In "The Way of the Dialetheist: Contradictions in Buddhism," Yasuo Deguchi, Jay L. Garfield, and Graham Priest argue that some (though not all) of the contradictions that appear in Buddhist texts should be accepted. An examination of their argument depends on what sort(s) of negation is (are) used in the texts. In order to see apparently contradictory statements as affirmations of true contradictions, we must assume that 'not' (or its variance) is used as a contradiction-forming operator. In this article, the (...) conception of negation(s) that is (are) salient in the writings of Dōgen is examined, and it is argued that he would not agree that his sentences are to be considered, and accepted, as contradictory. (shrink)

Following on from Shaun Gallagher's influential 2005 book How the Body Shapes the Mind, this volume brings together leading experts from the fields of philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry in a productive dialogue, exploring key questions and debates about the relationship between body schema and body image.

The Moon Points Back comprises essays by both established scholars in Buddhist and Western philosophy and young scholars contributing to cross-cultural philosophy. It continues the program of Pointing at the Moon, integrating the approaches and insights of contemporary logic and analytic philosophy along with those of Buddhist Studies in order to engage with Buddhist ideas in a contemporary voice.The essays in the volume focus on the Buddhist notion of emptiness, exploring its relationship to core philosophical issues concerning the self, the (...) nature of reality, logic, and epistemology. The volume closes with reflections on methodological issues raised by bringing together traditional Buddhist philosophy and contemporary analytic philosophy.The Moon Points Back demonstrates convincingly that integration of Buddhist philosophy with contemporary analytic philosophy and logic allows for novel understandings of and insights into Buddhist philosophical thought. It also shows how Buddhist philosophers can contribute to debates in contemporary Western philosophy and how contemporary philosophers and logicians can engage with Buddhist material. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Japan Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies 2005 Annual MeetingPaul SwansonThe 2005 meetings of the Japan Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies focused on the theme "Personal and Impersonal Aspects of the Absolute" and were divided into two venues, with a preliminary panel at the nineteenth World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) in Tokyo, March 24–30, and the regular annual meeting held in Kyoto on July 19–21. (...) At both meetings, the same four papers by JSBCS members were presented, in English at the World Congress and in Japanese at the regular meeting of the Society.The topic summary for the IAHR panel read as follows:In general, the Christian God is said to be transcendental and personal, but the Buddhist dharma is said to be immanent and impersonal. God, Christ, and Holy Spirit in the New Testament, however, have an immanent transcendent side, and it is impersonal on the immanence side. There is also a transcendent immanence side of the Buddhist Tathagata, and it is personal on the transcendent side. On the one hand, the three major personalistic monotheisms that originated in the Middle East traditionally understood the teachings of other religions as incomplete. On the other hand, in Buddhism other religions are looked down on as "other ways," unable to bring about final liberation (ADK IX). It is said that in the case of the personalistic religions, there is risk of spiritual attachment because God reveals His absolute divine will to believers through prophets; in the case of Buddhism, practitioners are urged to seek their own enlightenment and even, in some early sutras, to use critical reasoning. However, even in Buddhism the thoughts of the founders of the sects have authority. It is important to re-examine the meaning of God and dharma from the perspective of the human personality structure.Chaired by Watanabe Manabu, the IAHR panel consisted of the following four paper presentations:1. Hanaoka Eiko, "Absolute Infinite Openness in Christianity and Buddhism." The origin of a personal God in Christianity and impersonal "emptiness" or "absolute nothingness" in Buddhism are both personal and also impersonal [End Page 183] as an "absolute infinite openness." The self-awareness of absolute infinite openness is the self-awareness of the experience of the most personal dimension, and always simultaneously of the most impersonal dimension. It is that impersonal dimension that this paper investigates.2. Takemura Makio, "On the Significance of Buddha in Buddhism." Buddhism has a view of the Absolute that is comparatively unique. The Absolute is not found in the absolute in contrast to the relative. It is always found in the identity of the absolute and the relative, that is, the identity of any conditioned dharma (samskrita) and the ultimate unconditioned nature (asamskrita) as emptiness (sunyata), or the activity of jnana and the tathata or dharmata. In other words, the individuality or personality of Buddha and the universality or impersonality of tathata are never separated. The ultimate nature does not exist only by itself, and a buddha is one of many buddhas, even if people believe the Buddha as absolute. In Buddhism, buddhas as personal are filled with great compassion and work hard to guide people to become Buddha. They never judge people's guilt. Why is this so? This paper attempts to analyze the reasons in terms of questions such as whether or not the personality of the Absolute is rooted on emptiness, whether the Absolute is one or not, and so forth.3. Tanaka Yutaka, "God as the Locus of the World and the Ground of Human Freedom." This paper critically discusses Nishitani Keiji's arguments of "The Personal and the Impersonal in Religion" in his Religion and Nothingness. Comparing the Christian tradition of speculative mysticism or "panentheism" with the Zen Buddhist philosophy of "Nothingness," the paper seeks to show that God as the locus of the cosmos is the transcendental ground of human freedom and subjectivity.4. Yagi Seiichi, "Impersonal God in the New Testament." In the Pauline epistles and Johannine literature, the key words of a theology that indicates the oneness of divine-human activity can be identified: God working in us, as an expression of mutual... (shrink)

