In Kagaku no Sekai to Kokoro no Tetsugaku, Mr.Michio Kobayashi features on Descartes' theory of minds as "subjecitive-active consciousness", and defends it against the materialist movement. I show that Kobayashi's method has a difficulty for defending existence of our minds because Descartes didn't allow the scientific investigation of our mental experience from outside,and so cannot appropriately grasp the significance of other minds.

In a spellbinding narrative that skillfully weaves together cutting-edge research among today's foremost scientists, theoretical physicist Michio Kaku--author of the bestselling book Hyperspace --presents a bold, exhilarating adventure into the science of tomorrow. In Visions, Dr. Kaku examines in vivid detail how the three scientific revolutions that profoundly reshaped the twentieth century--the quantum, biogenetic, and computer revolutions--will transform the way we live in the twenty-first century. The fundamental elements of matter and life--the particles of the atom and the nucleus (...) of the cell--have now been decoded, closing one of the great chapters of scientific history. But this is just the preface to an even more far-reaching scientific revolution, as we make the transition from being passive observers of the mysteries of nature to becoming masters of nature, able to manipulate matter, life, and intelligence to remold the world around us. In the first part of Visions, Dr. Kaku discusses the cyber future, when millions of microprocessors are scattered throughout our environment; when the iron principle that has ruled the computer industry, Moore's Law, finally collapses, forcing scientists to adopt startling new designs like DNA computers and quantum computers; and when artificial intelligence systems finally arrive. In the next section, Dr. Kaku shows how the decoding of DNA will allow us to conquer devastating genetic diseases, defeat many cancers at the molecular level, synthesize new medicines using virtual reality, grow new organs, conquer aging and reshape our genetic inheritance. Finally, he explores how quantum physicists will perfect new ways to harness the cosmic energy of the universe--from molecular machines to supermagnets that may energize a second industrial revolution, to powerful fusion engines that one day may take us to the stars. What makes Michio Kaku's vision of the future of science so compelling and authoritative is that it is based on the groundbreaking research already underway at leading laboratories around the world. Weaving interviews with over 150 scientists--several of them Nobel laureates--into a rich, inspiring narrative, Dr. Kaku reveals the growing consensus among key scientists about how science will likely evolve through the early, middle, and late years of the twenty-first century. An intimate, thrilling tour through the next century of science, Visions is a riveting, essential map to how scientists will reshape our future. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 13-30 [Access article in PDF] Peace and Nonviolence from a Mahayana Buddhist Perspective: Nikkyo Niwano's Thought Michio T. Shinozaki Rissho Kosei-kai Nikkyo Niwano, the founder of Rissho Kosei-kai, taught a perspective on peace and nonviolence that I would like to explore from a Mahayana Buddhist point of view. Niwano's understanding of peace and violence and his "road" to peace are discussed. The first section (...) explores his understanding of peace as harmony at four different levels. The second section deals with the issue of the causes of violence on different levels and the precept of not-killing. The third section focuses on nonviolent action and the Bodhisattva Never Disrespectful as a model of nonviolent action. Also, the vision for overcoming hatred and violence is discussed within the context of the pacifist argument. The fourth section focuses on problems of harmony in terms of diversity and universal altruism, on the value of open forums in decision-making processes, and on Niwano's theological grounding for interreligious cooperation as a road to peace.Rissho Kosei-kai (RKK) is a Japanese Buddhist organization founded in Tokyo in 1938 by Nikkyo Niwano (1906-1999) and the late Mrs. Myoko Naganuma (1899-1957). The name "Rissho Kosei-kai" means society for establishing the true Dharma and the perfecting of selves through mutual exchange. RKK is a nonmonastic Buddhist group that draws much of its inspiration from the Lotus Sutra and claims to have six million members, largely in Japan.Nikkyo Niwano was born on November 15, 1906, in a small, poor village near Tokamachi in Nigata prefecture, which has heavy snow in winter. He was raised in a large family under one roof with another family. His harmonious and peaceful personality was the product of such circumstances. 1 He went to Tokyo to work at seventeen and took various jobs--at a rice shop, a charcoal dealer, a Japanese pickle dealer, and a milk delivery shop. In 1926, he was discharged after completing three years of naval service. He says of this experience, "One of the greatest harvests from my military experience was the reinforcement of my philosophy of nonviolence." 2 He was confident that the philosophy of nonviolence was applicable in the situation of the everyday event of military corporal punishment. [End Page 13]Upon coming to Tokyo, a new spiritual journey began with becoming acquainted with various folk religions, and he joined Reiyö-kai, practicing reverence to one's ancestors. After the founding ofRKK, Niwano received orders to report for military duty twice, in 1941 and 1945, but he was disqualified from serving in the army, so he had no battlefield experience. 3 Niwano and Naganuma were imprisoned in 1943, because the police regarded her inspirational guidance as a false and wicked religion. This was the time of the Peace Preservation Law under which religions and religious ideas were suppressed. 4Niwano preferred "not quarreling and harmony" to strife.When the faith and activities of RKK were criticized regularly for almost a month in 1956 by the nationwide newspaper TheYomiuri Shimbun,and when Soka Gakkai attacked RKK as a wicked religion and tried to start a campaign to abolish it, Niwano called them the "Yomiuri bodhisattva" and "Gakkai bodhisattva," as they could lead members to improvement and reflection on their motives and behavior. 5From inside RKK, Niwano was severely criticized and experienced being ostracized by Myoko Naganuma's ardent followers, who tried until 1957 to have her become president of RKK or establish a separate organization. He regarded this as a time for him to be tolerant and forbearing through reflecting on himself and not blaming others, and he later warmheartedly accepted his former opponents.Robert Kisala refers to Rissho Kosei-kai as follows: "After the Second World War, Rev. Nikkyo Niwano, whose activities centered around a big metropolitan urban city, advocated strengthening the solidarity of the family and local community in modern society and devoted himself to religious cooperation in order to solve social issues at an international level." 6An... (shrink)

