USKALI MÄKI (Helsinki, 1951) is a philosopher of science and a social scientist, and one of the forerunners of the strong wave of research on the philosophy and methodology of economics that has been expanding during the last three decades. His research interests and academic contributions cover many topics in the philosophy of economics, such as realism and realisticness, idealisation, scientific modelling, causation, explanation, rhetoric, the sociology and economics of economics, and the foundations of new institutional and Austrian economics. He (...) is a coeditor of The handbook of economic methodology (1998); Economics and methodology: crossing boundaries (1998); Rationality, institutions and economic methodology (1993). And the editor of two compilations of essays that have become highly influential to the shaping of the field: The economic world view: studies in the ontology of economics (2001), and Fact and fiction in economics: realism, models, and social construction (2002). (shrink)

This article shows how the MISS account of models—as isolations and surrogate systems—accommodates and elaborates Sugden’s account of models as credible worlds and Hausman’s account of models as explorations. Theoretical models typically isolate by means of idealization, and they are representatives of some target system, which prompts issues of resemblance between the two to arise. Models as representations are constrained both ontologically (by their targets) and pragmatically (by the purposes and audiences of the modeller), and these relations are coordinated by (...) a model commentary. Surrogate models are often about single mechanisms. They are distinguishable from substitute models, which are examined without any concern about their connections with the target. Models as credible worlds are surrogate models that are believed to provide access to their targets on account of their credibility (of which a few senses are distinguished). (shrink)

Introducing the ontology of theory choice -/- Economists choose theories and they choose ways of pursuing theories, and they leave others unchosen. Why do economists choose the way they do? How should economists choose? What are the objectives and what are the constraints? What should they be? The questions are both descriptive and prescriptive. -/- There are two broad classes of “criteria of choice” that have been somewhat systematically considered in the recent literature on economic methodology: (1) Empirical criteria. There (...) are several possible ways of incorporating empirical criteria in one's theory of science. The respective methodology of theory assessment may be static or dynamic, it may be deductivist or inductivist, it may include various ideas of what constitutes empirical evidence, and so on. What they all share is the general idea that scientific theories are, or are to be, checked against empirical evidence according to some rules, and that this determines the choice of theory. (2) Social criteria. Again, there are several options. The social criteria may be related to the social interests of scientists or larger social collectives, they may be based on the persuasiveness and tradition-boundedness of theories, they may involve social or moral norms, they may be derived from various costs and benefits of holding a theory in a given research community, and so on. If they involve empirical data, it is the social aspects of the data that matter. What all these views share is that scientific theories are taken to have social attributes (functions, consequences) that play or should play a major role in theory choice. (shrink)

Science is often said to aim at truth. And much of science is heavily dependent on the construction and use of theoretical models. But the notion of model has an uneasy relationship with that of truth. -/- Not so long ago, many philosophers held the view that theoretical models are different from theories in that they are not accompanied by any ontological commitments or presumptions of truth, whereas theories are (e.g. Achinstein 1964). More recently, some have thought that models are (...) not truth-valued at all, but truth-valued claims can be made about similarity relations between models and real systems (e.g. Giere 1988). Others suggest that models are instruments that can be used for attaining truths, for example that models are false means for true theories (e.g. Wimsatt 2007). At the same time, philosophers and others keep talking about models being ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’, ‘accurate’ and ‘inaccurate’ or getting facts ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Among practicing scientists, one can find both the notion of a ‘true model’ and the idea that ‘it is in the nature of models that they are false’. There seems to be enough variety of views and confusion around them to invite a little bit of further investigation (see also Mäki 1992, 1994, 2004, 2009a,b,c). (shrink)

As concerns over the negative social and environmental impacts of industrial agriculture become more widespread, efforts to define and regulate sustainable agriculture have proliferated in the US. Whereas the USDA spearheaded previous efforts, today such efforts have largely shifted to Tripartite Standards Regimes (TSRs). Using a case study of the Leonardo Academy’s initiative to develop a US sustainable agriculture standard, this paper examines the standards-development process and efforts by agribusiness to influence the process. Specifically, we analyze how politics operate in (...) seemingly “depoliticized” TSRs, and how agribusiness and the USDA use “framing practices” and procedural complaints to influence the standard-development process. We contend that although governance mechanisms are a potentially powerful tool for advocates of alternative agrifood, their efficacy may be constrained by science-based requirements, an agribusiness countermovement, and a captured state. (shrink)

