In this paper I investigate the possibility of a dictatorship in the context of Harsanyi's Social Aggregation Theorem. Preliminarily, some propositions about Harsanyi's Theorem are presented using an alternative principle that I name Quasi-strong Pareto, which is the latter part of Strong Pareto. Then I define dictatorship as a requirement that social preference agrees with a dictator's preference or those of members of dictatorial group even if their preferences strictly contradict those of all other people in the society. Conclusively, although (...) in each version of Harsanyi's Theorem with Pareto Indifference, Weak Preference Pareto or Weak Pareto the social utility function may have a form of dictatorship, however if individuals' vNM utility functions are all 'individualistic' and Quasi-strong Pareto is satisfied, then the dictatorship is excluded. (shrink)

We provide two alternative characterizations of the Nash bargaining solution. We introduce new simple axioms, strong undominatedness by the disagreement point, and egalitarian Pareto optimality. First, we prove that the Nash solution is characterized by symmetry, scale invariance, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and strong undominatedness by the disagreement point. Second, we replace the independence of irrelevant alternatives axiom with the sandwich axiom and egalitarian Pareto optimality. We then demonstrate that the Nash solution is characterized by symmetry, scale invariance, strong undominatedness (...) by the disagreement point, the sandwich axiom, and egalitarian Pareto optimality. (shrink)

This chapter reviews fundamental ethical controversy surrounding the ongoing effort to revise the Uniform Determination of Death Act in the United States. Instead of focusing on the process of the revision itself, the chapter explores the underlying ethical debate over brain death that has been ongoing for many decades and finally culminated in this revision. Three issues are focused: the requirement for consent and personal exemptions before applying brain death for the diagnosis of death; redefining the areas of the brain (...) that have ceased to function in the definition of brain death; and codifying the American Academy of Neurology as the authority to issue the standards of the diagnosis of brain death. The chapter concludes that allowing the personal choice of death determination gives a pragmatic compromise to the disputed definition and practice of diagnosing brain death. So long as all risks and imperfections of the diagnosis are accepted through the consenting process, there is nothing ethically objectionable to continuing the current practice of diagnosing brain death as a successful tool to facilitate heart-beating organ donation without violating the dead-donor rule. By contrast, precluding personal choice and imposing legal restrictions to consent and exemptions would further erode public trust. (shrink)

現代人が直面する、安楽死、臓器移植、死刑といった倫理問題に、徳、善、良心、愛を基礎として、読者と共に考えぬく強靱な思索。.

This paper investigates the semantics of measure phrases in Japanese. Based on new data, we argue that the interpretation of measure phrases in Japanese is sensitive to scale structure such that (i) measure phrases are introduced by a degree morpheme that selects only for gradable predicates whose scale contains a minimal element (i.e., a lower closed scale) and (ii) violations to this restriction are repaired via coercion, which forces a comparative interpretation with a contextually determined standard and hence a minimal (...) element. We compare the Japanese facts to data in other languages and argue that the requirement of having a minimal element is not specific to Japanese, but universal. We show that languages may vary in how they deal with potential violations of this universal constraint, including coercion of a contextually recoverable derived minimal element (Japanese), ungrammaticality (e.g., Spanish, Korean, Russian), and a hybrid system of ungrammaticality for some adjectives and allowed constraint violation for others (e.g., English, German, Italian). (shrink)

Naturalistic teleological accounts of mental content rely on an etiological theory of function. Nanay has raised a new objection to an etiological theory, and proposed an alternative theory of function that attributes modal force to claims about function. The aim of this paper is both to defend and to cast a new light on an etiological theory of function. I argue against Nanay’s “trait type individuation objection,” suggesting that an etiological theory also attributes modal force to claims about function. An (...) etiological theory of function can be thought to analyze claims about function with modal force, not relying on any theory of counterfactuals. (shrink)

