Original source :「委員会の論理」『世界文化』[Culture du monde], n° 13, janvier 1936, 2–17 ; n° 14, février 1936, 16–33 ; n° 15, mars 1936, 12–25. Repris dans nmz 1 : 46–108. La version des œuvres complètes présente un certain nombre de variantes par rapport à la première publication en 1936. « La logique des comités » a été traduit en espagnol par Agustín J. Zavala. Je remercie vivement Saitō Takako pour sa relecture et ses précieuses remarques.

In the writings of the Japanese Pure Land Buddhist Shinran 親鸞 (1173–1263) we read: “I, Shinran, do not have a single disciple of my own” (SZ Supplement: 10; Saitō 2010: 242; Yuien 1996: 6). Is he simply being modest? Does Shinran defy discipleship? Does he rule out the possibility of the reception of his thought? The answer to these questions is not clear; nevertheless, what we do know is that the reader of his writings is supposed to arrive at (...) the Buddha’s original teaching. Shinran’s voluminous works, however, exhibit more than an introduction to, or simple interpretation of, the Buddha’s preaching. We may say that Shinran has given us sermons and treatises that manifest an authentic and unique appropriation of the Buddhist tradition, and, therefore, his works offer the possibility of a thoughtful reception for his interpreters and disciples. The philosopher KUKI Shūzō 九鬼周造 (1888–1941) wrote remarkable verses about Shinran seven centuries after his death: “I will have no disciple, said Shinran; as for me [Kuki], I long to have his soul” (KSZ Supplement, 146; Saitō 2010: 242). Kuki’s poetic reflections express Shinran’s quest for an authentic life, and echo back the existentialist aspect of his philosophy. More than this, his words commit him to Shinran as his teacher. Do these words not enact the most authentic discipleship possible? In fact, SAITŌ Takako takes Kuki’s verses as empirical evidence of his receiving the intellectual legacy of Shinran. Thus, at the end of her article, the proof of historical facticity of reception retroactively justifies Saitō’s careful comparison of Kuki’s thought with Shinran’s, which began based on presuming similarities in content. In other words, the factual findings prove the validity of comparing Shinran and Kuki, although a truthful reading is impossible to verify historically. Be that as it may, Kuki’s poetic expression demonstrates the history of the reception of a pre-modern Buddhist by a modern philosopher in Japan, regardless of whether this discipleship was ultimately judged to be authentic and perfected, or an untimely failure. (shrink)

In the writings of the Japanese Pure Land Buddhist Shinran 親鸞 we read: “I, Shinran, do not have a single disciple of my own”. Is he simply being modest? Does Shinran defy discipleship? Does he rule out the possibility of the reception of his thought? The answer to these questions is not clear; nevertheless, what we do know is that the reader of his writings is supposed to arrive at the Buddha’s original teaching. Shinran’s voluminous works, however, exhibit more than (...) an introduction to, or simple interpretation of, the Buddha’s preaching. We may say that Shinran has given us sermons and treatises that manifest an authentic and unique appropriation of the Buddhist tradition, and, therefore, his works offer the possibility of a thoughtful reception for his interpreters and disciples. The philosopher KUKI Shūzō 九鬼周造 wrote remarkable verses about Shinran seven centuries after his death: “I will have no disciple, said Shinran; as for me [Kuki], I long to have his soul”. Kuki’s poetic reflections express Shinran’s quest for an authentic life, and echo back the existentialist aspect of his philosophy. More than this, his words commit him to Shinran as his teacher. Do these words not enact the most authentic discipleship possible? In fact, SAITŌ Takako takes Kuki’s verses as empirical evidence of his receiving the intellectual legacy of Shinran. Thus, at the end of her article, the proof of historical facticity of reception retroactively justifies Saitō’s careful comparison of Kuki’s thought with Shinran’s, which began based on presuming similarities in content. In other words, the factual findings prove the validity of comparing Shinran and Kuki, although a truthful reading is impossible to verify historically. Be that as it may, Kuki’s poetic expression demonstrates the history of the reception of a pre-modern Buddhist by a modern philosopher in Japan, regardless of whether this discipleship was ultimately judged to be authentic and perfected, or an untimely failure. (shrink)

