In 2008, researchers created human three-dimensional neural tissue – known as the pioneering work of “brain organoids.” In recent years, some researchers have transplanted human brain organoids into animal brains for applicational purposes. With these experiments have come many ethical concerns. It is thus an urgent task to clarify what is ethically permissible and impermissible in brain organoid research. This paper seeks (1) to sort out the ethical issues related to brain organoid research and application and (2) to propose future (...) directions for additional ethical consideration and policy debates in the field. Toward (1), this paper first outlines the current state of brain organoid research, and then briefly responds to previously raised related ethical concerns. Looking next at anticipated scientific developments in brain organoid research, we will discuss (i) ethical issues related to in vitro brain organoids, (ii) ethical issues raised when brain organoids form complexes or have relationships with other entities, and (iii) ethical issues of research ethics and governance. Finally, in pursuit of (2), we propose research policies that are mindful of the ethics of brain organoid research and application and also suggest the need for an international framework for research and application of brain organoids. (shrink)

This paper focuses on a water management project in the remote Aboriginal community of Milingimbi, Northern Australia. Drawing on materials and experiences from two distinct stages of this project, we revisit a policy report and engage in ethnographic storytelling in order to highlight a series of sensing practices associated with water management. In the former, a working symmetry between Yolngu and Western water knowledges is actively sought through the practices of the project. However, in the latter, recurrent asymmetries in the (...) research work continue to appear: a bilingual diagram of water usage is displayed but produces confusion; measuring a water hole for salinity, a member of the scientific team throws in a water meter, while a Yolngu elder prefers the telling of an ancestral story; a collaborative 3-D mapping exercise invites participation from community members but struggles to develop an outcome that differs from existing maps used by scientists and government staff. Focusing on these moments as subtle points of rupture, we suggest that attending to “seeing,” “telling,” and “mapping” in both stages of this water management project offers a way to explore the political work of crafting climate futures and beginning to interrogate differing means for “doing difference” within them. (shrink)

The core aims of the Global Health Impact Project include incentivizing pharmaceutical companies for socially conscious production and promoting socially conscious consumption among consumers. Its backbone is a metric that computes the amount of illness burden alleviated by a pharmaceutical drug. This essay aims to assess the connection between values and numbers in the Global Health Impact Project. Specifically, I concentrate on two issues, the anonymity of illness burden and the distribution of health benefits. The former issue asks whether we (...) should treat the illness burden of every person the same. The latter issue asks among whom health benefits should be fairly distributed. Examination of these issues begs for clarification of some of the key concepts of the Global Health Impact Project, such as the definition of essential medicines and the significance of national borders. Although this essay focuses on the two particular metric issues in the Global Health Impact Project, its core argument is applicable to other metrics for ethically motivated initiatives—to construct a metric for an ethically motivated initiative, it is not only important to articulate underlying concepts and values, but it is also important to operationalize them, so they are consistently reflected in the metric. (shrink)

We explore how adding prosocial preferences to the canonical precaution model of accidents changes either the efficient damages rule or the harm from accidents. For a utilitarian lawmaker, making the potential injurer sympathetic to the victim of harm has no effect on either outcome. On the other hand, making injurers averse to harming others reduces the harm from accidents but has no effect on efficient damages. For an atomistic lawmaker — one who excludes prosocial preferences from social welfare — cultivating (...) a taste for either harm aversion or perfect sympathy can reduce efficient damages, though neither has any effect on the amount of harm from accidents. On the other hand, causing people to act as if they are averse to harm creation, such as out of habit or moral obligation, reduces both the efficient amount of damages and total harm. In general, encouraging either a distaste for, or moral commitment against, harm creation is useful while inculcating sympathy for victims of harm is not. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of imagination in environmental ethics and introduce an imaginative dimension as an essential part of environmental ethics. Imagination constitutes a basic condition for ethical thinking and action. Matters of environmental ethics have revealed the indispensable role of imagination in ethics. I’ll advance an imagination-based environmental ethics by developing Hans Jonas’ ethical thought. From his viewpoint, various effects of our action on nature and future generations, generally out of our sight, have (...) become an ethical concern. This necessitates the exercise of imagination because we must “imagine” those distant effects to act in an environmentally responsible way. Jonas’ “heuristics of fear” is an imaginative approach necessary for responsible action. Further, I reinterpret the role of imagination as motivating our “will to know.” In conclusion, I suggest the importance of environmental education as cultivating ecological imagination from the standpoint of environmental ethics. (shrink)

