This questionnaire-based observational study was conducted in July 2020 with the aim of understanding the ethical and social issues faced by health care providers (HCPs) registered with the Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine in intensive care units (ICUs) during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. There were 200 questionnaire respondents, and we analyzed the responses of 189 members who had been involved in COVID-19 treatment in ICUs. The ethical and social issues that HCPs recognized during the pandemic were difficulties in (...) the decision-making process with patients’ families, limitations of life-sustaining treatment, lack of palliative care, and inadequate mental support for patients’ families and HCPs. Regarding decision-making on issues of clinical ethics during the pandemic, more than half of the respondents thought they had failed to provide sufficient palliative care to patients and responded that they experienced moral distress. The free-text responses on moral distress revealed issues such as unusual treatment and care, restricted visits, challenging situations for HCPs, and psychological burden. Additionally, 38.1% of respondents experienced episodes of social prejudice or discrimination and 4.7% experienced a shortage of medical resources. Our study result shows that the moral distress of HCPs was caused by difficulties in patient-centered decision-making and insufficient medical care to patients and their families. These were caused mainly by a lack of communication due to the stronger implementation of infection control measures. We believe that it is important to address ethical and social issues during a pandemic in order to provide appropriate medical care and prevent burnout among HCPs. (shrink)

Employing conversation analysis, this article investigates instructions in lessons for guitar and Japanese calligraphy. In receiving an instruction, the students in the guitar lessons are expected to immediately follow the instruction. In contrast to the guitar lessons, the students in the calligraphy lessons are not institutionally expected to immediately follow the teacher’s instructions but to receive them. However, the students often gesticulate what they learned from and could make sense of the prior instruction upon completion of an instruction activity. I (...) call this phenomenon embodied solitary confirmation. By demonstrating the interactional procedure for this practice, this article respecifies reflection as an interactional phenomenon and elucidates an organization of multiactivity. (shrink)

Young children generally learn words from other people. Recent research has shown that children can learn new actions and skills from nonhuman agents. This study examines whether young children could learn words from a robot. Preschool children were shown a video in which either a woman or a mechanical robot labeled novel objects. Then the children were asked to select the objects according to the names used in the video. The results revealed that children in the human condition were more (...) likely to select the correct objects than those in the robot condition. Nevertheless, the five-year-old children in the robot condition performed significantly better than chance level, while the four-year olds did not. Thus there is a developmental difference in children’s potential to learn words from a robot. The results contribute to our understanding of how children interact with non-human agents. Keywords: developmental cybernetics; word learning; social cognition; cognitive development. (shrink)

A decision tree is one of the machine learning techniques and also one of the major knowledge representations of data mining results.This is because it is easy to understand its meaning for human analysts.Even ID3, the representative algorithm, is known to exhibit remarkable performance deterioration under certain circumstances, particularly due to strong correlation between attributes representing the class of examples. One of the approaches to get more preferable decision trees is pre-processing the training data to extend its description, such as (...) attributes generation and attribute selection. There is also the idea of decision trees with a region rule. In this paper, we consider two approaches, i.e., decision trees with a region rule allowing multiple attributes, and a pre-processing method of a region rule to enabling any suitable number of attributes to correspond to branch nodes, where an optimal division condition with arbitrarily multiple attributes is acquired. By using this method, we propose a new decision tree generation algorithm guaranteeing to select effective compound attributes with each branch node, where an MDL-based new evaluation criterion is also defined for determining the optimal number of compound attributes specified to each node.This algorithm is applied to datasets containing only nominal values. It consists of three processes: compound attributes selection, parent node integration, and pruning. We call this new decision trees DTMACC (Decision Trees with Multiple Attributes Concept Clustering). The effectiveness and comprehensiveness of the proposed algorithm are confirmed through experiments comparing to the ordinary decision trees and an effective pre-processing method. (shrink)

This paper elucidates Fink’s phenomenology of the world in its basic conception by illustrating his Kant-interpretation. However, some scholars support that his conceptions are not related to Kant’s transcendental dialectic but rather generated from Hegelian speculative one. In contrast to those views in secondary literature, this study demonstrates, on the one hand, the decisive meaning of Kant’s transcendental dialectic, especially the “cosmological antinomy”, for the formation of Fink’s philosophy as a whole and, on the other hand, how Fink elucidates phenomenologically (...) the problem of the pre-givenness of the world by criticizing Kantian so called Copernican turn and transforming his architectonic of the transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

LK is much more difficult than NK, and to make matters worse, Gentzen's intention is still unclear when it comes to that system (LK). -/- The second and third volumes of the series titled What is LK? conduct the detailed survey of each inference-figure in a toe-to-toe way, as it were, which most mathematicians looked through. -/- The present volume, Vol.3, looks deeper into those operational inference-figures which concerns propositional logic.

