The previous studies have shown that human infants and domestic dogs follow the gaze of a human agent only when the agent has addressed them ostensively—e.g., by making eye contact, or calling their name. This evidence is interpreted as showing that they expect ostensive signals to precede referential information. The present study tested chimpanzees, one of the closest relatives to humans, in a series of eye-tracking experiments using an experimental design adapted from these previous studies. In the ostension conditions, a (...) human actor made eye contact, called the participant’s name, and then looked at one of two objects. In the control conditions, a salient cue, which differed in each experiment (a colorful object, the actor’s nodding, or an eating action), attracted participants’ attention to the actor’s face, and then the actor looked at the object. Overall, chimpanzees followed the actor’s gaze to the cued object in both ostension and control conditions, and the ostensive signals did not enhance gaze following more than the control attention-getters. However, the ostensive signals enhanced subsequent attention to both target and distractor objects (but not to the actor’s face) more strongly than the control attention-getters—especially in the chimpanzees who had a close relationship with human caregivers. We interpret this as showing that chimpanzees have a simple form of communicative expectations on the basis of ostensive signals, but unlike human infants and dogs, they do not subsequently use the experimenter’s gaze to infer the intended referent. These results may reflect a limitation of non-domesticated species for interpreting humans’ ostensive signals in inter-species communication. (shrink)

In this review, we discuss the implications of placing an infant in the supine position with respect to human cognitive development and evolution. When human infants are born, they are relatively large and immature in terms of postural and locomotor ability as compared with their closest relatives, the great apes. Hence, human mothers seemingly adopt a novel pattern of caring for their large and heavy infants, i.e., placing their infants in the supine position; this promotes face-to-face communication with their infants. (...) Moreover, infants in the supine position can interact with other nearby individuals in the same manner from an early age. In addition, the infants can also explore their own body parts and/or objects with their hands since the hands are not required to support the body and are therefore, free to move. These activities are considered to be fundamental to the early development of human social and nonsocial cognition, including knowledge of self, in the first six months after birth. Further, developmental continuity in the voluntary exploratory movements in the prenatal period to the early postnatal period is also discussed. (shrink)

Jecker and Au’s paper raises important issues concerning health equity in pandemic responses, and the importance of considering the long-term effects of pandemic strategy on population health and well-being.1 We welcome their focus on the experience of Asian countries, including Japan. However, we have some concerns with both the distinction which they draw between elimination and mitigation, and their account of the nature and origins of the Japanese response to the COVID-19 pandemic. First, we believe that the distinction between elimination (...) and mitigation is not fine grained enough to capture the various strategies which countries have taken towards the pandemic. Many of Jecker and Au’s criticisms of the elimination strategy relate to specific policies such as lockdowns, travel restrictions and restrictions on businesses, which have been employed by numerous countries irrespective of their end goal. By contrast to the simple elimination/mitigation dichotomy with which Jecker and Au work, Baker et al have identified five separate COVID-19 strategies, namely: exclusion, elimination, suppression, mitigation and no substantive strategy.2 Baker et al define an elimination strategy as ‘maximum action to exclude disease and eliminate community transmission’ with the goal of reaching ‘zero [disease] transmission in the community’. On this account, Japan’s strategy does …. (shrink)

O escopo do artigo é examinar a tese hobbesiana de que todo efeito possui uma causa necessária, indicando como o filósofo a demonstra de modos diferentes, mas complementares: em primeiro lugar, tanto por meio da identificação entre causa integral, causa suficiente e causa necessária, como pela redefinição dos conceitos de potência e ato; em segundo, através da subordinação do princípio de bivalência à determinação necessária dos eventos; e, por fim, pela defesa de que só por meio de uma causa necessária, (...) causa que opera mecanicamente por meio de contato, é possível dar a razão pela qual os eventos possuem tais determinações espaciotemporais ao invés de outras, de modo que a causalidade mecânica necessária se estabelece como o único tipo legítimo de explicação dos fenômenos em Hobbes, transformando-se, então, na forma geral da inteligibilidade. (shrink)

Tanabe Hajime développa sa philosophie dans la perspective d’une « ontologie sociale » à travers la « logique de l’espèce » et la « logique de l’Amour ». La première, développée de 1934 à 1941, vise la rationalisation de la société japonaise en temps de guerre, la seconde le salut de la société japonaise après la Seconde Guerre mondiale dans le cadre d’une philosophie de la religion. Le but de cet article est de mettre au jour le développement de la (...) logique de l’espèce vers la logique de l’Amour et de présenter l’histoire de l’ontologie sociale tanabéenne dans le cadre de la « métanoétique ». (shrink)

