The key mutation of the schizophrenic psyche can be described as a disturbance of the first person-ness of the I-sense, i.e., of the sense of the "I" as personal subject of experience and of action. Under these circumstances, representations of things are not definitively experienced as "my" representations—with the self-evidence of belonging to me. This uncertainty of selfhood, specific to schizophrenia, cannot be reduced to a disability of intellect, logic, judgment, or memory. In the course of developing his argument, the (...) author criticizes philosopher Michel Henry's critique of Heidegger's (1961) interpretation of Descartes's cogito ergo sum. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a framework for searching information through both the WWW and a human group. Though information retrieval using a searc engine in the WWW is very useful, we can not acquire local information owned by persons and not explicitly described in text. A user knows neither where target information is in the WWW nor who knows in a human group. Thus we integrate the information retrieval in the WWW with that in a human group, develop a (...) heterogeneous information search system HERIS as a multi-agent system. We develop this framework as multi-agent system consisting of user agents and search engine agents, and use contract net protocol to communication among the agents. A user agent and a search engine agent are assigned to a user and a search engine. Each of the agents maintains a user profile and a search engine profile. When a user gives a query to a system, it selectively searches information resources consisting the WWW and user group. Finally a user acquires integrated results of a hit list from the WWW and a audio/video connection to a user who can answer the query. It was found through experimental evaluation that information retrieval using a human group as an information resource is valid and a search with HERIS has a different character from conventional search engines. (shrink)

Chef de file de la réflexion psychiatrique au Japon, le Professeur Kimura Bin s’oppose dans cet article aux réductionnismes physicalistes en découvrant au coeur de la subjectivité une articulation complexe entre le personnel et l’impersonnel qui simultanément confirme la conception spirituelle zen de la constitution de l’individualité et donne une base à la fondation d’une science psychiatrique véritable. Il démontre que l’orientation donnée par les sciences cognitives et la philosophie analytique conduit à ignorer la différence entre réalité et actualité, (...) et occulte ainsi le fait que chaque existant est unique, manquant de la sorte à la fois son unité et son unicité. Pour retrouver l’originalité propre à chacun, Kimura propose d’en retrouver l’originarité, esquissée dans le concept heideggérien de Befindlichkeit, et d’élargir la subjectivité au sens proposé par Victor von Weizsäcker en tant que rencontre avec le milieu. Il conclut cette étude phénoménologique en proposant de fonder une psychopathologie en première personne, c’est-à-dire d’introduire la subjectivité dans la science psychiatrique, seule voie pour comprendre l’existence et résoudre l’énigme de la schizophrénie. (shrink)

In recent times, international comparative studies on managers’ beliefs regarding ethical/unethical leadership have increased in number. These studies focus on both Eastern and Western countries. However, although these previous studies focused on the effects of national culture, they did not pay sufficient attention to the effects of institutions. Moreover, these studies covered only a few countries. Despite Japan’s strong influence on the world economy, it has not been included in previous studies on ethical leadership. Thus, to reveal unexplored factors—particularly cultural (...) and institutional factors—and to determine the generalizability of previous findings, this study used a qualitative research method to examine Japanese business managers’ beliefs about ethical/unethical leadership. The data revealed the convergence and divergence in beliefs regarding ethical/unethical leadership between managers in Japan and in other countries. The analysis identified mostly the same themes of ethical/unethical leadership as found in other countries albeit with different distributions. In addition, We identified new themes that may be specific to Japan or that were neglected in previous studies. Moreover, this study suggests the necessity of considering each society’s history of business ethics and current ethics-related institutional contexts in ethical/unethical leadership studies. (shrink)

