This study reports an ecologic analysis of the relationship between mean birth weight (MBW) and nutritional, medical and social variables, using 1982 data for 47 prefectures in Japan.

Auditory perception is traditionally conceived as the perception of sounds — a friend’s voice, a clap of thunder, a minor chord. However, daily life also seems to present us with experiences characterized by the absence of sound — a moment of silence, a gap between thunderclaps, the hush after a musical performance. In these cases, do we positively hear silence? Or do we just fail to hear, and merely judge or infer that it is silent? This longstanding question remains controversial (...) in both the philosophy and science of perception, with prominent theories holding that sounds are the only objects of auditory experience and thus that our encounter with silence is cognitive, not perceptual. However, this debate has largely remained theoretical, without a key empirical test. Here, we introduce a novel empirical approach, presenting experimental evidence that silence can be genuinely perceived (not just cognitively inferred). We ask whether silences can ‘substitute’ for sounds in event-based auditory illusions — empirical signatures of auditory event representation in which auditory events distort perceived duration. Seven experiments introduce three new ‘silence illusions’ — the one-silence-is-more illusion, silence-based warping, and the oddball-silence illusion — each adapted from a prominent perceptual illusion previously thought to arise only from sounds. Subjects were immersed in ambient noise interrupted by silences structurally identical to the sounds in the original illusions. In all cases, silences elicited temporal distortions perfectly analogous to the illusions produced by sounds. Our results suggest that silence is truly heard, not merely inferred, introducing a general approach for studying absence perception. (shrink)

While Reinhold was no doubt interested in harnessing Kantian practical reason as a rational ground for our fundamental religious convictions, it remains unclear as to whether he reserves any role for theoretical or speculative reason in moral faith, and if so, what. This paper argues that he continues to assign an important role to speculative reason in the establishment and dissemination of a “religion of reason” in his efforts across three major texts of the Jena period (namely, the 1786-87 Letters (...) on the Kantian Philosophy, the 1789 Attempt at the New Theory of the Human Power of Representation, and the 1790 first edition of Contributions to the Correction of the Misunderstandings of Previous Philosophers) to outline a “new metaphysics” that accounts for supersensible objects (God, the soul, freedom and the physical, the moral and the intelligible world) in terms of forms of reason. It shows how Reinhold develops a unified account of speculative and practical reason by extending the former’s role to include that of producing ideas that pertain to the practical postulates and narrowing the latter’s role to that of imparting objective reality and further content to the ideas. (shrink)

In this work we investigate the Weihrauch degree of the problem Decreasing Sequence of finding an infinite descending sequence through a given ill-founded linear order, which is shared by the problem Bad Sequence of finding a bad sequence through a given non-well quasi-order. We show that $\mathsf {DS}$, despite being hard to solve, is rather weak in terms of uniform computational strength. To make the latter precise, we introduce the notion of the deterministic part of a Weihrauch degree. We then (...) generalize $\mathsf {DS}$ and $\mathsf {BS}$ by considering $\boldsymbol {\Gamma }$ -presented orders, where $\boldsymbol {\Gamma }$ is a Borel pointclass or $\boldsymbol {\Delta }^1_1$, $\boldsymbol {\Sigma }^1_1$, $\boldsymbol {\Pi }^1_1$. We study the obtained $\mathsf {DS}$ -hierarchy and $\mathsf {BS}$ -hierarchy of problems in comparison with the Baire hierarchy and show that they do not collapse at any finite level. (shrink)

It is widely thought that knowledge is factive – only truths can be known. However, this view has been recently challenged. One challenge appeals to approximate truths. Wesley Buckwalter and John Turri argue that false-but-approximately-true propositions can be known. They provide experimental findings to show that their view enjoys intuitive support. In addition, they argue that we should reject the factive account of knowledge to avoid widespread skepticism. A second challenge, advanced by Nenad Popovic, appeals to multidimensional geometry to build (...) a case where it seems intuitive that a person knows p even though p is false. In addition, Popovic argues that we should reject the factive account of knowledge because most of us would not become widespread skeptics if we discovered that ordinary objects in our world are actually four-dimensional. In this paper, we defend the factive account of knowledge against these arguments by challenging the intuitive appeal of the cases and arguing that there is no real threat of widespread skepticism for the factive account of knowledge. (shrink)

A set F of Boolean functions is said to be functionally complete if every Boolean function is definable by combining functions in F. Post clarified when a set of Boolean functions is functionally complete (with respect to classical semantics). In this paper, by extending Post’s theorem, we clarify when a set of Boolean functions is functionally complete with respect to Kripke semantics.

