These volumes present the text of Abū Ma’͑šar’s _Great Introduction to Astrology_ in Arabic and Greek and the divergences in the Latin translations. It provides a fully-comprehensive account of traditional astrological doctrine and its philosophical bases.

We propose a novel probabilistic image selection method for the Web image gathering system we proposed before. It employed two-step processing: (1) Gather HTML files of Web pages related to given keywords, analyze them and fetch only Web images expected to be highly related to the keywords. (2) Select only relevant images from the gathered images based on the image-feature-based clustering. In this paper, we propose building a generative model based on the Gaussian mixture model to represent the distribution of (...) image features of images related to the given keywords, and applying it to select images instead of the processing (2). We call the new system ``Probabilistic Image Collector''. We show the effectiveness of our proposed system by the experimental results. (shrink)

In _Religion and Nothingness_ the leading representative of the Kyoto School of Philosophy lays the foundation of thought for a world in the making, for a world united beyond the differences of East and West. Keiji Nishitani notes the irreversible trend of Western civilization to nihilism, and singles out the conquest of nihilism as _the_ task for contemporary philosophy. Nihility, or relative nothingness, can only be overcome by being radicalized to Emptiness, or absolute nothingness. Taking absolute nothingness as the (...) fundamental notion in rational explanations of the Eastern experience of human life, Professor Nishitani examines the relevance of this notion for contemporary life, and in particular for Western philosophical theories and religious believes. Everywhere his basic intention remains the same: to direct our modern predicament to a resolution through this insight. The challenge that the thought of Keiji Nishitani presents to the West, as a modern version of an Eastern speculative tradition that is every bit as old and as variegated as our own, is one that brings into unity the principle of reality and the principle of salvation. In the process, one traditional Western idea after another comes under scrutiny: the dichotomy of faith and reason, of being and substance, the personal and transcendent notions of God, the exaggerated role given to the knowing ego, and even the Judeo-Christian view of history itself. _Religion and Nothingness_ represents the major work of one of Japan's most powerful and committed philosophical minds. (shrink)

Cultural values can be considered as important factors that impact parents’ social cognitions and parenting practices. However, few studies compare specific cultural values of parents and the relationships between cultural values and parenting processes in eastern and western contexts. This study examined the ethnicity differences in mothers’ cultural values, parental social cognitions, and parenting practices between Mainland Chinese and European American contexts. Predictors of parenting goals and parenting practices were also investigated. Mothers of 4–6 years old children from the western (...) United States and Shanghai/China participated in this study. The results suggested that mothers from Shanghai/China were both more collectivistic and individualistic than mothers from the western United States. Chinese mothers more strongly endorsed training and collectivistic parenting goals, while European American mothers more strongly endorsed individualistic parenting goals for their children. However, no significant difference was found in parenting practices for both groups of mothers. For both ethnic groups, in general, mothers’ cultural values have small but significant impact on their parenting processes. The prediction of cultural values and parenting goals on parenting practices were also different for both ethnicity groups. Although Chinese mothers were higher on both individualism and collectivism, their collectivistic values were more important in predicting parental social cognitions. (shrink)

20世紀論理哲学の扉を開いたウィトゲンシュタインは,また神と宗教をめぐって生涯つきつめた思索を続けた。豊富な資料や証言を織り込み現代の謎ともいうべき哲学者の生に迫る,俊英の書下し。.

In this paper, we describe a generic image classification system with an automatic knowledge acquisition mechanism from the World Wide Web. Due to the recent spread of digital imaging devices, the demand for generic image classification/recognition of various kinds of real world scenes becomes greater. To realize it, visual knowledge on various kinds of scenes is required, and we have to prepare a large number of learning images. Therefore, commercial image collections such as Corel Image Gallery are widely used in (...) conventional studies on generic image classification. However, they are not suitable as learning images for generic image classification, since they do not include various kinds of images. Then, in stead of commercial image collections we propose utilizing of a large number of images gathered from the World-Wide Web by a Web image-gathering system as learning images. Images on the Web have huge diversity in general. So that we take advantage of the diversity of Web images for a generic image classification task, which is the first attempt among this kinds of work. By the experiments, we show that utilizing of Web images as learning images is effective and promising for generic image classification. (shrink)

In contemporary nihilism the nihility stretches, so to speak, into the site of God’s being, and in this way becomes an abyss. And upon this godless nihility that has become an abyss, all life, not only biological life and souls, but even spiritual and personal life, manifests the form of something fundamentally meaningless. At the same time, it is furthermore claimed that human beings can only truly become free and independent and become true subjects when they resolutely ground themselves upon (...) this abyssal nihility. (shrink)

