The role of research ethics consultants in biomedical research has increased to the point that they have an advisory capacity at all research institutes. For such professionals, we have established an educational system, which includes teaching materials, training methods, and nationwide educational workshops. These workshops have served to examine the developed system’s usefulness and to provide realistic training for consultant candidates. In addition, we have used the current workshop to encourage clinical research investigators to participate. Subsequently, we examined its usefulness (...) as an opportunity to provide exposure to research ethics. In October 2019, we held a 1-day pilot workshop in Tokushima, Japan, which included a basic lecture in research ethics. During the lecture, two sets of materials were used for case discussion: case 1, covering issues related to a clinical trial, and case 2, covering issues related to human biological specimens. At the end of the workshop, a 30-item self-reporting anonymous questionnaire was provided. Of the 13 total participants, 9 were clinical research investigators and related personnel, while 6 had no direct intention to act as consultants. Respondents indicated that case 2 was more difficult than case 1. However, both cases were generally accepted as educational materials; thus, satisfaction was expressed in relation to both. As the evaluations of the cases were generally positive, we will further examine the usefulness of participation in the workshop in the cultivation of research ethics in the investigator community. (shrink)

Ariga Tetsutaro (1899–1977) war Professor für das Studium des Christentums an der Universität Kyoto und gehörte dort der zweiten Professoren-generation an. Er legte die Grundlagen der Patristik und der Erforschung des Christentums in Japan. In seinem Hauptwerk “Origenes” hatte er den Historismus in der Theologie erforscht, aber nachdem er seinen Dienst als Professor an der staatlichen Universität aufgenommen hatte, die die Trennung von Staat und Religion hochhielt, suchte er nach Wegen, ein ‘Studium des Christlichen’ zu etablieren, das sich von der (...) Theologie unterschied. Dabei dienten ihm Schleiermachers “Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums” und die Tradition des deutschen liberalen Protestantismus als Anhaltspunkte. Anstatt der Theologie, die den Glauben als methodischen Ausgangspunkt hat, und der Religionswissenschaft, die nur die distanzierte Objektivität als Ausgangspunkt wählt, schlug er als neuen Versuch ein Christliches Studium mit akademischem Standpunkt vor, bei dem der Gelehrte eine Forschungshaltung einnimmt, die durch ein Mindestmaß an vernünftiger Kritik und ‘Ur-Sympathie’ gegenüber der Religion geprägt ist. (shrink)

Interventions performed on a pregnant woman's body can affect the fetus in multiple ways. Such effects can be harmful to beneficial to the fetus. Unfortunately, the effects of new drugs and compoun...

Recent work on the application of neural networks to language modeling has shown that models based on certain neural architectures can capture syntactic information from utterances and sentences even when not given an explicitly syntactic objective. We examine whether a fully data-driven model of language development that uses a recurrent neural network encoder for utterances can track how child language utterances change over the course of language development in a way that is comparable to what is achieved using established language (...) assessment metrics that use language-specific information carefully designed by experts. Given only transcripts of child language utterances from the CHILDES Database and no pre-specified information about language, our model captures not just the structural characteristics of child language utterances, but how these structures reflect language development over time. We establish an evaluation methodology with which we can examine how well our model tracks language development compared to three known approaches: Mean Length of Utterance, the Developmental Sentence Score, and the Index of Productive Syntax. We discuss the applicability of our model to data-driven assessment of child language development, including how a fully data-driven approach supports the possibility of increased research in multilingual and cross-lingual issues. (shrink)

This article aims to clarify the meaning of henology for Lacan and Žižek. Žižek apparently rejects Neoplatonic way of thinking, but by considering Lacanian Henology through its origin, Etienne Gilson, Lacanian henology and Žižek’s Hegelian reading of the One become converged. Both of them think the movement of the One from one principle and its two aspects. The principle is that the One gives something that it does not have, and it corresponds to Lacanian definition of love. Regarding its two (...) aspects, the first one is the logical necessity that generates necessarily the One, and the second is the logical contingency that generates contingently the surplus element. By this, we can clarify the theoretical development of each period of Lacan. In early Lacan, henology was a logic that ties his “the Symbolic” and Freudian Death drive. In middle Lacan, his main concern was the mathematical logic as the logic of the Id, and henology became the generative logic of the subject of enunciation or the subject of the jouissance. But at the same time, this movement produces as a co-product a inassimilable remainder, “object a” with the subject of signifiant. In late Lacan, by virtue of the “necessary” movement of the One and its “contingent” co-product, the universe of the discourse became indeterminate, undecidable, “not-all,” which means for Lacan “the contingent.” This characteristic became the logic of Lacanian “sexuation.”. (shrink)

Quantum logic is only applicable to microscopic phenomena while classical logic is exclusively used for everyday reasoning, including mathematics. It is shown that both logics are unified in the framework of modal interpretation. This proposed method deals with classical propositions as latently modalized propositions in the sense that they exhibit manifest modalities to form quantum logic only when interacting with other classical subsystems.

田辺は自己の生を包摂する時代の趨勢と真摯に対峙し、廣松は「近代」の陥穽を注視し絶えず他者との協働を考察し続けた。この二人の視座から「啓蒙の弁証法」の陥穽に落ちた日本社会と日本人の「生の姿」を考えていく 。.

