Human interaction has two principle functions: building and maintaining relationships with others and exchanging information. The function of building and maintaining relationships with others relates to interpersonal coordination; this behavior pattern is expected to predict the outcome of social relationships, such as between therapists and patients. It is unclear, however, whether the exchange of information is associated with interpersonal coordination. In the present study, we tested a hypothesis of whether body movement synchrony occurs in a natural conversation and whether this (...) synchrony has a positive correlation with the degree of information exchange. Fifty participants were engaged in a conversation task; each had different roles in the conversation. We measured their body movements during this conversation using an optical motion capture system. Similar to methods that can be found in previous research, we calculated body movements and quantified their synchrony applying the methods previously reported that automatically quantified their body movements. Moreover, we determined the participants’ degree of information exchange concerning the conversation using a questionnaire. We observed that the body movement synchrony of pairs who talked with each other was significantly higher than that of pairs who did not talk with each other, and that this synchrony was positively associated with the degree of information exchange. These results suggest that body movement synchrony predicted information exchange. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Nature (Ziran 自然) of Technological and Economic Development in Early DaoismYumi Suzuki (bio)I. IntroductionEric Nelson's Daoism and Environmental Philosophy: Nourishing Life provides comprehensive guidance on how early and later Daoist thought could offer both ideological and practical solutions to contemporary environmental issues. Nelson does not simple-mindedly claim that Daoists are environmentalists or that Daoism is comparable with modern environmental thought. His monograph has a more sophisticated, and also (...) more ambitious and consequently philosophically provocative, goal: to evolutionally develop old Daoist thought to directly address contemporary philosophical discourses on the environment.1I have summarized elsewhere what I find to be the most significant and meaningful contributions this book has made.2 I think its goal has successfully been achieved in various ways: Nelson gives careful and accurate interpretations to each passage from the original texts.3 What he calls "the new Daoism" deployed on the basis of these interpretations is reasonable and uncontroversial. The monograph overall offers an exemplary model of how wisdom acquired through studying the history of philosophy can be adapted to cogitating on newly emerging philosophical questions, despite differences in the intellectual contexts that we are required to warily distinguish. Moreover, by focusing on the Daoist tradition in East Asia, it well demonstrates how other systems of philosophical thought can be usefully employed to critically reflect on fundamental assumptions that an existing system is already committed to and that could be the very cause of relevant philosophical and pragmatic problems.While I mostly agree with his arguments in chapters 1–4 and 6, the only part I found unsatisfactory is chapter 5, "Early Daoist Biopolitics and a New [End Page 771] Daoist Political Ecology" (pp. 100–118). The present review aims to elaborate reasons for my resistance to Nelson's all-out endorsement of what he regards as the sociopolitical implications of Daoism. When it comes to politics, it appears to me, early Daoist texts such as the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi express often disappointingly ambiguous and agnostic attitudes toward what can be done with respect to their doctrinal opponents and outsiders. My suggestion is that if we examine the explorations of their contenders, that is, mainly Confucians and Legalists, concerning political and technological devices, they may present an altogether less biased and more balanced range of solutions to a question Nelson raises regarding an environmental challenge associated with a competitive globalized economy and rapidly developing technologies in our modern age.II. A Challenge to the Current Environmental MovementChapter 5 begins with the following statement:Appeals to encountering the myriad things in their environmental contexts and relations are necessary for an ecological transformation of existing cultures and societies. Yet an environmental ethos and culture of nature is not sufficient given how systematically reproduced social-economic processes in advanced capitalist societies meditate, entangle, and obstruct the transformative potential of such encounters. To this extent, an adequate environmental philosophy must concurrently be social-political philosophy that can offer an environmentally oriented critique of existing social structures and institutions that directly and indirectly harm creatures and degrade ecosystems in myriad ways such that transformations must transpire in economic and societal structures as well as at the level of individual cultivation and reflections.(p. 100)Nelson maintains that even though it is cardinal to transform the ways in which the myriad things encounter and mutually correspond with each other, as well as alter their own existential state, by cultivating an environmental ethos and culture of nature in each individual and society, one of the most serious challenges for such transformations could originate with already existing capitalist, materialist, and consumerist social structures and institutions widely prevailing and deeply embedded in the highly complex economic and political systems of our age.This, I think, captures the core problem of modern environmentalism. An individual, a group of people such as nonprofit or nongovernmental organizations, or a single city or country might be convinced by the Daoist "biospiritual" mode of life. Nevertheless, it appears to be far more difficult in practice to have certain countries or multinational mega-firms abandon their steadfast, primary commitment to national, industrial, commercial, or corporate missions to pursue their own benefits that deprioritize or... (shrink)