The issue of justice after catastrophe is an enormous challenge to contemporary theories of distributive justice. In the past three decades, the controversy over distributive justice has centered on the ideal of equality. One of intensely debated issues concerns what is often called the “equality of what,” on which there are three primary views: welfarism, resourcism, and the capabilities approach. Another major point of dispute can be termed the “equality or another,” about which three positions debate: egalitarianism, prioritarianism, and sufficientarianism. (...) On these topics of distributive justice, authors are concerned with the current difference between the better-off and the worse-off or the present situation of the badly-off. By contrast, it is essential to take account of the past distribution of well-being as well as the present situation in order to explore questions of post-catastrophe justice. Without looking at the pre-disaster distribution of income, preference satisfaction, or basic capabilities among affected people, no present assessment of the damage caused by the disaster could be correct and no proposed remedy adequate. It is true that luck egalitarians assess the current distribution among people by referring to the decision that each individual made. Yet they pay scant attention to the situation in which each one stayed in the past. Therefore, we can legitimately say that most theorists of distributive justice, including luck egalitarians, have failed to give consideration to the past state of each person. -/- To fill this gap in the literature, the present article explores philosophical questions that arise when we take account of each person’s past and present situations in discussing distributive justice regarding public compensation and assistance to survivors and families of victims of natural and industrial disasters. In addressing these novel questions, I develop and refine various concepts, ideas, and arguments that have been presented in the study of distributive justice in normal settings. I tackle two tasks, the first of which is to explore the foundation and scope of luck egalitarianism. Despite the moral appeal it has in many cases, luck egalitarianism has attracted the so-called harshness objection. Some luck egalitarians attempt to avoid this objection in a pragmatic way by combining the luck egalitarian doctrine with the principle of basic needs satisfaction. However, they do not provide any systematic rationale for this combination. In contrast with such pragmatic responses, I seek to offer a principled argument for holding individuals responsible for their choices only when their basic needs are met, by invoking the ideas of respect for human voluntariness and rescue of human vulnerability. Based on this argument, I propose a form of responsibility-sensitive theory, which considers the pre-disaster distribution of well-being as a default position. The second task I take on is to refine sufficientarianism in the context of post-catastrophe justice. Luck egalitarianism with boundaries set by the basic needs principle seems to indicate the potential for sufficientarianism. But major proponents of this view conceive the welfarist assumption, a considerably high standard of well-being, and the controversial treatment of persons staying below the threshold, all of which seem problematic in the post-disaster situation. I try to construct a new version of sufficientarianism by replacing these current features with more robust ones. (shrink)

It is crucial for indigenous people living in the Arctic to harvest animals by hunting in a traditional manner, as is the case with such peoples in other parts of the world. Given the nutritional, economic, and cultural importance of hunting for aboriginal people, it seems reasonable to say that they have the moral right to hunt animals. On the other hand, non-aboriginal people are occasionally prohibited from hunting a particular species of animal in many societies. The question then arises: (...) why can aboriginal people, unlike other citizens, have special hunting rights? If indigenous people are to have the right to hunt a particular species that other citizens are denied, then it presents a significant challenge to philosophers to explore the moral grounds that justify such a special right. This exploration is the subject of the current paper. (shrink)

In recent years several books by major figures in Japan's modern philosophical tradition have appeared in English, exciting readers by their explorations of the borderlands between philosophy and religion. What has been wanting, however, is a book in a Western language to elucidate the life and thought of Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945), Japan's first philosopher of world stature and the originator of what has come to be called the Kyoto School. No one is more qualified to write such a book than (...) Nishitani Keiji, whose lifetime coincides with the rise and flowering of the Kyoto School and whose own critical contribution to Japanese thought has been so important. _Nishida Kitaro_ is a translation of essays Nishitani wrote about his teacher from 1936 to 1968 and published as a book in 1985. This series of meditations by one master on another provides a remarkable, living portrait of Nishida the person and conveys the enthusiasm he aroused in his students. Examining Nishida's most important work, _An Inquiry into the Good_, Nishitani penetrates to the core of his thought and presents it in language that is a marvel of clarity. (shrink)

In the past decade, a growing number of authors, notably Thomas Pogge, have maintained that citizens in economically advanced societies are responsible for extreme and extensive poverty in the developing world. Iris Marion Young proposed the social connection model of responsibility, which asserts that these citizens participate in networks that give rise to global structural injustices. While Pogge’s argument for the existence of citizens’ responsibility has been the subject of widespread debate, few efforts have been made to scrutinise the solidity (...) of Young’s perspective. To plug this gap in the literature, this paper assesses the pertinence of Young’s view. A more traditional view than those of Pogge and Young considers poverty as indicating a lack of respect for the human rights of those living in less-developed countries. Rights theorists of global justice, however, have paid scant attention to philosophical observations concerning redistribution within the borders of a society. To remedy this shortcoming, this paper endeavours to develop the theory that citizens in affluent societies bear a duty correlative to the subsistence right of the global needy, by exploring sufficientarianism, which is one of the primary views on domestic redistribution. To begin with, I make a distinction between the responsibility-based theory and the right-based theory of global justice. This is followed by a close examination of Young’s social connection model as a significant version of the former position. I then offer a right-based argument that invokes the sufficientarian idea of the human right to live above the threshold of safe and healthy subsistence. (shrink)

Among various views on intergenerational justice, the most widely accepted theory invokes the rights of future generations. However, the rights theory seems to suffer from the non-identity problem addressed by Derek Parfit. Some rights theorists attempt to circumvent the problem by examining causal links between actions taken by preceding generations and their effects on succeeding ones. Others try to do so by replacing future individual rights with such collective rights. This paper argues that both individualist and collectivist versions of the (...) rights theory fail to supply grounds for intergenerational concern. The paper then offers an alternative theory that refines the idea of duty of fair play developed by John Rawls and applies it to the context of intergenerational relationships. To begin with, I identify several characteristics of posterity and explicate the adverse implications these characteristics have for other major theories of intertemporal concern than the rights theory. Next, different versions of the rights theory are closely examined from the perspective of the non-identity problem. Then, I offer an alternative argument for caring about future people, which is founded on the idea of intergenerational fair play. This paper concludes by noting that the fairness theory, unlike its rivals, does not face the non-identity problem or any other problems stemming from the features of posterity previously identified. (shrink)