Hospital ethics committees (HECs) are expected to play extremely broad and pivotal roles such as case consultation, education of staffs on healthcare ethics, and institutional policy formation. Despite the growing importance of HECs, there are no standards for setup and operation of HECs, and composition and activities of HECs at each institution are rarely disclosed in Japan. In addition, there is also a lack of information sharing and collaboration among HECs. Therefore, the authors established the Consortium of Hospital Ethics Committees (...) (CHEC) in October 2020, which has been regularly hosting a couple of core activities. One is the Healthcare Ethics Forum, held monthly online for CHEC members to freely discuss HECs and healthcare ethics consultation. The other is the Collaboration Conference of Hospital Ethics Committees, intended to provide a place for HEC members and administrative officers from across Japan to exchange information of their HECs, learn from each other, and cooperate to operate HECs appropriately. In this paper, the authors introduced CHEC as well as reported the results of a questionnaire survey conducted at the first conference among participating facilities, suggesting the diverse structures and activities of HECs in Japan. (shrink)

This study aimed to identify the ethical issues faced by home care physicians and nurses, and the support they require. It was conducted in collaboration with the Japanese Association for Home Care Medicine from November to December 2020. An e-mail was sent to 2785 physicians and 582 nurses who are members of the society, requesting their participation in a web-based survey targeting physicians and nurses with practical experience in home care; 152 physicians and 53 nurses responded. Home care physicians and (...) nurses face ethical issues, some of which are that “the patient’s wishes cannot be reliably understood owing to their impaired decision-making capacity” and “there is disagreement between the patient and their family members over the necessary healthcare.” The respondents sought “experience with, and insight into, healthcare ethics” and “home care” from people with whom they would consult on ethical issues, but at the time of the actual consultation, those individuals were the main healthcare professionals involved with the patient. In addition, the respondents desired to have “multidisciplinary discussions in the community,” “participation of healthcare ethics experts at meetings,” and “meetings held by healthcare ethics experts” to discuss specific cases. Given these results and the history of healthcare ethics education in Japan—which has been implemented mostly for healthcare providers—we conclude that it is important for academic societies that offer healthcare ethics education to healthcare providers and regional core hospitals with ethics support resources to collaborate to provide ethics consultation services in the community. (shrink)

"Deep Words contains translations of "Honso, the "Core Text" of "Gengo, by Miura Baien, 1723-1789 - a widely renowned Japanese teacher and writer of his time; ...

In the Essay Locke argues abstract ideas within the framework of the descriptivist theory of reference. For him, abstract ideas are, in many cases, conceptual ideas that play the role of “descriptions” or “descriptive contents,” determining general terms’ referents. In contrast, in the introduction of the Principles, Berkeley denies Lockean abstract ideas adamantly from an imagistic point of view, and he offers his own theory of reference seemingly consisting of referring expressions and their referents alone. However, interestingly, he mentions a (...) general term’s “definition” and suggests that it determines the scope of the term’s referents. For example, he takes up the definition of a triangle as “a plain Surface comprehended by three right Lines” and suggests that just as Locke’s general idea of a triangle does, the definition determines the referents of the general term “triangle.” His definition reminds us of the fact that as Descartes grasps the content of the general idea of a triangle as “a figure enclosed by three lines,” so Locke grasps the abstract idea of a triangle as “a Figure including a Space between three Lines,” and so on. That is, since Berkeley is an imagist, he does not acknowledge Locke’s conceptual abstract ideas as “ideas,” but although he verbally denies “abstract ideas,” his theory of reference also actually has the same descriptivist framework consisting of referring expressions, their descriptive contents, and their referents. Thus, we understand the real reason why Berkeley’s criticism of Locke seems beside the point. (shrink)

1960年代以後、日本の思想・哲学に大きな影響力をもった廣松渉(1933‐94)。この独自な哲学者の人と思想と時代と影響関係の全体を思想史上に位置づけ、その思考過程を精密に追跡した、気鋭の書。.

