Originally published as 「明治の哲学界：有機体の哲学とその系譜」in 井上克人編『豊饒なる明治』, Kansai Daigaku Shuppannbu, 2012, 3–22. Translated by Morisato Takeshi. German Idealism was introduced to Japanese intellectuals in the middle of Meiji era and was mainly received from a mystical or religious perspective, as we see in Inoue Tetsujirō’s “harmonious existence,” Inoue Enryō’s “unity of mind and body,” and Kiyozawa Manshi’s “existentialism.” Since these theories envisioned true reality as a unified and living whole, I group them under the label “philosophy of organism” and from (...) there argue that their conviction that “all is truth and truth is all” was shaped in large part by the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana. The understanding of Buddhist concepts by Meiji philosophers was philosophical in its content, and those who devoted themselves to the study of Western philosophy were encouraged to describe Eastern thought in Western philosophical terms. As a result, the philosophical world of the Meiji era developed an original standpoint that unified Eastern and Western perspectives by means of a logic of “phenomena-in-reality.”. (shrink)

The discovery of the signal peptides that direct proteins to localize at the nucleolus is described here. The nucleolar targeting signal termed the NOS consists of clustered basic amino acids organized such that a portion also functions as the nuclear transporting signal. Although a NOS has been identified within the regulatory genes of human retroviruses, HTLV‐I and HIV‐I, signals of similar function in cellular proteins – such as heat shock proteins – may be induced through the configurational change of protein (...) structure by heat or stress. (shrink)

法は危機をこえてどう変容するのか!法的議論の分裂、立憲主義の錯綜、正統性のゆらぎ―法が危機にあるいま、従来の支配的見解を根本的に問い、オルタナティヴ理論を提示する。.

巧緻を極めた完全犯罪の罠ともいうべき言葉の繭を破り「神」と「死」の謎に迫る、躍動感溢れる究極の探究報告。「いま」生きているこの現場の徹底究明。.

In political philosophy, reflective equilibrium is a standard method used to systematically reconcile intuitive judgments with theoretical principles. In this paper, we propose that survey experiments and a model selection method—i.e., the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC)-based model selection method—can be viewed together as a methodological means of satisfying the epistemic desiderata implicit in reflective equilibrium. To show this, we conduct a survey experiment on two theories of distributive justice, prioritarianism and sufficientarianism. Our experimental test case and AIC-based model selection method (...) demonstrate that the refined sufficientarian principle, a widely accepted principle of distributive justice, is no more plausible than the prioritarian principle. This tells us that some changes of certain intuitions revolving around sufficientarianism should be examined (separately) based on the findings of the survey experiment and AIC model selection. This shows the potential of our approach—both practically and methodologically—as a novel way of applying reflective equilibrium in political philosophy. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 4, Page 445-452, May 2022.

A dialectical contradiction can be appropriately described within the framework of classical formal logic. It is in harmony with the law of noncontradiction. According to our definition, two theories make up a dialectical contradiction if each of them is consistent and their union is inconsistent. It can happen that each of these two theories has an intended model. Plenty of examples are to be found in the history of science.

Specular reflections and refractive distortions are complex image properties of solid transparent objects, but despite this complexity, we readily perceive the 3D shapes of these objects. We have found in past work that relevant sources of scene complexity have differential effects on 3D shape perception, with specular reflections increasing perceived thickness, and refractive distortions decreasing perceived thickness. In an object with both elements, such as glass, the two optical properties may complement each other to support reliable perception of 3D shape. (...) We investigated the relative dominance of specular reflection and refractive distortions in the perception of shape. Surprisingly, the ratio of specular reflection to refractive component was almost equal to that of ordinary glass and ice, which promote correct percepts of 3D shape. The results were also explained by the variance in local RMS contrast in stimulus images but may depend on overall luminance and contrast of the surrounding light field. (shrink)

This pilot study examines how a number of American and Japanese journalists make the tough calls regarding an escalating social problem: whether to identify juveniles who have been charged with serious capital crimes. Divergent societal and journalistic values of the two countries are explored via a survey of journalists from Honolulu and Hiroshima. Newsroom policies and practices are described regarding general and specific cases of juvenile crime. In general, Japanese journalists are far more likely than U.S. journalists to withhold names. (...) Tables and additional background information are found at jmme.org. (shrink)

This paper offers a new insight on the Condorcet Jury Theorem (CJT) in the theory of epistemic democracy. This theorem states that democratic decision-making leads us to correct outcomes under certain assumptions. One key assumption is the ‘independence condition’, which requires that voters form their beliefs independently when they vote. This paper examines the role of an opinion leader as an informational source, which potentially violates independence. We demonstrate that voters’ beliefs may be correlated in the presence of the leader, (...) and that the CJT can fail if the leader’s opinions are reliable. This leads us to the following paradoxical observation: for epistemic democracy, good leaders may be bad, while bad leaders may be good. (shrink)