Tracheostomy with invasive ventilation may be required for the survival of patients at advanced stages of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In Japan it has been shown that a proactive approach toward TIV may prolong the survival of ALS patients by over 10 years by preventing the lethal respiratory failure that generally occurs within 3-5 years of the onset of the disease. Measures to prolong life expectancy without foregoing quality of life have produced better results in Japan than in other developed countries. (...) This ‘Japanese bias’ has been attributed to socio-cultural and religious factors as well as to the availability of material resources in Japan. In this article, we use the concepts of onozukara in kadō and amae to illuminate features of patient care that may contribute to this ‘Japanese bias’. (shrink)

The promised open space of cyber-interaction has its dark side hidden behind its brilliant rhetoric. The danger emerges within the very center of developing this technology (cyber-evolution). That is a more fundamental danger than this dark side seems to have. The possible replacement of our primary reality with virtual reality might erode the significance of our existential reality. This means also that the virtual reality might lose its own ground to be constructed. In order to clarify this fundamental problem at (...) issue I show some results from a questionnaire done on younger generation. The results seem to suggest possible way of facing this problem. (shrink)

Hunting Down Social Darwinism addresses the manner in which free-market advocacy is often criticized as social Darwinism. It explores the term’s meaning and the reasons such criticisms prove to be misleading. Hayashi examines whether it is fair to describe nineteenth-century free-market advocates Spencer and Sumner as social Darwinists.

The history of the documentation of health inequality is long. The way in which health inequality has customarily been documented is by comparing differences in the average health across groups, for example, by sex or gender, income, education, occupation, or geographic region. In the controversial World Health Report 2000, researchers at the World Health Organization criticized this traditional practice and proposed to measure health inequality across individuals irrespective of individuals’ group affiliation. They defended its proposal on the moral grounds without (...) clear explanation. In this paper I ask: is health inequality across individuals of moral concern, and, if so, why? Clarification of these questions is crucial for meaningful interpretation of health inequality measured across individuals. Only if there was something morally problematic in health inequality across individuals, its reduction would be good news. Specifically, in this paper I provide three arguments for the moral significance of health inequality across individuals: (a) health is special, (b) health equity plays an important and unique role in the general pursuit of justice, and (c) health inequality is an indicator of general injustice in society. I then discuss three key questions to examine the validity of these arguments: (i) how special is health?, (ii) how good is health as an indicator?, and (iii) what do we mean by injustice? I conclude that health inequality across individuals is of moral interest with the arguments (b) and (c). (shrink)

ObjectivesThe purpose of the current study was to examine whether a self-report measure identifies prenatal substance use and predicts resulting adverse birth outcomes in a large cohort using electronic medical records.MethodsPregnant patients who were admitted between 2014 and 2015 at Christiana Care Health System and delivered singleton birth were included in the analyses. Participant demographic information, pregnancy comorbidities, self-reported substance use, and birth outcomes were retrieved from electronic medical records. Detailed descriptive analyses of prenatal substance use were conducted, and logistic (...) models were evaluated for the associations between substance use and each birth outcome.ResultsThe average maternal age was 30 years, 37% receiving Medicaid. Over 58% were White, 26% were Black, and 13% were Hispanic. Cigarette smoking only showed the highest prevalence among substance u... (shrink)

Si la question de la science divine dans le catholicisme et le protestantisme réformé n’a cessé d’attirer l’attention des historiens de la philosophie, la position de l’orthodoxie luthérienne est restée relativement méconnue. Or, le Systema Locorum Theologicorum d’Abraham Calov, professeur à Wittenberg, connu également comme Schulphilosoph, se distingue par sa profondeur et sa finesse parmi les ouvrages luthériens. Cet article étudie systématiquement son traitement de l’omniscience divine afin de mettre en évidence le caractère polémique attribué à cette notion. En situant (...) le texte dans le contexte historique et doctrinal de l’époque, on tâchera d’éclairer les problématiques principales du théologien vers la moitié de l’âge classique, ainsi que sa position vis-à-vis de certains auteurs majeurs. (shrink)

According to the Buddhist doctrine of Two Truths, there are no persons in our final ontology, but there are persons in our conventional ontology. What does it mean to say that persons exist conventionally? The Ābhidharmikas say that ultimately there are psychophysical tropes, called dharmas, certain collections or combinations of which are conventionally taken to be persons. We would then ask: what kind of reality is conventional reality, and what is the metaphysical relation between conventional reality and ultimate reality as (...) pertains to persons?Recently there have been various attempts to understand Buddhist philosophy by using contemporary analytical methods and theories. Among the prominent scholars in this... (shrink)