Logic in Buddhist Philosophy concerns the systematic study of anumāna (often translated as inference) as developed by Dignāga (480-540 c.e.) and Dharmakīti (600-660 c.e.). Buddhist logicians think of inference as an instrument of knowledge (pramāṇa) and, thus, logic is considered to constitute part of epistemology in the Buddhist tradition. According to the prevalent 20th and early 21st century ‘Western’ conception of logic, however, logical study is the formal study of arguments. If we understand the nature of logic to be formal, (...) it is difficult to see what bearing logic has on knowledge. In this paper, by weaving together the main threads of thought that are salient in Dignāga’s and Dharmakīti’s texts, I shall re-conceive the nature of logic in the context of epistemology and demarcate the logical part of epistemology which can be recognised as logic. I shall demonstrate that we can recognise the logical significance of inference as understood by Buddhist logicians despite the fact that its logical significance lies within the context of knowledge. (shrink)

The problem of how to accommodate inconsistencies has attracted quite a number of researchers, in particular, in the area of database theory. The problem is also of concern in the study of belief change. For inconsistent beliefs are ubiquitous. However, comparatively little work has been devoted to discussing the problem in the literature of belief change. In this paper, I examine how adequate the AGM theory is as a logical framework for belief change involving inconsistencies. The technique is to apply (...) to Grove’s sphere system, a semantical representation of the AGM theory, logics that do not infer everything from contradictory premises, viz., paraconsistent logics. I use three paraconsistent logics and discuss three sphere systems that are based on them. I then examine the completeness of the postulates of the AGM theory with respect to the systems. At the end, I discuss some philosophical implications of the examination. (shrink)

BackgroundRegulations on forgoing life-sustaining treatment (LST) have developed in Asian countries including Japan, Korea and Taiwan. However, other countries are relatively unaware of these due to the language barrier. This article aims to describe and compare the relevant regulatory frameworks, using the (more familiar) situation in England as a point of reference. We undertook literature reviews to ascertain the legal and regulatory positions on forgoing LST in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and England.Main textFindings from a literature review are first presented to (...) describe the development of the regulatory frameworks surrounding the option of forgoing LST in each country. Based on the findings from the four countries, we suggest five ethically important points, reflection on which should help to inform the further development of regulatory frameworks concerning end-of-life care in these countries and beyond. There should be reflection on: (1) the definition of – and reasons for defining – the ‘terminal stage’ and associated criteria for making such judgements; Korea and Taiwan limit forgoing LST to patients in this stage, but there are risks associated with defining this too narrowly or broadly; (2) foregoing LST for patients who arenotin this stage, as is allowed in Japan and England, because here too there are areas of controversy, including (in England) whether the law in this area does enough to respect the autonomy of (now) incapacitated patients; (3) whether ‘foregoing’ LST should encompass withholdingandwithdrawing treatment; this is also an ethically disputed area, particularly in the Asian countries we examine; (4) the family’s role in end-of-life decision-making, particularly as, compared with England, the three Asian countries traditionally place a greater emphasis on families and communities than on individuals; and (5) decision-making with and for those incapacitated patients who lack families, surrogate decision-makers or ADs.ConclusionComparison of, and reflection on, the different legal positions that obtain in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and England should prove informative and we particularly invite reflection on five areas, in the hope the ensuing discussions will help to establish better end-of-life regulatory frameworks in these countries and elsewhere. (shrink)

Wright’s “adaptive landscape” has been influential in evolutionary thinking but controversial, especially because the landscape that organisms encounter is altered by the evolutionary process itsel...