The vestibulo-ocular reflex plays an important role in controlling the gaze at a visual target. Although patients with vestibular hypofunction aim to improve their VOR function, some retain dysfunction for a long time. Previous studies have explored the effects of direct current stimulation on vestibular function; however, the effects of random noise stimulation on eye–head coordination have not previously been tested. Therefore, we aimed to clarify the effects of high frequency noisy vestibular stimulation on eye–head coordination related to VOR function. (...) Thirteen healthy young adult participants with no serious disease took part in our study. The current amplitude and density used were 0.4 mA and 0.2 mA/cm2, respectively, with a random noise frequency of 100–640 Hz. The electrodes were located on both mastoid processes. The stimulus duration and fade in/out duration were 600 and 10 s, respectively. Subjects oscillated their head horizontally, gazing at the fixation point, at 1 Hz for 30 repetitions. The coordination of eye–head movements was measured by eye-tracking and a motion capture system. Peak-to-peak angles for eye and head movement and deviation of the visual line from the fixation target revealed no significant differences between HF-nVS and sham. The lag time between the eye and head movement with HF-nVS post-stimulation was significantly shorter than that of the sham. We found that HF-nVS can reduce the lag time between eye and head movement and improve coordination, contributing to a clear retinal image. This technique could be applied as a form of VOR training for patients with vestibular hypofunction. (shrink)

This study aims to explicate interviewer and candidate conversational practices in L2 job interviews as they relate to the assessment of a candidate’s qualification for a particular position. The data consisted of 27 audio-recorded job interviews for the position of student assistant in English classes at a Japanese university. The analysis of these interactional data, conducted using conversational analysis methodology, revealed that the inadequacy of a candidate’s response is constructed by means of the interviewer’s subsequent pursuit of a relevant answer (...) from the candidate. In addition, a candidate’s ability to build rapport by providing sequentially linked joke-serious responses evoked a positive evaluation from the interviewer. The findings indicate that a candidate’s understanding of expected behaviors and ability to accommodate his or her behaviors in a manner relevant to the interaction result in a positive assessment. (shrink)

Miyagawa (Games and Economics Behavior 41(2), 292–308 [2002]) provides a simple extensive game form that implements a large class of two-agent bargaining solutions in subgame-perfect equilibrium. This class includes all of the Nash, Kalai–Smorodinsky, and relative utilitarian solutions. This note extends Miyagawa’s result to multi-agent bargaining problems.

Real-world walking activity is important for poststroke patients because it leads to their participation in the community and physical activity. Walking activity may be related to adaptability to different surface conditions of the ground. The purpose of this study was to clarify whether walking adaptability on an uneven surface by step is related to daily walking activity in patients after stroke. We involved 14 patients who had hemiparesis after stroke and 12 healthy controls. The poststroke patients were categorized as least (...) limited community ambulators or unlimited ambulators. For the uneven surface, the study used an artificial grass surface. The subjects repeated even surface walking and the uneven surface walking trials at least two times at a comfortable speed. We collected spatiotemporal and kinematic gait parameters on both the even and uneven surfaces using a three-dimensional motion analysis system. After we measured gait, the subjects wore an accelerometer around the waist for at least 4 days. We measured the number of steps per day using the accelerometer to evaluate walking activity. Differences in gait parameters between the even and uneven surfaces were calculated to determine how the subjects adapted to an uneven surface while walking. We examined the association between the difference in parameter measurements between the two surface properties and walking activity. Walking activity significantly and positively correlated with the difference in paretic step length under the conditions of different surface properties in the poststroke patients and step width in the healthy controls. The strategy of increasing the paretic step length, but not step width, on an uneven surface may lead to a larger base of support, which maintains stability during gait on an uneven surface in poststroke patients, resulting in an increased walking activity. Therefore, in poststroke patients, an increase in paretic step length during gait on an uneven surface might be more essential for improving walking activity. (shrink)