BackgroundTranscranial direct current stimulation is a non-invasive, non-convulsive technique for modulating brain function. In contrast to other non-invasive brain stimulation techniques, where costs, clinical applicability, and availability limit their large-scale use in clinical practices, the low-cost, portable, and easy-to-use tDCS devices may overcome these restrictions.ObjectiveDespite numerous clinical applications in large numbers of patients suffering from psychiatric disorders, it is not quite clear how tDCS influences the mentally affected human brain. In order to decipher potential neural mechanisms of action of tDCS (...) in patients with psychiatric conditions, we focused on the combination of tDCS with neuroimaging techniques.DesignWe propose a contemporary overview on the currently available neurophysiological and neuroimaging data where tDCS has been used as a research or treatment tool in patients with psychiatric disorders.ResultsOver a reasonably short period of time, tDCS has been b... (shrink)

In Western countries, the ideal professional and ethical attributes of healthcare providers and the ideal patient-doctor relationship have been analysed in detail. Other cultures, however, may have different norms, arising in response to diverse healthcare needs, cultural values and offering alternative perspectives. In this paper, drawing a case study, we introduce the concept of Shinmi, used in Japan to describe a desirable approach to medical care. Shinmi means kind or cordial in Japanese. In the medical context, it refers to doctors (...) treating patients with a degree of emotional closeness as if they were the doctors’ own family. We analyse the concept of Shinmi, drawing on virtue ethics. We distinguish two different elements to a Shinmi-na attitude. As illustrated in our example, excessive Shinmi can be problematic for patients and doctors. Furthermore, elements of Shinmi may conflict with existing Western values (for example, norms that encourage emotional detachment and discourage doctors’ treatment of family members). However, if pursued appropriately, we argue that a balanced Shinmi-na approach can be conducive to the goals of medicine. The concept of Shinmi may be valuable for medical students, in Japanese and potentially other health care systems, and help them to cultivate a virtuous approach to meeting the emotional needs of patients. (shrink)

Emerging parallel to long-standing, academic and policy inquiries on personal responsibility for health is the empirical assessment of lay persons’ views. Yet, previous studies rarely explored personal responsibility for health among lay persons as dynamic societal values. We sought to explore lay persons’ views on personal responsibility for health using the Fairness Dialogues, a method for lay persons to deliberate equity issues in health and health care through a small group dialogue using a hypothetical scenario. We conducted two 2-h Fairness (...) Dialogues sessions (n = 15 in total) in Nova Scotia, Canada. We analyzed data using thematic analysis. Our analysis showed that personal choice played an important role in participants’ thinking about health. Underlying the concept of personal choice was considerations of freedom and societal debt. In participants’ minds, personal and social responsibilities co-existed and they were unwilling to determine health care priority based on personal responsibility. The Fairness Dialogues is a promising deliberative method to explore lay persons’ views as dynamic values to be developed through group dialogues as opposed to static, already-formed values waiting to be elicited. (shrink)

Lysosomal positioning is an important factor in regulating cellular responses, including autophagy. Because proteins encoded by disease‐responsible genes are involved in lysosomal trafficking, proper intracellular lysosomal trafficking is thought to be essential for cellular homeostasis. In the past few years, the mechanisms of lysosomal trafficking have been elucidated with a focus on adapter proteins linking motor proteins to lysosomes. Here, we outline recent findings on the mechanisms of lysosomal trafficking by focusing on adapter protein c‐Jun NH2‐terminal kinase‐interacting protein (JIP) 4, (...) which plays a central role in this process, and other JIP4 functions and JIP family proteins. Additionally, we discuss neuronal diseases associated with aberrance in the JIP family protein. Accumulating evidence suggests that chemical manipulation of lysosomal positioning may be a therapeutic approach for these neuronal diseases. (shrink)