My life as a quantum physicist / M. Nakahara -- A review on operator quantum error correction - Dedicated to Professor Mikio Nakahara on the occasion of his 60th birthday / C.-K. Li, Y.-T. Poon and N.-S. Sze -- Implementing measurement operators in linear optical and solid-state qubits / Y. Ota, S. Ashhab and F. Nori -- Fast and accurate simulation of quantum computing by multi-precision MPS: Recent development / A. Saitoh -- Entanglement properties of a quantum lattice-gas model on (...) square and triangular ladders / S. Tanaka, R. Tamura and H. Katsura -- On signal amplification from weak-value amplification / Y. Shikano -- Topological protection of quantum information / K. Fujii -- Quantum annealing with antiferromagnetic fluctuations for mean-field models / Y. Seki and H. Nishimori -- A method to change phase transition nature - Toward annealing methods / R. Tamura and S. Tanaka -- Computational analysis of the first stage of the photosynthetic system, the light-dependent reaction, by quantum chemical simulation method / M. Tada-Umezaki -- Two-qubit gate operation on selected nearest neighboring qubits in a neutral atom quantum computer / E. Hosseini Lapasar... [et al.] -- A simple operator quantum error correction scheme avoiding fully correlated errors / C. Bagnasco, Y. Kondo and M. Nakahara -- Black hole predictability, classical and quantum / A. Ishibashi -- Classical field simulation of finite-temperature Bose gases / T. Sato -- Atomic quantum simulations of lattice gauge theory: Effect of gauge symmetry breaking / K. Kasamatsu, I. Ichinose and T. Matsui -- Recursive construction of noiseless subsystem for qudits / U. Gungordu... [et al.] -- Composite quantum gates for precise quantum control / M. Bando... [et al.] -- New formulation of statistical mechanics using thermal pure quantum states / S. Sugiura and A. Shimizu -- Thermodynamics in unitary time evolution / T. N. Ikeda -- Second law of thermodynamics with QC-mutual information / T. Sagawa. (shrink)

In Japan, terminating life-sustaining treatment in non-terminal patients is legally and ethically problematic given the lack of legal regulations regarding the termination of LST, including dialysis treatment. This article describes an ethically problematic case that happened at a hospital in Tokyo in March 2019, in which a patient died after a physician withdrew kidney dialysis upon the patient’s request. Most national newspapers in Japan reported the case extensively and raised the question of ethical and legal permissibility of withdrawing dialysis treatment (...) from non-terminal patients. In this article, we first examine the case within the current policy framework in Japan and then discuss how Japan can improve its end-of-life practice, focusing specifically on the patient’s right to self-determination and treatment refusal. We recommend that policymakers consider legalizing the termination of LST and the patient’s right to refuse treatment based on the principle of respect for autonomy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist ExperienceDavid L. McMahanBuddhism: Introducing the Buddhist Experience. By Donald W. Mitchell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 368. Hardcover $55.00. Paper $26.95.The teacher of courses on Buddhism now has an unprecedented number of high-quality introductory texts from which to select, many of which have just been published or revised in the past few years. Thus, the problem becomes which to choose. Donald (...) W. Mitchell's Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist Experience should be [End Page 268] among the first choices, especially if the course focuses on the doctrinal and textual elements of Buddhism. Those looking for rich descriptions of Buddhism on the ground or detailed analyses of living traditions, however, will either look elsewhere or supplement Mitchell's text with others.The organization of Buddhism is fairly typical of the genre. After an introduction, the chapters are: "The Life of Gautama Buddha," "The Teachings of the Buddha," "The Way of the Elders," "The Great Vehicle," "The Indian Experience of Buddhism," "The Tibetan Experience of Buddhism," "The Chinese Experience of Buddhism," "The Korean Experience of Buddhism," "The Japanese Experience of Buddhism," "Modern Buddhism in Asia," and "Buddhism in the West." Also included are some photographs, maps, a pronunciation guide, and a glossary. The book also features twenty-two boxes with short writings, often autobiographical, by modern Buddhists elucidating some feature of their own understanding or experience of their tradition. Among these are writings by well-known Asian Buddhists such as the Dalai Lama, Dharma Master Sheng Yen, and Sulak Sivaraksa; Western Buddhist teachers like Robert Aitken and Sylvia Boorstein; and scholar-practitioners like Jeffrey Hopkins, Rita Gross, and Kenneth Kenshin Tanaka. Although brief, they successfully bring to life the practice of Buddhism from various inside perspectives.The strongest parts of the text are the explications of Indian Buddhism as presented in sūtras and other primary sources. Here Mitchell presents surprisingly (for an introductory text) rich accounts of the Pāli suttas, Mahāyāna sūtras, and the various philosophical schools. He stays close to the texts and offers coherent accounts of main doctrines, accessible yet nuanced and peppered liberally with quotations from primary sources. Of particular interest is an extended treatment of Buddhaghosa's Visuddhi-magga and accounts of the main themes of important Mahāyāna sūtras: the Perfection of Wisdom sūtras, the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, the Lotus Sūtra, and the Sukhāvatī-vyūha Sūtra.The chapters on Tibetan and East Asian Buddhism do not—and, in the limited space allotted, could not—maintain the level of detail provided in the chapters on Indian traditions. Indeed, it seems inevitable that introductory texts must give a sometimes tedious list of schools and figures when addressing these geographical areas. In Mitchell's book, however, even these chapters feature accounts of certain doctrines that go beyond those of most introductory texts. The chapter on Chinese Buddhism, for example, introduces in some depth the intricacies of Ch'ih-i's T'ient'ai doctrine, the visionary extravagance of the Hua-yen school, and the poetic subtleties of Hui-neng's explication of Ch'an in the Platform Sūtra of the Sixth Patriarch.The book's richness in the presentation of doctrines and texts does exact a certain cost in historical nuance. While an introductory text cannot afford space for too much scholarly debate, some historians of Buddhism will likely find unsatisfactory the distinction presented in the introduction between the "vast array of Buddhist religious cultural forms" and its "profound spiritual quest" or "the more fundamental depths of Buddhist experiences" (p. 1). Such language, although widespread, perpetuates the "core philosophy and practice"-versus-"culturally accumulated baggage" [End Page 269] picture of Buddhism constructed by early western Buddhologists, implicitly suggesting that scholars can extract this original tradition from later cultural accretions. Thus, while Mitchell is by no means uncritical in his analysis of traditional historical claims, he sometimes blurs distinctions between these claims and those which can be verified by critical historical study. He presents, for example, a concise account of the scholarly debates surrounding the rise of... (shrink)