Both Socrates and Mozi are said in Plato’s dialogues and in the Mozi respectively to have claimed that they are living a sort of life following superhuman “intention”: Socrates according to the Delphic oracle, and Mozi the intention of heaven. Some modern philosophers show discomfort with their “superstitious” attitudes, taking the claims literally as a kind of groundless devotion, while others conjecture “sensible” purposes to understand the mystic elements as providing moral lessons. This paper, by responding to these modern revisions (...) of their doctrines, aims at highlighting the necessity of their (re-)introductions of superhuman perspectives to their inquiries. Through examining the similarities in Plato’s and Mohists’ demonstrations, the suggestion made will be that despite countless incommensurable features, heaven’s intention for Mohists offers a fundamental philosophical basis which enables them to develop arguments by means of sharp dichotomies, what is right or wrong, in the same way that Socrates in the Apology and in the Hippias Minor does for the development of Plato’s constructive endeavour beyond his Socratic a/euporetic legacy. Not only are their practices dependent on the presupposition of the existence of a perspective beyond humans, but also the reality of that perspective is established though their own investigative practices. (shrink)

This paper revisits one of the most celebrated verses on dao and ming in the Opening Chapter of the received Laozi Daodejing. I shall clarify two types of English interpretations which are possibly applicable to the verse and demonstrate that they are equally sustainable. It follows that a commitment to either one of these interpretations may thereby spoil the meta-perspective effect which the verse skillfully creates.

This study explores the individual-level activities of legislators in parliament, which have been largely ignored in the literature on parliamentary democracies. Individual legislators are extensively involved in parliamentary activities such as drafting private members’ bills and posing questions, even though these activities have only been considered to play marginal roles in parliamentary democracies. Moreover, their engagement varies significantly. By using unique data from Japan, this study demonstrates that the personal attributes of legislators affect their choice of parliamentary activities. Under electoral (...) systems with intra-party competition, legislators use parliamentary activities as an important means to inform their constituents about what they can do for them and how they differ from other legislators. In elections, candidates cultivate personal votes by exploiting the image drawn from their personal attributes and, once elected, they behave in accordance with their attributes in order to maintain their electoral ground. Thus, they devote themselves to different activities in parliament. The data analyzed here support this argument. The results of empirical analyses show that legislators with local-level political experience engage in particularistic pork-barrel activities that will benefit their local interests, while legislators with legal-work experience allocate their time and energy to general policy-making activities that will enhance their public image and visibility as legal experts. (shrink)

Some modal logics based on logics weaker than the classical logic have been studied by Fitch [4], Prior [7], Bull [1], [2], [3], Prawitz [6] etc. Here we treat modal logics based on the intuitionistic propositional logic, which call intuitionistic modal logics.

Glivenko-type theorems for substructural logics are comprehensively studied in the paper [N. Galatos, H. Ono, Glivenko theorems for substructural logics over FL, Journal of Symbolic Logic 71 1353–1384]. Arguments used there are fully algebraic, and based on the fact that all substructural logics are algebraizable 279–308] and also [N. Galatos, P. Jipsen, T. Kowalski, H. Ono, Residuated Lattices: An Algebraic Glimpse at Substructural Logics, in: Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics, vol. 151, Elsevier, 2007] for the details). As (...) a complementary work to the algebraic approach developed in [N. Galatos, H. Ono, Glivenko theorems for substructural logics over FL, Journal of Symbolic Logic 71 1353–1384], we present here a concise, proof-theoretic approach to Glivenko theorems for substructural logics. This will show different features of these two approaches. (shrink)

