西が中心に据える〈虚〉という概念に注目し、「平和・和解」理論としての可能性を問うた。.

When we examine the quality of life for each individual, several specific dimensions need to be considered. Health conditions and quality of family relationships are critical. When the individual in question is married, his/her marital quality is important. When he/she has a job, subjective assessment of that job is important. Social relationships regarding friends, neighbors, colleagues, relatives, etc. may be critical also. Although the quality of life is more than the sum of qualities of these specific areas of one's life, (...) it is still determined to a great extent by the qualities of these sub-areas, including marital and family relationships. (shrink)

This article is an attempt by Japanese physicians to introduce the practice patterns and moral justification of Japanese critical care to the world. Japanese health care is characterized by the fact that the fee schedule does not reward high technology medicine, such as surgery and critical care. In spite of the low reimbursement, our critical care practice pattern is characterized by continuing futile treatment for terminal patients in the intensive care unit (ICU). This apparently wasteful practice can be explained by (...) fundamental Japanese cultural values, social factors in Japan, the availability of extensive insurance coverage, physicians' psychological factors, lack of cost-benefit considerations and the pragmatic approach the Japanese take to situations. We attempt to make some brief suggestions regarding the improvement of our critical care practices. Although we can not fully present quantitative data to support our argument, this article represents our real-world approaches to the ethical issues in the ICU in Japan. (shrink)

The concept of 'sustainable welfare society' is highlighted in the social quality analysis, an approach that was extended from a European into an Asian developmental context. is article will expose the basic meaning and conceptual framework used for an analysis of the sustainable welfare society. On this basis, it will examine the postwar Japanese experience of public policymaking and, furthermore, explore the implications of this approach by the analysis of Asian cases and of developing economies. Accordingly, the idea of realizing (...) sustainable welfare societies is discussed in the background of Japanese social policies in reference to the European context of development. (shrink)

Japanese sociologistsCulture and social consciousnessclass, stratification, and mobilityindustry, labor, and organization’. Overall characteristics of sociological studies of Japanese society in Japan are summarized. The discrepancy between contemporary social phenomena and sociological research is also noted, using an example of freeters and neets, among others.

The homeostatic property cluster theory is widely influential for its ability to account for many natural-kind terms in the life sciences. However, the notion of homeostatic mechanism has never been fully explicated. In 2009, Carl Craver interpreted the notion in the sense articulated in discussions on mechanistic explanation and pointed out that the HPC account equipped with such notion invites interest-relativity. In this paper, we analyze two recent refinements on HPC: one that avoids any reference to the causes of the (...) clustering of properties and one that replaces homeostatic mechanisms with causal networks represented by causal graphs. We argue that the former is too slender to account for some inductive inference in science and the latter, thicker account invites interest-relativity, as the original HPC does. This suggests that human interest will be an un-eliminative part of a satisfactory account of natural kindness. We conclude by discussing the implication of interest-relativity to the naturalness, reality, or objectivity of kinds and indicating an overlooked aspect of natural kinds that requires further studies. (shrink)

近世の儒者・熊沢蕃山(一六一九~九一)の一つ一つの著作の思想構造の解明をめざし、さらにそれぞれの著作を比較することで、蕃山の思想の変化に注目し、その変化の意味を問う。また中江藤樹『翁問答』や池田光政の 藩政改革をとりあげて、岡山藩における蕃山の政治体験の意味を解明し、それらの考察から多様な蕃山の思想を立体的に浮かび上がらせる。.

Discussion of the posthuman has emerged in a wide set of fields through a diverse set of thinkers including Donna Haraway, Ray Kurzweil, Nick Bostrom, N. Katherine Hayles, and Francis Fukuyama, just to name a few. Despite his extensive critique of technology, commentators have not explored the fruitfulness of Heidegger's work for deciphering the various strands of posthumanism recently formulated in response to contemporary technological developments. Here, I employ Heidegger's critique of technology to trace opposing visions of the posthuman, visions (...) that are both tied intimately to new information technologies. For those seeking to extend humanist ideals, information technologies are employed to extend the vision of an ultra-humanist view of a ‘scientific posthuman’ that dangerously understands the body to be a forfeitable nuisance, rather than an inherent aspect of being human. Along Heideggerian lines, thinkers such as N. Katherine Hayles and Thomas Carlson have developed an alternative trajectory related to Dasein's Being-in-the-world. This trajectory posits the self as constituted by a lack or abyss, enabling the formulation of a ‘mystical posthuman,’ celebrating, rather than forfeiting, humanity's embodied existence. (shrink)

As philosophers in the continental tradition have taken an interest in the return of religion, anthropologists and sociologists have rejected the once-dominant secularization thesis. Bradley B. Onishi connects these lines of thought to reveal how philosophy's religious investigations have enabled critical reflections on the category of the secular.

