We investigate two constants cT and rT, introduced by Chaitin and Raatikainen respectively, defined for each recursively axiomatizable consistent theory T and universal Turing machine used to determine Kolmogorov complexity. Raatikainen argued that cT does not represent the complexity of T and found that for two theories S and T, one can always find a universal Turing machine such that equation image. We prove the following are equivalent: equation image for some universal Turing machine, equation image for some universal Turing (...) machine, and T proves some Π1-sentence which S cannnot prove. © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim. (shrink)

This study examines the neural substrate of the understanding of human relationships in verbal communication with Japanese honorific sentences as experimental materials. We manipulated two types of Japanese verbs specifically used to represent respect for others, i.e., exalted and humble verbs, which represent respect for the person in the subject and the person in the object, respectively. We visually presented appropriate and anomalous sentences containing the two types of verbs and analyzed the electroencephalogram elicited by the verbs. We observed significant (...) parietal negativity at a latency of approximately 400 ms for anomalous verbs compared with appropriate verbs. This parietal negativity could be a manifestation of the pragmatic process used to integrate the linguistic forms with the human relationships represented in the sentences. The topographies of these event-related potentials corresponded well with those of ERPs for two second-person pronouns in Chinese. This correspondence suggests that the pragmatic integration process in honorific expressions is cross-linguistically common in part. Furthermore, we assessed the source localization by means of independent component analysis and dipole fitting and observed a significant difference in ERP between the honorific and control sentences in the IC cluster centered in the precentral gyrus and in the cluster centered in the medial part of the occipital lobe, which corresponded well with the functional magnetic resonance imaging findings for Japanese honorification. We also found several significant differences in the time-frequency analyses for the medial occipital cluster. These significant differences in the medial occipital cluster suggested that the circuit of the theory of mind was involved in the processing of Japanese honorification. Our results suggest that pragmatic and syntactic processing are performed in parallel because the person to be respected must fulfill the grammatical function appropriate for the honorific verb. (shrink)

This paper gives new confluence proofs for several lambda calculi with permutation-like reduction, including lambda calculi corresponding to intuitionistic and classical natural deduction with disjunction and permutative conversions, and a lambda calculus with explicit substitutions. For lambda calculi with permutative conversion, naïve parallel reduction technique does not work, and traditional notion of residuals is required as Ando pointed out. This paper shows that the difficulties can be avoided by extending the technique proposed by Dehornoy and van Oostrom, called the Z (...) theorem: existence of a mapping on terms with the Z property concludes the confluence. Since it is still hard to directly define a mapping with the Z property for the lambda calculi with permutative conversions, this paper extends the Z theorem to compositional functions, called compositional Z, and shows that we can adopt it to the calculi. (shrink)

Refusal is considered a face-threatening act, since it contradicts the inviter’s expectations. In the case of Japanese, native speakers are known to prefer to leave sentences unfinished for a conventional indirect refusal. Successful comprehension of this indirect refusal depends on whether the addressee is fully conventionalized to the preference for syntactic unfinishedness so that they can identify the true intention of the refusal. Then, non-native speakers who are not fully accustomed to the convention may be confused by the indirect style. (...) In the present study, we used event-related potentials of electroencephalography in an attempt to differentiate the neural substrates for perceiving unfinished sentences in a conventionalized indirect refusal as an FTA between NS and NNS, in terms of the unfinishedness and indirectness of the critical sentence. In addition, we examined the effects of individual differences in mentalization, or the theory of mind, which refers to the ability to infer the mental states of others. We found several different ERP effects for these refusals between NS and NNS. NNS induced stronger P600 effects for the unfinishedness of the refusal sentences, suggesting their perceived syntactic anomaly. This was not evoked in NS. NNS also revealed the effects of N400 and P300 for the indirectness of refusal sentences, which can be interpreted as their increased processing load for pragmatic processing in the inexperienced contextual flow. We further found that the NNS’s individual mentalizing ability correlates with the effect of N400 mentioned above, indicating that lower mentalizers evoke higher N400 for indirect refusal. NS, on the contrary, did not yield these effects reflecting the increased pragmatic processing load. Instead, they evoked earlier ERPs of early posterior negativity and P200, both of which are known as indices of emotional processing, for finished sentences of refusal than for unfinished ones. We interpreted these effects as a NS’s dispreference for finished sentences to realize an FTA, given that unfinished sentences are considered more polite and more conventionalized in Japanese social encounters. Overall, these findings provide evidence that a syntactic anomaly inherent in a cultural convention as well as individual mentalizing ability plays an important role in understanding an indirect speech act of face-threatening refusal. (shrink)