A non-classical subsystem of orthomodular quantum logic is proposed. This system employs two basic operations: the Sasaki hook as implication and the _and-then_ operation as conjunction. These operations successfully satisfy modus ponens and the deduction theorem. In other words, they form an adjunction in terms of category theory. Two types of semantics are presented for this logic: one algebraic and one physical. The algebraic semantics deals with orthomodular lattices, as in traditional quantum logic. The physical semantics is given as a (...) procedure for deriving a final segment of a series of yes-no experiments. (shrink)

Der Band enthält die drei bislang unveröffentlichten "Krisenhefte" von Marx mit Exzerpten, Zeitungsausschnitten und Notizen, die 1857/1858 während der ersten Weltwirtschaftskrise entstanden sind. Die Materialsammlung dokumentiert Marx’ empirische Untersuchung dieser Krise, die er mit der Zusammenstellung und Systematisierung von Artikeln, Angaben und Kommentaren aus führenden Zeitungen wie "The Times", "The Morning Star", "The Standard", "The Manchester Guardian" und "The Economist" durchführte. In den Auszügen werden Wirtschafts- und Finanzfragen in den europäischen Ländern sowie den USA, China, Indien, Ägypten, Australien und Brasilien (...) behandelt, der Finanz- und Warenmarkt untersucht, sowie Daten zu Konkursen, Arbeitslosigkeit, Kurzarbeit, Lohnentwicklung und Arbeitskämpfen festgehalten. Die Krisenhefte stehen in engem Zusammenhang mit Marx’ "Grundrissen der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie", seinen Artikeln für die "New-York Tribune" und Debatten mit Engels, in denen allesamt die Krise 1857/58 analysiert wird. (shrink)

丸山眞男の政治思想史と廣松渉の哲学は「現代の人間世界における人間性の運命とは」を「問う」たのであった。今、だからこそ惰性となった現実主義を「醒めた目」で捉える必要がある。つまり、丸山と廣松の両者のよう に「“鉄のように堅い殻”」の歴史内部で退動する「弁証法的緊張」を把握しなくてはならない。二人が生涯を賭けた思想史と哲学の探求は、人間の歴史的現実に対する私たち自身の課題なのである。.

In 2005 Japan completed its first census after the Personal Information Protection Law went into force in April 2005. The debate about the new law raised privacy concerns for the first time among the public. The news-media also provided several examples of possible lack of safeguards in the data collection of sensitive personal information required for the census. The result was the highest non-response rate ever for the Japanese census. Consequently, its accuracy and role as a source for the reliable (...) national statistics for health/welfare policy-making is now critically threatened. In this paper we argue the necessity to adopt specific safeguards to protect personal data in any future census if the trend of increasing non-response rates is to be reversed. We provide some suggestions for such safeguards, and criticize the Japanese government’s response of focusing exclusively on the mechanism of data collection as a means of meeting the privacy challenge. (shrink)

Advanced new therapies, such as stem cell and gene therapies and xenotransplantation, represent challenges for regulatory and ethical review. Major drug agencies, such as in the U.S., India, and Europe, have asserted regulatory authority and require ethics review by local ethics review committees, using the same strict requirements as those for standard drug approvals. In spite of this, unapproved and undocumented stem cell clinics flourish in all of these places, suggesting that current approaches do not offer patients sufficient protection. Japan (...) has attempted another approach, requiring approvals at local levels for all regenerative medical procedures, and a faster approval of promising new interventions. The Japanese approach has, however, also been criticized as not striking a proper balance between early access and a proper assessment of safety and effectiveness. For smaller and less-resourced countries, such as Thailand, one major challenge is limited expertise to conduct the evaluation of these advanced new therapies. This article provides an overview of the issues facing regulators and proposes that countries should restrict the early adoption of advanced new therapies to specialized clinics with appropriate scientific and ethical expertise for review. Review in these institutions should focus on expert clinical benefit assessments for individual patients being offered such interventions, independently of whether they are offered as research or therapy. (shrink)

人間は「生」を得た瞬間から「死」という「滅び」に向かって生きている。そうであるからこそ「生」を尊ぶという考え方が日本の美をつくってきた。日本の美意識の基層をなし、自然に美を見いだした「優美」。演技を七 分にとどめ、完全に演じ切らないことを説いた世阿弥の「幽玄」。慢心する秀吉を戒め、侘びることを説いた利休の「侘び」。旅の途中で寂びつくして命つきることを願った芭蕉の「さび」。西欧文化の影響が背景にある「 きれい」。そして、二一世紀に世界を席巻する「かわいい」とは―。日本の美の潮流を俯瞰し、心のふるさとに耳をすます。.

The paper presents a new argument for epistemic permissivism. The version of permissivism that we defend is a moderate version that applies only to explicit doxastic attitudes. Drawing on Yalcin’s framework for modeling such attitudes, we argue that two fully rational subjects who share all their evidence, prior beliefs, and epistemic standards may still differ in the explicit doxastic attitudes that they adopt. This can happen because two such subjects may be sensitive to different questions. Thus, differing intellectual interests can (...) yield failures of uniqueness. This is not a merely pragmatic phenomenon. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper discusses one aspect of the context in which atomic physics developed in Japan between 1905 and 1931. It argues that during this period, there was a social context in which atomic physics was valued as a study of the electron and was thus relevant to electrical engineering. To demonstrate this, I first show that after the Russo-Japanese War, electrical engineering was deemed a valuable and viable field of research in Japan. Second, I show that physicists wrote textbooks and (...) popular accounts about the electron, covering topics from both atomic physics and electrical engineering and presenting the former as relevant to the latter. Finally, as an example of how atomic physics partially emerged from this context, I discuss the group of Kujirai Tsunetarō, an electrical engineer who worked in the physics department of the Institute for Physical and Chemical Research. From Kujirai's group, Nishina Yoshio started his career and became the most important Japanese atomic and nuclear physicist of the 1930s. (shrink)