Many scholars have claimed that the psychology of the indirect passions in the Treatise is meant to capture how we come to regard persons as morally responsible agents. My question is exactly how the indirect passions relate to responsibility. In elucidating Hume’s account of responsibility, scholars have often focused not on the passionate responses themselves, but on their structural features. In this paper, I argue that locating responsibility in the structural features is insufficient to make sense of Hume’s account of (...) responsibility. I argue this on the grounds that without reference to the passions, Hume does not have the resources to distinguish between responsible and non-responsible entities. Instead, I attribute to Hume a distinctive, sympathy-based response-dependent conception of responsibility. (shrink)

In the concluding section of the Book One of the Treatise, Hume confronts radical scepticism about the standards of correct reasoning. According to the naturalistic interpretations, Hume resolves this scepticism by appealing to some psychological facts. A common criticism of this interpretation is that the alleged naturalistic epistemic norm seems to be merely Hume’s report of his psychology, and it remains unclear why this seemingly mere psychological description can provide a principled reason to overcome his scepticism. In this paper, I (...) will argue that Hume’s discussions of the “indirect passions” and social identity provide a constitutivist ground for the naturalistic epistemic standards in the “Conclusion”: being the object of the indirect passions constitutes what kind of person one is, and being the kind of person (philosopher in Hume’s case) gives non-optional reason to pursue certain kinds of reasoning. (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。.

To articulate their understanding of Hume’s discussion of ‘distinctions of reason’, commentators have often taken what I refer to as a ‘respect-first view’ on resemblance, in which they cat...

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)

揺れ動く国民国家の概念、秩序形成にともなう差別などの考察を通して、規範と価値原理のヴィジョンを描く。.

暴走する世界と迷走する日本への反時代的「檄」。実践と原理を結ぶ、40年間の知の行路、その「回顧的総括」と、「未来への提言」。.

The studies on the cAMP‐requiring mutants and their suppressors in the yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, revealed that cAMP‐dependent protein phosphorylation is involved in the G1 phase of the cell cycle, in conjugation, and in the post‐meiotic stage of sporulation, and that inhibition of cAMP‐dependent protein phosphorylation is required to induce meiotic division.

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)

The purpose of the study was twofold: Experiment 1 tested the possibility that the mere recollection of food aroused a state of hunger and that different types of food influenced the state of hunger differently; Experiment 2 tested the possibility that food cues affected altruistic behavior. In Experiment 1, 28 participants reported how hungry they felt before and after their recollection of certain foods. Results suggest that recollection of food increased hunger and that the type of food influenced the degree (...) of hunger = 31.88, p <.001, η2 =.54). In Experiment 2, 63 participants were randomly assigned to one of three recollection conditions: noodles, pudding, and control. Participants in the two conditions described each food in detail; control group participants did not. Participants were then asked how much they would be willing to participate in an ostensible experiment. Results indicate that recollection-induced hunger reduced altruistic behavior = 4.11, p =.021, η2 =.12). Cue reactivity theory and the hierarchy of needs could explain these results. (shrink)

The mode and timing of germ-cell specification has been studied in diverse organisms, however, the molecular mechanism regulating germ-cell-fate determination remains to be elucidated. In some model organisms, maternal germ-cell determinants play a key role. In mouse embryos, some germ-line-specific gene products exist as maternal molecules and play critical roles in a pluripotential cell population at preimplantation stages. From those cells, primordial germ cells (PGCs) are specified by extracellular signaling mediated by tissue, as well as cell–cell interaction during gastrulation. Thus, (...) establishment of germ-cell lineage in mammalian embryos appears to be regulated by a multistep process, including formation and maintenance of a pluripotential cell population, as well as specification of PGCs. PGCs can be generated from pluripotential embryonic stem (ES) cells in a simple monolayer culture in which tissue interaction does not occur. This raises the possibility that ES cells, as well as, possibly, pluripotential cells in preimplantation embryos, are more closely related to the PGC precursors than pluripotential cells after implantation. BioEssays 27:136–143, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

LTP is thought to be an experimental model for studying the cellular mechanism of learning and memory. Shors & Matzel review some contradictory data concerning the linkage between LTP and memory and suggest that LTP does not underlie learning and memory. LTP is a cellular and synaptic process and cannot be a memory mechanism. In fact, it is a cellular information storage mechanism.