Categorial grammar is well-known for its elegant analysis of coordination enabled by the flexible notion of constituency it entertains. However, to date, no systematic study exists that examines whether this analysis has any obvious empirical advantage over alternative analyses of nonconstituent coordination available in phrase structure-based theories of syntax. This paper attempts precisely such a comparison. We compare the direct constituent coordination analysis of non-canonical coordinations in categorial grammar with an ellipsis-based analysis of the same phenomena in the recent HPSG (...) literature. We provide a set of empirical evidence, consisting of cases in which non-canonical coordinations interact with scopal operators of various sorts, which systematically falsifies the predictions of the latter, ‘linearization-based’ ellipsis approach to coordination. We propose an alternative analysis in a variant of categorial grammar called Hybrid Type-Logical Categorial Grammar. The proposed framework builds on both the Lambek-inspired variants of categorial grammar and a more recent line of work modelling word order via a lambda calculus for the prosodic component. The flexible syntax–semantics interface of this framework straightforwardly captures the interactions between non-canonical coordinations and scopal expressions, demonstrating the broader empirical payoff of the direct constituent coordination analysis of non-canonical coordinations pioneered by Steedman :523–568, 1985; Linguist Philos 13:207–263, 1990) and Dowty hitherto not explicitly recognized in the literature. (shrink)

Not a few feminist writers, such as Kristeva, Irigaray, and Chodorow, have dealt with Freud’s psychoanalysis so far, but it is not clear to what degree the Freudian theory grounds their arguments, because Freud himself developed his psychoanalysis mainly for the male mental world (Seelenleben). In this paper, we shall follow Freud’s train of thought exclusively from this angle. After the geneses of Pcpt.-Cs., id, ego, and super-ego (W-Bw, Es, Ich, and Über-Ich, respectively) are treated (§§7-10), we shed light on (...) how these factors relate to the female spirituality (§§11-24) and why feminists could still rely on Freud’s thought (§25). On the other hand, the present research will also provide an easy introduction to Freud’s psychoanalysis, by reference to which each thinker could overview the Freudian theory (Fig. (5) and Fig. (8) will help). In this respect, we shall also take account of the masculine side of his discussion, that is to say, how a man usually develops his male personality, while we constantly put it in stark contrast to the female spirituality. Although, in this modern world, not a few thinkers criticize the Freudian theory as non-scientific like Popper did (§2), we should remember that there remain supporters of his theory, such as Grümbaum (§3). We shall touch on this kind of argument relating to philosophy of science in the first half of this paper, which will also provide some useful knowledge for the readers who still get doubtful of the Freudian theory and its usage in feminist arguments. (shrink)

Although written in Japanese, an overall picture of quantum physics is drawn, which would surely be useful for beginners as well as researchers of the humanities.

The practical syllogism of the customary type, “desire, belief /∴ action”, which we may also formulate as “WI (q), BI (p→q) /∴ p”, is the main topic of the following discussions. This syllogism is not valid, viewed at the level of rigid, symbolic logic. That is the initial claim made in this article (§2). Kant may save us from this dead end (§1); but his logic of the imperative is never always provided for our ordinary lives (§3.1). Contrasting the two, (...) Kant’s logic and the customary syllogism, we look into where the invalidity of the latter resides in: individuality of the belief (§1.4), a fallacy of affirming the consequent (§2.1), propositional attitudes (§2.3), irrationality (§3.2), concretely. Although the validity is finally given up, we find another dimension of understanding in the formulation of utilitarianism; this point has been passed over by former thinkers (§4). Before jumping to this conclusion, we look through the landscape of their discussions as well, especially those held under the name of Humeanism. Readers who wonder how this article relates to the main stream of modern debates are recommended to see those parts (§3.3-3.4) first. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to apply inductive logic to the field that, presumably, Carnap never expected: legal causation. Legal causation is expressible in the form of singular causal statements; but it is distinguished from the customary concept of scientific causation, because it is subjective. We try to express this subjectivity within the system of inductive logic. Further, by semantic complement, we compensate a defect found in our application, to be concrete, the impossibility of two-place predicates (for causal relationship) (...) in inductive logic. (shrink)