In the Böhm theorem workshop on Crete, Zoran Petric called Statman’s “Typical Ambiguity theorem” the typed Böhm theorem. Moreover, he gave a new proof of the theorem based on set-theoretical models of the simply typed lambda calculus. In this paper, we study the linear version of the typed Böhm theorem on a fragment of Intuitionistic Linear Logic. We show that in the multiplicative fragment of intuitionistic linear logic without the multiplicative unit the weak typed Böhm theorem holds. The system IMLL (...) exactly corresponds to the linear lambda calculus with multiplicative pairing. The system IMLL also exactly corresponds to the free symmetric monoidal closed category without the unit object. As far as we know, our separation result is the first one with regard to these systems in a purely syntactical manner. (shrink)

This article asks whether our moral duties are created by others’ non-compliance and whether we should fulfill them or not. For example, do we need to donate more of our income to eradicate world poverty because billionaires do not donate? If so, how much should we donate? In short, should we make up for others’ defaulting on their moral duties – and if so, how and to what extent? Such situations are called non-ideal circumstances in political philosophy. With the increasing (...) importance of non-ideal theories of justice and ethics, the question of how we should act in non-ideal situations has received more attention in the ethics literature in recent years. This article poses and addresses the question of whether we should take up the slack when others do not comply with their own moral duty. This article examines how consequentialism and contractualism might respond to non-ideal situations of taking up the slack and then defends a contractualist-constructivist approach to dealing with these situations. (shrink)

O conceito de potentia possui uma pluralidade de sentidos na obra de Hobbes, sendo empregado na física, na antropologia, nas reflexões sobre o direito e sobre a política, bem como no discurso sobre Deus e seus atributos. Neste artigo, o exame será circunscrito ao conceito hobbesiano de potência (power) no Short Tract em seu diálogo com a tradição aristotélica da potência e do ato, isto é, ao conceito físico de potência por meio do qual os movimentos são explicados. O que (...) pretendo indicar é que já nessa obra esse conceito se forjou em oposição ao conceito aristotélico e à tradição escolástica, por mais que essa primeira formulação da noção de potência seja problemática. Hobbes fundamenta uma dupla fonte do determinismo no Short Tract, fonte que se tornará una com a reformulação do conceito de potência nos textos posteriores, como exporei na segunda parte do artigo. (shrink)

As is well known, John Rawls opposes the idea and policy of basic income. However, this paper posits that his view of self-respect and activity could accommodate its implementation. Rawls lists the social basis of self-respect in social primary goods as the most important good, but does not assume that it is derived from wage labor alone. It appears that his theory of justice aims to criticize the work-centered (wage-labor) society and to overcome it. Besides, as Rawls desires, for our (...) work to be meaningful and our life worthwhile, we should institutionalize basic income because it can improve workers’ bargaining power and their attitude toward work, in addition to enhancing their leisure time. In this paper, by considering the normative relationship between meaningful work, worthwhile life, and self-respect from a Rawlsian perspective, I inquire into the potential of basic income in his well-ordered society. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between the generation and suspension of meaning in Dostoevsky’s Demons with reference to Bakhtin’s thesis that one’s meaning is defined by someone else’s answer. By generation I mean both the generational conflict between fathers and children and the generative power of language. It is the division between what one says and what one means that troubles Stavrogin. He has his authorship usurped by others and is not in control of his own discourse. Although the document (...) headed “From Stavrogin” in the unpublished chapter “At Tikhon’s” has traditionally been called a confession by critics, that is misleading, for, as the narrator points, the pages look very much like a political tract, and what is at stake in his dialogue with Tikhon is the very question: is it a confession or not? This document also raises questions about the authenticity of signatures, as does Prince Myshkin’s counterfeiting of someone else’s signature in The Idiot. (shrink)

Despite decades of empirical happiness research, there is still little evidence for the positive effect of economic growth on life satisfaction. This poses a major challenge to welfare economic theory and to normative conceptions of socio-economic development. This book endeavours to explain these findings and to make sense of their ethical implications. While most of the existing literature on empirical happiness research is ultimately interested in understanding how to improve human lives and societal development, the ethical backdrop against which these (...) findings are evaluated is rarely made explicit. In contrast to this, Professor Hirata focuses on the role happiness should play in an ethically founded conception of good development. Taking a development ethics perspective, this book proposes a nuanced conception of happiness that includes both its affective and its normative dimensions and embeds this in a comprehensive conception of good development. The argument is that happiness should not be regarded as the only thing that determines a good life and that good development cannot sensibly be thought of as a matter of maximizing happiness. Happiness should rather be seen as an important indicator for the presence or absence of those concerns that really matter to people: the reasons that give rise to happiness. This book should be of interest to students and researchers of economics, psychology and development studies. (shrink)