Secreted signaling molecules act as morphogens to control patterning and growth in many developing tissues. Since locally produced morphogens spread to form a concentration gradient in the surrounding tissue, spreading is generally thought to be the key step in the non‐autonomous actions. Here, we review recent advances in tool development to investigate morphogen function using the role of decapentaplegic (Dpp)/bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)‐type ligand in the Drosophila wing disc as an example. By applying protein binder tools to distinguish between the (...) roles of Dpp spreading and local Dpp signaling, we found that Dpp signaling in the source cells is important for wing patterning and growth but Dpp spreading from this source cells is not as strictly required as previously thought. Given recent studies showing unexpected requirements of long‐range action of different morphogens, manipulating endogenous morphogen gradients by synthetic protein binder tools could shed more light on how morphogens act in developing tissues. (shrink)

Contemporary transnational migration has given rise to a new ideology and semiotics of the foreign body – one that draws on the cognitive field of the primitive, marked, and abjected body. This foreign body is carefully differentiated from both the sphere of the local/national, and the “expatriate” professional who by virtue of economic and cultural capital is desired and assimilated into the local sphere. An aspiring cosmopolitan and global city-state like Singapore shows this semiotic differentiation to quite a marked degree, (...) in the policies and discourses of barely-tolerated and abjected foreign workers whose racially-marked bodies are highlighted by typologies of violence, disease, sexuality, and mob assemblies. The semiotics of the foreign body in Singapore is also evident in other racial-cultural fissures elsewhere, including in countries with multicultural reputations such as Australia, and countries like the U.S., U.K. and France that are struggling to cope with large migrant communities of Middle-Eastern and South Asian peoples. (shrink)

Representing Place: Landscape Painting and Maps by Edward Casey Landscape, Nature, and the Body Politic: From Britain's Renaissance to America's New World by Kenneth Robert Olwig.

歴史をひもとくと、外来の文化を巧みに取り入れ、独自のセンスで翻案してきた日本人の姿が見えてくる。様々な史実に刺激を受け、本書は、日本文化の魅力を、西洋と日本を対比しつつ「はじまり」ということに主眼を置 いて探る。「やっぱり日本発の感性はおもしろい」との発見にみちた、かたちをめぐる五つの物語。.

Diogenes, Ahead of Print. The aim of this study is to elucidate the genesis of communality in the urban street. Although in the modern world cities have long been seen as research laboratories, in today’s context of globalization they are becoming more radical and dynamic; they are becoming experimental theatres of social change. Since the end of the twentieth century, the political and economic reorganization of the world order is producing dramatic changes in various societies throughout the globe. This is (...) bringing about changes which tend to standardize society and atomize individual subjects. These changes are seemingly connected, but they do exist alone, separately. In this complex situation, we are confronted with the fundamental question, how can people construct communality transcending differences among them? The present study looks for an answer to this question, paying special attention to collective violence in the urban street, where ‘emergent but real’ norms are constructed among the rioters and the communality genesis mechanism is activated. In order to make a case for this urban communality, the analysis focuses on events in the streets of Nairobi at the time of the Second Liberation of 1990s and during the Post-Election Violence of 2007–2008. People with different political and religious affiliation and ethnic identity were involved in violent urban riots. They were originally strangers, but they generated new social order and norms. In the street, they constructed and shared a provisional communality, which was emergent and fluid but also real and firm. (shrink)

Goh, Michelle Christian discipleship is to live faithfully Jesus' commandment of love-of God and of our neighbour. The commandment to love especially those who are poor or in need was emphasised by Jesus in his actions and his teachings. Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan has traditionally been an influential model of care and compassion. We are given an example of how we ought to extend ourselves to care for each other, especially those who are helpless, suffering or isolated.1 It (...) is increasingly recognised that elderly persons are amongst those who are in need in modern society. This article discusses how the trinitarian perspective of God can enrich our care and service of ageing persons beyond the Good Samaritan paradigm. (shrink)

