the work of Diane Vaughan, we search for an alternative view of engineering ethics. We focus on the inherent uncertainty of engineers’ work with respect to hazard precaution. We discuss claims that the concept of professional responsibility, which plays a central role in orthodox engineering ethics, is too narrow and that we need a broader and more fundamental concept of responsibility. Responsibility which should be attributed to every person related to an organization and therefore given the range of responsible persons, governments, managers, engineers, etc. might be called “civic virtue”. Only on the basis of this broad concept of responsibility of civic virtue, we can find a possible way to prevent disasters and reduce the hazards that seem to be inseparable part of the use of complex technological systems. (shrink)

Words and phrases must be interpreted within the proper cultural and contemporary political and historical context. In particular, the language of politics is distinguished by the use of specific terms and phrases which often allude to other associated meanings. This means that caution must be exercised when interpreting the terms used not only within the context of the other language, but often also within its own linguistic context. The translator or commentator has to be familiar with the language code used (...) in the given environment and within the cultural biases of that particular society so that meanings are not lost and the often crucial connotations are not misinterpreted. Political rhetoric often employs words and language in a manipulative yet frequently subtle manner. This paper analyzes examples of shifts in language code by looking at a number of cases in Japan and their cultural construction where loss of integrity and backstage practices are at stake. (shrink)

The project of the comprehensive reform of Japanese insolvency law started in October 1996. After many enactments and amendments, there are now two types of judicial proceedings for personal insolvencies in Japanese insolvency law. The first category is straight bankruptcy proceedings in which the debtor can be discharged; the other is special Civil Rehabilitation proceedings for individual debtors. In this Article, I will first give a brief overview of the special Civil Rehabilitation proceedings for individual debtors, including a short description (...) of two types of proceedings, and legislative issues. Then I will give a brief overview of major amendments of the Bankruptcy Law concerning individual bankruptcies, including amendments relating to the scope of exemption and discharge proceedings. (shrink)

Discovery of representative Web pages regarding specific topics is important for assisting users' information retrieval from the Web. Researches on Web structure mining, whose goals are to discover or to rank important Web pages based on the graph structure of hyperlinks, have been very active recently. A complete bipartite of Web graph, which is composed of centers (containing useful information regarding specific topic) and fans (containing hyperlinks to centers), can be regarded as a Web community sharing a common interest. Although (...) Murata's method for discovering Web communities is a simple method for finding related Web pages, it has the following weaknesses: (1) since the number of centers increases monotonously, pages irrelevant to the members of Web communities may be added in the process of discovery, and (2) since the number of fans decreases monotonously according as the number of centers increases, the method may suffer topic drift. This paper describes an improved method for refining Web communities in order to acquire representative Web pages of the topics of input Web communities. The method is based on the assumption that most of the fans contain hyperlinks pointing to representative pages regarding their topic, and that hyperlinks to the pages of the same quality often co-occur. In our new method, both fans and centers are renewed iteratively by the result of the majority vote of the members of previous Web community. Results of our experiments show that the new method has abilities of finding desirable pages for several topics. (shrink)

This paper proposes a method for discovering Web communities. A complete bipartite graph K i, j of Web pages can be regarded as a community sharing a common interest. Discovery of such community is expected to assist users’ information retrieval from the Web. The method proposed in this paper is based on the assumption that hyperlinks to related Web pages often co-occur. Relations of Web pages are detected by the co-occurrence of hyperlinks on the pages which are acquired from a (...) search engine by backlink search. In order to find a new member of a Web community, all the hyperlinks contained in the acquired pages are extracted. A page which is pointed by the most frequent hyperlinks is regarded as a new member of the community. We have build a system which discovers complete bipartite graphs based on the method. Only from a few URLs of initial community members, the system succeeds in discovering several genres of Web communities without analyzing the contents of Web pages. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyze R. G. Collingwood’s maiden work in philosophy, Religion and Philosophy, in the light of the realism/idealism dispute in early twentieth-century British philosophy. Due to scholars’ narrow scopes of interests, this book has suffered divided and unsettled understandings in literature that find only either realist or idealist character in it. By contrast, I comprehensively examine various aspects of the work on which both readings rest in turn—his conception of history and metaphysics. Consequently, I find out that (...) Collingwood implicitly elaborates a series of negative doctrines attempting to overcome dualismspervading at both poles of the dispute, namely abstract/concrete, subject/object, and theory/action. Since this framework is to be more explicitly present in his subsequent philosophizing, I demonstrate that Religion and Philosophy was, against its underestimated status in literature, not mere juvenilia, but a substantialstarting-point for Collingwood’s philosophy constructively grounded in the contemporary debate. (shrink)

