Human homogamy may be caused in part by individuals’ preference for phenotypic similarities. Two types of preference can result in homogamy: individuals may prefer someone who is similar to themselves (self-referent phenotype matching) or to their parents (a sexual-imprinting-like mechanism). In order to examine these possibilities, we compare faces of couples and their family members in two ways. First, “perceived” similarity between a pair of faces is quantified as similarity ratings given to the pair. Second, “physical” similarity between two groups (...) of faces is evaluated on the basis of correlations in principal component scores generated from facial measurements. Our results demonstrate a tendency to homogamy in facial characteristics and suggest that the tendency is due primarily to self-referent phenotype matching. Nevertheless, the presence of a sexual-imprinting-like effect is also partially indicated: whether individuals are involved in facial homogamy may be affected by their relationship with their parents during childhood. (shrink)

Previous studies have revealed the effect of interoceptive accuracy, a behavioral measure of the ability to feel physiological states and regulation for that, which origin emotion on decision-making such as gambling. Given that decision-making in moral dilemma situations is affected by emotion, it seems that IAcc also affects moral decision-making. The present study preliminarily investigates whether IAcc affects decision-making and emotional ratings such as regret for one’s own choices in moral dilemma situations. IAcc did not affect moral choice, but affected (...) regret ratings for one’s moral choice in portions of dilemma scenarios. Moreover, people with higher IAcc make deontological choices more rapidly than those with lower IAcc in self-related dilemma scenarios. These results suggest that people with higher IAcc feel stronger emotional conflicts about utilitarian choices but weaker conflicts about deontological choices than people with lower IAcc depending on the moral dilemma scenario. (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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

「3・11」大震災は哲学に何を突きつけたか。大震災は、日本に張りめぐらされた権力構成体=「原発ペンタゴン」を明るみに出したが、これを機に哲学が問うべきは、近代において理性が、技術・テクノロジーに依存す る「技術的理性」に変貌したという事実である。本書は、原発をはじめとする技術問題を俎上に載せて「技術的理性」の諸特質について論じ、その変革可能性を考察する。.

The present study collected a larger set of three-dimensional data on human crania from the Kofun period (as well as from previous periods, i.e., the Jomon and Yayoi periods) in the Japanese archipelago (AD 250 to around 700) than previous studies. Three-dimensional geometric morphometrics were employed to investigate human migration patterns in finer-grained phases. These results are consistent with those of previous studies, although some new patterns were discovered. These patterns were interpreted in terms of demic diffusion, archaeological findings, and (...) historical evidence. In particular, the present results suggest the presence of a gradual geological cline throughout the Kofun period, although the middle period did not display such a cline. This discrepancy might reflect social changes in the middle Kofun period, such as the construction of keyhole-shaped mounds in the peripheral regions. The present study implies that a broader investigation with a larger sample of human crania is essential to elucidating macro-level cultural evolutionary processes. (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)

Hirschi and Gottfredson (1983) claim that the relationship between age and crime is similar in all social and cultural conditions and that no current sociological or criminological theory can account for this similarity. We introduce the new field of evolutionary psychology and extend Daly and Wilson's (1988) work on homicide to construct a general theory of male criminality, which explains why men commit violent and property crimes. The theory can also explain the age-crime curve. It might also account for some (...) empirical anomalies such as why physically smaller boys are more delinquent, and why violent criminals desist more slowly. (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)

The origins and consequences of warfare or largescale intergroup violence have been subject of long debate. Based on exhaustive surveys of skeletal remains for prehistoric hunter-gatherers and agriculturists in Japan, the present study examines levels of inferred violence and their implications for two different evolutionary models, i.e., parochial altruism model and subsistence model. The former assumes that frequent warfare played an important role in the evolution of altruism and the latter sees warfare as promoted by social changes induced by agriculture. (...) Our results are inconsistent with the parochial altruism model but consistent with the subsistence model, although the mortality values attributable to violence between hunter-gatherers and agriculturists were comparable. (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)

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)

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)

Descartes insists, “[...] there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me [...]” (AT-VII, 25; CSM-II, 17). In what way can we draw evidence that our existence can be drawn from our being deceived? The interpretations that the earlier studies have shown is not a monolith. Then I will search for some inherent characteristics of deception, and analyse the construction of the (...) reasoning, “if a deceiver deceives me, I exist.” To be concrete, I show: 1) that it is not “I exist” but “I think” that is concluded from the supposition “a deceiver deceives me/I am deceived by a deceiver”; 2) that the attributions of the self as a thinking thing, i.e. understanding, affirming, and denying (AT-VII, 28; CSM-II, 19), are discovered in the very supposition of a deceiver. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to bring an end to the interpretative dispute on Descartes’s cog­ito: is the cogito known by intuition or by inference? There have been several studies based on both analytical and historical approaches to the dispute, and it seems that we have exhausted all interpretations. Nevertheless, I wish to revisit this dispute, as it ap­pears that the previous studies have overlooked Descartes’s use of words and phrases, which is the most significant for understanding his various (...) discourses on the cogito con­sistently. In this paper, I focus on the terms which Descartes uses to indicate the varied status of the cogito, such as ‘haec cognitio, ego cogito, ergo sum’, ‘hanc propositionem, ego cogito, ergo sum’, ‘hanc conclusionem: cogito, ergo sum’, and so on; Descartes changes carefully the terms in each of the cogito arguments. By focusing on these terms, I try to interpret Descartes’s explanations consistently. (shrink)