The ethics of care and Confucian care ethics are both characterised by relations-based moral reasoning and decision-making. Acknowledging this similarity, this article compares and contrasts these two ethics, highlighting Western and Eastern moral concerns. One of the main differences between the two ethical theories is their different focus on vulnerability and inequality as factors in achieving equality in the ethics of care; another is the reciprocity, rather than equality, dimension in Confucian ethics. Both theories enshrine the view that the characteristics (...) of care offer scope for developing the capacity for judgement. However, a fundamental difference is revealed when considering that Confucian ethics emphasises care as a virtue in the cultivation of one's moral agency, whereas the ethics of care sees care as both a disposition and practice, and the caring relationship to be a primary means of moral evaluation. For the care ethicists, the practice of care embraces communicative morality, within fluid, dynamic interpersonal relationships - in sharp contrast to Confucian care practices, which are constructed within formal standards and fixed, role-based relationships. (shrink)

I develop a “two-systems” interpretation of Husserl’s theory of belief. On this interpretation, Husserl accounts for our sense of the world in terms of (1) a system of embodied horizon meanings and passive synthesis, which is involved in any experience of an object, and (2) a system of active synthesis and sedimentation, which comes on line when we attend to an object’s properties. I use this account to defend Husserl against several forms of Heideggerean critique. One line of critique, recently (...) elaborated by Taylor Carman, says that Husserl wrongly loads everyday perception with explicit beliefs about things. A second, earlier line of critique, due to Hubert Dreyfus, charges Husserl with thinking of belief on a problematic Artificial Intelligence (AI) model which involves explicit rules applied to discrete symbol structures. I argue that these criticisms are based on a conflation of Husserl’s two systems of belief. The conception of Husserlian phenomenology which emerges is compatible with Heideggerean phenomenology and associated approaches to cognitive science (in particular, dynamical systems theory). (shrink)

This chapter presents the main formalism of the book, which is used in subsequent chapters to describe a variety of concepts in Husserlian phenomenology, and thereby unify them. A dynamical systems approach to Husserl is introduced, and several dynamical laws of Husserlian phenomenology are described. The first is an expectation rule according to which expectations are determined by what a person knows, sees, and does. The second is a learning rule according to which background knowledge is updated in a specific (...) way when experiences fulfill or frustrate prior expectations. In addition to these rules, a “supervenience function” is described, which associates how a thing is seen with a “trail set,” the set ways that thing is expected to look, relative to all possible ways of moving around it. This function further illustrates the explanatory dimension of phenomenology described in Chap. 2, whereby how we immanently experience things is determined by how we expect them to look relative to counterfactual movement patterns. (shrink)

It is often claimed (1) that levels of nature are related by supervenience, and (2) that processes occurring at particular levels of nature should be studied using dynamical systems theory. However, there has been little consideration of how these claims are related. To address the issue, I show how supervenience relations give rise to ‘supervenience functions’, and use these functions to show how dynamical systems at different levels are related to one another. I then use this analysis to describe a (...) graded approach to non-reductive physicalism, and to critically assess Davidson’s arguments for psychological anomaly. I also show how this approach can inform empirical research in cognitive science. (shrink)

A biosemiotic view of living things is presented that supersedes the mechanistic view of life prevalent in biology today. Living things are active agents with autonomous subjectivity, whose structure is triadic, consisting of the individual organism, its Umwelt and the society. Sociality inheres in every living thing since the very origin of life on the earth. The temporality of living things is guided by the purpose to live, which works as the semantic boundary condition for the processes of embodiment of (...) the subjectivity. Freedom at the molecular and cellular levels allows autonomy and spontaneity to emerge even in single cell organisms, and the presence of the dimension of mind in every living thing is deduced. Living things transcend their individualness, as they live in historically formed higher order structure consisting of the lineage-species and the society. They also transcend materiality, having the dimension of mind. (shrink)

I argue that Husserlian phenomenology is metaphysically neutral, in the sense of being compatible with multiple metaphysical frameworks. For example, though Husserl dismisses the concept of an unknowable thing in itself as “material nonsense”, I argue that the concept is coherent and that the existence of such things is compatible with Husserl’s phenomenology. I defend this metaphysical neutrality approach against a number of objections and consider some of its implications for Husserl interpretation.