A culture war has been brewing in Singapore since 2009 when a conservative Christian group conducted a reverse takeover of a feminist civil society organization and was subsequently expelled from the organization in a publicized meeting between the two groups. Since then, the state has mediated the contestation of values between religious conservatives and liberal groups allied around issues of gender and sexuality. The culture war between the two sides has revolved around creative protests that have evaded state prohibitions against (...) public contestations over what is legally considered private beliefs and affairs. They involve innovative hybridizations of American discourses on values and rights mixed with Asian emphases on family traditions and sentiments. The COVID-19 pandemic has, however, laid bare the adaptation of the American culture war into the Singaporean public sphere. This article looks at and analyzes COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among conservative Christians in Singapore and their incorporation of anti-vaccination views from American Christian nationalism into secular framings, invoking legal rights and responsibilities aligned with the state’s nationalist discourse. I argue that this represents a new phase of contestation by conservatives, refashioning their religious views into secular frames of public good and morality serving the secular nation. By doing so, they implicitly challenge the state’s regulation of religion as private interests and beliefs. This altered religious activism has shifted the terms of secularism and loosened the hegemony of the state in defining these terms. (shrink)

This chapter elucidates the important Fichtean concept of drive by examining how it is put to use in the Jena Wissenschaftslehre to account for the I’s positing of an object in general, its comprehension of nature as purposive, and its consciousness of its own pure nature. In the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, the nature of drive is first clarified as the form the I necessarily takes in and for itself inasmuch as it strives. Further configurations of the determination are (...) used to explain the operation of the laws by which the I determines external objects, their changes, and the harmony or disharmony of their changes with the moral law. In the System of Ethics, the concept is further employed to provide a transcendental account of nature’s purposiveness. By the account, the I is compelled by the need to comprehend its own nature as a drive that constitutes an organized whole to posit to a drive to form parts of itself into such wholes in the rest of nature. Also, when the I refers natural objects to the original drive, it posits final purposes for the objects. In the popular lectures, the concept is employed as an anthropological and psychological concept to explain features that accrue to human beings on account of their rationality, such as their social, aesthetic, intellectual and moral nature. (shrink)

This paper presents Fichte’s system of philosophical science with the aim of elucidating the boundary separating the pure, absolute I and the empirical, individual I in the system. Tapping on writings related to the two versions of the Jena Doctrine of Science, I represent Fichte’s philosophical project as the primarily epistemological one of maintaining the scientific status of pre-philosophical knowledge in the face of the Maimonian skeptical challenge. Apparently, Fichte analyzes the scientificity of a body of knowledge in terms of (...) its certainty and systematicity. But it is in connection with his conception of a philosophical-scientific system as a presentation of an autonomous “system of a human mind” that we are able to make sense of the systematicity and certainty that are at play in the concept. Moreover, the philosophical-scientific system falls short of meeting the Maimonian skeptical challenge so long as it remains incomplete. Most importantly, the human-mental system is no empirical subject, but a pure subject that maps the possible perceptions and actions which an empirical subject has the potential to realize for itself. (shrink)

Vera Schwarcz's Place and Memory in the Singing Crane Garden examines the moral, philosophical, and historical meanings of a garden built by a Manchu Chinese prince, subsequently destroyed by British imperialists, commandeered by Red Guard radicals, and finally transformed into the grounds of an art museum. Reading Singing Crane Garden in the context of Schwarcz's previous writings on Chinese intellectuals and Jewish traditions, as well as insights provided by critical philosophers and geographers, this essay explores the moral and ethical dimensions (...) of locating history in specific “emplacements”. The argument begins by examining the phenomenology of place articulated by Edward Casey, weaves through discussions of Chinese spatiality, embodiment, and garden aesthetics, and comments on Schwarcz's study of broken monuments and stele through comparisons with Classical Chinese writers and the contemporary American poet Louise Glück. Comparisons are made between the destruction of the garden by the British forces of James Elgin, the murder of the journalist Thomas Bowlby, and the purging, imprisonment, torture, and brutality against scholars and intellectuals by the Red Guards under Mao. The essay closes with commentaries on Schwarcz's reflections concerning continuing global atrocities, and new insights into the ways that understanding landscape architecture as a form of history can bring meaning to questions of memory, loss, and the desire to evoke unrecoverable experiences. (shrink)