How is that when scientists need some piece of mathematics through which to frame their theory, it is there to hand? What has been called 'the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics' sets a challenge for philosophers. Some have responded to that challenge by arguing that mathematics is essentially anthropocentric in character, whereas others have pointed to the range of structures that mathematics offers. Otavio Bueno and Steven French offer a middle way, which focuses on the moves that have to be made (...) in both the mathematics and the relevant physics in order to bring the two into appropriate relation. This relation can be captured via the inferential conception of the applicability of mathematics, which is formulated in terms of immersion, inference, and interpretation. In particular, the roles of idealisations and of surplus structure in science and mathematics respectively are brought to the fore and captured via an approach to models and theories that emphasize the partiality of the available information: the partial structures approach. The discussion as a whole is grounded in a number of case studies drawn from the history of quantum physics, and extended to contest recent claims that the explanatory role of certain mathematical structures in scientific practice supports a realist attitude towards them. The overall conclusion is that the effectiveness of mathematics does not seem unreasonable at all once close attention is paid to how it is actually applied in practice. (shrink)

This essay roughly sketches two major conceptions of autonomy in contemporary bioethics that promote the resourcification of human body parts: (1) a narrow conception of autonomy as self-determination; and (2) the conception of autonomy as dissociated from human dignity. In this paper I will argue that, on the one hand, these two conceptions are very different from that found in the modern European tradition of philosophical inquiry, because bioethics has concentrated on an external account of patient’s self-determination and on dissociating (...) dignity from internal human nature. However, on the other hand, they are consistent with more recent European philosophy. In this more recent tradition, human dignity has gradually been dissociated from contextual values, and human subjectivity has been dissociated from objectivity and absolutized as never to be objectified. In the concluding part, I will give a speculative sketch in which Kant’s internal inquiry of maxim of ends, causality and end, and dignity as irreplaceability is recombined with bioethics’ externalized one and used to support an extended human resourcification. (shrink)

. The author conceives rules as action‐determining ideas. They are general and of hypothetical form, and they are of three semantic types: descriptive, technological, and normative rules. The most important categorisation of normative rules is the distinction between rules of behaviour and power‐conferring rules. Both kinds of rules are necessary to establish institutions. Principles are a special kind of normative rules. The social existence of normative rules is connected with their institutionalisation as frames for action. The dynamics of rules is (...) in principle based on two elements: on socially approved habit, and/or on authorised norm creation. (shrink)

Thirteen up-and-coming researchers in the philosophy of mathematics have been invited to write on what they take to be the right philosophical account of mathematics, examining along the way where they think the philosophy of mathematics is and ought to be going. A rich and diverse picture emerges. Some broader tendencies can nevertheless be detected: there is increasing attention to the practice, language and psychology of mathematics, a move to reassess the orthodoxy, as well as inspiration from philosophical logic.