The epistemological chasm between how we (implicitly and subjectively) perceive or imagine the actual world and how we (explicitly and “objectively”) think of its underlying entities has motivated perhaps the most disconcerting impasse in human thought: the explanatory gap between the phenomenal and physical properties of the world. Here, I advocate a combination of philosophical skepticism and simplicity as an informed approach to arbitrate among theories of consciousness. I argue that the explanatory gap is rightly a gap in our understanding, (...) but one that is not surprising; and we being observers biased by our first-person perspective and our existence may both hinder and (the realization we have them) assist our reasoning. Further, I unfold the concept of observer into two distinct notions based on its functional and phenomenal aspects, and exploit this device to elucidate the subject-observer relationship. Then, I proceed to analyze the philosophical zombie dilemma. Lastly, I contend that from a skeptical viewpoint, panpsychism (or neutral monism) is the most parsimonious doctrine accounting for the explanatory gap, and suggest that it would be possible to make headway in the hard problem of consciousness by uncovering non-trivial causal relationships between qualia states and functional states, if routine and controlled manipulation of neural circuits were easily available. (shrink)

Everyday aesthetic experiences and concerns occupy a large part of our aesthetic life. However, because of their prevalence and mundane nature, we tend not to pay much attention to them, let alone examine their significance. Western aesthetic theories of the past few centuries also neglect everyday aesthetics because of their almost exclusive emphasis on art. In a ground-breaking new study, Yuriko Saito provides a detailed investigation into our everyday aesthetic experiences, and reveals how our everyday aesthetic tastes and judgments can (...) exert a powerful influence on the state of the world and our quality of life. By analysing a wide range of examples from our aesthetic interactions with nature, the environment, everyday objects, and Japanese culture, Saito illustrates the complex nature of seemingly simple and innocuous aesthetic responses. She discusses the inadequacy of art-centered aesthetics, the aesthetic appreciation of the distinctive characters of objects or phenomena, responses to various manifestations of transience, and the aesthetic expression of moral values; and she examines the moral, political, existential, and environmental implications of these and other issues. (shrink)

In this paper we study the logical strength of the determinacy of infinite binary games in terms of second order arithmetic. We define new determinacy schemata inspired by the Wadge classes of Polish spaces and show the following equivalences over the system RCA0*, which consists of the axioms of discrete ordered semi‐rings with exponentiation, Δ10 comprehension and Π00 induction, and which is known as a weaker system than the popularbase theory RCA0: 1. Bisep(Δ10, Σ10)‐Det* ↔ WKL0, 2. Bisep(Δ10, Σ20)‐Det* ↔ (...) ATR0 + Σ11 induction, 3. Bisep(Σ10, Σ20)‐Det* ↔ Sep(Σ10, Σ20)‐Det* ↔ Π11‐CA0, 4. Bisep(Δ20, Σ20)‐Det* ↔ Π11‐TR0, where Det* stands for the determinacy of infinite games in the Cantor space (© 2009 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim). (shrink)

We investigate which part of Brouwer’s Intuitionistic Mathematics is finitistically justifiable or guaranteed in Hilbert’s Finitism, in the same way as similar investigations on Classical Mathematics already done quite extensively in proof theory and reverse mathematics. While we already knew a contrast from the classical situation concerning the continuity principle, more contrasts turn out: we show that several principles are finitistically justifiable or guaranteed which are classically not. Among them are: fan theorem for decidable fans but arbitrary bars; continuity principle (...) and the axiom of choice both for arbitrary formulae; and $\Sigma _2$ induction and dependent choice. We also show that Markov’s principle MP does not change this situation; that neither does lesser limited principle of omniscience LLPO ; but that limited principle of omniscience LPO makes the situation completely classical. (shrink)

I propose that the appropriate appreciation of nature must include the moral capacity for acknowledging the reality of nature apart from humans and the sensitivity for listening to its own story. I argue that appreciating nature exclusively as design is inappropriate to the extent that we impose upon nature a preconceived artistic standard as well as appreciation based upon historical/cultural/literary associationsinsofar as we treat nature as a background of our own story. In contrast, aesthetic appreciation informed by our attempt to (...) make sense of nature, such as science, mythology, and folklore, is appropriate because it guides our experience toward understanding nature’s own story embodied in its sensuous surface. (shrink)

I propose that the appropriate appreciation of nature must include the moral capacity for acknowledging the reality of nature apart from humans and the sensitivity for listening to its own story. I argue that appreciating nature exclusively as design is inappropriate to the extent that we impose upon nature a preconceived artistic standard as well as appreciation based upon historical/cultural/literary associationsinsofar as we treat nature as a background of our own story. In contrast, aesthetic appreciation informed by our attempt to (...) make sense of nature, such as science, mythology, and folklore, is appropriate because it guides our experience toward understanding nature’s own story embodied in its sensuous surface. (shrink)

Neglect of everyday aesthetics -- Significance of everyday aesthetics -- Aesthetics of distinctive characteristics and ambience -- Everyday aesthetic qualities and transience -- Moral-aesthetic judgments of artifacts.