In philosophical methodology, intuitions are used as evidence to support philosophical theories. In this paper, I evaluate the skeptical argument that variation in intuitions is good evidence that our intuitions are unreliable, and so we should be skeptical about our theories. I argue that the skeptical argument is false. First, variation only shows that at least one disputant is wrong in the dispute, but each disputant lacks reason to determine who is wrong. Second, even though variation in intuitions shows that (...) at least one disputant has the wrong intuition in the thought experiment, it is not evidence of unreliability of any disputant’s intuition regarding the philosophical theory being tested. So, variation in intuitions is not good evidence that one’s own intuitions are unreliable. One reply from the literature in peer disagreement is that we should conciliate if we cannot determine who is wrong. I argue that these disagreements are instead unconfirmed peer disagreements (i.e., no good reason to take or dismiss disputants as an epistemic peer, inferior or superior). I argue that if you have a strong intuition about a case, then it is rational for you to remain steadfast. Thus, variation in intuitions does not call for skepticism. (shrink)

We study the computational content of various theorems with reverse mathematical strength around Arithmetical Transfinite Recursion (ATR_0) from the point of view of computability-theoretic reducibilities, in particular Weihrauch reducibility. Our main result states that it is equally hard to construct an embedding between two given well-orderings, as it is to construct a Turing jump hierarchy on a given well-ordering. This answers a question of Marcone. We obtain a similar result for Fraïssé's conjecture restricted to well-orderings.

This essay investigates what a nuanced and revisionary interpretation of Fichte’s Critical-idealist philosophy could reveal about its impact on the philosophic thought of Friedrich Schlegel. It argues that Schlegel sees the Wissenschaftslehre through the lens of the distinction Fichte famous draws between the “spirit” (Geist) and the “letter” (Buchstaben) of a philosophy. He considers the spirit of the Wissenschaftslehre to lie in its acute awareness of its own limitation as a work of art and its letter in the deductive or (...) demonstrative form it inevitably assumes upon being expounded. In the face of the discrepancy, Schlegel rejects the letter of the Wissenschaftslehre in favor of its spirit. (shrink)

In Schopenhauer’s thought, the will’s primacy over the intellect seems to suggest that the intellect plays no role in determining what we do. I provide an alternative picture of the intellect as actively deliberating and choosing in abstract cognition from what it passively receives from the will in natural cognition.

This chapter offers a fresh perspective on Fichte’s controversial critique of dogmatism in the “First and Second Introductions” to the Attempt at a New Presentation of the Science of Knowledge. It argues that the issue at stake in Fichte’s anti-dogmatism is the demand that reason be thoroughly determined from within itself and hence not be determined by anything outside it. It then addresses the charge of Fichte’s two-mindedness about the effectiveness of his refutation of dogmatism by arguing that the absolute (...) autonomy of reason deprives the idealist of any objective foothold upon which to refute the dogmatist outside of moral belief, it furnishes him with the subjective ground of rational justified by means of which the dogmatist can be refuted in his own terms. (shrink)

Many non-heteronormative Malaysian men find themselves on the receiving end of political, socio-cultural, and religious condemnations of their sexual identifyings and expressions. Their lived realities are often considered invalid, including from religious and theological perspectives. This article is a queer socio-theological project that examines the lived realities of six non-heteronormative Malaysian men who speak up and talk back on their sexualities and spiritual sensibilities. Using a Constructivist Grounded Theory Methodology, and aided by the theological musings of Marcella Althaus-Reid and a (...) document of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences as analytical frameworks, this article analyzes and theologizes the complex processes of transcendent/desire, or negotiations of the “Profoundly More” and sexuality in the narratives of these men. This article suggests that transcendent/desire can be imaginatively assembled in three interrelated forms: as embodied connections with the transcendent; as a vocation; and as an imperative to flourish. (shrink)

The article examines the sensorium and how it is has been divided to argue that touch underlies what we refer to as hearing. It explores Stockhausen's "Helicopter Quartet" as an extended meditation on the mediation of the senses and the foregrounding of touch in the piece through teletechnologies that serve as prosthetic devices for sound, sight and touch.

This piece explores possible reasons for Lucilius’ suggestive reference to worms,emblemate uermiculato, in the famous comment (about speech arranged akin to mosaics) which has survived from Book 2 of the satirist. The fragment can be set metatextually amid other extracts of Lucilius to show the poet's agency and skill, considered as having influenced aspects of its own afterlife (especially in Hor.Sat. 2.4) and appreciated in its historical context as a hit at Publius Mucius Scaevola, who died from phthiriasis.