Niiles-Mäki, Anne Logotherapy as philosophical therapy - philosophical background, area of applicability, applied methods, Two-Staged Separation Diagnostics of disorders Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2021, 267 p. (JYU Dissertations ISSN 2489-9003; 432) ISBN 978-951-39-8863-0 (PDF) -/- This Dissertation belongs to the field of Philosophy. It deals with Logotherapy, a philosophical therapy form; its philosophical background, field of use, methods and diagnostics. Because of its nature as studying therapy, it belongs also in the field of human sciences and is a qualitative research. (...) As research approach, I have selected in philosophical research commonly used phenomenological-hermeneutic research approach and as for method, I chose content analysis method, which is necessary, in particular because one of the main aims in this study is to show how and why Logotherapy differs from the philosophical basis due to therapy forms that have emerged from the basis of Psychiatry and Psychology. Logotherapy also differs from other philosophical therapies because Logotherapy is based on Logotheory or Logophilosophy, which is a specific Existential-phenomenological theory, that has developed only to be applied in Logotherapy. This is why the content analysis of Logotherapy is a major part of studying Logotherapy. Logotherapy – unlike Psychotherapy – is focused on the Noological dimension of the consciousness, which is healthy by its principles. Psychotherapy doesn’t recognize the Noological dimension on the consciousness, but focuses on the disorders, that originate from the Psychic dimension of the consciousness. But the disorders in Noological and in Psychic dimension are different as their quality and not to be put together as mental disorders. -/- As research material, I have used the writings of Viktor Frankl, who developed Logotherapy, and the studies and theories concerning Logotherapy, that have been relevant to this study. I have also used the statistics and studies involving mental health, that have had interesting content and results related to Logotherapy. In this Dissertation, I also had to use the writings of the philosophers, psychiatrists and psychotherapists that influenced Viktor Frankl’s thinking and the writings of the philosophers, psychiatrists and psychotherapists that were relevant in studying and understanding the subject. This Dissertation is divided to 13 main chapters, from which the first six (1-6) deal with the basic assumptions and basic logotheoretic principles of the study, starting with methodology and studying process. Chapters 7-10 deal with the philosophical basis of Logotherapy, its field of use and applications. Chapters 11-12 present, among others, the Logotheoretic theory of consciousness and the Two-Staged Separation Diagnostics of disorders. Chapter 13 is focused on evaluation of the study and taking a stand towards new kind of logotherapeutic applications. Attachment “Exercise matrix for using in therapy process” is from A. Stropko. Exercise matrix has been modified and translated into Finnish. -/- Keywords: Viktor Frankl, Logotherapy, Logophilosophy, consciousness, Noological dimension of consciousness, Logotheoretic theory of consciousness, purpose, values, Existential Vacuum, Existential Analysis, worldview, Two-Staged Separation Diagnostics of disorders, medicalization. (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)