This paper offers a different approach to writing about oneself—Stanley Cavell's idea of philosophy as autobiography. In Cavell's understanding, the acknowledgement of the partiality of the self is an essential condition for achieving the universal. In the apparently paradoxical combination of the 'philosophical' and the 'autobiographical', Cavell shows us a way of focusing on the self and yet always transcending the self. The task requires, however, a reconstruction of the notions of philosophy and autobiography, and at the same time the (...) destabilising of our conceptions of self and language. Cavell seeks to achieve this through the idea of finding one's voice, understood as an autobiographical exercise. This necessitates both negotiation of the inheritance from the past and innovation for the future, initiation into the language community and deviation from it. What this amounts to, in ways that the paper seeks to explain, is a process of the self and language in translation. This is a sense of 'translation' that is broader than the conventional understanding of the term. Such a conception can, it is argued, exercise a therapeutic effect on the self, destabilising the myth of self-identity. The implications of this account for the contemporary vogue for narrative in educational research, as well as for classroom practice, are considered. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider, for a set \ of natural numbers, the following notions of finitenessFIN1:There are a natural number l and a bijection f between \\);FIN5:It is not the case that \\), and infinitenessINF1:There are not a natural number l and a bijection f between \\);INF5:\\). In this paper, we systematically compare them in the method of constructive reverse mathematics. We show that the equivalence among them can be characterized by various combinations of induction axioms and non-constructive principles, (...) including the axiom of bounded comprehension. (shrink)

This article examines historical transformations of Japanese collective memory of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by utilizing a theoretical framework that combines a model of reiterated problem solving and a theory of cultural trauma. I illustrate how the event of the nuclear fallout in March 1954 allowed actors to consolidate previously fragmented commemorative practices into a master frame to define the postwar Japanese identity in terms of transnational commemoration of "Hiroshima." I also show that nationalization of trauma of "Hiroshima" involved (...) a shift from pity to sympathy in structures of feeling about the event. This historical study suggests that a reiterated problem-solving approach can be efficacious in analyzing how construction of national memory of a traumatic event connects with the recurrent reworking of national identity, on the one hand, and how a theory of cultural trauma can be helpful in exploring a synthesis of psychological and sociological approaches to commemoration of a traumatic event, on the other. (shrink)

Neo-Confucian influence in early modern Japan was highly intellectual, indicating that Confucian ideals did not change the nature of Japanese norms of social lives. For early modern Japanese intellectuals, the conflict and contradiction between reality and ideals had always been a source of debate and inspiration. Within the theme of Neo-Confucian rites, the contradiction was highlighted owing to the fact that it included a guideline for authentic ancestral worship and religious policy. Once introduced within the Japanese circumstances of the day, (...) Confucian understanding on spirits and proper rites lead Japanese scholars to define what was legitimate worship in the format of state religion: it was necessary to authorize traditional Japanese worship toward domestic shrines. Within thepractical process of policy making, it must be noted that a keen interest toward local beliefs had emerged through the discussion. Arai Hakuseki (1657‐1725) reflects such political interest within his work ‘Kishinron’. In order to understand the impact of Japanese interpretation of Neo-Confucian ideals, it is essential to focus on the interrelationship between religious policy and interest toward local beliefs. (shrink)

BackgroundThe concept of career identity is integral to nursing practices and forms the basis of the nursing professions. Positive career identity is essential for providing high-quality care, optimizing patient outcomes, and enhancing the retention of health professionals. Therefore, there is a need to explore potential influencing variables, thereby developing effective interventions to improve career identity.ObjectivesTo investigate the relationship between moral distress, moral courage, and career identity, and explore the mediating role of moral courage between moral distress and career identity among (...) nurses.DesignA quantitative, cross-sectional study.MethodsA convenient sample of 800 nurses was recruited from two tertiary care hospitals between February and March 2022. Participants were assessed using the Moral Distress Scale-revised, Nurses’ Moral Courage Scale, and Nursing Career Identity Scale. This study was described in accordance with the STROBE statement.Ethical considerationResearch ethics approval was obtained from the researcher’s university and hospital where this study was conducted prior to data collection.FindingsMoral distress is negatively associated while moral courage is positively associated with career identity among nurses. Moral courage partially mediates the relationship between moral distress and career identity ( β = −0.230 to −0.163, p < 0.01).DiscussionThe findings reveal a relationship between moral distress, moral courage, and career identity among nurses.ConclusionBy paying attention to nurses’ moral distress and courage, healthcare providers can contribute to the development of effective interventions to improve career identity, and subsequently performance, among nurses. (shrink)

We critically examine pragmatism's approach to skepticism and try to elucidate its certain limits. The central questions to be addressed are: whether “skepticism” interpreted through the lens of problem-solving does justice to the human condition; and whether the problem-solving approach to skepticism can do justice to pragmatism's self-proclaimed anti-foundationalism. We then examine Stanley Cavell's criticism of Dewey's “problem-solving” approach. We propose a shift from the problem-solving approach's eagerness for solutions to a more Wittgensteinian and Emersonian project of dissolution.