We develop a general algebraic and proof-theoretic study of substructural logics that may lack associativity, along with other structural rules. Our study extends existing work on substructural logics over the full Lambek Calculus [34], Galatos and Ono [18], Galatos et al. [17]). We present a Gentzen-style sequent system that lacks the structural rules of contraction, weakening, exchange and associativity, and can be considered a non-associative formulation of . Moreover, we introduce an equivalent Hilbert-style system and show that the logic associated (...) with and is algebraizable, with the variety of residuated lattice-ordered groupoids with unit serving as its equivalent algebraic semantics. Overcoming technical complications arising from the lack of associativity, we introduce a generalized version of a logical matrix and apply the method of quasicompletions to obtain an algebra and a quasiembedding from the matrix to the algebra. By applying the general result to specific cases, we obtain important logical and algebraic properties, including the cut elimination of and various extensions, the strong separation of , and the finite generation of the variety of residuated lattice-ordered groupoids with unit. (shrink)

Both Ambrose St. John (1815–1875) and John Henry Newman (1801–1890), who were received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1845, became members of the Birmingham Oratory. Newman’s closest companion for over three decades, St. John’s death was extremely painful for Newman, not only because it was unexpected, but because of his devotion to Newman as well as his dedication to his spiritual duties. Along with presenting Newman’s narrative of the last few weeks of St. John’s life, this essay raises the (...) question: why did Newman write this “account.”. (shrink)

John Henry Newman has rightly been hailed as a giant in the Catholic intellectual tradition. His contributions to theology, literature, and education have been studied at length; however, his contribution to philosophy has not received appropriate attention. This essay 1) explores Newman’s unique philosophical insights in terms of the phenomenological tradition of Edmund Husserl; 2) analyzes the transcendental approach of certain British scientists—notably Ronald Knox and Charles Darwin; and 3) discusses how Newman might be considered a phenomenologist.

The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between education and technological rationality from the perspective of the philosophy of education, and to show that while education is deeply related to technique, skills, or technology, it can never be reduced to technical knowledge, and that there are things in education that overflow technical knowledge. I will here ask why there is something in education that overflows technical knowledge — I will define it as knowledge of pathos — and (...) why it is necessary to redefine the meaning of education in terms of knowledge of pathos. In order to address this issue, I will first examine the relationship between technology and transcendence in the world of education in Kei Hachiya’s Education and Transcendence. Second, I will show that recent outstanding theoretical achievements of Japanese philosophers of education — Satoji Yano’s Education from the Perspectives of Gift and Exchange, Yasuo Imai’s Medial Perspective on Education, and Tsunemi Tanaka’s Clinical Theory of Human Becoming — are all located within the problematic area of ‘technology-pathos-education’. Finally, I would like to propose a ‘philosophy of education built on fragile parts’, with a view to redefining education through the knowledge of pathos, paying attention to the experience of pathei mathos and the opportunity of weakness in the philosophy of education. (shrink)

Kajiyama has argued that the basis for the concept of _jāti_ (false rejoinder) as described in the _Nyāyasūtra_ is the concept _xiang ying_ (相応) as found in the _Fangbian xin lun_ (方便心論). Kajiyama has also shown that the sophistic arguments called _xiang ying_ are very similar to the _prasaṅga_ arguments of Nāgārjuna, the founder of the Madhyamaka school. It thus seems worthwhile to investigate how later Mādhyamika philosophers treated the concept of _jāti_ that originally appeared as the result of the (...) _Nyāyasūtra’s_ criticism of the concept _xiang ying_ and was later accepted by Buddhist logicians such as Dignāga. This paper shows that there were two entirely opposite Mādhyamika positions regarding the concept of _jāti_. In order to demonstrate this difference, this paper examines in detail statements about _jāti_s that appear in various treatises, especially two works by Bhāviveka and three works by Candrakīrti. As the result, it becomes clear that the differences in the two positions correspond essentially to the differences in how Dignāgaʼs logic was evaluated by the so-called Svātantrika and Prāsaṅgika within the Madhyamaka school. (shrink)