The growing body of research on interdisciplinarity has encouraged a more in depth analysis of the relations that hold among academic disciplines. In particular, the incursion of one scientific discipline into another discipline's traditional domain, also known as scientific imperialism, has been a matter of increasing debate. Following this trend, Scientific Imperialism aims to bring together philosophers of science and historians of science interested in the topic of scientific imperialism and, in particular, interested in the conceptual clarification, empirical identification, and (...) normative assessment of the idea of scientific imperialism. Thus, this innovative volume has two main goals. Indeed, the authors first seek to understand interdisciplinary relations emerging from the incursion of one scientific discipline into one or more other disciplines, such as in cases in which the conventions and procedures of one discipline or field are imposed on other fields; or more weakly when a scientific discipline seeks to explain phenomena that are traditionally considered proper of another discipline's domain. Secondly, the authors explore ways of distinguishing imperialistic from non-imperialistic interactions between disciplines and research fields. The first sustained study of scientific imperialism, this volume will appeal to postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Science and Technology Studies, Sociology of Science & Technology, Philosophy of Science, and History of Science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ōmori Shōzō and Kotodama Theory: How Can We Overcome the Need for Bodily Encounters?Maki SatoIntroductionŌmori Shōzō is known for his theory of tachi-araware monism. Tachiaraware monism is his attempted counter-argument to the Cartesian dualism of the object–subject divide, or in his words, a divide between physical (butsuri, mono, science, object) and non-physical consciousness (ishiki, koto, perception, incident), perception (chikaku, 知覚) and conception (shikō, 思考). His concept of Kasane-egaki (...) is also often cited as a core concept of his theory of time.1 The main aim of this paper is to first overview the works of Ōmori since there is only a limited amount of his translated work so far.2 Consecutively, the paper focuses on Ōmori’s theory of kotodama and its related arguments with an intention to expand his concept of Kowaburi into the ethics of online encounters during the pandemic.The world in 2020 was suddenly forced to face the pandemic caused by COVID-19. What COVID-19 alerted us to is tremendous, and there are countless problems that the invisible virus has revealed. Among those are the hidden problems of contemporary society, not limited to the discrimination among races, gender, and jobs (white-collars versus essential workers), the problem of zoonosis, and the related environmental problems (climate change and intrusion into wild nature) caused by over-exploitation of nature. In developed countries, most students and those serving as intellectual workers face their daily lives being overly occupied with online lectures and meetings. COVID-19 worked to normalize remote work, which further normalized and forced our everyday life to shift to cyberspace. [End Page 101]In introducing and overviewing Ōmori’s philosophy, this paper attempts to see the current situation through Ōmori’s philosophy to draw out some ethical implications related to non-physical online encounters and how we can perceive human interactions and relationships under such conditions. Under the constraints caused by COVID-19, humans’ limitless desires to interact with others are expanding more so to the sphere of cyberspace, leading to technological development, such as VR. In short, first, the paper overviews Ōmori’s philosophy. Second, through the overview of Ōmori’s philosophy, the paper seeks adaptable philosophy of his that may work as soft binding grounding ethics for cyberspace encounters where substantial bodily encounters are void. In doing so, the paper intends to draw out weak binding ethics implied in Ōmori’s philosophy that may work to empathetically engage with others in cyberspace where embodied encounters with others are dissolved.Ōmori Shōzō and His Philosophy: A Short Introduction and OverviewIn his short essay introducing the Japanese philosophy of the 1970s, Yasuo Kobayashi coined the term “Komaba quartet” by selecting four active eminent philosophers based on the Komaba campus at the University of Tokyo.3 Among them is Ōmori Shōzō (1921–97), aligning with Hiromatsu Wataru (1933–94), Sakabe Megumi (1936–2009), and Inoue Tadashi (1926–2014). Ōmori is the oldest of the Komaba quartet and received higher education before World War II. He served at the Naval Technology Institute Mitaka Laboratory during the war with his physics degree from the Tokyo Imperial University.4 After the war, he studied philosophy at the University of Tokyo with an interest in phenomenology, leading him to study at Harvard and Stanford in the United States.During his professorship at the University of Tokyo, he inspired countless students who are now leading the philosophy academy in Japan, such as Noe Keiichi (1949–) and Noya Shigeki (1954–). In the round-table discussion titled “Explanatory Round-Table on the Charm of Ōmori’s Philosophy,” four of his former students—Iida Takashi and Tanji Nobuharu, in addition to Noe and Noya—worked on selecting his works. It is impressive to read that all four [End Page 102] of them recall how exciting and inspiring it was to take his classes.5 Iida recalls that Ōmori’s classes were exceptional since philosophy courses were all about reading, with might and main, the texts written in a language other than Japanese at the University of Tokyo. However, Ōmori, with his postwar American education, welcomed discussion with the students and was keen on questioning... (shrink)

One prominent aspect of recent developments in science studies has been the increasing employment of economic concepts and models in the depiction of science, including the notion of a free market for scientific ideas. This gives rise to the issue of the adequacy of the conceptual resources of economics for this purpose. This paper suggests an adequacy test by putting a version of free market economics to a self-referential scrutiny. The outcome is that either free market economics is self-defeating, or (...) else there must be two different concepts of free market, one for the ordinary economy, the other for science. Both conclusions will impose limits on the applicability of the ordinary economic concept of the market to the study of science. (shrink)

