Research interest in cuteness perception and its effects on subsequent behavior and physiological responses has recently been increasing. The purpose of the present study was to produce a dataset of Japanese infant faces that are free of portrait rights and can be used for cuteness research. A total of 80 original facial images of 6-month-old infants were collected from their parents. The cuteness level of each picture was rated on a 7-point scale by 200 Japanese people. Prototypical high- and low-cuteness (...) faces were created by averaging the top 10 and bottom 10 faces according to the mean cuteness ratings. Then, 50 composite faces were made by mixing two faces randomly chosen from the 60 unused middle-cuteness faces. The normative cuteness ratings of these composite faces were obtained from 229 Japanese men and women in their 20s–60s. The shape of each composite face was transformed to be cuter or less cute along a continuum between the high- and low-cuteness prototypical faces. A two-alternative forced-choice task confirmed that cuteness discrimination was better than the chance level for all 50 face pairs. Moreover, the results showed that young men had poorer sensitivity to cuteness differences in infant faces than older men and women of any age. This Japanese Cute Infant Face dataset, including composite face images and normative rating scores, is publicly available online. (shrink)

Intersectionality is a travelling theory; now enjoying significant contemporary visibility and popularity in the feminist blogosphere, it has moved across disciplines and borders in ways that are quite distinct from the scholarly critique developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw some time ago. In this article, I consider how intersectionality is translated, and retheorised, as an intertwined set of everyday knowledges and associated governmental practices that both echo and diverge from some of the complexities and politics of its wide-ranging scholarly uptake. Drawing on (...) interviews with self-identifying feminists in a pilot project mapping contemporary Australian digital feminisms, this article explores two overarching patterns in intersectionality’s mobilisation. First, the shift to understanding intersectionality as an everyday conceptual grid plotting women’s differences along one axis, and measuring relative privilege and disadvantage on the other, recentring whiteness and liberal multicultural models of diversity and inclusion. Second, the transformation of intersectionality into an abstract, individualistic model of conduct, involving the citation and classification of ‘white feminist’ behaviour elsewhere, in frequent judgments on US celebrity culture. As such, intersectionality, while seemingly popular, often remained curiously ‘theoretical’ and divorced from embodied, everyday practices. I suggest in what follows that such a model of intersectionality raises questions of the commercial, racialised, political and mediated conditions that shape the theory’s visibility and materialisation. (shrink)

There are various philosophers who have discussed the role of language in ancient India. Among them, Bhart ṛ hari considered the relation between the superficial appearance of speech and its essential nature. In actual life, we pronounce and perceive the word. He held that there must be some link between ideal logic and worldly truth. His focus in the Brahmakā n ̣ ḍ a of the Vākyapadīya, is on the process of communication, the process of the internalization of speech. He (...) differentiates the perspective of the speaker and the hearer, and explains the movement of sounds. The spho ṭ a theory addresses both how to pronounce the word and how to perceive it. Traces of his discussion are found in the works of his follower Ma n ̣ ḍ anamiśra in his book, Spho ṭ asiddhi. (shrink)

This paper will show how the philosopher Maṇḍanamiśra discusses in his Brahmasiddhi the cancellation of a former element by a latter, which is prescribed in Mīmāṃsāsūtra 6.5.54. We do not have yet a clear idea of what the value of this text holds for him. I would emphasize that probably more than we had expected, it forms an essential part of Maṇḍana’s philosophy. Its authority is sometimes stated explicitly and sometimes not; and we easily overlook the fact that his argument (...) is highly dependent on the Mīmāṃsā scheme. This rule, 6.5.54, was originally purely concerned with the performance of the sacrifice, but Maṇḍana applies it to his epistemic analysis, i.e. his discussion on the relative strength of the valid means of knowledge, giving this rule the status of basic testimony. Furthermore, he interprets the rule in his own unique way, or at least differently from Kumārilabhaṭṭa, integrating it with the argument by his famous predecessor Bhartṛhari. The mutual relationship among Maṇḍana, Kumārila, and Bhartṛhari, will be illuminated by focusing on what Mīmāṃsāsūtra 6.5.54 really means. (shrink)