The social and cultural causes behind the widespread use and acceptance of robots in Japan are not yet completely understood. This study compares humans and robots in images gathered through Google searches in Japanese and in English. Numerous pictures obtained by the search in Japanese were found to have a human and a robot looking together at something else (“third item”), whereas many of the images acquired by search in English show a human and a robot facing each other. This (...) is similar to the composition of mother and child in paintings: in _ukiyo-e_ that was painted mainly in the Edo period of Japan, the mother and child are often depicted together viewing something other than themselves, whereas this is not the case in Western paintings of mother and child. It has also been pointed out that, in modern Western paintings, the world inside the picture is separated from the outside world, forming an independent microcosmos, whereas the inside and outside are continuous in Japanese paintings. These may indicate that, in Japanese society, robots are to a certain extent regarded as fellow human beings who can share the third item. In Western society, on the other hand, no code is embedded that can fix robots’ superiority or inferiority to humans, which would easily trigger an antagonistic view toward artificial intelligence (AI)/robots as threatening entities, as shown in most of Western literature and movies. We suggest that such cultural characteristics of Japanese society can contribute to enhance coexistence with AI/robots. (shrink)

Der Souveränitätsbegriff Immanuel Kants wird in diesem Sammelband aus drei unterschiedlichen Perspektiven beleuchtet. Zu Beginn werden seine rechtlichen Bedingungen untersucht: im Allgemeinen die Kantische Rechtsauffassung und im Besonderen der Prozess des Übergangs vom Naturzustand, in dem alle Individuen souverän sind, zum bürgerlichen Zustand, laut dem die Souveränität allein dem Staat gehört. Der zweite Abschnitt enthält eine ausführliche Analyse des Begriffes, sei es als innere (die staatliche Verfassung) oder äußere Souveränität (die internationalen Beziehungen). Der abschließende Teil beschäftigt sich mit dem Begriff (...) der Politik als praktische Durchsetzung des Rechtes - und deshalb indirekt auch der Souveränität - auf dem Gebiet der Wirklichkeit, mit enger Verbindung zur Moral und Geschichte. Durch diese Analysen schlägt das Buch eine sowohl wissenschaftliche wie unkonventionelle Darstellung des politischen Denkens Kants vor, die dem Leser zugänglich gemacht wird. (shrink)

The Japanese comparative adverb motto has two different uses. In the degree use, motto compares two individuals and denotes that there is a large gap between the target and a given standard with a norm-related presupposition. On the other hand, in the so-called ‘negative use’ it conveys the speaker’s attitude toward the utterance situation. I argue that similarly to the degree motto, the negative motto is a comparative morpheme, but unlike the degree motto it compares a current situation and an (...) expected situation at the level of conventional implicature /expressive. I argue that the speaker’s negative evaluation of the utterance situation in question comes from the large gap between the expected degree and the current degree. The theoretical implications of this paper are that there is a natural extension from semantic comparison to expressive comparison and that there is a type in natural language that can be called an ‘indirect expressive’, as opposed to ‘direct expressives’ like bastard and man. (shrink)

This study investigates interpretations of the Japanese initial mora-based minimizer “X.Y...”-_no_ “X”-_no ji-mo_ ‘lit. even the letter “X” of “X.Y...”.’ Although initial mora-based minimizers have a literal interpretation of _ji_ ‘letter’, they have a non-literal interpretation as well. The non-literal interpretation has several distinctive features that are not present in ordinary minimizers. First, it is highly productive in that various expressions can appear in the form “X.Y...”-_no_ “X”-_no ji_. Second, non-literal minimizers typically co-occur with predicates that relate to knowledge, information, (...) concepts, thought, and habituality, as seen in the corpus data (Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese [BCCWJ]). I argue that in the non-literal use, X refers to the minimum on the scale of the main predicate concerning “X.Y...”. I suggest that the non-literal use was developed as a result of the conventionalization of the pragmatic inference derived from the literal reading, and that the co-occurrence with predicates related to knowledge, information, knowledge, concepts, thought, or habituality is due to the interpretation of “X.Y...”, which were originally interpreted as letters as an abstract concept. The theoretical implication of this study is that, in addition to a non-compositional (lexically specified) minimizer whose scale is lexically fixed (e.g., _give a damn_, _lift a finger_), there also exists a compositional (lexically unspecified) minimizer in natural language, whose scale is specified via the predicate with which the minimizer co-occurs. The last section of this paper briefly discusses similar/related phenomena in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Korean, and English from a cross-linguistic perspective. (shrink)

This book, written by one of the leading Japanese scholars in the philosophy of agricultural science, examines the relationship between human life, the natural environment, and agriculture.