Brain imaging studies have consistently shown subgenual Anterior Cingulate Cortical (sgACC) involvement in emotion processing. COMT Val158 and Met158 polymorphisms may influence such emotional brain processes in specific ways. Given that resting-state fMRI (rsfMRI) may increase our understanding on brain functioning, we integrated genetic and rsfMRI data and focused on sgACC functional connections. No studies have yet investigated the influence of the COMT Val158Met polymorphism (rs4680) on sgACC resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) in healthy individuals. A homogeneous group of sixty-one Caucasian (...) right-handed healthy female university students, all within the same age range, underwent rsfMRI. Compared to Met158 homozygotes, Val158 allele carriers displayed significantly stronger rsFC between the sgACC and the left parahippocampal gyrus, ventromedial parts of the inferior frontal gyrus, and the nucleus accumbens (NAc). On the other hand, compared to Val158 homozygotes, we found in Met158 allele carriers stronger sgACC rsFC with the medial frontal gyrus, more in particular the anterior parts of the medial orbitofrontal cortex. Although we did not use emotional or cognitive tasks, our sgACC rsFC results point to possible distinct differences in emotional and cognitive processes between Val158 and Met158 allele carriers. However, the exact nature of these directions remains to be determined. (shrink)

In a dynamic environment, even if an agent makes a plan to obtain a goal, the environment might change while the agent is executing the plan. In that case, the plan, which was initially valid when it was made, might later become invalid. Furthermore, in the process of replanning, it is necessary to take into account the side effects of actions already executed. Nowadays, HTN planning is becoming popular among agent researchers because its task decomposition algorithm is efficient and suitable (...) for joint planning in multi-agent systems. However, the dynamic replanning algorithm of HTN planning has not yet been established. In order to solve this problem, we have previously presented an agent life cycle that integrates HTN planning, action execution, knowledge updates, and plan modification. In that agent life cycle, the plans are always kept valid according to the most recent knowledge and situation. However, when one plan does not work and the agent starts using an alternative plan, it sometimes undoes some actions that do not have to be undone. The source of this problem lies in the need to have total-order plans. In other words, all the actions have to be sequentially ordered even when the order is not important in some parts of the plan. This paper extends our previous agent life cycle and presents new ways to avoid unnecessary action cancellation. This enables the agent to handle partial-order plans and to make use of two kinds of undoing actions: sequential undoing actions and concurrent undoing actions. (shrink)

“Atsumori” is a Noh play composed by master playwright Zeami sometime before 1423, featuring characters from the Tales of the Heike. Although popular to this day, the philosophical significance of the play remains underdeveloped and underappreciated. Prima facie, it features a ghost who is liberated thanks to the sincere prayer of the priest who killed him. Simplistic reading would yield simplistic understanding of the characters and their dynamism, and would fail to appreciate, for instance, the agency of the ghost or (...) the liberation of the priest. Accordingly, some regard the play as falling short of the highest aesthetic value, insofar as its protagonist fails to attain liberation through his own effort. Some even contend that the ulterior purpose of the play is to portray ghosts as powerless and desperate so that vanquishers need not fear vengeful ghosts. While it is possible that Zeami indeed held such ulterior intention and regarded it as second rank for the protagonist’s lack of agency, I shall present a different reading that would yield a richer appreciation of the characters and their dynamism. I do so by regarding the “friendship of dharma” that occurs at the culmination of the play as “existential communion” as presented in Tanabe Hajime’s later philosophy. That is, the play need not be read as a story about a living priest saving a dead warrior—it can be read as about two lost souls saving each other, through mutual acceptance, mutual sacrifice, and collaborative mediation of the Absolute. For this purpose, the paper first delineates Tanabe’s later philosophy with a focus on the idea of existential communion. Then it introduces “Atsumori” and discusses its philosophical significance. An impasse due to the scope of the play will be identified, which I call “the problem of epistemic authority,” and to fill the gap I will introduce and discuss another spin-off story featuring Atsumori. The paper intends to offer a philosophically richer reading of the play to invite readers to think deeply and creatively about Noh. (shrink)

In recent decades, Asian subsidiaries of Japanese manufacturing multi-national enterprises (MNEs) have faced heightened competitions from local firms to underscore the strategic importance of developing competent “host country nationals” (HCNs) to overcome their liability of foreignness. In addition, in recent literature on global MNEs, the importance of “boundary spanners” (BSs) has been pointed out in facilitating knowledge sharing across intra-organizational boundaries. Given these discussions, this study focuses on an interesting contingent relationship in the role of BSs observed in author’s interviews. (...) i.e., In cases of “bad BSs,” “knowledge appropriation” can take place where newly promoted HCNs would monopolize their knowledge and information, and the mitigating processes of notion gap problem in grey areas management are heavily stagnated. Whereas in cases of “good BSs,” “knowledge sharing” would take place where newly promoted HCNs would be willing to share them with other members, and the mitigating processes of the notion gap problem are steadily progressed. The study proposes a framework illustrating conditions under which HCNs choose knowledge sharing over appropriation. The analysis identifies two key factors influencing this choice: dependence on personal skills and prospects for growth opportunities. The findings suggest a dynamic relationship where knowledge sharing leads to effective control and efficient knowledge transfer, fostering virtuous cycles, while knowledge appropriation results in inefficiencies, creating vicious cycles. The study calls for further research on dynamic aspects of this contingent relationship and suggests practical strategies for shifting from knowledge appropriation to sharing, thereby enhancing organizational performance in foreign subsidiaries. (shrink)

Ph.D. University of Hawaii at Manoa 2013.