Cet article veut montrer que l’idée du travail domestique en tant que reproduction de la force de travail dans la tradition marxiste a été élargie par les théories du care développées dans les années 2000, selon lesquelles le travail domestique et du care non seulement reproduisent la force de travail mais produisent et maintiennent la vie. Dans une première partie, il fait un état de lieux concernant les controverses autour du travail domestique, de la reproduction/production et de la reproduction sociale. (...) Dans une deuxième partie, il présente le travail du care en tant que travail productif et reproductif. Il s’agit ici d’élaborer une proposition alternative, transversale et matérialiste, en tenant compte des acquis des développements récents de la « Social reproduction theory », tout en refusant la séparation entre travail productif et reproductif sur laquelle elle se fonde. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the conception of nature as a book in Francis Bacon. On the one hand, using this image and confronting the reading of the book of nature and the reading of the books of established authors, Bacon contrasts two completely different ways of the natural philosophy: the Interpretation of Nature in contrast to the Anticipation of the Mind. On the other hand, by considering the revealed book and the book of creatures, Bacon contends for the specificity (...) of the scientific investigation of nature and its relative autonomy in relation to the sphere of religion, although he indicates the character of continuity and complementation of the two books of the same authorship. (shrink)

Disaster planning challenges our morality. Everyday rules of action may need to be suspended during large-scale disasters in favour of maxims that that may make prudential or practical sense and may even be morally preferable but emotionally hard to accept, such as tsunami-tendenko. This maxim dictates that the individual not stay and help others but run and preserve his or her life instead. Tsunami-tendenko became well known after the great East Japan earthquake on 11 March 2011, when almost all the (...) elementary and junior high school students in one city survived the tsunami because they acted on this maxim that had been taught for several years. While tsunami-tendenko has been praised, two criticisms of it merit careful consideration: one, that the maxim is selfish and immoral; and two, that it goes against the natural tendency to try to save others in dire need. In this paper, I will explain the concept of tsunami-tendenko and then respond to these criticisms. Such ethical analysis is essential for dispelling confusion and doubts about evacuation policies in a disaster. (shrink)

The present study examined the direct and indirect relationships between competitive work environments and subjective unhealthiness. It also examined the effects of adjusting for cognitive distortions in the relationship between a competitive work environment and subjective unhealthiness and between a competitive work environment and workaholism. Data were collected from 9,716 workers in various industries, occupations, and positions. The results show that competitive work environments were positively related to subjective unhealthiness, both directly and through workaholism. Furthermore, cognitive distortions moderated the positive (...) effect between a competitive work environment and workaholism, and the positive relationship was stronger when cognitive distortions were high. This study has important and practical implications for companies that are increasingly concerned about the health of their employees. (shrink)

倫理学における『正義論』革命の全貌。「反照的均衡」という方法論を軸とした『正義論』は、規範倫理学・政治哲学の分野を活気づけた。しかしそれだけが『正義論』革命なのではない。ロールズの理論は、道徳の根本問 題を考える道徳哲学・倫理学の分野にも衝撃を与えたのである。 -/- This book explores the full story of A Theory of Justice revolution in ethics. A Justice of Theory, centered on the methodology of "reflective equilibrium," has energized the fields of normative ethics and political philosophy. However, this is not the only revolution in A Theory of Justice. Rawls's theory has also impacted the fields of moral philosophy and metaethics, which deal with fundamental questions of morality.

Neste artigo, pretende-se indicar como o jovem Leibniz, em textos do início da década de 1670, como no Theoria Motusi e nas correspondências a Johann Friedrich e a Hobbes, apropria-se do conceito de conatus e da teoria da sensação de Hobbes para defender a existência de mentes incorpóreas, seres verdadeiramente indivisíveis, em oposição à redução hobbesiana da realidade a corpos e seus movimentos. Ademais, uma vez que a essência do corpo reside no movimento e não na extensão — como o (...) filósofo afirma influenciado pelas teorias de Hobbes — e que o corpo, de acordo com os princípios do mecanicismo, não é fonte de seu próprio movimento, Leibniz argumentará que a sua substância deve residir em algo incorpóreo. Essa apropriação por parte de Leibniz do conceito de conatus e da teoria do movimento hobbesianos desempenhará, assim, um papel importante não apenas na rejeição da substância extensa cartesiana, como também na posterior reabilitação das formas substanciais, rejeitadas pelo autor na sua primeira juventude. (shrink)