Nature and civilization are often regarded in opposition to each other. However, civilization employs technologies and is based on laws of nature. Also, the historical world is a result of the development of the natural world. An “anti-nature” must thus be contained somewhere within nature. The idea of “ anti-nature ” is neither alien to the Eastern nor to the Western traditional concepts of nature. The philosophy of Lao Zi never embraces mere naturalism. Lao Zi has observed that things in (...) the world are not always “ so on their own ” but rather in the mode of anti-nature. A nti-nature in nature itself does not become expressive until Christian theology, in which the origin of evil is reflected upon. The last part of the paper begins with one Buddhist thought expressed in the Diamond Sutra: “The world is not the world that is named the world.” Through naming of a thing, this thing is objectified or substantialized, and an objectified thing is not the thing itself. This self is “ śūnya ”, a non-world, which is what the world is. This non-world (as well nature) is first and foremost concealed by ego-consciousness that tends to objectify the things. E go-consciousness as this anti-nature tends to conceal this non-nature, and begins to act in the form of technology. The radical way of solving the problems caused by this “anti-nature” must begin with gaining an insight into the nature of ourselves as well as the nature of technology. (shrink)

This essay is an overview of the intellectual itinerary of the Japanese philosopher Kuki Shūzō . Kuki first came to the attention of Western readers in Heidegger’s A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer. After correcting the record on Kuki with regards to this famous piece, the essay turns to the work that Heidegger and the Japanese Inquirer were discussing, namely, The Structure of Iki. The essay discusses both the background and basic arguments of this work. The (...) essay then expands on Kuki’s Western reception, indicating that his thinking evolved beyond his early work with the phenomenon of iki. His later thinking concerns the problem of contingency and the essay concludes with a discussion of his late work, The Problem of Contingency. The essay reviews Kuki’s thinking as a whole in order to develop a sense of his hermeneutics. (shrink)

The aim of teaching philosophy to children ultimately is not to teach them the history of philosophy, but rather to teach them to think, starting from philosophical concepts. This will help to develop high-level skills in children such as questioning, research, understanding and interpreting knowledge, establishing meaningful relationships between knowledge, creating original ideas, and problem-solving. Models of philosophizing with children have been developed, and systematic application attempts have been made, producing successful results in many countries of the world. According to (...) Matthew Lipman, these skills should be developed at a very young age with use of the model of philosophy for children (P4C). Our aim is to show and explore how to develop and sustain creative thinking, which is one of the achievements of P4C. If Lipman is right, children participating in these activities will start to gain creative thinking skills from an early age and will apply this foundation in other knowledge acquisition processes at more advanced developmental stages. This presentation aims to reveal the interrelation between P4C and creative thinking activity. First P4C will be explained, and then creative thinking and the interrelation between the two will be expanded upon in the conclusion. (shrink)

In recent times, previous studies have reported the manipulation of tools by rats and degus in controlled experimental settings. However, a previous study reported that only one out of eight experimentally naïve rats could manipulate a rake-shaped tool according to the position of a food reward without prior experience of obtaining the reward with the tool before the test. The present study aimed to improve the training of rats and investigate rodents’ ability to manipulate tools according to food position. Stricter (...) criteria were employed when training the rats to promote the rats’ monitoring of their own tool manipulation. Additional training was introduced to give them the opportunity to learn that the reward moved closer to them by pulling an object connected to the reward. The present study showed that only one of eight rats could manipulate a tool according to the position of the reward without prior experience of obtaining the reward with the tool or perceiving that part of the tool came in contact with the reward, as the previous study showed. The change in training did not enhance the rats’ tool-manipulation ability according to the food position. These procedures should be conducted in a wider variety of animals to investigate whether the training in motion control can promote the subjects’ effective tool-use behavior. (shrink)