We propose a novel algorithm to transliterate English to Japanese and its application to a voice controlled browser, which enable ordinary Japanese people to browse English Web site by voice. Speech recognition software designed for native English speakers do not work for most Japanese because Japanese can't pronounce English as native English speakers do. Therefore, we combined Japanese speech recognition software with English-to-Japanese transliteration software. The accuracy of our transliteration algorithm is 80% recall for the top candidate, and 92% recall (...) for the top three candidates. The browser using this transliteration algorithm makes it possible for Japanese to navigate English Web pages almost as accurate as Japanese pages by voice commands. (shrink)

In the practice of education and educational reforms today ‘meritocracy’ is a prevalent mode of thinking and discourse. Behind political and economic debates over the just distribution of education benefits, other kinds of philosophical issues, concerning the question of democracy, await to be addressed. As a means of evoking a language more subtle than what is offered by political and economic solutions, I shall discuss Ralph Waldo Emerson's idea of perfectionism, particularly his ideas of the ‘gleam of light’ and ‘genius’, (...) as an alternative mode of thinking of human power. Through this Emersonian lens, a provocative shift will be made from meritocracy and ‘mediocracy’ to aristocracy. Emersonian aristocracy destabilizes balanced measures and prevailing discourse about fairness and justice, and makes us reconsider how to achieve a just society in democracy. As an educational implication, I shall propose the idea of citizenship without inclusion—a vision of education for a democratic society in which we learn to live as and with the Great Man. (shrink)

In recent decades, designers, architects, and landscape architects concerned with their contribution to today’s ecological problems started formulating a new way of designing and creating artifacts. Called “ecological design” and promoted as a corrective alternative to conventional practice, its basic tenet is to draw from nature a guidance for design, rather than imposing our design on nature. This newapproach signifies a welcome change, first by calling attention to the ecological implications of artifacts, a subject matter generally neglected in environmental ethics, (...) and, second, by providing useful, specific suggestions regarding the ecologically responsible way of designing artifacts. However, the conceptual basis and resultant implications of ecological design deserve and need critical analyses. I argue that the basic premise of ecological design—that nature should act as the authority—is problematic by examining analogous strategies from social, political, moral, and aesthetic realms, as well as by exploring its specific application in the promotion of “native” plants in gardens. I end with another issue often neglected in the practice of ecological design: our aesthetic response to the created objects. (shrink)

After half a century, environmental aesthetics successfully expanded the scope of modern art-centred Western aesthetic discourse. I argue that further expansion is in order. First, we should explore the aesthetics of the constituents of the environment, namely artefacts, human activities and social relationships, which determine the quality of life and the state of the world. Second, we need to cultivate aesthetic literacy as well as a normative discourse to steer our aesthetic practice toward a better world-making. Finally, environmental aesthetics needs (...) to be globalised to include rich aesthetic traditions of nature and environment from diverse cultures. (shrink)

In recent decades, designers, architects, and landscape architects concerned with their contribution to today’s ecological problems started formulating a new way of designing and creating artifacts. Called “ecological design” and promoted as a corrective alternative to conventional practice, its basic tenet is to draw from nature a guidance for design, rather than imposing our design on nature. This newapproach signifies a welcome change, first by calling attention to the ecological implications of artifacts, a subject matter generally neglected in environmental ethics, (...) and, second, by providing useful, specific suggestions regarding the ecologically responsible way of designing artifacts. However, the conceptual basis and resultant implications of ecological design deserve and need critical analyses. I argue that the basic premise of ecological design—that nature should act as the authority—is problematic by examining analogous strategies from social, political, moral, and aesthetic realms, as well as by exploring its specific application in the promotion of “native” plants in gardens. I end with another issue often neglected in the practice of ecological design: our aesthetic response to the created objects. (shrink)

Contemporary scenes of democracy and education exemplify a real scepticism about the point of political participation, and by implication about one's place in society in relation to others. What is called for is a recovery of desire per se ? of people's desire to say what they want to say and their desire to participate in the creation of the public. In response, this article examines Stanley Cavell's ordinary language philosophy. The way he reconstructs philosophy from the perspective of ordinary (...) language provides us with an alternative route to citizenship. Cavell's philosophy is turned towards our existential need to recover political passion, the mainspring of a desire to think that affirms humanity as necessarily political. And in the end this existential need dovetails with the need of the polis: that people speak in their own voice. That, I shall conclude, must be the basis of education for citizenship and political literacy. (shrink)

This article examines the underexplored relationship between Amartya Sen's ‘capability approach’ to human well-being and education. Two roles which education might play in relation to the development of capacities are given particular attention: (i) the enhancement of capacities and opportunities and (ii) the development of judgement in relation to the appropriate exercise of capacities.

