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.

The article explores a change taking place today in the fields of biology and social anthropology, signaling a shared desire to transcend the heuristic effects of the opposition between nature and culture. Acceptance of the idea that random mutations are the sole driving force behind the process of natural selection overlooks the agentive capacity of non-human living beings, revealing an anthropocentric inspiration. To critique the rhetoric surrounding the principle of natural selection, I turn to the anthropology of Tim Ingold and (...) his analysis of the metaphors that illustrate the principle. I disagree with the author, however, when he argues that these metaphors do not adequately illustrate neo-Darwinian premises. Instead, I believe that they are faithful since their apparent contradiction expresses the unease of neo-Darwinian theory itself when it combines randomness and teleology. New currents in biology, such as biosemiotics, attribute evolutionary importance to epigenetic changes. From the evolutionary perspective, they also highlight the importance of recognizing that the entire lived world possesses the capacity for agency, not just human beings. Within social anthropology, the so-called ontological turn and multispecies ethnography have been working with a new conception of the person, extendible to non-human beings, including the latter to compose a single collective with humans. Thus we can observe an attempt on the part of biologists and anthropologists alike to move beyond anthropocentrism, producer and product of the opposition between nature and culture. (shrink)

En este artículo se estudia la novela _El entenado _(1983), de Juan José Saer, una obra singular que se incluye dentro del género de la nueva novela histórica pero que se aleja de sus convenciones. _El entenado _no reflexiona sobre un hecho central de la historia de Argentina ni acude a testimonios colectivos, sino que desplaza su mirada al testimonio individual y a la narración de un acontecimiento histórico casi olvidado, marginal: la fallida expedición de Juan Díaz de Solís (1515) (...) y el testimonio del único superviviente de la antropofagia ritual de los indios colastiné, el grumete Francisco del Puerto. Las herramientas teóricas de este artículo corresponden a los postulados de la novela histórica de Georg Lukács y a las premisas de María Cristina Pons sobre la nueva novela histórica de mediados del siglo XX en Latinoamérica; todo esto en diálogo con la poética del autor vertida en ensayos y entrevistas. El centro de este estudio, sin embargo, no es una reflexión genérica, sino el análisis detallado de los diversos desplazamientos que propone Saer: el genérico, el espacial y el temporal. Se subraya, principalmente, el movimiento que va de la fragmentación, de los cuerpos, o del discurso parcial de la historia, a la construcción de un sentido simbólico. Las conclusiones reflexionan sobre cómo integrar los elementos excluidos (históricos, sociales e individuales) en los grandes discursos y cómo dotarlos de sentido. Así, esta novela propone abandonar la infructuosa búsqueda de una verdad histórica y sustituirla por una verdad simbólica, más crítica e incluyente. (shrink)

Some researchers claim that uncertainty prolongs the duration of emotional experiences because uncertainty toward an emotion-eliciting event prolongs attention to that event. However, some results contradict this claim. We assumed that curiosity rather than uncertainty prolongs the duration of emotional experience via attention, and that attention and emotional experience are prolonged only when uncertainty elicits curiosity. This assumption is based on the information gap theory, which proposes that curiosity increases with uncertainty, but that curiosity decreases at a certain level of (...) uncertainty. We conducted a survey study to investigate the relationships among curiosity, uncertainty, attention and duration of positive and negative emotional experiences. The results showed that curiosity, but not uncertainty, prolonged the duration of emotional experiences and the process was completely mediated by attention both for positive and negative emotions. Moreover, uncertainty prolonged the duration of emotional experiences only when uncertainty elicited curiosity, which in turn prolonged attention to the emotion-eliciting event. (shrink)

Functional electrical stimulation (FES), a method for inducing muscle contraction, has been successfully used in gait rehabilitation for patients with deficits after neurological disorders and several clinical studies have found that it can improve gait function after stroke and spinal cord injury. However, FES gait training is not suitable for patients with walking difficulty, such as those with severe motor paralysis of the lower limbs. We have previously shown that action observation combined with motor imagery (AO + MI) of walking (...) induces walking-related cortical activity. Therefore, we combined FES, which alternately generates dorsiflexion and plantar flexion, with AO + MI as an alternative to gait training. The present study investigates the transient effects of 20-min of FES simultaneously with and without AO + MI of walking on corticospinal and spinal reflex excitability in able-bodied participants. We measured motor evoked potentials and Hoffmann-reflexes to assess corticospinal and spinal reflex excitability at rest before and after the 20-min FES with and without the AO + MI. Our results show that FES without AO + MI did not change excitability (p > 0.05), while FES with AO + MI facilitated corticospinal excitability (p < 0.05). This facilitation likely occurred due to the synchronization of sensory inputs from FES and cortical activity during AO + MI. Facilitation was observed only in the dorsiflexor but not the plantar flexor muscle (p < 0.05), suggesting muscle specificity of the facilitation. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of combining FES with AO + MI and pave the way for novel neurorehabilitation strategies for patients with neurological gait deficits. (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, third, and fourth 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.4, looks deeper into those operational inference-figures which concerns predicate logic.

