His book Some Japanese flowers of 1896. an original copy of which is in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, features handcolored collotypes of flowers native to Japan, including the lotus, several varieties of chrysanthemum and lily ...

This book examines the general views of artificial intelligence. It also explores the idea of consciousness, consciousness pictures, and mechanisms for wet consciousness and dry consciousness.

進化論・国家有機体説から生命主義・歴史への回帰まで、デモクラシーと煩悶の時代における「国体」の地平.

Teaching is hypothesized to be a species-typical behavior in humans that contributed to the emergence of cumulative culture. Several within-culture studies indicate that foragers depend heavily on social learning to acquire practical skills and knowledge, but it is unknown whether teaching is universal across forager populations. Teaching can be defined ethologically as the modification of behavior by an expert in the presence of a novice, such that the expert incurs a cost and the novice acquires skills/knowledge more efficiently or that (...) it would not acquire otherwise. One behavioral modification hypothesized to be an adaptation for teaching is ostensive communication—exaggerations of prosody and gesture that signal intent to transmit generalizable knowledge and indicate the intended receiver. On this view, the use of ostensive communication in conjunction with the transmission of generalizable knowledge constitutes evidence of teaching. Oral storytelling appears to meet these criteria: Indigenous peoples regard their traditions as important sources of ecological and social knowledge, and oral storytelling is widely reported to employ paralinguistic communication. To test this hypothesis, descriptions of performed narrative in forager societies were coded for the use of 14 ostensive-communicative behaviors and the presence of generalizable knowledge. Although biased toward North America, the study sample comprised 53 forager cultures spanning five continents, 34 language families, and diverse biomes. All cultures evinced the predicted behaviors. Results suggest that foragers use storytelling as a mode of instruction, thus providing cross-cultural evidence of teaching in forager populations. (shrink)

Crucial problems exist in understanding Japanese traditional customs with regard to autonomous decision making by patients in Japan. These problems are difficult to comprehend because they seem, by western standards, to defy logic. Questions that baffle those outside the Japanese tradition, include: Why do many Japanese patients hesitate to make medical treatment and care decisions for themselves without consulting family, close friends, or someone viewed as being in a superior position? Why do many Japanese physicians fail to disclose the truth (...) directly to the patient, instead customarily conveying information to family members, despite the doctors' awareness of their legal obligation to protect the patient's privacy? Why do many Japanese physicians continue to question whether patients should be told the truth at all? What perpetuates Japan's widespread, but often unnoticed, neglect of the individual's right to self-determination in healthcare decision making? (shrink)

Approximately 30 years ago, a son prepared a cup of milk mixed with insecticide and arranged for his mother to unknowingly administer the poison to his father, who had been suffering severe pain after a cerebral apoplectic attack and demanding that his son assist him. in dying. After drinking the mixture, the father died, and the son was charged with homicide.

Is there only one bioethics? Is a global bioethics possible? Or, instead, does one encounter a plurality of bioethical approaches shaped by local cultural and national traditions? Some thirty years ago a field of applied ethics emerged under the rubric `bioethics'. Little thought was given at the time to the possibility that this field bore the imprint of a particular American set of moral commitments. This volume explores the plurality of moral perspectives shaping bioethics. It is inspired by Kazumasa (...) Hoshino's critical reflections on the differences in moral perspectives separating Japanese and American bioethics. The essays include contributions from Hong Kong, China, Japan, Texas, the United States, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. The volume offers a rich perspective of the range of approaches to bioethics. It brings into question whether there is unambiguously one ethics for bioethics to apply. (shrink)

The Japanese government took significant steps in making decisions about a newly developing clinical application of gene therapy when, on April 15, 1993, the Government officially accepted the Guidelines for Clinical Research on Gene Therapy submitted by the Health Science Council of the Ministry of Health and Welfare of Japan to the Minister.