In spite of the evident centrality of philosophical 'realism' in Collingwood's autobiographical account of his own intellectual development, his critique of 'realism' has hardly been investigated as a central theme in his philosophy. Collingwood's arguments against contemporary 'realism' and his stated move beyond 'idealism' have mostly been treated as a minor question subordinate to other questions. By contrast, I have tried in this thesis to reconstruct Collingwood's philosophy as a critical development of the realism/idealism dispute of his day, focusing on (...) his less known early published and unpublished philosophical writings. This has enabled me to clarify his unique definition of 'realism' in terms of a dualistic framework, and understand his philosophy as an attempt to overcome such dualisms in the realms of philosophy. This approach ultimately highlighted the aim of Collingwood's reform of philosophy as the better understanding of the human mind and action. By employing the 'historical' and 'internal' method of analysis, I firstly illustrated how the idea of 'dualism' became an issue in the realism/idealism dispute as it emerged in early twentieth-century British philosophy. This was followed by a biographical sketch in which I demonstrated that Collingwood's educational background was perfectly equipped to refute the 'realist' philosophy in the dispute. Historically contextualising thus, I chronologically restored the formation of his critique of 'realism' as his attempts to synthesise dualisms in logic, ontology, epistemology, and ethics during the period between Religion and Philosophy and An Essay on Philosophical Method. Finally, I argued that Collingwood's critique of 'realism' crystallised in his notion of duty, which embodied his characterisation of philosophy as both 'normative' and 'descriptive'. Throughout, I presented a systematic and sustained picture of Collingwood's early philosophy, identifying and unfolding the fertile implications of his critique of 'realism' for his principal concern with the human mind and action. (shrink)

Human perception is often believed to function holistically, especially in the tradition of Gestalt psychology, involving a focused item and its surrounding. This holistic approach can allow us to explain something that is not directly experienced in our perception, meaning that the absence as well as the presence of something can have a significant impact on how we perceive the world. The way we perceive the presence is more or less the same cross-culturally, but the prominence of the absence, or (...) what is termed emptiness in this volume, varies considerably from one culture to another. The aim of this volume is to identify what emptiness is like and how different cultures incorporate this concept from various perspectives. It turns out that emptiness plays a key role in identifying socio-cultural diversity in a broader sense, including arts and languages. This volume consists of contributions from different fields covering a wide range of topics such as history, literary studies, mythology, film studies, architecture, linguistics, social-anthropology, ethnology and cognitive science. Due to the range covered in this volume, studies presented here are highly interdisciplinary, but all chapters deal with the sense of emptiness, which suggest that the underlying idea of the significance of emptiness is pervasive. Yet, this topic has not previously been systematically compared across different disciplines. It is hoped that this volume will offer a first overview of the pervasiveness and integration of disciplines concerning the sense of emptiness. (shrink)

This paper shows a role for emotion in rational choice. The key concept here is “time illusion”. The perception of the time spent on an activity is often different from the actual time spent, and depends on how enjoyable the activity is. Based on the conception that time illusion affects one’s evaluation of the opportunity cost of an activity, this paper integrates the concept into utility theory. Using this approach suggests that an activity that is perceived as less time intensive (...) is demanded more as the price of time increases. The presence of time illusion leads to a deviation from rational choice, namely, over- or under-consumption. (shrink)

Semi-structured interviews with university students in the UK and Japan, undertaken in 2009 and 2010, are analysed with respect to the revealed attitudes to privacy, self-revelation and revelation by/of others on SNS.

There are many morphologically distinct membrane structures with different functions at the surface of epithelial cells. Among these, adherens junctions (AJ) and tight junctions (TJ) are responsible for the mechanical linkage of epithelial cells and epithelial barrier function, respectively. In the process of new cell–cell adhesion formation between two epithelial cells, such as after wounding, AJ form first and then TJ form on the apical side of AJ. This process is very complicated because AJ formation triggers drastic changes in the (...) organization of actin cytoskeleton, the activity of Rho family of small GTPases, and the lipid composition of the plasma membrane, all of which are required for subsequent TJ formation. In this review, the authors focus on the relationship between AJ and TJ as a representative example of specialization of plasma membrane regions and introduce recent findings on how AJ formation promotes the subsequent formation of TJ. (shrink)