In order to examine the fit between realism and science, one needs to address two issues: the unit of science question (realism about which parts of science?) and the contents of realism question (which realism about science?). Answering these questions is a matter of conceptual and empirical inquiry by way local case studies. Instead of the more ordinary abstract and global scientific realism, what we get is a doubly local scientific realism based on a bottom-up strategy. Representative formulations of the (...) former kind are in terms of the truth and reality of the posits of current science, in terms of warranted belief, in terms of mind-independent unobservable entities. Using illustrations mainly from the social sciences, doubly local scientific realism denies the global applicability of such formulations and seeks to make adjustments in their elements in response to information about local units of science: It is sufficient for a realist to give the existence of an entity (and the truth of a theory) a chance, while in some areas we may be in s position to make justified claims about actual existence (and truth). Logical inquiry-independent existence is sufficient for the social and human sciences, while mind-independence will be fine for many other domains. It should not be insisted that the theoretical posits of realist science be strict unobservables in all areas: most theoretical posits of the social sciences are idealized commonsensibles, such as elements in folk psychology. Unsurprisingly, this sort of local strategy will create space for realism that is able to accommodate larger areas of science without sacrificing traditional realist intuitions. (shrink)

A newly emerged field within economics, known as geographical economics claims to have provided a unified approach to the study of spatial agglomerations at different spatial scales by showing how these can be traced back to the same basic economic mechanisms. We analyze this contemporary episode of explanatory unification in relation to major philosophical accounts of unification. In particular, we examine the role of argument patterns in unifying derivations, the role of ontological convictions and mathematical structures in shaping unification, the (...) distinction between derivational and ontological unification, the issue of how explanation and unification relate and finally the idea that unification comes in degrees. (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)

Idealization is ubiquitous in human cognition, and so is the inclination to be puzzled by it: what to make of ideal gas, infinitely large populations, homo economicus, perfectly just society, known to violate matters of fact? This is apparent in social science theorizing (from J. H. von Thünen, J. S. Mill, and Max Weber to Milton Friedman and Thomas Schelling), recent philosophy of science analyzing scientific modeling, and the debate over ideal and non-ideal theory in political philosophy (since John Rawls). (...) I will offer a set of concepts and principles to improve transparency about the precise contents of idealizations (in terms of negligibility, applicability, tractability, and early-step status) and their distinct functions (such as contributing to minimal modeling, benchmark modeling, and how-possibly modeling). (shrink)

The phenomenological vision, particularly, Husserl’s idea of critique as an infinite vocational theoria and Patočka’s as an enduring programme, view Platonic logic and Socratic act as the paradigms for a normative justification of the idea of universal science and philosophy. In light of that, the Thrasymachus-Socrates debate is interpreted as a case to testify the critical power of philosophy successfully exercised over sophistic tyrannical non-philosophy. This paper criticizes the phenomenological idealization of the Socratic victory as an ethico-teleologically anticipated success of (...) philosophy and rewrites the defeat of Thrasymachus as a political failure in warring with philosophy during which Thrasymachus questions the legitimacy of the act of philosophizing to decide its legitimacy and thereby exposes the politics played out in that act. (shrink)

The suggestions outlined here include the following. Money is a bundle of institutionally sustained causal powers. Money is an institutional universal instantiated in generic currencies and particular money tokens. John Searle’s account of institutional facts is not helpful for understanding the nature of money as an institution (while it may help to illuminate aspects of the nature of currencies and money particulars). The money universal is not a social convention in David Lewis’s sense (while currencies and money particulars are characterized (...) by high degrees of conventionality). The existence of the money universal is dependent on a larger institutional structure and cannot be understood in terms of collective belief or acceptance or agreement separately focusing on money. These claims have important implications for realism about money. (shrink)

A few aspects of the issue of realism are addressed in the context of a social science. The paper looks for adjustments needed in our conceptions of scientiflc realism to accommodate some peculiarities of economics. Ontologically speaking, economics appears to be closely linked to commonsense conceptions of the world, thus the problem of theoretical concepts does not emerge in the same form it is often taken to exist in physics. Theory formation is largely a matter of idealization and isolation among (...) observables rather than postulation of unobservables. Given that isolative theories violate the truth in many ways, truth is more of a problem than existence in a realism pertaining to economics. The idea of significant truth -which is able to tolerare varieties of untruths in theories- is suggested to be based on the notion of the way the world works; this is a matter of the causal structure and functioning of the world. None of this is undermined by the acknowledgement that economist’s attittudes and decisions are shapped by rhetorical persuasion. (shrink)