In 1966, Laura Bohannan wrote her classic essay challenging the supposition that great literary works speak to universal human concerns and conditions and, by extension, that human nature is the same everywhere. Her evidence: the Tiv of West Africa interpret Hamlet differently from Westerners. While Bohannan’s essay implies that cognitive universality and cultural variation are mutually exclusive phenomena, adaptationist theory suggests otherwise. Adaptive problems ("the human condition") and cognitive adaptations ("human nature") are constant across cultures. What differs between cultures is (...) habitat: owing to environmental variation, the means and information relevant to solving adaptive problems differ from place to place. Thus, we find differences between cultures not because human minds differ in design but largely because human habitats differ in resources and history. On this view, we would expect world literature to express both human universals and cultural particularities. Specifically, we should expect to find literary universality at the macro level (e.g., adaptive problems, cognitive adaptations) and literary variation at the micro level (e.g., local solutions to adaptive problems). (shrink)

In 1966, Laura Bohannan wrote her classic essay challenging the supposition that great literary works speak to universal human concerns and conditions and, by extension, that human nature is the same everywhere. Her evidence: the Tiv of West Africa interpret Hamlet differently from Westerners. While Bohannan’s essay implies that cognitive universality and cultural variation are mutually exclusive phenomena, adaptationist theory suggests otherwise. Adaptive problems ("the human condition") and cognitive adaptations ("human nature") are constant across cultures. What differs between cultures is (...) habitat: owing to environmental variation, the means and information relevant to solving adaptive problems differ from place to place. Thus, we find differences between cultures not because human minds differ in design but largely because human habitats differ in resources and history. On this view, we would expect world literature to express both human universals and cultural particularities. Specifically, we should expect to find literary universality at the macro level (e.g., adaptive problems, cognitive adaptations) and literary variation at the micro level (e.g., local solutions to adaptive problems). (shrink)

Stories consist largely of representations of the human social environment. These representations can be used to influence the behavior of others (consider, e.g., rumor, propaganda, public relations, advertising). Storytelling can thus be seen as a transaction in which the benefit to the listener is information about his or her environment, and the benefit to the storyteller is the elicitation of behavior from the listener that serves the former’s interests. However, because no two individuals have exactly the same fitness interests, we (...) would expect different storytellers to have different narrative perspectives and priorities due to differences in sex, age, health, social status, marital status, number of offspring, and so on. Tellingly, the folklore record indicates that different storytellers within the same cultural group tell the same story differently. Furthermore, the historical and ethnographic records provide numerous examples of storytelling deliberately used as a means of political manipulation. This evidence suggests that storyteller bias is rooted in differences in individual fitness interests, and that storytelling may have originated as a means of promoting these interests. (shrink)

Annual and cumulative incidences of HIV + and AIDS in patients reported by the AIDS Surveillance Committee of the Ministry of Health and Welfare are cited to illustrate some characteristics in Japan: nearly 59% of either HIV + or AIDS patients were infected through injection of blood products or by blood transfusion. A number of plaintiffs have sued the Japanese government and pharmaceutical companies since 1989, but no judicial decisions have yet been made. The incidence of HIV decreases for each (...) of the following routes of infection: the second highest route of transmission being heterosexual, followed by bisexual and unconfirmed or unknown cases, and less frequently homosexual, drug use and lastly via vertical transmission. The most serious bioethical problems with HIV + and AIDs patients in Japan is the social segregation of these patients. There are many emotional fears among the general public and medical personnel about AIDS because of their inadequate scientific knowledge of this disease. The Japan Hospital Association is doing The Stop AIDS Campaign and made several surveys. Japan has become increasingly aware of the importance of AIDS education and a great deal of effort is being made to enhance bioethical considerations. (shrink)

Annual and cumulative incidences of HIV+ and AIDS in patients reported by the AIDS Surveillance Committee of the Ministry of Health and Welfare are cited to illustrate some characteristics in Japan: nearly 59% of either HIV+ or AIDS patients were infected through injection of blood products or by blood transfusion. A number of plaintiffs have sued the Japanese government and pharmaceutical companies since 1989, but no judicial decisions have yet been made. The incidence of HIV decreases for each of the (...) following routes of infection: the second highest route of transmission being heterosexual, followed by bisexual and unconfirmed or unknown cases, and less frequently homosexual, drug use and lastly via vertical transmission. The most serious bioethical problems with HIV+ and AIDS patients in Japan is the social segregation of these patients. There are many emotional fears among the general public and medical personnel about AIDS because of their inadequate scientific knowledge of this disease. The Japan Hospital Association is doing The Stop AIDS Campaign and made several surveys. Japan has become increasingly aware of the importance of AIDS education and a great deal of effort is being made to enhance bioethical consideration. (shrink)

