On March 11, 2011, one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded occurred off the northeast coast of Japan. It destroyed buildings, damaged infrastructure, and killed people in the Tohoku region. The associated tsunami was even more destructive, engulfing coastal areas and obliterating whole towns. The earthquake and the tsunami together occasioned a third disaster: the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Like most people, Dr. Makoto Sato was horrified by the destruction and suffering that he saw. He wanted (...) to help and felt that he should, but doing something appropriate and effective was not easy. He is a general internist and bioethicist at a university medical center in Hokkaido, the large island north of Tohoku. What should Dr. Sato have done then? What should he do now? (shrink)

The main contentions of this paper are twofold. First, there is a more than century‐old Japanese tradition of human rights based on a fusion of Western concepts of natural rights and a radical reinterpretation of Confucianism, the major proponent of which was the Japanese thinker Nakae Chomin. Secondly, this tradition, although a minority view, is crucial for remedying the serious defects in the present Japanese medical system. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Nakae Chomin sought to reinterpret Chinese (...) tradition, especially Confucianism, by injecting the concepts of popular sovereignty and democratic equality, drawn from Western sources. The resulting view maintained the Confucian commitment to a moral nexus for society, but replaced hierarchy with egalitarianism. The pressing need for such an approach to patients' rights in present‐day Japan is illustrated by two recent cases: the photographing and commercial exploitation of patients' genitals without serious response by authorities, and the attempt by physicians to manipulate the time of death and, possibly, to improperly pressure family members in order to transplant organs from the brain‐dead victim of a criminal assault. Such problems stem from hierarchy and paternalism, which seem to be a legacy of the rapid, state‐sponsored introduction of Western medicine in the mid‐nineteenth century, and in particular from the government's adoption of and support for German military medicine as a model for Japan. (shrink)

Quine claims that his naturalized epistemology which is a science about science must take the place of traditional epistemology. Because physics is the paradigm of science for Quine, there is apparently no room for normative and intentional discourses in Quine's naturalized epistemology. However, Quine uses normative and intentional discourses in his naturalized epistemological inquiry. Hence, the problem addressed in this dissertation is the place of normative and intentional discourses in Quine's naturalized epistemology. ;My procedure is to examine critically the above (...) mentioned contradiction from two different angles. In an initial and external criticism I assume the in-principle gap between physicalistic discourse and normative and intentional discourses. In an internal criticism I assume the gap merely practical. In the former criticism I offer my own interpretation of the status of naturalized epistemology in Quine's philosophy and argue for the presence of a tension between methodological concerns and what Quine calls his physicalistic bias. I explain three manifestations of the tension in Quine's writings: his discussions of language acquisition, induction and scientific method in general. I also argue that methodological concerns play the ineradicable role in an epistemology, which Quine must and at least partially does recognize. In the internal criticism I discuss the nature of the gap between physicalistic discourse and normative and intentional discourses and examine and criticize Quine's behavioristic physicialism. On the basis of the criticism of Quine's behavioristic physicalism I criticize Quine's thesis of indeterminacy of translation which denies the fact of the matter for intentional discourse. ;I find, as a result, that because both methodological concerns and physicalistic bias are basic elements of Quine's naturalized epistemology, the resultant tension is serious. I also find that Quine's naturalized epistemology as it is cannot resolve the tension, whether we assume the gap as in-principle or merely practical. ;Thus, I conclude that as the unsettling status of normative and intentional discourses indicates, Quine's naturalized epistemology does not make a coherent whole. (shrink)