A logic is said to be paraconsistent if it does not allow everything to follow from contradictory premises. There are several approaches to paraconsistency. This paper is concerned with several philosophical positions on paraconsistency. In particular, it concerns three ‘schools’ of paraconsistency: Australian, Belgian and Brazilian. The Belgian and Brazilian schools have raised some objections to the dialetheism of the Australian school. I argue that the Australian school of paraconsistency need not be closed down on the basis of the Belgian (...) and Brazilian schools’ objections. In the appendix of the paper, I also argue that the Brazilian school’s view of logic is not coherent. (shrink)

Toyoichi Tanaka's pioneering work in biophysics made major contributions to the science of gels and polymers. His research centered on the physics of gels, their fundamental structures and characteristics, their dynamics, and their roles in living organisms. This volume collects twenty-five major research papers originally published in Science, Nature, Physical Review Letters, and other leading journals between 1973 and 2000. The English texts are supplemented with Japanese summaries and critiques written by a group of Dr. Tanaka's colleagues and (...) students. (shrink)

Priest holds anti-exceptionalism about logic. That is, he holds that logic, as a theory, does not have any exceptional status in relation to the theories of empirical sciences. Crucial to Priest’s anti-exceptionalism is the existence of ‘data’ that can force the revision of logical theory. He claims that classical logic is inadequate to the available data and, thus, needs to be revised. But what kind of data can overturn classical logic? Priest claims that the data is our intuitions about the (...) validity of inferences. In order to make sense of this claim, I will appeal to the Madhyamaka Buddhist philosopher Candrakīrti. I will then pose a problem for Priest’s anti-exceptionalism. Finally, I will suggest a way out of the problem for Priest. Whether or not he accepts my solution, I will let him decide. (shrink)