インフォームド・コンセント、脳死と臓器移植、生体肝移植、終末医療と尊厳死、体外受精...。これら医療の新しい問題をどう考えたらいいのか。バイオエシックスが生まれ育った北米で二十年を過ごし、日本の医療倫 理の確立のために活躍してきた著者が、患者中心の医療の倫理とは何か、わが国になじむ倫理とは何かを、情熱をこめて語る。.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 233-250 [Access article in PDF] Narrative Theory and Function: Why Evolution Matters Michelle Scalise Sugiyama I It may seem a strange proposition that the study of human evolution is integral to the study of literature, yet that is exactly what this paper proposes. The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, the practice of storytelling is ancient, pre-dating not only the advent of writing, (...) but of agriculture and permanent settlement as well. Secondly, narrative is ultimately a product of the mind, which in turn is the product of a long history of evolution by natural selection. Thus, an understanding of why and how humans create and consume narrative requires an understanding of (1) features of ancestral environments and (2) features of the mind that made the emergence of this phenomenon possible.There can be little doubt that narrative emerged in human prehistory. Language, an obvious prerequisite for storytelling, is likely to have emerged by at least 50,000 and possibly 250,000 years ago, depending upon whether one places one's trust in archaeological or anatomical evidence. 1 The most reasonable estimate is offered by Geoffrey Miller, who points out that, given its universality, the language faculty must have emerged by the time ancestral Homo sapiens began migrating out of Africa approximately 100,000 years ago. 2 Although the oldest known written narrative (The Epic of Gilgamesh) dates back only 5,000 years, the written literary traditions of many ancient cultures are known to be rooted in longstanding oral traditions. 3 The fact that many modern foraging peoples have rich and complex oral traditions further suggests that the emergence of narrative is not linked to the development of agriculture 10,000 years ago. Moreover, other forms of symbolic expression, such as the cave paintings, Venus figurines, and engraved bone [End Page 233] and antler that have been found at various sites throughout Europe, date back approximately 30,000 years, and rock paintings in Australia may date back even farther. 4 Since humans were physiologically capable of speech long before they began producing these artifacts, storytelling is likely to be at least as ancient as these other representational forms. Indeed, one scholar situates the "dawn of the oral tradition" within this period (Pfeiffer, p. 189). Given, then, that modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) have been in existence for approximately 100,000 years 5 and are the only hominid species or subspecies known for certain to exhibit storytelling behavior, we can safely say that oral narrative is a product of our hunting-and-gathering past, likely to have emerged between 30,000 and 100,000 years ago.The universality of narrative is further testimony to its being an ancient cognitive phenomenon. Literate or not, all known cultures, past and present, practice storytelling. 6 Moreover, all normally developing humans acquire the ability to process and generate stories: studies of Western children indicate that the ability to tell stories emerges spontaneously between the ages of two-and-a-half and three, and children as young as thirty months can distinguish between narrative and non-narrative uses of language. 7 In contrast to reading, writing, and arithmetic, no special education is required for narrative competence to develop, nor is there any evidence that oral literacy is acquired through contact with other cultures; although subject matter is often exchanged between groups, the practice of storytelling itself arises independently among even the most isolated peoples. Nor does any type of culture have a monopoly on narrative sophistication: the stories of hunter-horticulturalist societies are no less observant, insightful, or artful than those of agrarian or industrial societies.As with language, narrative takes the same basic form across cultures, which David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson define as "a chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time." Given the preponderance of human agents in narrative, most narrative theorists would probably modify this barebones description to include character (usually understood to have a human psychology), goal-oriented action, and resolution. Frank Kermode, for example, defines the "proprieties" of narrative as "connexity, closure, and character," and John... (shrink)