Rauszer and Sabalski proved in [2] that distributivity with respect to infi- nite joins and meets is a sucient and necessary condition making the RasiowaSikorski Lemma valid in distributive lattices. The main part of their proof is a direct construction of a required filter under distributivity. In this note we show that a generalization of the result can be obtained from the Rasiowa-Sikorski Lemma for Boolean algebras by using Gornemann’s result in [1] instead of a direct con- ¨ struction. Suppose (...) A is a distributive lattice and Q; R 2 A f;g. We call A complete if 8M 2 Q9 M 2 A and 8N 2 R9 F N 2 A. M 2 Q is -dis if 9 M 2 A and 8a 2 A a t M = m2M. N 2 R is F -dis if 9 F N 2 A and 8a 2 A a u F N = F n2N. is called distributive if every M 2 Q is -dis and every N 2 R is F -dis. Suppose A is complete and C; D A. By rC we mean the filter in A generated by C, in particular, let r; = ; = ;. is called complete if and , where 8M 2 Q 9m 2 MrC \ D[fmg = ;) 8N 2 R 9n 2 NrC[fng \ D = ;). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bayle, Saint-Evremond, and Fideism:A Reply to Thomas M. LennonGianluca MoriIn a recent article published in this journal Thomas M. Lennon returns to the controversial question of Bayle's attitude towards religion. The point he debates is the particular use that, in expounding his conception of the relationship between faith and reason, Bayle makes of a passage from Saint-Evremond. In Lennon's view the correct interpretation of this point would show that (...) Bayle's fideism is to be "taken at face value" without any hint of irony and with no suspicion of dissimulation or insincerity.1 This would cast doubt on and greatly weaken the interpretation I proposed in my Bayle philosophe.2 My aim here is to respond briefly to Lennon's arguments and to clarify even more briefly what in my opinion is the right perspective in which to consider Bayle's position on this topic.The context in which Bayle quotes Saint-Evremond is to be found in the Eclaircissements he added to the second edition of his Dictionnaire historique et critique (1702) to counter the Dutch religious authorities' harsh criticism of the first edition. In particular the Walloon Consistory accused Bayle of taking a skeptical position that undermined the most important dogmas of Christian faith. In response Bayle wrote the Eclaircissement sur les Pyrrhoniens, a clumsy mosaic of quotations from the Scriptures and from patristic and profane texts, with which he sought to show that his skeptical fideism was not in the least heterodox but indeed the position that most closely reflected true Christianity. The quotation from Saint-Evremond, almost at the end of this text, is taken [End Page 323] from the Conversation du Maréchal d'Hocquincourt et du Père Canaye (written in about 1654).3 The final passage gives a clear idea of the general tone: after having disputed with a churchman the need to subject one's intellect to the yoke of faith, the marshal concludes by saying that he is ready to be crucified "without knowing why." Father Canaye replies: "No reason! That is the true religion. No reason! God has granted you a fine grace, mylord." So, and here Lennon obviously agrees (229), Saint-Evremond's is a text with no shadow of mystical inspiration, indeed strongly tending in the libertine direction, as is clear from the blatant way it pours scorn on the fideist approach.In my interpretation Bayle's use of this quotation does not at all demonstrate his atheism or unbelief, for in my view that question is undecidable. However, the quotation from Saint-Evremond is sufficient—and this is the onlyreason I mentioned it4 —to show that Bayle's approach to fideism is in no way innocent and naive as is sometimes claimed. On the contrary, his texts on this subject contain what amounts to provocations aimed at orthodox readers (to which they immediately reacted). This, together with other more important reasons, leads me to believe that Bayle's professions of Christian faith, though frequent, are generally far from being above suspicion: indeed, almost every line of them raises questions about their actual significance.The provocation contained in the quotation from Saint-Evremond appears in all its rhetorical weight if we associate this text with three other passages from Bayle's works. The first is from the Nouvelles de la république des lettres of December 1686, in which Bayle stresses the unedifying nature of the religious maxims contained in Saint-Evremond's Conversation (which, incidentally, he himself had just had printed in the collection Le Retour des pièces choisies).5 The second is taken from a letter by Jean d'Oulès to Bayle, written in 1696, in which the author deals with exactly the same passage from the Conversation that was later to be reproduced in the Eclaircissement. In this letter d'Oulès quotes the full passage which he considers to be a "naughty text" deliberately written to throw ridicule on the fanatical fideism of Pierre Jurieu.6 The third passage is from Bayle's Continuation des pensées diverses of 1704 in which, shortly after the death of Saint-Evremond, he publicly reveals the poet... (shrink)