Previous studies have suggested that musical training in childhood is beneficial for sociability. However, it remains unclear how age of onset of group music lessons is associated with the late sociability of children from a long-term perspective. This study investigated associations between group music lessons conducted at a music school and children’s levels of sociability by focusing on the age of onset of the lessons. We conducted a survey of 276 children aged 4–5 years (M = 58.5 months) and 6–7 (...) years (M = 82.7 months) who commenced music lessons at ages 1, 2, 4, and 6 years. We found that (1) the empathy scores of children aged 6–7 years who began lessons when 1-year-old were greater than those who began lessons when 4-years-old, (2) the communication scores of children aged 4–5 years who began lessons when 1-year-old were greater than those who began lessons when older than 1 year, and (3) the empathy and extraversion scores were high in those aged 6–7 years who began lessons in that age range. The results suggest that early onset of music lessons could positively influence children’s sociability; in contrast, after about age 7 years, children who already had high sociability may be more inclined to select group music lessons. By focusing on the impact of regular group music lessons from a very young age on later levels of sociability, these results further elucidate the effects of musical lessons. In sum, participation in group music lessons 2–4 times per month can be effective social training for very young children and foster their later sociability. (shrink)

Why is John Rawls less popular than other philosophers in Japan? In what follows, I explain how Rawls’ philosophy has been received in Japan, especially in relation to Japanese culture, politics, and economy. After giving an overview of the framework of Rawls’ philosophical view, I outline the background of the reception of Western philosophy in Japan . Then, I proceed to explain the reason why the early reception of Rawls’ work in Japan was mainly started not by ethicists and philosophers (...) but by economists and jurists . I discuss the first Japanese translation of A Theory of Justice , the publication of .. (shrink)

仏教における「業思想」は、倫理思想であり行為の哲学でもある。様々に変遷してきたこの思想の歴史と論理をスリリングに読み解く!

The savanna theory of happiness proposes that, due to evolutionary constraints on the human brain, situations and circumstances that would have increased our ancestors’ happiness may still increase our happiness today, and those that would have decreased their happiness then may still decrease ours today. It further proposes that, because general intelligence evolved to solve evolutionarily novel problems, this tendency may be stronger among less intelligent individuals. Because humans are a diurnal species that cannot see in the dark, darkness always (...) represented danger to our ancestors and may still decrease our happiness today. Consistent with this prediction, the analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) data shows that exposure to sunlight was associated with happiness but the association was significantly weaker among more intelligent individuals. (shrink)

The Fist-Edge-Palm task, a manual hand task, has been used to detect frontal dysfunctions in clinical situations: its performance failures are observed in various prefrontal cortex -related disorders, including schizophrenia. However, previous imaging studies reported that the performance of the FEP task activated motor-related areas, but not the PFC. Here, we aimed to investigate the relationships between the performance of the FEP task and PFC functions. Hemodynamic activity in the PFC, including the dorsolateral PFC and frontal pole, was recorded. Healthy (...) young subjects performed the FEP task as well as a palm tapping task three times. The subjects also completed a Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and Schizotypal Personality Scale questionnaire. We found that hemodynamic activity in the PFC increased in the first trial of the FEP task but decreased considerably in the second and third trials compared to the PT task. The number of performance errors in the FEP task also decreased in the second and third trials. Error reduction in the FEP task between the first and second trials was negatively correlated with schizotypal trait and the number of perseveration errors in the WCST. Furthermore, changes in the PFC hemodynamic activity between the first and second trials were positively correlated with error reduction in the FEP task between the first and second trials, and negatively correlated with the number of perseveration errors in the WCST. These results suggest that learning in the FEP task requires PFC activation, which is negatively associated with perseveration errors in the WCST. The results further suggest that the FEP task, in conjunction with near-infrared spectroscopy, may be useful as a diagnostic method for various disorders with PFC dysfunction. (shrink)

Probably very few people today would believe that, prior to Japan's modernization during the Meiji period, the Japanese were not able to run. It seems commonsensical that human beings should be able to perform the same body movements such as running—since, of course, we are human beings regardless of whether we live in modern countries. However, it appears, in fact, that people in the Edo Period did not run in the sense of how we run today. There was no need, (...) for example, for farmers to run in the midst of their daily agricultural activities.In addition, it has been also pointed out that, although some premodern Japanese, such as samurai or official messengers... (shrink)