Multiple modernities has emerged as the post-Huntingtonian paradigm in the study of secularism and religion, and the concepts ‘imaginary’ or ‘ verstehen’ are the most common candidates guiding research aiming to articulate this multiplicity. This article revisits Shmuel Eisenstadt’s original ‘Multiple Modernities’ thesis, Charles Taylor’s concept ‘imaginary’ and Max Weber’s ‘ verstehen’, and offers concise examples on how they are put into practice in the current literature on secularism and religion. I argue that the original Eisenstadt thesis is built upon (...) interactions of modernities, and the ‘imaginary’ and ‘ verstehen’ analytics eliminate from sight non-isomorphic relations between ideas and actions, despite the ample presence of both interactions and non-isomorphic relations in the politics of secularism and modernity. Turning multiple modernities into an exercise in typologies of non-interacting modernities articulated in isomorphic relations between ideas and actions produces new kinds of post-Huntingtonian culturalism. I finally sketch a comparative politics of new meanings as the counter-hypothesis to which ‘imaginary’, ‘ verstehen’ and non-interacting typology analytics of modernities have to respond. (shrink)

This essay focuses on Mahmoud Darwish’s exilic experience as depicted in Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982 (1986). For Darwish, the siege of Beirut was a climactic moment in which he realized that he is stuck on a perpetual threshold. Imposed by the sovereign power, this exilic threshold characterizes the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon bereft of their rights as citizens and held outside their homeland and political domain. I wish to argue that, rather than being trapped in this condition, Darwish (...) takes it as a vantage point to critically reconstruct the notions of homeland and political belonging. This involves a contrapuntal approach to the notions of homeland, diaspora, and memory, and acts as a form of resistance. It converts the exilic threshold that keeps the poet neither outside nor inside the political domain into a site of worldliness in both the Arendtian and Saidian sense of the term. Elaborating on Judith Butler’s account of cohabitation and diasporic thinking, I argue that the exilic condition Darwish describes can give rise to a political ethic that resists the homogenization of spaces and temporalities, and allows for an alternative sense of political belonging. (shrink)

In this article, the author begins by noticing a statistical fact: from the seven Japanese translations of Being and Time, in five cases the German word Sein has been translated as sonzai, and in two cases as u. This fact invites the author to a discussion about the Japanese understanding of “Being”, which is developed on three levels: the question of language, the question of historical-cultural world, and the question of the “European”, understood as a Western principle, depictingthis “Abend-land” as (...) a region threatened by night. (shrink)

This study presents and discusses the essential “nearness” and “farness” between Nishitani philosophy and Nishida philosophy, where such “nearness” and “farness” are not meant to be words that simply express the relative positions in which Nishida and Nishitani philosophy stand with respect to each other, but present the internal structure of the very problems at the core of both. Taking as a clue, Nishitani’s words, “nearer to me than I am to myself,” we examine these philosophies by situating their interpretations (...) of Eckhart as an axis for our considerations and then introducing their understandings of an expression from Daitō Kokushi 大燈国師. In conclusion, we consider the problems remaining for both. While it was Nishida philosophy that made it possible to take on the foundation of the history of philosophy as a problem, it would be left to Nishitani to actually carry this out. In turn, while Nishitani presents a criticism of the “intellect,” we must speak of the elucidation of logic as an undeveloped problem left within Nishitani philosophy. (shrink)

Two studies aimed to examine cultural differences in social support provision, with or without solicitation, in Japan and the United States. In Study 1, we replicated a previous study with Japanese university students. We found that the Japanese participants did not provide social support when it was not solicited, as compared with when it was solicited. Furthermore, in Study 2, participants were asked to respond to a questionnaire regarding a hypothetical stressful situation experienced by a close other and to indicate (...) their willingness to provide support. We confirmed our hypothesis that Japanese participants hesitate to provide unsolicited support to close others, even when they recognize that the close others are in need, whereas the American participants do not hesitate to provide such support. Contrastingly, regarding solicited support, the Japanese and Americans were equally ready to provide support, as hypothesized. The cultural difference in social support resides in the provision of unsolicited support. These results suggest that differences in culturally appropriate responses to needy people are responsible for the difference in the provision of unsolicited vs. solicited social support. (shrink)

The networked society is impacting all aspects of people’s lives and changing the way that information is obtained and used. For students this impact is changing how information is shared and tasks are performed. A digital enabled culture is resulting in changed norms on collaboration and providing more opportunities for teams to collaborate on a moment’s notice. The digital ethics code of the 1980s is addressed in the current digital culture. This research will develop a measurement scale for digital ethics (...) and assess this scale in the context using students from China. (shrink)

Articles on Hindu ethics and religious life.

First Published in 1968. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.