The question whether cognition is subserved by internal processes in the brain (internalism) or extends in to the world (active externalism) has been vigorously debated in recent years. I show how internalist and externalist ideas can be pursued in a common framework, using (1) open dynamical systems, which allow for separate analysis of an agent's intrinsic and embodied dynamics, and (2) supervenience functions, which can be used to study how low-level dynamical systems give rise to higher-level dynamical structures.

経済の発展期には美徳とされた勤勉の価値が豊かさの到来とともに揺らいでいる。よく働くことは余暇や家庭や地域の生活と相反する生き方になってしまった。勤勉な労働よりも、意味ある労働が求められるようになる。だ が、勤勉倫理に代わる新しい仕事倫理は生まれるのだろうか。仕事をめぐる過去の思索を訪ね歩き、「良い仕事」の思想の伝統の中に、現代の自己実現願望の限界を超える新しい仕事倫理・仕事理念の可能性を見出す。.

This article presents research on robot therapy for elderly residents in a care house. Experiments were conducted from June 2005, lasting more than 2 months. Two therapeutic baby seal robots were introduced to the residents, and activated for over 9 hours daily. To investigate the psychological and social effects of the robots, the residents’ activities in public areas were recorded using video cameras, during the daytime for over 2 months. In addition, urinalysis of the residents was performed for 17-ketosteroid sulfate (...) and 17-hydroxycorticosteroid. Results of the video analysis indicated that social interaction increased through interaction with the seal robots. Results of the urine tests showed that the reactions of the subjects’ vital organs to stress improved after the introduction of the robots. (shrink)

Representational and embodied approaches to cognitive science are often presented in opposition to one another, with Merleau-Ponty serving as a historical precursor to embodied approaches. We argue that the two approaches are compatible and complementary, and that both can be used to interpret Merleau-Ponty's (and Husserl's) work. To support our arguments, we describe two forms of representation associated with two distinct processes. Motor intentionality is a process of direct embodied interaction (reflexes, habits, skilled behaviors) which use mediating representations to bind (...) sensory information together and guide behavior. These internal states reliably indicate specific stimuli (even if just during a transient episode), are associated with a determinate phenomenal character (a “typical physiognomy”), and correspond to what Husserl describes as passive synthesis. Higher-level processes like reasoning make use of more explicit representations (what Husserl calls active processes), which are associated with focused attention and “explicated” propositional contents. The two kinds of process can occur independently, but are often fully woven together, as for example when a friend makes explicit suggestions while the two of you cook. We also discuss Merleau-Ponty’s famous Schneider case, which makes vivid what happens when both types of processes (motor intentionality and high-level reasoning; passive and active synthesis) are intact, but when some explicit representations are damaged. A certain stratum of virtual or projected space is lost, and so a certain kind of abstractly guided behavior is unavailable to him. (shrink)

Aron Gurwitsch’s theory of the structure and dynamics of consciousness has much to offer contemporary theorizing about consciousness and its basis in the embodied brain. On Gurwitsch’s account, as we develop it, the field of consciousness has a variable sized focus or "theme" of attention surrounded by a structured periphery of inattentional contents. As the field evolves, its contents change their status, sometimes smoothly, sometimes abruptly. Inner thoughts, a sense of one’s body, and the physical environment are dominant field contents. (...) These ideas can be linked with (and help unify) contemporary theories about the neural correlates of consciousness, inattention, the small world structure of the brain, meta-stable dynamics, embodied cognition, and predictive coding in the brain. (shrink)