Na modernidade, a distinção entre natureza e artifício desaparece, a ponto das máquinas feitas pelos homens se tornarem modelos privilegiados para a explicação dos corpos natu- rais, como se depreende a partir de textos de Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, dentre outros. Essa nova relação entre natureza e artifício é correlata da mecanização e da destituição de fins na natureza, na medida em que a adoção da mecânica como modelo de explicação da natureza está atrelada à rejeição da utilização das causas finais (...) na física e à concepção de que os corpos são desti- tuídos de princípios imanentes de movimento ou de qualquer princípio incorpóreo que os predispo- nha a um processo de mudança teleologicamente estruturado e orientado. Leibniz também con- cebe a natureza como artifício e os corpos orgânicos como autômatos, mas a sua concepção de cor- pos naturais como máquinas artificiais vai ainda mais longe, a ponto de caracterizar o natural como aquilo que traz em si o caráter de artificial mais do que o próprio artificial. Entretanto, diferente- mente de Bacon, Descartes e Hobbes, Leibniz utiliza a analogia de natureza como máquina e a aprofunda justamente para argumentar que a natureza é teleologicamente estruturada, sendo que a diferença entre as máquinas feitas pelos homens e as naturais ou divinas reside no fato de que enquanto aquelas possuem uma finalidade meramente extrínseca, estas possuem uma finalidade imanente inscrita em cada uma das suas partes ao infinito. (shrink)

This paper seeks to examine two moments of the subject’s identification with substance in modernity, namely, the body in Hobbesian philosophy and the individual substance in Leibnizian thought. In Hobbes, to be a subject signifies to be subjected, so that the body-substance is characterized by not having in itself its principle of movement. In Leibniz, for his turn, a subject is that which contains in its own nature everything that can be truly predicated about it, implying that it is the (...) foundation and principle of its own activity, or, in a word, it is self-sufficient. Nonetheless, although Hobbesian body is characterized by its inertia and Leibnizian substance by its self-sufficiency, it is my purpose to indicate that the former is more crucial than the latter to the constitution of the modern conception of subjectivity, i.e., of the subject as the center of action and as a founding power, capable of establishing a new order by its decision. This is not possible in Leibnizian philosophy, for, according to it, human activity, like that of any other substance, consists solely in the actualization of the divine plan of the best of all possible worlds. (shrink)

The simultaneous recording of brain activity in two or more people, termed hyperscanning, is an emerging field of research investigating the neural basis of social interaction. Hyperscanning studies of adult–infant dyads have great potential to provide insights into how social functions develop. In particular, taking advantage of functional near-infrared spectroscopy for its spatial resolution and invulnerability to motion artifacts, adult–infant fNIRS may play a major role in this field. However, there remains a problem in analyzing hyperscanning data between adult and (...) young populations. Namely, there are intrinsic differences in hemodynamic time latencies depending on age, and the peak latency of the hemodynamic response function is longer in younger populations. Despite this fact, the effects of such differences on quantified synchrony have not yet been examined. Consequently, the present study investigated the influence of intrinsic hemodynamic differences on wavelet coherence for assessing brain synchrony, and further examined the statistical removal of these effects through simulation experiments. First, we assumed a social signal model, where one counterpart of the dyad sends a social signal to the other, which eventually results in simultaneous brain activation. Based on this model, simulated fNIRS activation sequences were synthesized by convolving boxcar event sequences with HRFs. We set two conditions for the event: synchronized and asynchronized event conditions. We also modeled the HRFs of adults and infants by referring to previous studies. After preprocessing with additional statistical processing, we calculated the wavelet coherence for each synthesized fNIRS activation sequence pair. The simulation results showed that the wavelet coherence in the synchronized event condition was attenuated for the combination of different HRFs. We also confirmed that prewhitening via an autoregressive filter could recover the attenuation of wavelet coherence in the 0.03–0.1 Hz frequency band, which was regarded as being associated with synchronous neural activity. Our results showed that variability in hemodynamics affected the analysis of inter-brain synchrony, and that the application of prewhitening is critical for such evaluations between adult and young populations. (shrink)

Today Asia is attracting attention in the area of bioethics. In fact, the potential of bioethics is beginning to be discussed seriously at academic centers across Asia. In Japan, this discussion began a decade ago with the publication The book is one of the principal explorations of biomedical ethics involving Japan to date. Tom Beauchamp, an author of one of the book's chapters, compares Japanese and American standards of informed consent and refutes relativistic positions, concluding that.