À la fin du xixe siècle, la plupart des nations latino-américaines étaient intégrées au commerce international par l’exportation de produits agricoles, miniers ou d’élevage et l’importation de biens manufacturés. Le développement des moyens de transport, principalement le train, et le processus d’urbanisation s’étaient accélérés. De nombreuses villes surgirent, de grandes villes furent transformées et embellies par de nouveaux bâtiments, parcs et jardins. La demande de main d’œuvre impulsa un...

A presentation of one of the most important Thomistic institutions, the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas, founded by Pope Leo XIII in 1879, and renewed in 1999 by John Paul II. The article covers the origins of the project, its long history, and its recent reform.

Os discursos repletos do signo da diversidade tornaram-se padrão dominante na publicidade contemporânea. Neste artigo, buscamos analisar como e porque a diversidade passou a ser um ativo simbólico na instância da comunicação de marcas e refletir sobre os possíveis impactos desta mudança. Realizamos um estudo documental, a partir da análise retórica de textos que orientam os profissionais de marketing e publicitários para o enfoque em campanhas inclusivas. Nestes discursos, buscamos encontrar as principais justificações – explícitas ou implícitas - para a (...) adesão à causa da diversidade. Para uma compreensão mais aprofundada do fenômeno, a análise empírica foi precedida de revisão teórica que desvelasse transformações mais amplas em diversos aspectos da sociedade contemporânea que afetam e reconfiguram o ecossistema de comunicação de marketing. Palavras-chave: marketing inclusivo; diversidade; publicidade de causa. (shrink)

Este artigo pretende analisar e entender os mecanismos envolvidos na servidão voluntária uma vez que essa disposição dos seres humanos em servir de modo gratuito faz com que não só se afastem do estado de natureza, de sua liberdade, mas também tolerem pacientemente os maus zelos tirânicos sendo assim, a partir de que surge tal voluntarismo servil e por que ele acontece de forma fácil? Serão os costumes que encaminham os homens a servir? Ou ainda, a servidão voluntária é resultado (...) de um acaso, o “mau encontro”? Ao mesmo tempo temos os admiradores do tirano, que visando exercerem a opressão ou ainda, visando tomarem o poder do seu senhor, fomentam no cotidiano humano a servidão gratuita. Iremos apresentar cada um destes momentos para que possamos chegar a um entendimento sobre a servidão voluntária nos baseando na obra de Étienne de La Boétie “O Discurso da Servidão Voluntária”. (shrink)

Here I present and discuss a model that, among other things, appears able to describe the dynamics of cancer cell origin from the perspective of stable and unstable gene expression profiles. In identifying suchaberrantgene expression profiles as lying outside the normal stable states attracted through development and normal cell differentiation, the hypothesis explains why cancer cells accumulate mutations, to which they are not robust, and why these mutations create a new stable state far from the normal gene expression profile space. (...) Such cells are in strong contrast with normal cell types that appeared as an attractor state in the gene expression dynamical system under cell‐cell interaction and achieved robustness to noise through evolution, which in turn also conferred robustness to mutation. In complex gene regulation networks, otheraberrantcellular states lacking such high robustness are expected to remain, which would correspond to cancer cells. (shrink)

Kaneko-Suzuki developed epistemic logics of shallow depths with multiple players for investigations of game theoretical problems. By shallow depth, we mean that nested occurrences of belief operators of players in formulae are restricted, typically to be of finite depths, by a given epistemic structure. In this paper, we develop various methods of surgical operations (cut and paste) of epistemic world models. An example is a bouquet-making, i.e., tying several models into a bouquet. Another example is to engraft a model (...) to some branches of another model. By these methods, we obtain various meta-theorems on semantics and syntax on epistemic logics. To illustrate possible uses of our meta-theorems, we present one game theoretical theorem, which is also a meta-theorem in the sense of logic. (shrink)

Addressing the question in the form of Kant’s maxim, this paper moves on to a more controversial topic in biomedical ethics, physician-assisted suicide. However, my conclusion is tentative, and what is worse, negative: I partially approve suicide. It does not imply a moral hazard. The situation is opposite: in the present times, terminal patients seriously wish it. I, as an author, put an emphasis on this very respect. Now suicide is, for certain circles, nothing but justice. The arguments of thinkers (...) who approve suicide are also cited from this angle. (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)

Although written in Japanese, 確率としての信念（Belief as Probability） pursues a good explanation of Ramsey's subjective theory of probability.

This paper analyses the metaliterary statements that pervade the oeuvre of Ennodius of Pavia (a.d. 474–521) in order to reconstruct his underlying conception of language: its nature, power, function, limitations, and dangers. This new perspective provides a more nuanced insight into the paradoxical poetics of the author as well as his final renunciation to literature after his appointment as bishop of Pavia.

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.