Illustrations: Numerous B/w Figures Description: Key questions in the history of Navya-nyaya (New Nyaya) remain unresolved: when did this school of logic begin, who was its founder, what distinguishes Navya-nyaya from Pracina-nyaya (Old Nyaya), and so on. This book attempts to answer these key questions in Part I. Part II provides a translation, analysis, and critical edition of the Lion and Tiger Definitions of Invariable Concomitance Chapter (Simha-vyaghra-laksana: LT Chapter) of the Tattva-cintamani-rahasya (TCR) of Mathuranatha (16th-17th c.). The hypothesis adopted (...) by the author with regard to the first question is that Udayana, who lived in the 11th century, is the founder of Navya-nyaya. This hypothesis is closely linked to the hypothesis offered regarding the second question, which is that the feature that distinguishes Navya-nyaya from the earlier school is its description of concepts and the structure of the world in terms of relation. Early Navya-nyaya authors, who flourished between Udayana and Gangesa (14th c.), devised specific terminology, of which delimitor (avacchedaka) and describer (niËpaka) are the most important, in order to identify or specify relation. This book attempts to illustrate the function of these and other Navya-nyaya terms from the viewpoint of relation. The main sources upon which the author has based his conclusions are Udayana s Laksanavali and the chapters on invariable concomitance or pervasion (vyapti) of the Nyaya-siddhanta-dipa (NSD) of Sasadhara (13rd-14th c.), the Tattva-cintamaÆi (TC) of Gangesa, and the TCR. Of these Sanskrit texts no scholar has worked on the Invariable Concomitance Chapter (Vyapti-vada) of the NSD in detail or the LT Chapter of the TCR. The latter chapter follows in the TCR the Five Definitions of Invariable Concomitance Chapter (Vyapti-pancaka), which Ingalls edited, translated, and analyzed in his epoch-making book Materials for the Study of Navya-Nyaya Logic (1951). One major innovation of this book made in Part II is to explain the structure of Navya-nyaya analysis by employing 86 diagrams based on the dharma-dharmin (property and property-possessor) relation, which serve as a visual aid and help readers to more easily understand the complicated structure of its analysis. The diagrams are also helpful in ascertaining how the definitions of invariable concomitance apply to individual cases and how the entities are connected in the application of the definitions. Another major innovation is: almost every sub-section of the LT Chapter of the TCR contains Mathuranatha s clarification of part of the two definitions; but this clarification does not give the definition incorporating prior clarifications and insertions; this book provides such a definition accompanied by a diagram. In other words, Part II illustrates the structure of the whole definition at every process of the clarification, which (definition) is never presented as such in Mathuranatha s text. (shrink)

Husserl is well known for his critique of the “mathematizing tendencies” of modern science, and is particularly emphatic that mathematics and phenomenology are distinct and in some sense incompatible. But Husserl himself uses mathematical methods in phenomenology. In the first half of the paper I give a detailed analysis of this tension, showing how those Husserlian doctrines which seem to speak against application of mathematics to phenomenology do not in fact do so. In the second half of the paper I (...) focus on a particular example of Husserl’s “mathematized phenomenology”: his use of concepts from what is today called dynamical systems theory. (shrink)

We survey the development of “California Phenomenology”, both as a philosophical movement originating with Dagfinn Føllesdal’s formulation of a Fregean, analytic reading of Husserl in the late 1950s and 1960s, and as an evolving network of philosophers working throughout California, who have met under the auspices of several groups in a more or less continuous way since that time. We trace the history of these groups in detail, provide an overview of debates that occurred between “West Coast” approaches to Husserlian (...) phenomenology and other approaches, and survey the broad panorama of more recent work. (shrink)

This article focuses on the trajectory of life of the three generations of the Jankowski family in Siberia, Primorski Krai and Korea in the years 1863– 1945 in terms of their economic, cultural and scientific achievements. The founder of the Far Eastern branch of the family was Michał Jankowski. Exiled to Siberia for participation in the January Uprising of 1863, as a man of indefatigable energy and collaborator of Benedykt Dybowski, he undertook many initiatives, including hunting, wild ginseng collecting and (...) a gold mining administration. In 1880 he settled on the Sidiemi Peninsula near Vladivostok, where he established a farm specializing in horse breeding and ginseng gardening. In addition to farming, he conducted natural history and archaeological research and sent the acquired specimens and artifacts to Russian and European museums. The tradition of his father was continued in the second generation by Jerzy Mikhailovich Jankowski. Endowed with similar character and talent, he studied agriculture and husbandry in Texas and at the agricultural faculty of St. Louis University in Missouri. He expanded the farm to include commercial fishing and rice cultivation. The occupation of the Far East by the Red Army in 1922 forced the family to emigrate to Korea and Manchuria. The new family seat called Novina was built on the Ompo River near the town of Ch’ŏngjin, about 200 kilometers south along the Korean coastline from the mouth of the Tuman River. It was not only a modern farm with specialized animal husbandry and fruit farming, but was also a recreational, cultural, and spiritual enclave, with a school for children, a summer theater, an Orthodox church, and a resort for holidaymakers. The third and the most famous representative of the family was Walery Jurewicz Jankowski. In 1945, he joined the Soviet Army, where, due to his knowledge of Korean and Japanese, he served as an interpreter for the military intelligence at the headquarters of the 25th Army in P’yŏngyang. At the beginning of 1946, both Walery and his fathers were arrested and sent to the labor camps. The family was scattered around the world, from Australia to the North and Latin Americas and the farm was nationalized. The Jankowsky family achieved spectacular success in the Russian Far East and in Korea because they were able to apply the traditional Polish gentry ethos based on the extended structure of family and servants, which they were able to combine with a chivalrous fortitude and openness to hard life in the frontiers populated by various ethnic groups. (shrink)