Husserl’s phenomenology opens itself with a critique of positive sciences. Husserl problematizes the hardcore presupposition of positivism that the world is a definite sort of an existential totality of objects and thus it is exhaustible with empirical data and deductive-conceptual abstraction on the basis of causalspatio-temoprality. Criticizing the wholesome reduction of nature into a physical reality and the instrumentalizing of theoretical reason, he proposes transcendental phenomenology, as an ideal form of science. Self-entitled as the genuine science, the science of origin, (...) the science of all sciences, etc., it concerns itself with the matter of validity. Claiming that validating objectivity as such and the meaning of scientific objectification is something of which onlyphenomenological reflection on pure consciousness is capable and that the positivistic objectivity is and must be founded on transcendental subjectivity, Husserl radically idealistically revised the whole positivistic concept of evidence and givenness of a fact and substituted it with the phenomenological notion of apriori self-evidence and originary givenness of primordial intentional consciousness. Nevertheless, it is noticed that the absolute universal validity of positivistic objectivity was never rejected or questioned; objectivity is still in and of itself an absolute criterion of scientificity in Husserl. This paper will argue that the idealistic turn toward subjectivity takes place through factualization of transcendentality and this, by bestowing apriori apodicticity with facticity, even enhances more the supreme epistemological function of positivity. It will discuss such positivistic drive, directly bequeathed from the very cultural ethos at which phenomenological criticism targeted, as an important locomotive for Husserl’s program and point out an antinomical consequence with which it is to be faced as a consequence. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to call the attention, especially that of feminists, to the current progress in biology. It appears gender studies still confine themselves to outdated ideas of sex chromosomes like XX, XY (§10). However, science has been making progress. It no longer sticks to such matters as XX, XY. Its interest is now in Sry, a kind of gene (§11), and MIS, a kind of sex hormone (§14). Abnormalities of sex chromosomes are no longer evidence to (...) deny the biological approaches, for example. We shed light on this fact, putting gender studies in the context of chronologies of science as well (§§2-9). (shrink)

“정치적인 것” 또는 “정치적임”(the political)은 칼 슈미트 정치이론에서 핵심적 역할을 하는 개념이다. 친구와 적을 실존적으로 구분하는 것을 이 개념논리의 핵심으로 간주하고, 모든 서구 근대 국가정치이론의 권력개념의 근간을 서구신학에서 찾고 있는 슈미트의 정치신학적 사유는 많은 논란과 함께 오랫동안 널리 논의되고 다양하게 해석되어 왔다. 한편, 우리는 자칭 최고형태의 형이상학이자 철학운동의 한 형태인 후썰현상학 체계 전반을 관통하는 일종의 “구조적 정치성”이 있음을 발견한다. 특히 후썰식 현상학적 주체와 비판 개념의 형이상학적 이론구조는 “정치적”이라는 개념으로 표상되고 파악되는 특성을 분명히 보이고 있다. 이러할 때, 우리는 슈미트식 정치 개념과 (...) 논리가 우리가 후썰현상학의 형이상학적 움직임을 구조적으로 동기적으로 추동하고 있는 것으로 보고 있는 그 정치성을 드러내게 하는데 유용한 관찰과 분석의 도구적 틀을 제공할 수 있음을 본다. 이 논문은 후썰이론 전반에 걸쳐 중심적인 이론적 역할을 담당하는 현상학적 주체-원험(原驗)적 초월자 주체(transcendental ideal subject) — 에 존재론적 ․ 구조적으로 내재하고 있는 일종의 분명한 정치적성(politicality)을 가시화하고자 하며, 그 작업에서 슈미트를 어떻게 전략적으로 유용할 수 있는지 보여주고자 한다. (shrink)

LK is much more difficult than NK, and to make matters worse, Gentzen's intention is still unclear when it comes to that system (LK). -/- After long surveys conducted from Vol.1 to Vol.5, all of which shares the common title What is LK?, this sixth volume, a direct continuation of Vol.5, successively handles the solved problems in the realm of propositional logic in LK.

Although written in Japanese, this article handles historical and technical survey of Gödel's incompleteness theorem thoroughly.

Although written in Japanese, what the statistical inference is philosophically investigated.