The moral status of human brain organoids (HBOs) has been debated in view of the future possibility that they may acquire phenomenal consciousness. This study empirically investigates the moral sensitivity in people’s intuitive judgments about actions toward conscious HBOs. The results showed that the presence/absence of pain experience in HBOs affected the judgment about the moral permissibility of actions such as creating and destroying the HBOs; however, the presence/absence of visual experience in HBOs also affected the judgment. These findings suggest (...) that people’s intuitive judgments about the moral status of HBOs are sensitive to the valence-independent value of phenomenal consciousness. We discuss how these observations can have normative implications; particularly, we argue that they put pressure on the theoretical view that the moral status of conscious HBOs is grounded solely in the valence-dependent value of consciousness. We also discuss how our findings can be informative even when such a theoretical view is finally justified or when the future possibility of conscious HBOs is implausible. (shrink)

The present lecture is a beginer's guide to supersymmetry, superstrings, and M-theory. It addresses students and scientists whose basic research topic in theoretical physics is a different one but who, nonetheless, wish to gain a glimpse into this exciting new field of theoretical physics.

Contemporary general equilibrium theory is characteristically short-run, separated from monetary aspects of the economy, and as such does not deal with long-run problems such as capital accumulation, innovation, and the historical movement of the economy. These phenomena are discussed by growth theory, which assumes a given or shifting production function, and in turn cannot therefore deal with the fundamental problem of growth, namely how the production function is derived. Thus traditional theories have a common weakness in that they divorce real (...) economic growth from the activities of the financial sector. This book provides a much-needed synthesis of growth theory and monetary theory. Professor Morishima draws on the work of Schumpeter, Keynes and the pre-war neoclassical economists to formulate a capital-theoretic general equilibrium theory. (shrink)

Rescher charakterisiert die Gesetzesaussage durch a) nomische Notwendigkeit, b) hypothetische Kraft; Gesetzeshaftigkeit sei Bereitschaft zur faktentranszendenten Anwendungeines Allsatzes. Dem wird die These gegenübergestellt, daß die Struktur des nomischen Allsatzes so zu bestimmen ist, daß die faktentranszendente Anwendung durch den Satz begründet erscheint. Dies wird durch einen Allsatz erreicht, der nicht nur über die reale Welt, sondern auch über ein System von Alternativwelten über der realen Welt spricht. Durch den nomischen Allsatz wird gleichzeitig die nomische Notwendigkeit expliziert. Die Begründung der faktentranszendenten (...) Geltung ist gleich stark wie jene der erfahrungszendenten Gehung in der realen Weh. (shrink)

Summary The author stresses the fact-transcendent import of knowledge. A non-ontological theory of possibility is given as well as an extensional explication of fact-transcendent and contrary-to-fact conditionals by defining the fact-transcending conditional as an extensional conditional within a field of possibilities over a domain of states of affairs. The theory of fact-transcendent conditionals is used to establish an explication of nomological and quasinomological sentences. Some methodological consequences of this conception are discussed.

Übereinstimmend mit Körner versteht der Autor unter 'praktischer Philosophie' die Gesamtheit der handlungsbezogenen Disziplinen. 'Handlung' ist informationsgelenktes Verhalten eines Subjektes. Der Handlungsbegriff wird durch den handlungsbestimmenden Informationsverarbeitungsprozeß charakterisiert. Handlungstheoretische Analysen erfordern eine erkenntnismäßig differenzierte Semantik. Der Begriff der Handlung setzt die Existenz von Handlungsspielräumen voraus. Der Autor kritisiert die Unterscheidung von kognitivem und präskriptivem Sollen und zeigt, daß Normsätze einer gegebenen Bedeutung in verschiedenen pragmatischen Funktionen verwendet werden können. Es werden die Begriffe 'Normenlogik' und 'deontische Logik' einander gegenübergestellt. Die Standardsysteme (...) der deontischen Logik sind keine geeignete Basis für die normativen Disziplinen. Der Autor fordert die Ausarbeitung einer genuinen Normenlogik, in der Sollsätzen eine primäre und Darfsätzen nur eine sekundäre Rolle zukommt. (shrink)