Aron Gurwitsch’s Gestalt-inspired “field theory of consciousness” was introduced in the same period as Wolfgang Köhler’s theory of “electrical brain fields.” I consider parallels between these theories, drawing on results that have emerged in the last five years. First, I consider the claim that fields of consciousness supervene on electromagnetic fields in the brain, then I outline Gurwitsch’s field theory of consciousness, and finally I consider how the structures described by Gurwitsch might relate to structures in the brain’s electro-magnetic field. (...) Along the way, I expose a dogma (that qualia are paradigmatic conscious states) and develop an interpretation of Gurwitsch’s field theory. (shrink)

I show how existing concepts of supervenience relate to two more fundamental ontological relations: determination and dependence. Determination says that the supervenient properties of a thing are a function of its base properties, while dependence says that having a supervenient property implies having a base property. I show that most varieties of supervenience are either determination relations or determination relations conjoined with dependence relations. In the process of unpacking these connections I identify limitations of existing concepts of supervenience and provide (...) ways of overcoming them. What results is a more precise, flexible, and powerful set of tools for relating sets of properties than current concepts of supervenience provide. I apply these tools to a recalcitrant problem in the physicalism literature – the problem of extras. (shrink)

Lopes ( 2021 ) has argued against my use of neural networks and dynamical systems theory in neurophenomenology. Responding to his argument provides an opportunity to articulate a pluralist approach to neurophenomenology, according to which multiple theoretical frameworks—symbolic, dynamical systems, connectionist, etc.—can be used to study consciousness and its relationship to neural activity. Each type of analysis is best suited to specific phenomena, but they are mutually compatible and can inform and constrain one another in non-trivial ways. I use historical (...) and conceptual arguments to elaborate on this type of pluralism as it applies to cognitive science, phenomenology, and neurophenomenology. (shrink)

Although the concept of information is an inherently qualitative entity implying the capacity for meaning creation, in the historical development of this concept there has been a consistent emphasis on quantitative aspects. The generalization of the information concept from a specialized military term to a concept of broad social application occurred during the period when society as a whole became militarized in the 1930s and 1940s. After the Second World War, with the development of systematic information theory and the spread (...) of computers in society, the military associations of the information concept gradually became obscured. But the popularity of information society theory in Japan and the USA indicates a need to review the military associations of its key concept. Today, with the development and spread of numerous global and local media, the information phenomena are experienced in a manner that far outstrips the narrow confines of the concept's history. So the concept of information needs to be understood as a field of struggle in which different definitions confront each other leading to the creation of new practices and alternative concepts. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 6, Page 27-29, June 2011.

There are reasons to believe that decision‐making capacity (mental competence) of women in labor may be compromised in relation to giving informed consent to epidural analgesia. Not only severe labor pain, but also stress, anxiety, and premedication of analgesics such as opioids, may influence women’s decisional capacity. Decision‐making capacity is a complex construct involving cognitive and emotional components which cannot be reduced to ‘understanding’ alone. A systematic literature search identified a total of 20 empirical studies focused on women’s decision‐making about (...) epidural analgesia for labor pain. Our review of these studies suggests that empirical evidence to date is insufficient to determine whether women undergoing labor are capable of consenting to epidural analgesia. Given such uncertainties, sufficient information about pain management should be provided as part of prenatal education and the consent process must be carefully conducted to enhance women’s autonomy. To fill in the significant gap in clinical knowledge about laboring women’s decision‐making capacity, well‐designed prospective and retrospective studies may be required. (shrink)

Although debate is a richly structured and prevalent form of discourse, it has received little scholarly attention. Logicians have focused on the structure of individual arguments-how they divide into premises and conclusions, which in turn divide into various constituents. In contrast, I focus on the structure of sets of arguments, showing how arguments are themselves constituents in high-level dialectical structures. I represent debates and positions by graphs whose vertices correspond to arguments and whose edges correspond to two inter-argument relations: "dispute" (...) and "support," respectively. On this basis I develop a theory of the structure of debate. (shrink)