In this study, we conducted large-scale experiments with novel descriptions of determinism. Our goal was to investigate the effects of desires for punishment and comprehension errors on people’s intuitions about free will and moral responsibility in deterministic scenarios. Previous research has acknowledged the influence of these factors, but their total effect has not been revealed. Using a large-scale survey of Japanese participants, we found that the failure to understand causal determination (intrusion) has limited effects relative to other factors and that (...) the conflation of determinism and epiphenomenalism (bypassing) has a significant influence, even when controlling for other variables. This leads to the increased prevalence of incompatibilist responses. Furthermore, our results demonstrated a close association between the attribution of free will/responsibility and retributive desire. While further research is needed to establish the causal relationship between these factors, this association is consistent with Cory Clark and colleagues' study that increased desire contributes to increased compatibilist responses and their claim that a definitive intuition about free will may be elusive. (shrink)

The concept and the logic of the political, the most notable Schmittian ideas, based on the friend/enemy distinction and his thought on political theology have been widely and critically discussed and actively appropriated with various interpretations. On the other hand, we find that there is certain definite momentum piercing through the theoretical structure of Husserl’s phenomenology in general both as a form of metaphysics and as a philosophical movement, which can also be called the political. In this circumstance, we find (...) the Schmittian logic of the political together with his idea of political theology specifically serviceable for an effective visualization of the political characteristically structured in Husserl’s system, particularly in the concepts of transcendental subjectivity and universal critique. This paper argues that Husserl’s phenomenological critical subject is fundamentally a politico-theological subject and is an attempt to show to what extent and in what way Schmitt can be strategically utilized to make manifest the politicality that we discover as something that structurally inheres in Husserlian notion of subjectivity and critique. *. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify the relationship of three thinkers, Hume, Bentham, and Mill in the context of utilitarianism. Through discussion, we shall figure out how and why utilitarianism is trustworthy.

The foremost aim of this paper is to realize the fourth part of the Aufbau. This part, which provides an actual phenomenalistic constitution system, is interpretable from a Kantian perspective (§§1-4). But Carnap plotted to overcome Kant’s old style of philosophy as well. We review this aspect of his constitution, focusing on space (§§7-13) and time (§§5-6), especially.

Although written in Japanese, an overall picture of special theory of relativity is drawn, which would surely be useful for beginners as well as researchers of the humanities.

Cloning research caught a great deal of attention when Dolly the sheep was born (§4). While some fear surrounded the attainment (§§14-15), Wilmutʼs research itself has grown well, providing a less vicious manner to gain ES cells (§12). In this article, we review the progress of cloning research along with the concern of medical circles about its application to reproductive cloning, that is to say, making replicas of human beings (§§16-21). Note that all the content is ascribed to the author (...) alone, not to Musashino University. (shrink)

One can work for another person, probably for all the others in an ethical way, and not for money. This is the main idea pursued in this article. When it comes to labour, we are inclined to deal with Marx. But even Marx apparently did not notice this ethical side of labour, because his focus was mainly on the creation of value, which was common among thinkers at that time, such as Locke and Smith. In contrast, Hegel consistently tackled the (...) same issue from another angle: ethics. In terms of this, he went so far as to say the dignity of humans should be located in labour. We shed light on this very aspect of Hegel’s philosophy by reference to Alexandre Kojève’s famous commentary, Introduction à la lecture de Hegel. (shrink)

Although written in Japanese, this book becomes a landmark of my works so far: that on Zangwill (Kaneko, 2011), that on Utilitarianism (2013), and so on. The novelty shown in it is a formalization of traditional philosophy including Kant (its practical philosophy), Utilitarianism (Hume, Bentham, and Mill), and furthermore, Descartes. I try to locate these traditional thoughts within modern forms which I make in the name of "practical syllogism." This attempt would open up a new approach to ethical motivation.

Although written in Japanese, 動機説の観点から見た倫理的判断の諸相（Phases of the ethical judgement）has formed my original ideas on action theory, ethics, and so on.

LK is much more difficult than NK, and to make matters worse, Gentzen's intention is still unclear when it comes to that system (LK). -/- This book, Vol.1 of the series titled What is LK?, tackles this issue, focusing on the sequent, the most enigmatic notion we find in LK. The dependence-relation we find in NK shall play a crucial role in that investigation. -/- The style is typically textbook-like, so readers can learn the system of LK, using this series (...) as a guidance, too. (shrink)