Behind the phase of cognition analysed by Husserl, there is a phase of affection. In this phase, there are significant mental disorders occurring. Similar to the way in which the phase of cognition is divided into reference, meaning (referent), and representation of words (classification according to Husserl's theory of meaning), the phase of affection is also divided into reference, “meaning,” and figure as sphere of “meaning”. The situation as a reference can allow various predications to form different explanations, i.e. different (...) states of affairs. From the point of view of affection, this reference has another role. The affection of a situation obliges us to produce bodily “meanings,” which is a sign of health. Mental disorders can be described as some distortion in the phase of affection. Healing in this regard occurs through the restoration of creativity for “meanings” which assume the situation. (shrink)

This paper seeks to demonstrate the structural difference in communication of schizophrenia and autism. For a normal adult, spontaneous communication is nothing but the transmission of phantasía (thought) by means of perceptual objects or language. This transmission is first observed in a make-believe play of child. Husserl named this function “perceptual phantasía,” and this function presupposes as its basis the “internalized affection of contact” (which functions empirically in eye contact, body contact, or voice calling me). Regarding autism, because of the (...) innate lack of affection of contact, intersubjective perceptual phantasía does not occur spontaneously. Consequently, autistics do not engage in make-believe play but in stereotyped and solipsistic play. Without the formation of perceptual phantasía, there is no differentiation between phantasía and perception. For this reason, people with Asperger's syndrome consider conversation not an immediate communication of thought but a logical transmission of concepts. Schizophrenia is characterized by a distortion in the internalized affection of contact, resulting in a disturbance of perceptual phantasía, and this later is covered by various symptoms—for example, delusion as a pathological kind of communication of thought. This delusion is based on the pathological internalized affection of contact represented by a terrifying Other. (shrink)

Since the 1990s, the relation between liberalism and colonialism has been one of the most important issues in Locke studies and also in the field of modern political thought. This present work is a unique contribution to discussion of this issue in that it elucidates Lockeâ (TM)s concept of the law of nature and his view of war. Lockeâ (TM)s law of nature includes, despite its ostensible universal validity, some particular rules which favour the rights of a European form of (...) political society and individualistic land-acquisition at the sacrifice of native traditional land-rights and subsistence. Concerning wars between settlers and the natives, Lockeâ (TM)s concept of â oepunishmentâ in state of nature allows the militarily superior side to make a war with the inferior in disregard for the latterâ (TM)s claim and nevertheless, after winning victory, proclaim its own just cause of war. By putting Lockeâ (TM)s discourse on colonization and war in the context of contemporary relations between English colonists and the natives, this book makes clear that the expansive element of his theory of property actually overbalanced his rule of limitation of property according to equitableness and that it, after all, undermines the general principles of freedom and equality of all in his law of nature. (shrink)

We explore the connections between Dickson’s lemma and weak Ramsey theory. We show that a weak version of the Paris–Harrington principle for pairs in c colors and miniaturized Dickson’s lemma for c-tuples are equivalent over \. Furthermore, we look at a cascade of consequences for several variants of weak Ramsey’s theorem.

Biological forms are very complex, and mechanisms of pattern formation are not well understood. Although developmental biology deals with the mechanistic explanation of patterns, currently we do not know how to understand the mechanisms of pattern formation from huge amounts of molecular information. In this article, I present one useful tool, mathematical modeling, to obtain a mechanistic understanding of biological pattern formation, and show an actual example in lung branching morphogenesis. In this example, mathematical modeling plays an indispensable role in (...) understanding the biological phenomena. The model successfully reproduces the basic features of morphogenesis in vitro, but mechanism in vivo still remains to be elucidated. (shrink)