This paper replies to Nanay’s response to my recent paper. My suggestions are the following. First, “should” or “ought” does not need to be deontic. Second, etiological theories of function, like provability logic, do not need to attribute modal force to their explanans. Third, the explanans of the homological account of trait type individuation does not appeal to a trait’s etiological function, that is, what a trait should or ought to do. Finally, my reference to Cummins’s notion of function was (...) intended to note that the homological account is permitted to use this non-etiological notion of function. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Short ReplyGianluca MoriWhile thanking Thomas Lennon for the interest he has shown in my work—and without going into details of interpretation which cannot bear discussion in this context—I would like to make a few remarks on factual questions raised by his response.1) Lennon's text (p. 338): "The text that Bayle and Mori erroneously take to be Saint-Evremond's is in fact from Jean-François Sarasin."While it is not certain (...) that Bayle and I "erroneously" take this text to be Saint-Evremond's, it is certain that Lennon erroneously takes it to be Sarasin's. In fact, the text quoted by Bayle is not taken from Sarasin's Discours sur Epicure, but, as Bayle explicitly points out ("Xénophanes," K, note 124), from a "Discours des ennuis et des déplaisirs." This "Discours" is chapter 5 of De l'usage de la vie, a text published in many editions of Saint-Evremond's works (see the Barbin 1692 in-4° ed., Seconde Partie, p. 326). The paternity of De l'usage de la vie is doubtful and controversial, but it possibly contains some passages taken from Saint-Evremond's unpublished manuscripts, especially in chapters 3-6, as reported by an important source quoted by Ternois in Saint-Evremond, Œuvres en prose, IV, 3-4, note 1.2) Lennon's text (pp. 338-39): "The significance of two of the other texts advanced by Mori is fully vitiated, for in them Bayle makes the same mistake."In my article, I did not fail to state that these texts (OD I, 158 and Dict., "Epicure," M) are taken from an apocryphal source. On page 329 I wrote: "[Bayle] mistakenly attributes to [Saint-Evremond] a text on Epicurus's morals [i.e., Sarasin's Discours] included in that volume." However, it was absolutely impossible, for seventeenth-century readers, to distinguish between Saint-Evremond's original and apocryphal texts: the author himself—as is widely known—did not want to clarify this point (with a few exceptions, including the Saint-Evremoniana, which, as we have seen, Bayle never attributed to Saint-Evremond). [End Page 343] And this is true for all editions: there is no significant difference between genuine and pirated editions, since no official edition, authorized and revised by the author, existed before Des Maizeaux's posthumous one. From this point of view, virtually nobody (before 1705) could "study" Saint-Evremond's texts. (On this connection it should be added that I never claimed that Bayle "studied" Saint-Evremond, but only that he read his available works and made up his mind on them, and particularly on the Conversation du Maréchal d'Hocquincourt—which should be at the core of the present debate—long before reading Cotolendi).3) Lennon's text (p. 336): "As Mori acknowledges elsewhere, Labrousse thinks Le Vassor was a left-wing Anglican who failed to understand Bayle's calvinist perspective."Concerning Le Vassor, I "acknowledge" Labrousse's opinion only to reject it with a detailed argument (Bayle philosophe, 262, note 341).Gianluca MoriUniversità del Piemonte OrientaleCopyright © 2004 The Journal of the History of Ideas, Inc.... (shrink)