Dyadic play fighting occurs in many species, but only humans are known to engage in coalitional play fighting. Dyadic play fighting is hypothesized to build motor skills involved in actual dyadic fighting; thus, coalitional play fighting may build skills involved in actual coalitional fighting, operationalized as forager lethal raiding. If human psychology includes a motivational component that encourages engagement in this type of play, evidence of this play in forager societies is necessary to determine that it is not an artifact (...) of agricultural or industrial conditions. We examine whether coalitional play fighting appears in the hunter-gatherer record and includes motor skills used in lethal raiding. Using the ethnographic record, we generated a list of motor patterns regularly used in forager warfare. Then, using Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas, we identified 100 culture clusters containing forager societies and searched the ethnographic records of these societies for descriptions of coalitional play fighting, operationalized as contact games played in teams. Resulting games were coded for the presence of eight motor patterns regularly used in forager lethal raiding. Although play does not tend to be systematically documented in the hunter-gatherer literature, sufficiently detailed descriptions of coalitional play were found for 46 of the 100 culture clusters: all 46 exhibited coalitional play using at least one of the predicted motor patterns; 39 exhibited coalitional play using four or more of the eight predicted motor patterns. These results provide evidence that coalitional play fighting occurs across a diverse range of hunter-gatherer cultures and habitats, regularly recruits motor patterns used in lethal raiding, and is not an artifact of agricultural or industrial life. This is a first step in a new line of research on whether human male psychology includes motivations to engage in play that develops the deployment of coordinated coalitional action involving key motor patterns used in lethal raiding. (shrink)

Selection pressure from health risk is hypothesized to have shaped adaptations motivating individuals to attempt to become valued by other individuals by generously and recurrently providing beneficial goods and/or services to them because this strategy encouraged beneficiaries to provide costly health care to their benefactors when the latter were sick or injured. Additionally, adaptations are hypothesized to have co-evolved that motivate individuals to attend to and value those who recurrently provide them with important benefits so they are willing in turn (...) to provide costly care when a valued person is disabled or in dire need. Individuals in egalitarian foraging bands can provide a number of valuable benefits, such as defense, diplomacy, food, healing, information, technical skill, or trading savvy. We therefore expect that humans have evolved psychological mechanisms motivating the pursuit and cultivation of a difficult-to-replace social role based on the provisioning of a benefit that confers a fitness advantage on its recipients. We call this phenomenon social niche specialization. One such niche that has been well-documented is meat-sharing. Here we present cross-cultural evidence that individuals cultivate two other niches, information and tool production, that serve (among other things) to buffer health risk. (shrink)

In referring to biographies of Edison as examples, the following are shown: the image of a scientist or an engineer in biographies has dramatically changed over time; the images produced anew in each period fitted well to the social milieu of the day; biographies therefore acquired a large readership and contributed to informing to the public of the value of science and technology and the necessity of promoting them. It is also pointed out that a new image of scientist or (...) engineer is to be created which is surely attractive to people today if we expect biographies to remain effective in promoting public understanding of science as before. (shrink)

In 1966, Laura Bohannan wrote her classic essay challenging the supposition that great literary works speak to universal human concerns and conditions and, by extension, that human nature is the same everywhere. Her evidence: the Tiv of West Africa interpret Hamlet differently from Westerners. While Bohannan’s essay implies that cognitive universality and cultural variation are mutually exclusive phenomena, adaptationist theory suggests otherwise. Adaptive problems ("the human condition") and cognitive adaptations ("human nature") are constant across cultures. What differs between cultures is (...) habitat: owing to environmental variation, the means and information relevant to solving adaptive problems differ from place to place. Thus, we find differences between cultures not because human minds differ in design but largely because human habitats differ in resources and history. On this view, we would expect world literature to express both human universals and cultural particularities. Specifically, we should expect to find literary universality at the macro level (e.g., adaptive problems, cognitive adaptations) and literary variation at the micro level (e.g., local solutions to adaptive problems). (shrink)

Organisms don't explore for exploration's sake: exploratory psychology is regulated by inputs from multiple adaptations dedicated to processing information from different domains of ancestral adaptive relevance. As holistic representations of environments, imaginary worlds simulate multiple adaptive problems, solutions, and outcomes, thereby engaging numerous emotional systems and providing potentially useful information. Their popularity is thus best understood in terms of the full spectrum of information domains they comprise.

Imaginary worlds recur across hunter-gatherer narrative, suggesting that they are an ancient part of human life: to understand their popularity, we must examine their origins. Hunter-gatherer fictional narratives use various devices to encode factual information. Thus, participation in these invented worlds, born of our evolved ability to engage in pretense, may provide adaptations with information inputs that scaffold their development.