In this paper, using Mark Schroeder’s (2008a) expressivist semantic framework for normative language as a case study, I will identify difficulties that even an expressivist semantic theory capable of addressing the Frege-Geach problem will encounter in handling the logical possibility of moral dilemmas. To this end, I will draw on a classical puzzle formulated by McConnell (1978) that the logical possibility of moral dilemmas conflicts with some of the prima facie plausible axioms of the standard deontic logic, which include obligation (...) implies permission. On the tentative assumption that proponents of ethical expressivism should be generally committed to securing the logical possibility of moral dilemmas in their semantic theories, I will explore whether and how expressivists can successfully invalidate obligation implies permission within the framework developed by Schroeder. The case study eventually reveals that this can indeed be a hard task for expressivists. Generalizing from the case study, I will suggest that the source of the difficulty ultimately lies in the mentalist assumption of the expressivist semantic project that the logico-semantic relations exhibited by normative sentences should be modeled in terms of the psychological attitudes that speakers express by uttering them. My final goal will be to show that the difficulty expressivists face in dealing with the logical possibility of moral dilemmas is a reflection of the more general problem that their commitment to the mentalist assumption prevents them from flexibly adopting or dropping axioms in their semantic theories to get the right technical results. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 87-92 [Access article in PDF] Christian Prayer Seen from the Eye of a Buddhist Kenneth K. Tanaka Musashino Women's University, Tokyo When I think about Christian prayer, the image I get is that of a young girl of about eight years old with long brown hair. Wearing a nightgown, she is kneeling next to her bed with her hands clasped and her head bowed. (...) I have often queried myself about the source of this image. This is an interesting question in itself. I personally don't know of anyone who fits that description or who has actually witnessed someone like her in prayer. Nevertheless, it is interesting how a Buddhist raised in a predominately Christian society comes to form his image of Christian prayer.Working further with this image, I see this little girl—let's call her Megan—doing two things in her evening prayer. One is that she is giving thanks to God for the benefits she has received. She thanks him for her food, clothing, friends, and family. Then, she also makes a request. In this petitionary element of her prayer, she is asking God to make her sick father get well soon. As she does so, her expression turns more serious, and she clasps her hands more firmly and brings them closer to her chest. She then looks up toward the ceiling, expressing her heartfelt wish for her father's early recovery. What is noteworthy is that Megan's prayers are spoken aloud as in a human conversation.I realize that this image does not do justice to a topic as enormous as "Christian prayer," but I believe that it provides a glimpse into how one Buddhist imagines the topic. I have a number of questions about Megan's prayer, particularly as I try to understand what may be going on inside of her. I wonder first and foremost, what God looks like to her. Is God a male or a female, or neither? I would think that even for her (in this gender-sensitive age), God is still a male. If so, does she see him as an elderly man with a long white beard, holding a cane and sitting in a throne? Next, where does God reside? If he is in heaven, what is heaven like to her? I wonder if heaven is located somewhere amidst the lofty, puffy clouds. In regards to her father's illness, how does she think God can make her father get well? What is the mechanism by which a personified God can heal? Perhaps I am being too analytical and overly rigorous with my questions about a spiritual act, and that of an eight-year-old at that.Perhaps I should, instead, turn the questions toward me, asking how I would [End Page 87] answer the same questions about a Buddhist girl "praying" before the Buddha or a bodhisattva for the same kind of wish? The image that immediately crops up in my mind is of a girl of about twelve and her mother whom I saw at a pagoda in Rangoon, Burma, a number of years ago. The girl is wearing a large, red fresh flower in her hair and has on traditional apparel. She sits with her mother on a marble floor of a spacious area in front of Buddha images that are several meters in height. She holds a bouquet of flowers held upright between the palms of hands in a gesture of reverence. She sits with her legs folded but thrown out to her side, a style common in her country as well as in Thailand. Her eyes appear closed, and her head is slightly bowed down toward the Buddha images. She stays in that posture for what seems like several minutes; her mother does the same. I don't know, of course, what is going on inside, but she is certainly not meditating.I believe this is an important point to make here, for Buddhists are stereotypically seen to only meditate. However, the vast majority of lay Buddhists... (shrink)