Economics is a controversial scientific discipline. One of the traditional issues that has kept economists and their critics busy is about whether economic theories and models are about anything real at all. The critics have argued that economic models are based on assumptions that are so utterly unrealistic that those models become purely fictional and have nothing informative to say about the real world. Many also claim that an antirealist instrumentalism (allegedly outlined by Milton Friedman in 1953) justifying such unrealistic (...) models has become established as the semi-official practitioners' philosophy of conventional economics. Others argue that what is the case in the economy and the way economics relates to it are socially constructed such that there is no economics-independent way the world worls or truths about it. On both of these pictures, realism would seem to have little do with economics. These pictures are too simplistic. There is more realism in and about economics than first would appear. To see this requires not just looking mere closely, but also adjusting one's conception of scientific realism. It also requires taking a critical stance on much of what economicsts themselves and other commentators have claimed. Yet, historically, there is much wisdom available in the philosophical self-image of the discipline. (shrink)

Compared to the massive literature from other disciplinary perspectives on interdisciplinarity, philosophy of science is only slowly beginning to pay systematic attention to this powerful trend in contemporary science. The paper provides some metaphilosophical reflections on the emerging “Philosophy of Interdisciplinarity”. What? I propose a conception of PhID that has the qualities of being broad and neutral as well as stemming from within the agenda of philosophy of science. It will investigate features of science that reveal themselves when scientific disciplines (...) are viewed in comparison or in contact with one another. PhID will therefore generate two kinds of information: comparative and contactual. Comparative information is about the similarities and differences between disciplines, while contactual information is about what happens and why when disciplines get in contact with each other. Virtually all issues and resources within the philosophy of science can be mobilized to bear on the project, including philosophical accounts of models, explanations, justification, evidence, progress, values, demarcation, incommensurability, and so on. Given that scientific disciplines are institutional entities, resources available in social epistemology and social ontology will also have to be invoked. Why? Establishing PhID is presently an obvious step to take for several reasons, including the following two. First, ID is an increasingly powerful characteristic of contemporary science and its management, and so it would be inappropriate for an empirically informed philosophy of science to ignore it. Second, contemporary philosophy of science happens to be particularly well equipped for addressing issues of ID thanks to the recent massive work in the more specialized fields of philosophies of special disciplines. How? Given the breadth and heterogeneity of its domain and tasks, the practice of PhID must be heavily collective. It must mobilize multiple competences and it must keep elaborating a systematic agenda. While a lot of new conceptual work is needed, the approach is bound to be emphatically empirical, with a cumulative and mutually complementary series of case studies to be conducted. Among the methods to be employed, good old textual analysis of scientific publications will be supplemented with interviews, ‘experimental’ techniques, participant observation as well as various interventionist approaches. The published work in PhID will often be authored jointly by philosophers and other scholars in science studies as well as practitioners in various scientific disciplines. (shrink)

Ronald Coase has been a vigorous critic of mainstream economic theory, arguing that it is unrealistic and that a good theory is realistic. The attributes "realistic" and "unrealistic" appear in three senses at least in Coase: one related to narrow ness and breadth; another related to abstracting from particularities (and the issue of "blackboard economics"); and the third related to correspondence with the legal. This does not yet make Coase an advocate of realism. It is therefore separately argued that each (...) of the three kinds of "realisticness" as a property of theories is consistent with realism as a theory of theories. (shrink)

This study attempted to answer the question of how to share the values and ethics of youth work among practitioners and with policymakers, funders, and society. Although social interest in youth support in Japan has been on rise recently due to the increase number of difficulties surrounding young people, the ‘ethics and values’ in practice and in the field can be driven by the neoliberal social and political trends present in our society. This study presents a way to resist and (...) counter the penetration of neoliberal practical ethics and organisational management through the process of visualising, sharing and legitimising the ‘practical ethics and values’ embedded in the fields where youth work has been developed with young people. This is the research-based practice of ‘practitioners collectively telling, writing, sharing, and communicating the stories of practice’. (shrink)

The following essay is an attempt to a) bridge the gap between habit in the ordinary sense of the word and the concept of habit as described by philosophers, using the various characteristics of habitual behaviors that shape daily life as a clue and b) clarify what it means to question the meaning of habit in general. What philosophers from Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas, to Ravaisson, to Dewey have regarded as habit is very different from the common usage of the (...) noun “habit.” The word “habit” commonly refers to automatically repetitive, nonreflective behavior that does not require the intervention of the will. In contrast, philosophers have regarded the essence of habit to be the free exercise of advanced abilities that require concentration and tension. The following essay confirms that 1) habits are a way of returning to ourselves and are impossible to imitate, 2) we should distinguish habits from "routines" and "rituals,” and 3) the problem of the formation of habit is one of “transcendence.”. (shrink)