Feinberg and Mallatt, in their presentation of neurobiological naturalism, have suggested that visual consciousness was acquired by early vertebrates and inherited by a wide range of descendants, and that its neural basis has shifted to nonhomologous nervous structures during evolution. However, their evolutionary scenario of visual consciousness relies on the assumption that visual consciousness is closely linked with survival, which is not commonly accepted in current consciousness research. We suggest an alternative idea that visual consciousness is linked to a specific (...) class of agency, consequently justifying their phylogenetic claim. We also examine the implication of their phylogenetic claim: visual consciousness is homologous across vertebrates, but its neural basis is not. This apparent incongruence illustrates a general phenomenon of homology, and that the resulting hierarchical view of visual consciousness and its neural basis can be straightforwardly accommodated by neurobiological naturalism. Throughout these discussions, we aim to address the potential theoretical issues in neurobiological naturalism and refine the picture illustrated by Feinberg and Mallatt regarding phylogenetic distribution and trajectories of visual consciousness. (shrink)

Ota Weinberger versucht, die logische Analyse für die theologische Argumentation nutzbar zu machen und Forderungen für eine Moral des friedfertigen Diskurses aufzustellen.Hierzu bestimmt er zunächst eine logische und methodologische Charakteristik des Glaubensoperators der Religionen. Nach einer Diskussion des Begriffes der möglichen Welten wird das Theodizeeproblem skeptisch beleuchtet. Zur Konstitution der Willensfreiheit ist weder die Existenz der ontologischen noch des moralischen Bösen erforderlich. Auch ist die Notwendigkeit des Bösen zum Nutzen der Geschöpfe nicht beweisbar. Es gehört jedoch zur Sichtweise der Theologen, (...) daß moralische Momente als Determinanten der Glückseligkeit angesehen werden.Der Autor stellt der Konzeption des Weltethos eine Theorie gegenüber, derzufolge das politische Geschehen durch das Aufeinanderprallen verschiedener Zivilisationen bestimmt ist. Weinberger setzt der gängigen Moral, die den Einsatz für die eigene Gemeinschaft fordert, eine Moral entgegen, die Wege der diskursiven Brücken zwischen divergierenden Welthaltungen sucht. Am Ende diskutiert er Methoden der friedlichen Koexistenz und Kooperation - trotz unterschiedlicher Einstellungen. (shrink)

dicates implying a surplus in the background from previous negation) and the other three combinations . The second part of the study in relation to the issue of intersubjectivity summarizes Hegel's unhappy consciousness analysis of figures from the Phenomenology of Spirit and shows that it takes insufficient account of Hegel older authors, which is just Dionysios. In writings on mystical theology can find is the formal structure of intersubjectivity, and Hegel's analysis so they can not be correct.

Why are democracy, equality and freedom currently in such turmoil? Kitahara discusses the confusion and pessimism in Western civilization today. The author presents his theory of civilization and suggests how the enormous problems within Western civilization can be addressed by pursuing the original basis of Western civilization-individualism. The three key values of democracy, equality and freedom are then re-interpreted from the perspective of individualism, and possibilities for dealing with the problems of Western civilization are suggested. Contents: PART I: PROBLEMS OF (...) WESTERN CIVILIZATION; Western Civilization in Confusion; Democracy; Equality; Freedom; Ideology, Bureaucracy, and Technology; Culture and Biology; Culture and the Individual; PART II: A THEORY OF CIVILIZATION; The Self in the Life Space; The Manipulatory Drive; Identification and Variation; The Conditions for Civilization; The Maintenance of Civilization; The Failure of Civilization; PART III: REFLECTIONS ON WESTERN CIVILIZATION; The Contradictions; Individualism and Democracy; Individualism and Equality; Individualism and Freedom; Epilogue. (shrink)

Though there has been an array of methods to evaluate the extent of sarcoidosis, it is generally difficult to detect central nervous system involvement. Recently it has become accepted that 18F-FDG PET is more sensitive than gallium scintigraphy in finding sarcoid lesions, however its usefulness and limitations for detecting sarcoidosis in the central nervous system, especially in the spinal cord, has rarely been investigated. Two patients with pathologically confirmed sarcoidosis manifested spinal symptoms. We conducted 18F-FDG PET along with conventional imagings (...) before and after treatment. Abnormal FDG uptakes which could not be detected by gallium scintigraphy were shown in the spinal cords in both patients. These abnormal uptakes were diminished in accordance with clinical improvement after treatment. Our findings suggest that 18F-FDG PET is effective in detecting and tracking the activity of spinal sarcoidosis. (shrink)