For genetic algorithms, it is important to maintain the population diversity. Some genetic algorithms have been proposed, which have an ability to control the diversity. But these algorithms use the distance between two individuals to control the diversity. Therefore, these performances become worse on ill-scaled functions. In this paper, we propose a new genetic algorithm, DIDC(a genetic algorithm with Distance Independent Diversity Control), that does not use a distance to control the population diversity. For controlling the diversity, DIDC uses two (...) GAs that have different natures. For realizing different natures, one GA uses a crossover operator as a search operator, and the other GA uses a mutation operator in DIDC. By applying DIDC to several benchmark problems, we show that DIDC has a good performance on high dimensional, multimodal, non-separable and ill-scaled problems. Finally, we show that the control parameter of DIDC has the same effect on the search with the number of generating children n c. (shrink)

The ordeal of `Comfort Women' who were sexually enslaved by the Japanese Imperial Military during the Second World War became widely known in the 1990s through these women's accounts of their experience. Instead of considering their narratives as historical data which reflect the `true' historical past, this article locates them within a broader framework of thinking of narratives. Drawing on the understanding of narrative as a key to the self and the subject which has been developed in narrative research, as (...) well as Judith Butler on interpellation and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on subaltern agency, this article argues that the `Comfort Women's' testimonies should not be read one-dimensionally in the light of `truth' and `falsity', but should rather be considered as the site of their subject-formation. Their narratives are where agency concurrently emerges, and `Comfort Women' are thus not powerless victims but are active participants in their creation of their own narratives and their own selves. (shrink)

Sehen und Sagen sind untrennbar. Diese Untrennbarkeit ist ein wesentlicher, aber bisher nicht so beachteter Streitpunkt der Fichtes WL. Das Sagen ist für Fichte wesentlich. Dies ist deutlich, wenn man darauf achtet, dass es in enger Beziehung zu dem Sehen steht.

Recently, some studies revealed that transcranial direct current stimulation reduces dual-task interference. Since there are countless combinations of dual-tasks, it remains unclear whether stable effects by tDCS can be observed on dual-task interference. An aim of the present study was to investigate whether the effects of tDCS on dual-task interference change depend on the dual-task content. We adopted two combinations of dual-tasks, i.e., a word task while performing a tandem task and a classic Stroop task while performing a tandem task. (...) We expected that the Stroop task would recruit the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and require involvement of executive function to greater extent than the word task. Subsequently, we hypothesized that anodal tDCS over the DLPFC would improve executive function and result in more effective reduction of dual-task interference in the Stroop-tandem dual-task than in the word-tandem dual-task. Anodal or cathodal tDCS was applied over the DLPFC or the supplementary motor area using a constant current of 2.0 mA for 20 min. According to our results, dual-task interference and the task performances of each task under the single-task condition were not changed after applying any settings of tDCS. However, anodal tDCS over the left DLPFC significantly improved the word task performance immediately after tDCS under the dual-task condition. Our findings suggested that the effect of anodal tDCS over the left DLPFC varies on the task performance under the dual-task condition was changed depending on the dual-task content. (shrink)

The mental fatigue elicited by working and studying consumed mental resources, thereby eliciting a declined performance and an increased mental stress. The long-term continuous work and study, which is typical for modern workers and students, can increase mental fatigue and health risks. Previous studies reported that the natural environment has a restorative of mental resources and reducing stress. However, it is difficult for urban workers and students to take sufficient breaks in real natural environment. We conducted an experiment to examine (...) whether brief and indirect exposure to the natural environment elicits a restorative of attention and reducing stress. Twenty-five undergraduate and graduate students from the university of modern city participated in the experiment. The experiment involved measuring the changes in the task performance of the participants and the subjective mental workload, while the attention restoration was indexed from physiological response over time. The participants had two types of resting periods in the middle of the task, i.e., by looking at a blank display or by watching a nature video having scenes of, e.g., a forest, small waterfall, and rustling leaves. The results indicate that the natural environment indirectly depicted through the nature videos does not affect the task performance and the subjective mental workload but decreases the SCL. The results of the physiological response suggest that having rest periods depicting the natural environment, even if indirectly and briefly, can restore the directed attention for the task. This experiment revealed a useful method of resting for urban workers and students to restore their attention to a task. (shrink)