In the present paper, we evaluate the grounds on which therapeutic approaches are determined in elderly demented patients as a typical group of patients who are conscious but lack the ability to make competent judgments. It is argued that none of the factors that the patient as an individual being has at present and that are complete in that individual - the age of the patient, dementia, personhood, and the ability to feel pain - is likely to be a genuine (...) reason for care-providers including health care workers and patient’s family to discontinue the treatment for severely demented patients. It is also claimed that reasons for discontinuation of the treatment for severely demented patients arise from the relationship between the patient and the care-providers, especially the patient’s family. The human relationships between the patient and the family may be maintained as long as the latter find some significance in the presence of the severely demented patient and recognize him/her as “one of them”. When the patient ceases to be “one of them” for the family and is excluded from “their company”, the reason for supporting the demented member of the family is lost. The benefit to the patient and the value of his/her presence lose the individuality or specificity and are subjected to interpretation by the family. Therefore, the reason for discontinuation of the treatment for a severely demented patient is termination of the relationship between the patient and his/her family. The significance of our conclusion is briefly discussed. (shrink)

What sort of evidence can confer the strongest support to a hypothesis? A natural answer is that the evidence entails the hypothesis. Roush claims that the likelihood ratio measure of degree of incremental support can deliver this intuitively natural result, and regards it as unifying “[the] account of induction and deduction in the only way that makes sense”. In this paper, we highlight a difficulty in the treatment of this case, and question the great significance that is attached to this (...) measure and its alleged capacity to accommodate the logicality requirement. We contrast the likelihood ratio measure with other measures, and argue that problems still emerge in light of tensions with plausible requirements for confirmation measures more generally. (shrink)

We present substructural negations, a family of negations classified in terms of structural rules of an extended kind of sequent calculus, display calculus. In considering the whole picture, we emphasize the duality of negation. Two types of negative modality, impossibility and unnecessity, are discussed and "self-dual" negations like Classical, De Morgan, or Ockham negation are redefined as the fusions of two negative modalities. We also consider how to identify, using intuitionistic and dual intuitionistic negations, two accessibility relations associated with impossibility (...) and unnecessity. (shrink)

A milestone in Japan's post-war philosophical thought and a dramatic turning point in Tanabe's own philosophy, _Philosophy as Metanoetics_ calls for nothing less than a complete and radical rethinking of the philosophical task itself. It is a powerful, original work, showing vast erudition in all areas of both Eastern and Western thought.

Technical reasoning refers to making inferences about how to use tools. The degree of technical reasoning is indicated by the bias of the gaze on the functional part of the tool when in use. Few studies have examined whether technical reasoning differs between familiar and unfamiliar novel tools. In addition, what effect the intention to use the tool has on technical reasoning has not been determined. This study examined gaze shifts in relation to familiar or unfamiliar tools, under three conditions, (...) among 14 healthy adults. The cumulative fixation time on the functional part of the tool served as a quantitative indicator of the degree of technical reasoning. The two-way analysis of variance for tools and conditions revealed that the cumulative fixation time significantly increased under free viewing and use conditions, compared to lift conditions. Relative to the free viewing condition, cumulative fixation time for unfamiliar tools significantly decreased in the lift condition and significantly increased in the use condition. Importantly, the results showed that technical reasoning was performed in both the use and the free viewing conditions. However, technical reasoning in the free viewing condition was not as strong as in the use condition. The difference between technical reasoning in free viewing and use conditions may indicate the difference between automatic and intentional technical reasoning. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that an encounter with a tick can produce both fear and wonder. I make a distinction between the legitimate danger of tick borne-diseases and the non-danger of our entanglement with the nature revealed by the tick’s bite in order to highlight the goodness of the tick and the possibilities for post-human existences beyond narratives of conquest and control. Ultimately, I argue that wonder is a helpful mechanism for thinking through the goodness of the tick by (...) allowing an ungrounding of our assumptions about climate change, hospitality, and the danger of non-human agencies. (shrink)