A sense of agency (SoA) is the experience of subjective awareness regarding the control of one’s actions. Humans have a natural tendency to generate prediction models of the environment and adapt their models according to changes in the environment. The SoA is associated with the degree of the adaptation of the prediction models, e.g., insufficient adaptation causes low predictability and lowers the SoA over the environment. Thus, identifying the mechanisms behind the adaptation process of a prediction model related to the (...) SoA is essential for understanding the generative process of the SoA. In the first half of the current study, we constructed a mathematical model in which the SoA represents a likelihood value for a given observation (sensory feedback) in a prediction model of the environment and in which the prediction model is updated according to the likelihood value. From our mathematical model, we theoretically derived a testable hypothesis that the prediction model is updated according to a Bayesian rule or a stochastic gradient. In the second half of our study, we focused on the experimental examination of this hypothesis. In our experiment, human subjects were repeatedly asked to observe a moving square on a computer screen and press a button after a beep sound. The button press resulted in an abrupt jump of the moving square on the screen. Experiencing the various stochastic time intervals between the action execution button-press) and the consequent event square jumping caused gradual changes in the subjects' degree of their SoA. By comparing the above theoretical hypothesis with the experimental results, we concluded that the update (adaptation) rule of the prediction model based on the SoA is better described by a Bayesian update than by a stochastic gradient descent. (shrink)

Through expanded access protocols, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows patients with serious or immediately life-threatening diseases access to experimental drugs outside the clinical trial setting when no satisfactory alternative treatment is available. While the FDA has established a mechanism for providing patients with unapproved drug access, the regulations do not require the pharmaceutical company to provide the drug. The drug company’s permission to use its experimental drug is a necessary prerequisite to using the FDA’s expanded access mechanism. Increasingly, (...) drug companies are coming under scrutiny regarding the programs governing that decision-making power. Historically, disclosing whether a company has an expanded access program, and whether or how it would respond to an expanded access request, has been left to discretion of the drug companies themselves. Few manufacturers publish adequate expanded access protocols. As a result, patients were provided with little insight into how companies evaluate expanded access requests and are naturally skeptical as to the ethical integrity of the process. The recently passed 21st Century Cures Act changes that practice by requiring drug companies to have, and make publically available, their expanded access procedures including criteria for evaluating and responding to patient requests. In this article, we contend that complying with the new transparency provisions will require drug companies to respond to several unresolved expanded access issues. Namely, how to reconcile a patient’s desire to access lifesaving experimental therapies alongside the company and society’s interest in the efficient development of new drugs. Even more challenging, how can companies devise practices for evaluating and processing expanded access requests that also fairly and equitably acknowledge those concerns? In addressing these questions, this article explores the legal, regulatory, business, and societal influences that have shaped expanded access policies and practices. From there, we provide companies a framework that balances appropriately the desires of individuals and gaining the requisite approvals ensure access not just for one person but for society. (shrink)

We analyse the contention that privacy is an alien concept within Japanese society, put forward in various presentations of Japanese cultural norms at least as far back as Benedict in The chrysanthemum and the sword: patterns of Japanese culture. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1946. In this paper we distinguish between information privacy and physical privacy. As we show, there is good evidence for social norms of limits on the sharing and use of personal information (i.e. information privacy) from traditional interactions in (...) Japanese society, as well as constitutional evidence from the late 19th century (in the Meiji Constitution of 1889). In this context the growing awareness of the Japanese public about problems with networked information processing by public sector and commercial organisations from the 1980s (when a law governing public sector use of personal information was first passed) to recent years (when that law was updated and a first law governing commercial use of personal information was adopted) are not the imposition or adoption of foreign practices nor solely an attempt to lead Japanese society into coherence with the rest of the OECD. Instead they are drawing on the experience of the rest of the developed world in developing legal responses to the breakdown of social norms governing interchange and use of personal information, stressed by the architectural changes wrought by networked information processing capabilities. This claim is supported by consideration of standard models of Japanese social interactions as well as of Supreme Court judgements declaring reasonable expectations of protection of privacy to hold in Japan. (shrink)