Der Begriff der Person wird häufig im Bereich der biomedizinischen Ethik angewandt, wie vor allem in der Abtreibungsdebatte. Es wird immer noch kontrovers darüber diskutiert, ob ein Embryo als Person anzusehen ist.Dieses Buch zeigt einerseits auf, dass der Begriff der Person keinen Beitrag zur Antwort nach dem moralischen Status eines menschlichen Wesens am Lebensbeginn leisten kann. Andererseits wird jedoch deutlich, dass dieser Begriff für den Respekt gegenüber menschlichen Wesen am Lebensende hilfreich ist. Was bedeutet Respekt vor der Autonomie von Personen (...) bei der Sterbehilfe und was bedeutet Respekt gegenüber dementen Personen, die nicht mehr autonom sind? Bei der Beantwortung dieser Fragen spielt der Begriff der Person eine entscheidende Rolle. Dieses Buch soll einen Beitrag zur Verdeutlichung der Grenzen und Gültigkeit des Begriffs der Person in der biomedizinischen Ethik leisten. (shrink)

In biomedical ethics, the concept of person plays a major role in the discussion of ethically appropriate relationships with early human beings. The debate over abortion is one such case. There is still a heated debate over whether a fetus is already a person. However, because of the structure of the argument, the debate over the moral status of the fetus quickly becomes all-or-nothing. Against this background, I would like to address the question of to what extent the concept of (...) person can be helpful in biomedical ethics. I argue that this concept is not useful for ethically appropriate interactions with early human beings, but it is useful for ethically appropriate interactions with human beings at the end of life. I demonstrate my thesis with reference to the argument about euthanasia. The concept of person plays a crucial role in understanding what it means to respect the autonomy of a person who desires euthanasia. (shrink)

1-kan. Geijutsuteki rōdō no shakaigaku -- 2-kan. Geijutsuteki sōzō no riron.

There are different ways of defining science, but I should like to examine it primarily as one of the forms of mental labor. In this connection it is appropriate to recall Marx's words: "A distinction must be made between universal labor and cooperative labor. Each plays its own role in the process of production. They overlap, but there is also a distinction between them. Every scientific work, every discovery, every invention is universal labor. It is made possible partly by cooperation (...) among contemporaries and partly by making use of the work of those who have gone before. Joint labor presumes direct cooperation among individuals." What is subsumed here under "cooperative labor," according to Marx, is "directly associated labor," which, to put it in other terms, is "direct labor.". (shrink)

In this paper we describe the Curry-Howard-De Bruijn isomorphism between Higher Order Many Sorted Intuitionistic Predicate Logic PREDω and the type system λPREDω, which can be considered a subsystem of the Calculus of Constructions. The type system is presented using the concept of a Pure Type System, which is a very elegant framework for describing type systems. We show in great detail how formulae and proof trees of the logic relate to types and terms of the type system, respectively. Finally, (...) we discuss some consequences of the isomorphism with respect to the relation between the systems discussed in this paper. (shrink)

We define and investigate a uniformly locally o-minimal structure of the second kind in this paper. All uniformly locally o-minimal structures of the second kind have local monotonicity, which is a local version of monotonicity theorem of o-minimal structures. We also demonstrate a local definable cell decomposition theorem for definably complete uniformly locally o-minimal structures of the second kind. We define dimension of a definable set and investigate its basic properties when the given structure is a locally o-minimal structure which (...) admits local definable cell decomposition. (shrink)

Consider a definably complete uniformly locally o-minimal expansion of the second kind of a densely linearly ordered abelian group. Let $f:X \rightarrow R^n$ be a definable map, where X is a definable set and R is the universe of the structure. We demonstrate the inequality $\dim ) \leq \dim $ in this paper. As a corollary, we get that the set of the points at which f is discontinuous is of dimension smaller than $\dim $. We also show that the (...) structure is definably Baire in the course of the proof of the inequality. (shrink)

Dans 'les Deux sources de la morale et de la religion', Bergson évoque rarement le Japon. Et pourtant dans le quatrième chapitre du même texte, intitulé Remarques finales 'Mécanique et mystique', c'était lui qui a bien prévu Hiroshima avec ces mots testamentaires: ' Il faut que tous se battent contre tous, comme firent les hordes des premiers temps. Seulement on se bat avec les armes forgées par notre civilisation, et les massacres sont d'une horreur que les anciens n'auraient même pas (...) imaginée. Au train dont va la science, le jour approche où l'un des adversaires, possesseur d'un secret qu'il tenait en réserve, aura le moyen de supprimer l'autre'. Ainsi se pose la question de savoir comment envisager les Deux Sources, à travers les relations assez particulières de ce philosophe avec le Japon. À partir de cette interrogation, PBJ (Projet Bergson au Japon) a organisé, aux 5-8 novembre 2013, à Paris, un colloque qui s'intitule Remarques finales : autour des Deux sources de la morale et de la religion de Bergson. Le présent volume présente les actes de ce colloque ellipsoïdal dont les centres étaient Bergson et le Japon"--Back cover. (shrink)