In the preface to his new monograph, Tragic Beauty in Whitehead and Japanese Aesthetics, Steve Odin proposes to do two things: better understand Alfred N. Whitehead's "poetic vision of tragic beauty" through comparison with Japanese aesthetics, and thereby also suggest a "new religio-aesthetic vision of tragic beauty and its resolution in the supreme ecstasy of peace". He does more than that, though. Besides thoroughly discussing Whitehead's aesthetics throughout the latter's works, from An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge to (...) Modes of Thought, he enriches this aesthetics by discussing similar themes in American philosophy and literature, including Charles Peirce, John... (shrink)

This paper provides a detailed comparison between discourse representation theory and dependent type semantics, two frameworks for discourse semantics. Although it is often stated that DRT and those frameworks based on dependent types are mutually exchangeable, we argue that they differ with respect to variable handling, more specifically, how substitution and other operations on variables are defined. This manifests itself in two recalcitrant problems posed for DRT; namely, the overwrite problem and the duplication problem. We will see that these problems (...) still pose a challenge for various extended compositional systems based on DRT, while they do not arise in a framework of DTS where substitution and other operations are defined in the standard type-theoretic manner without stipulating any additional constraints. We also compare the notions of contexts underlying these two kinds of frameworks, namely, contexts represented as assignment functions and contexts represented as proof terms, and see what different predictions they make for some linguistic examples. (shrink)

Proteins on the cell surface and secreted proteins are modified with sugar chains that generate and modulate biological complexity and diversity. Sugar chains not only contribute physically to the conformation and solubility of proteins, but also exert various functions via sugar-binding proteins that reside on the cell surface or in organelles of the secretory pathway. However, some glycosidases and lectins are found in the cytosol or nucleus. Recent studies of cytosolic sugar–related molecules have revealed that sugar chains on proteins in (...) the cytosol act as signals of adverse cellular conditions. In this review, we summarize recent reports that cytosolic sugar chains can trigger ubiquitination, followed by proteasomal and autophagic degradation to maintain cellular homeostasis. In addition, we discuss the functions of sugar-binding proteins revealed to date, along with possibilities not yet explored. The cytosolic N-glycans that normally reside on the cell surface or in organelles serves as a signal for the presence of unwanted proteins or organelles. Here, we review the monitoring system for cytosolic glycans including glycosidases and lectin in the cytosol. (shrink)

The so-called Buddhist momentarists, such as Dharmakīrti and his followers, defend the momentariness of all things. However, with equal force they also defend the persistence of all things, not just within a single lifetime but over an indefinite cycle of rebirth. Naturally, they have an interesting theory of persistence, according to which things persist without being self-identical over time. The theory is best presented in the Lokāyatāparīkṣā chapter of Śāntarakṣita’s Tattvasaṃgraha and Kamalaśīla’s Paṅjikā, as they clearly articulate the criteria of (...) persistence without identity. The purpose of this paper is to formulate a Buddhist theory of persistence through the analysis of these texts. Here is the basic formula: Things persist as series, which is constituted by momentary entities that are causally related as upādāna and upādeya. Upādāna causal relation is demarcated from other causal relations by the principle of changeability with temporal restriction, and the principle adopts further qualifications to accommodate complex cases and personal persistence. I have addressed a problem that contemporary physicalism might pose a threat to the Buddhist account of personal persistence, and argued that the problem can be evaded by regarding persons as psycho-physical entities rather than strictly non-physical. In its general outlook, the Buddhist theory of persistence is close to Theodore Sider’s stage theory in that persistence is a matter of distinct individuals standing in a special causal relationship. As regards personal persistence, the Buddhist has a stricter condition than Parfit’s IDM thesis, which states that psychological connectedness with any cause is what matters for survival. The Buddhist would say it is moral connectedness with a special cause called upādāna. (shrink)