Purpose A survey of the attitudes of students in eight countries towards the revelations of mass surveillance by the US’ NSA and the UK’s GCHQ has been described in an introductory paper and seven country-specific papers. This paper aims to present a comparison of the results from these countries and draws conclusions about the similarities and differences noted. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire was deployed in Germany, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, The People’s Republic of China, Spain, Sweden and Taiwan. The original survey (...) was in English, translated into German, Japanese and Chinese for relevant countries. The survey consists of a combination of Likert scale, Yes/no and free-text responses. The results are quantitatively analysed using appropriate statistical tools and the qualitative answers are interpreted. Findings There are significant differences between respondents in the countries surveyed with respect to their general privacy attitudes and their willingness to follow Snowden’s lead, even where they believe his actions served the public good. Research limitations/implications Owing to resource limitations, only university students were surveyed. In some countries, the relatively small number of respondents limits the ability to make meaningful statistical comparisons between respondents from those countries and from elsewhere on some issues. Practical implications Snowden’s actions are generally seen as laudable and having had positive results, among the respondents surveyed. Such results should give pause to governments seeking to expand mass surveillance by government entities. Originality/value There have been few surveys regarding attitudes to Snowden’s revelations, despite the significant press attention and political actions that have flowed from it. The context of attitudes to both the actions he revealed and the act of revelation itself is useful in constructing political and philosophical arguments about the balance between surveillance activity for state security and the privacy of individual citizens. (shrink)

PurposeThis paper aims to deal with the attitudes towards and social impact of Edward Snowden’s revelations in Japan, taking the Japanese socio-cultural and political environment surrounding privacy and state surveillance into account.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire survey of 1,820 university students and semi-structured follow-up interviews with 56 respondents were conducted, in addition to reviews of the literature on privacy and state surveillance in Japan. The outcomes of the survey were statistically analysed, and qualitative analyses of the interview results were also performed.FindingsSnowden’s revelations have (...) had little influence over Japanese youngsters’ attitudes towards privacy and state surveillance, mainly due to their low level of awareness of the revelations and high level of confidence in government agencies.Practical implicationsThe study results imply a need for reviewing educational programmes for civic education in lower and upper secondary education.Social implicationsThe results of this study based on a large-scale questionnaire survey indicate an urgent necessity for providing Japanese youngsters with opportunities to learn more about privacy, liberty, individual autonomy and national security.Originality/valueThis study is the first attempt to investigate the social impact of Snowden’s revelations on Japanese youngsters’ attitudes towards privacy and state surveillance as part of cross-cultural analyses between eight countries. (shrink)

In this article I want to focus on a specific function that promises fulfil in our lives: their role as a way of shaping our character. To make my case, I will present an account of truth-telling based on Bernard Williams’ work on genealogy and on the virtues of truth. This account will highlight how our selves (or characters) are not static entities in time, that they are not immediately transparent to us. Nonetheless, we seem to have what I call (...) a drive to be someone, to have a character. We need ways to ‘steady the mind’, that is, ways of shaping our selves to whom we are or want to be. The argument I will put forward is that promises are one of the resources we have for doing so. By making promises, we commit ourselves to acting in a certain way and by doing that we also shape our selves. The argument will help us to answer some philosophical challenges raised against promises, notably about their rationality and about their relationship with vows and resolutions. Additionally, it will impact our thinking about contract law. What emerges from this article is an account of an important role played by promises that has been often neglected by the literature. (shrink)

In this essay I will put forward an account of the emotion of shame that draws from Bernard Williams’ groundbreaking work on _Shame and Necessity_. The main novelty will be a distinction between two senses of shame, “basic shame” and “complex shame”. Basic shame is related to what Williams refers to as a “loss of power” in relation to others that can be real or imaginary spectators and is a sense of diminishment towards those others. Complex shame, in turn, appears (...) when this diminishment is felt in relation to an “internalised other” that embodies the values she recognises as her own as well as other values she respects. Borrowing a page from Cheshire Calhoun, I argue that many accounts of shame face what I call the “challenge of unrespected judgments”: people are vulnerable to shame even when they do not endorse or respect the judgments of those shaming them. I claim that the proposed Williamsian account of the emotion can dissolve the challenge, because for one to feel basic shame there is no need for any further attitude of the ashamed person towards the shamer besides a sense of diminishment caused by the perception of loss of power. In addition to that, oppression can influence the internalised other of marginalised people in a way that makes them vulnerable to complex shame. I will conclude with some brief remarks about how moral education in the Aristotelian sense can help us to deal with the morally problematic instances of shame. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine the evolution of Japanese studies of international relations since the end of World War II. In so doing, in particular, this paper first looks at the dominant trends and characteristics of Japanese scholarship in this field, and, second, the correlations between the scholarship and Japan's experiences in real international relations. In discussing the evolution of Japanese studies of international relations, I shall divide the years since 1945 into three separate periods: (1) 194589, and (3) 1990 (...) and after. Then, taking the current US–Japan relationship as a case study, I will examine the contemporary characteristics of Japanese scholarship in this field. (shrink)

Over the past century, six studies – the most recent data from 2000 – and one review have comprehensively examined the content of medical oaths and oath-taking practices, all focusing on North Amer...