To apply reinforcement learning to difficult classes such as real-environment learning, we need to use a method robust to perceptual aliasing problem. The exploitation-oriented methods such as Profit Sharing can deal with the perceptual aliasing problem to a certain extent. However, when the agent needs to select different actions at the same sensory input, the learning efficiency worsens. To overcome the problem, several state partition methods using history information of state-action pairs are proposed. These methods try to convert a POMDP (...) environment into an MDP environment, and thus they are sometimes very useful. However, their computation cost is very high especially in large state spaces. In contrast, memory-less approaches try to escape from the aliased states by outputting actions stochastically. However, these methods output actions stochastically even in unaliased states, and thus the learning efficiency is bad. If we desire to guarantee the rationality in POMDPs, it is efficient to output actions stochastically only in the aliased states and to output one action deterministically in the other unaliased states. Hence, to discriminate between aliased states and unaliased states, the utilization of χ² -goodness-of-fit test is proposed by Miyazaki et al. They point out that, in aliased states, the distributions of the state transitions by random search and a particular policy are different. This difference doesn't occur owing to non-deterministic actions. Hence, if the agent can collect enough samples to implement the test, the agent can distinguish between aliased states and unaliased states well. However, such a test needs a large amount of data, and it's a problem how the agent collects samples without worsening learning efficiency. If the agent uses random search in the course of learning, the learning efficiency worsens especially in unaliased states. Therefore, in this research, we propose a new method called Extended On-line Profit Sharing with Judgement (EOPSwJ) to detect important incomplete perception, which doesn't need large computation cost and numerous samples. We use two criterions for detecting important incomplete perceptions to attain a task. One is the rate of transitions to each state, and the other is the deterministic rate of actions. We confirm the availability of EOPSwJ using two simulations. (shrink)

Recently, many opportunities have emerged to use the Internet in daily life and classrooms. However, with the growth of the World Wide Web (Web), it is becoming increasingly difficult to find target information on the Internet. In this study, we explore a method for developing the ability of users in information seeking on the Web and construct a search process feedback system supporting reflective activities of information seeking on the Web. Reflection is defined as a cognitive activity for monitoring, evaluating, (...) and modifying one's thinking and process. In the field of learning science, many researchers have investigated reflective activities that facilitate learners' problem solving and deep understanding. The characteristics of this system are: (1) to show learners' search processes on the Web as described, based on a cognitive schema, and (2) to prompt learners to reflect on their search processes. We expect that users of this system can reflect on their search processes by receiving information on their own search processes provided by the system, and that these types of reflective activity helps them to deepen their understanding of information seeking activities. We have conducted an experiment to investigate the effects of our system. The experimental results confirmed that (1) the system actually facilitated the learners' reflective activities by providing process visualization and prompts, and (2) the learners who reflected on their search processes more actively understood their own search processes more deeply. (shrink)

This chapter traces the evolution of Japan's systems of household and land registration from c.1600 to the period of early Meiji reforms in the 1870s and 1880s, with due attention to the distinction between a system designed by the state and local forms of registration practice. In the section on the pre-Meiji period, one such local practice of having people ‘disowned’ and its consequence — registerlessness — is examined. The section on the Meiji reforms and the section that follows turn (...) to the issue of continuity and discontinuity, and the question of whether any progress was made by those reforms. In order to illustrate the actual changes that took place at the local level, the chapter begins with an eighteenth-century story about a peasant woman and ends with a case of a family dispute that another village woman brought before the court some 120 years later. (shrink)

Yuriko Saito, the leading figure in the field, explores the nature and significance of the aesthetic dimensions of people's everyday lives. She argues that everyday aesthetics can be an effective instrument for directing humanity's collective and cumulative world-making project.

Original title : 「ドガの『舞姫』」『深田康算全集』[Œuvres complètes de Fukada Yasukazu]. Machida, Tamagawa Daigaku Shuppanbu, 1972–1973, 3 : 9–15.