This paper considers what Fichte's conception of the human body as an instrument of perception entails for his radical principle of the primacy of practice. According to Fichte, perception is a function of what he calls the "articulation" of the human body, as opposed to its "organization." I first provide an interpretation of his theory of the human-bodily articulation by arguing that he construes it as a product of culture as well as nature. On this basis, I go on to (...) consider the theory's implications for perception: first, since our articulated body is the sphere of our free activity, it follows from its function as the instrument of perception that we always exercise some measure of control over what we perceive; second, because our articulated body is a product of culture, the way in which we perceive is conditioned by practical rules, precepts and laws that regulate our reciprocal interaction with nature and society. (shrink)

No concept is more controversial in, and yet more central to, the Wissenschaftslehre than that of freedom. This chapter presents Fichte as an empirical indeterminist and a transcendental determinist. Underlying his better-known empirical account of freedom of voluntary choice, I argue, is a transcendental account of “freedom in itself.” The latter, given from the transcendental viewpoint, presents my world as a thoroughly determinate system of possible (inner and outer) experience, including the possible experience of what I can and will do (...) in it. From the perspective of transcendental genesis, freedom of voluntary choice is the result merely of my reflection on and analysis (rather than of my determination and synthesis) of the system. Additionally, I discuss other empirical expressions of freedom than free voluntary choice, including freedom of self-cultivation, freedom of thinking, external freedom and moral freedom. (shrink)

This article considers how the I furnishes a ground for the moral principle’s reality or applicability, or the synthetic unification of the higher and the lower powers of desire, through its originally determined nature. It argues that the nature of I-hood as an immediate unity of seeing and being, an absolute identity of the subjective and objective, is key to securing the moral principle’s applicability. On its basis, Fichte envisages an originally determined system of drives and feelings on the one (...) side, and of ends on the other, in and through which each of our dutiful actions in each given situation is determined. For Fichte, the question of the moral law’s application has more to do with demonstrating the moral law’s applicability as a principium executionis (or what is the same, the real, practical efficacy of reason) than with employing the law as a discursive criterion for deciding whether actions are dutiful or not. The article clarifies this point by reference to Rehberg’s critique of Kant’s ethics. (shrink)

To understand the public opinion concerning the genethics in culturally different populations, we conducted two focus groups in Japan, with one focus group each in China and Panama between April 2008 and August 2009. Generally, the participants in Japan were more cautious to disclose their personal thinking in a clear manner. Most participants in China and Panama hoped to have children free from any genetic disease if at all possible. The major difference between China and Panama seems to be whether (...) or not they will accept the issue of genetic abortion. Compared to China and Panama, fewer participants accepted a reprogenetics procedure in Japan. ―A goal of genetic counseling is to reduce the number of patients of genetic disease‖ is supported to a greater degree in China and Panama than in Japan. Most participants in China as well as Panama, and fewer participants in Japan accepted the concept of sharing genetic information with relatives, even though it is useful for preventing a possible genetic risk. The difference of the answers for the questions is depending on the cultural and value diversity in each country, while some of them are related into a paucity of knowing the principle of biogenetics. Education as to medical genetics and the principle of bioethics is most important to make genetics more accessible to the general public. (shrink)

Theorems of hyperarithmetic analysis occupy an unusual neighborhood in the realms of reverse mathematics and recursion-theoretic complexity. They lie above all the fixed iterations of the Turing jump but below ATR $_{0}$. There is a long history of proof-theoretic principles which are THAs. Until the papers reported on in this communication, there was only one mathematical example. Barnes, Goh, and Shore [1] analyze an array of ubiquity theorems in graph theory descended from Halin’s [9] work on rays in graphs. They (...) seem to be typical applications of ACA $_{0}$ but are actually THAs. These results answer Question 30 of Montalbán’s Open Questions in Reverse Mathematics [19] and supply several other natural principles of different and unusual levels of complexity.This work led in [25] to a new neighborhood of the reverse mathematical zoo: almost theorems of hyperarithmetic analysis. When combined with ACA $_{0}$ they are THAs but on their own are very weak. Denizens both mathematical and logical are provided. Generalizations of several conservativity classes are defined and these ATHAs as well as many other principles are shown to be conservative over RCA $_{0}$ in all these senses and weak in other recursion-theoretic ways as well. These results answer a question raised by Hirschfeldt and reported in [19] by providing a long list of pairs of principles one of which is very weak over RCA $_{0}$ but over ACA $_{0}$ is equivalent to the other which may be strong or very strong going up a standard hierarchy and at the end being stronger than full second-order arithmetic. (shrink)