According to Kant, the division of the categories “is not the result of a search after pure concepts undertaken at haphazard,” but is derived from the “complete” classification of judgments developed by traditional logic. However, the sorts of judgments that he enumerates in his table of judgments are not all ones that traditional logic has dealt with; consequently, we must say that he chose the sorts of judgments in question with a certain intention. Besides, we know that his choice of (...) judgments and categories is strongly influenced by certain views of natural science that he fully accepts. For this reason, his argumentations are sometimes seriously inconsistent. As to Kant’s argumentations of categories, many problems have already been pointed out, but in this paper, I take up the categories of quantity and quality once more, and make clear his argumentations’ hidden logic and its distortion from the point of view of the history of logic and natural science. First, I confirm that there are non-negligible problems in his explanation to the effect that his derivation of the categories of quantity and quality is based on the quantity and quality of judgments. Next, I reconsider the meaning of his treating the categories of quantity and quality as pure concepts of the understanding. Finally, I conclude that by having recourse to the categories of quantity and quality Kant tried unjustly to apriorize the distinction between the “extensive magnitude” and “intensive magnitude” that has a long formational history since Aristotle. (shrink)

La disociación, surgida a raíz del acontecimiento traumático, pone de manifiesto algunos caracteres fenomenológicos propios del cuerpo. En primer lugar, la destrucción de la esquematización propia del cuerpo es lo que genera el estado hipnótico. En segundo lugar, sólo si entendemos la facultad de esquematización como relacionada con la auto-conciencia podemos comprender el extraño fenómeno del sí-mismo despegado que se da en el estado de disociación. En tercer lugar, este desmoronamiento de la capacidad esquematizante tiene su origen en la destrucción (...) de un tipo muy especial y fundamental de intersubjetividad (se trata, por así decirlo, de la �phantasia �perceptiva� intersubjetiva�). (shrink)

In spite of his clear and deliberate distinction between philosophical and religious discourse, Ricoeur lets these two aspects of his thought interweave with respect to the deep "conviction" motiving it. The idea of “attestation”, considered as the "password" granting access to his last "hermeneutics of the self", testifies to this in particular. This term, while containing a religious connotation, refers to what Heidegger calls Fundamentalontologie , in which attestation ( Bezeugung ) is totally de-theologized to indicate how Dasein assumes its (...) own death. But Ricoeur only incorporates this notion into his thought by making it undergo a profound modification. Ricoeur replaces “being–toward–death” with “remaining alive until…”, which allows him to recognize “the religious in common.” How can we develop a conception of the philosophy of religion from this winding process? This article marks a first step toward answering that question. (shrink)

Witnessing after the “end of philosophy,” in the sense in which Heidegger mentions it in his famous lecture on “The end of philosophy and the task of thinking”—what does this mean for us and our world today? As a preparation for an answer to this question, the present study proposes to elaborate a radical hermeneutics of testimony, by invoking French philosophers who can be qualified as “post-Heideggerian”—Lévinas, Ricoeur, Derrida, among others—whose thoughts on testimony were developed through the essential critique on (...) Heideggerian idea of attestation and the creative reactivation of the semantic resources historically preserved by terms such as “witness” and “testimony”. (shrink)

The present article is based on a interview with a Japanese experienced caregiver who specializes in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which generally leads to the locked-in syndrome. Professional caregivers for ALS patients with ventilator experience two particular temporalities in their practice. First, they must monitor the patient continuously during a seven-hour stay. Because a single problem in the ventilator can have fatal consequences, the care of an ALS patient with a ventilator requires long periods of sustained concentration. Second, trying (...) to understand the signs of a patient with a ventilator sometimes requires three hours to go through ten alphabets. In addition to the huge effort that such communication requires, caregivers must complete the meaning of the signs with their imagination: the ten alphabets are not sufficient to understand what the patient really wants to say. This imaginative capacity, however, is based on a long relationship, which started when the patient was still able to speak and move. That is why, as this article will show, even when a patient has entered total LIS, the caregiver can continue to realize his or her wishes. (shrink)

The French Introduction to a special issue on Ricoeur and Theology.