My philosophical intuitions are those of a scientific realist. In addition to being realist in its philosophical outlook, my philosophy of economics also aspires to be realistic in the sense of being descriptively adequate, or at least normatively non-utopian, about economics as a scientific discipline. The special challenge my philosophy of economics must meet is to provide a scientific realist account that is realistic of a discipline that deals with a complex subject matter and operates with highly unrealistic models. Unrealisticness (...) in economic models must not constitute an obstacle to realism about those models. What follows is a selective and somewhat abstract summary of my thinking about economics, outlined from two perspectives: first historical and autobiographical, then systematic and comparative. The first angle helps understand motives and trajectories of ideas against their backgrounds in intellectual history. My story turns out to have both unique and generalizable aspects. The second approach outlines some of the key concepts and arguments as well as their interrelations in my philosophy of economics, with occasional comparisons to other views. More space will be devoted to this second perspective than to the first. (shrink)

Economics is a culturally and politically powerful and contested discipline, and it has been that way as long as it has existed. For some commentators, economics is the "queen of the social sciences", while others view it as a "dismal science" (and both of these epithets allow for diverse interpretations; see Mäki 2002). Economics is also a discipline that deals with a dynamically complex subject matter and has a tradition of reducing this complexity by using systematic procedures of simplification. Nowadays, (...) these procedures involve for the most part building and using mathematical models (for an overview of the philosophical issues, see Morgan and Knuuttila 2011). In the dominant circles of the discipline, one is not regarded as a serious economist having a professional expert view on any given economic or social issue without having a model about it. Much of the power of the discipline and its characteristic contestations therefore involve models and modelling: the successes and failures of the dismal queen are those of modeling. The issues involved in conomic modeling have been made particularly acute once again by the financial crisis of 2008-2009 and its aftermath: the discipline of economics is among the candidates for the major blame for failure. I will first outline some thoughts about the characteristics disciplinary conventions that guide and constrain modeling in economics. I will then summarize my account of the very ideas of models and modeling. Finally, within the framework of that account, I will highlight some major issues of contestation and sketch the respective notions of potential success and failure in economic modeling with illustrations. These notions are motivated by my subscription to a (flexible and discipline-sensitive) realist philosophy of science (e.g. Mäki 2005). (shrink)

The subject of this paper is the meaning and significance of habit formation, or habituation, in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. According to Aristotle, ethics is an intellectual activity that helps an individual become a good person. Moreover, habituation is essential for becoming a good person. Aristotle believes that habituation, which helps us become good people, is possible by making “actions in accordance with virtues” our habits. Habituation is a keystone concept in Aristotle’s ethics. However, contrary to the importance given to the (...) concept of habituation, Aristotle’s remarks on habituation are curiously poor and fragmentary. Several researchers have been baffled by this contradiction and have produced different perplexing interpretations. This paper attempts to shed light on Aristotle’s views on the path to virtue from a new perspective by clarifying three points: 1. According to Aristotle, habituation is something that adults with life experience should attempt to overcome their vices. 2. The “action” that constitutes the substance of habituation is the trial and error through which the learner achieves his or her own “middle point” (i.e., virtue), without following ready-made examples. 3. The reason Aristotle did not offer an in-depth explanation of this issue is that the hard work of habituation is already a “virtuous” and “noble” action in and of itself. (shrink)

Sex chromosomes in plants have been known for a century, but only recently have we begun to understand the mechanisms behind sex determination in dioecious plants. Here, we discuss evolution of sex determination, focusing on Silene latifolia, where evolution of separate sexes is consistent with the classic “two mutations” model—a loss of function male sterility mutation and a gain of function gynoecium suppression mutation, which turned an ancestral hermaphroditic population into separate males and females. Interestingly, the gynoecium suppression function in (...) S. latifolia evolved via loss of function in at least two sex‐linked genes and works via gene dosage balance between sex‐linked, and autosomal genes. This system resembles X/A‐ratio‐based sex determination systems in Drosophila and Rumex, and could represent a steppingstone in the evolution of X/A‐ratio‐based sex determination from an active Y system. (shrink)

Chapter 5 of an e-book 'Handbook for Logotherapists' 2024 (Niiles-Mäki Anne). Institute for Purpose-centered Philosophy Finland.

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)

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.

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)

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

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)

"The world as markets. At the core and boundaries of a universal economic ontology".

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.