BackgroundA brief measure of dispositional mindfulness is important for applied research on mindfulness. Although short forms of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, which measures the five aspects of mindfulness, have been developed worldwide, the validity and reliability of the Japanese version has not been examined. This study aims to examine the validity and reliability of the 24-item and 15-item versions of the FFMQ in Japan, which are the most widely used versions worldwide.MethodsOnline surveys were conducted for 889 adults in Japan (...) through an online survey company using self-reported questionnaires including the FFMQ to confirm the factor structure and validity. To examine construct validity, we examined the relationship between the short form of FFMQ and mind wandering, interoceptive awareness, experiential avoidance, cognitive fusion, openness, neuroticism, self-compassion, depression, and anxiety, which have been theoretically or empirically shown to be related to mindfulness. In addition, 137 adults responded to the FFMQ again, after four weeks, for the test-retest reliability.ResultsThe correlated five-factor and four-factor models and the higher-order factor hierarchical model did not show sufficient goodness of fit, while the 24-item version showed acceptable fit when uncorrelated method factors loaded on by the positive and negative items were added. However, the 15-item version did not show acceptable fits for any of the models. Regarding reliability, the 24-item version showed acceptable values. In terms of the relationship between the original and the shortened version of the FFMQ, the 24-item version shared approximately 80% of the variance with the original one. In addition, although the wording effects of positive and negative items seemed to affect the correlations between the FFMQ and the other scales, the associations with related concepts were as predicted generally, supporting the construct validity of the short form of the FFMQ.ConclusionIn Japan, the 24-item version of FFMQ showed acceptable validity and reliability similar to the original version, and we recommend that the 24-item version be used. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to introduce a cross-cultural study of the views and implications of Snowden’s revelations about NSA/GCHQ surveillance practices, undertaken through surveys administered in eight countries. The aims and academic and social significance are explained, and justification is offered for the methods used. Design/methodology/approach Pilot surveys were deployed in two countries, following which revised versions were deployed in eight countries. Quantitative analysis of suitable answer sets and quantitative analysis were performed. Findings Through the pilot survey studies conducted in (...) Japan and Spain, the academic significance and meaningfulness, as well as social significance of the project, were confirmed. Practical implications The results of the cross-cultural study are expected to contribute not only to the advance of surveillance study but also to the enhancement of ordinary, non-technical people’s awareness of state surveillance and their proactive approach to protecting their own rights and dignity from covert intrusion by government agencies. Originality/value This paper clarifies the importance and methodologies of investigating the social impact of Snowden’s revelations on youngsters’ attitudes toward privacy and state surveillance in a cross-cultural analysis framework. Although a few other studies have assessed the impact of Snowden’s revelations, these have mostly focussed on the USA, so this is the only study to date considering that impact on a broad international scale, using highly similar surveys to ensure comparability. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to investigate how Snowden’s revelations are viewed by young people in the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan through questionnaire surveys of and follow-up interviews with university students in the two countries, taking into account the histories and current status of state surveillance in these countries and the current complicated and delicate cross-strait relationships. Design/methodology/approach Questionnaire surveys of 315 PRC and 111 Taiwanese university students and semi-structured follow-up interviews with 16 master’s course students from the PRC (...) and one from Taiwan were conducted, in addition to reviews of the literature on privacy and state surveillance in the PRC and Taiwan. The outcomes of the survey were statistically analysed and qualitative analyses of the interview results were also performed. Findings Youngsters living in the PRC had greater interest in and more knowledge about Snowden’s revelations than those living in Taiwan, and the revelations were positively evaluated in both countries as serving public interest. However, PRC students indicated they were less likely to emulate Snowden than those from Taiwan did. Originality/value This study is the first attempt to investigate the social impact of Snowden’s revelations on PRC and Taiwanese youngsters’ attitudes towards privacy and state surveillance as part of cross-cultural analyses between eight countries. (shrink)