In his book review of Graham Priest's The Fifth Corner of Four, Mark Siderits, while criticising Priest's philology, suggests that Priest's work is 'of considerable interest' for two reasons. First, 'when two independent traditions use similar methods to work on similar issues, it is always possible that one may have hit on approaches that the other missed'. Second, 'the decentering that can be induced by looking at another tradition may trigger fresh insights, even if those insights are not ones that (...) were actually developed by the tradition marked 'other''. The main task of this paper is to unpack Siderits' thought. By analysing some of Priest's work, I will suggest a decentering that must have taken place in China when Buddhism was 'exported to China in Buddhist shipping containers'. For anyone familiar with the forms of Buddhist philosophy developed in India, various forms of Chinese Buddhism can often look strange. Some ideas that were debated and defended by Indian Buddhists do not appear anywhere in Chinese Buddhism and some assumptions have been quietly added to Buddhism by Chinese Buddhists. By showing that Priest's work brings out the 'innovation' that Chinese Buddhists gave to Buddhism, I will suggest that it is this decentering that Siderits suggests Priest makes use of. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with the development of the paradoxical theme of Daoism. Based on Chad Hansen's interpretation of Daoism and Chinese philosophy in general, it traces the history of Daoism by following their treatment of the limit of language. The Daoists seem to have noticed that there is a limit to what language can do and that the limit of language is paradoxical. The 'theoretical' treatment of the paradox of the limit of language matures as Daoism develops. Yet the (...) Daoists seem to have noticed that the limit of language and its paradoxical nature cannot be overcome. At the end, we are left with the paradoxes of the Daoists. In this paper, we jump into the abyss of the Daoists' paradoxes from which there is no escape. But the Daoists' paradoxes are fun! (shrink)

In this article, to revitalize the discussion on semantic externalism’s implications on the issue of content self-knowledge, I will argue that semantic externalism generates in fact two related but distinct skeptical puzzles concerning the presumption of truth attached to our mental self-ascriptions. The first is to explain how I can correctly ascribe mental states to myself, and the second is to explain how others can ascribe thoughts to me by taking my expressions of such self-ascriptions at face value. In my (...) view, although the first has been sufficiently addressed in the literature, the second has been more or less neglected. Furthermore, as I will argue, theorists must respond to both of the questions to fully show the compatibility of our ordinary conception of self-knowledge and semantic externalism. As a case study, I will introduce Dorit Bar-On’s neo-expressivism as an account of self-knowledge that provides a promising answer to the first question and argue that it is still incomplete in that it does not address the second skeptical puzzle. To shed light on the nature of the puzzle in question further, I will also explore its possible solutions in the neo-expressivist framework. (shrink)

In one of his influential works ‘One the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’, Donald Davidson argues against conceptual relativism. According to Davidson, ‘we could not be in a position to judge that others had concepts or beliefs radically different from our own’. Davidson’s thesis seems to have a consequence for comparative philosophy, particularly in a comparative study between Chinese and Western traditions of philosophy which are often considered to differ conceptually. If Davidson is correct, it is not clear whether (...) or not we can have insight into how and why concepts differ between these traditions. -/- In this paper, I philosophically reflect on Davidson’s argument against conceptual relativism. Though this paper retains the backbone of his argument, I reject Davidson’s thesis that different ways of conceptualisation cannot be compared. I do this through a discussion of the comparative studies conducted by David Hall and Roger Ames. In conclusion, I self-reflectively examine the nature of the demarcation between different traditions of philosophy and show how the activities of comparative philosophy can proceed. (shrink)

In 1A:7 of the Mengzi, Mengzi tries to convince King Xuan of Qi that he is a “true” king. As a reading of Mengzi’s reasoning involved in his attempt at persuasion, David Nivison advances an inferential view, according to which Mengzi’s persuasion involves inferences. In this paper, I consider the assumptions underlying the objections raised against Nivison’s inferential view. I argue that these objections assume a contemporary Western view about the nature of logic and inferences. I propose an alternative characterisation (...) of the relevant sense of inference that, I believe, is more sensitive to the classical Chinese philosophical context and argue that certain insights can be derived from reading Mengzi in light of this alternative characterization of inferences. (shrink)

An assessment of mood or emotion is important in developing mental health measures, and facial expressions are strongly related to mood or emotion. This study thus aimed to examine the relationship between levels of negative mood and characteristics of mouth parts when moods are drawn as facial expressions on a common platform. A cross-sectional study of Japanese college freshmen was conducted, and 1,068 valid responses were analyzed. The questionnaire survey consisted of participants’ characteristics, the Profile of Mood States, and a (...) sheet of facial expression drawing, and the sheet was digitized and analyzed using an image-analysis software. Based on the total POMS score as an index of negative mood, the participants were divided into four groups: low, normal, high, and very high. Lengths of drawn lines and between both mouth corners were significantly longer, and circularity and roundness were significantly higher in the L group. With increasing levels of negative mood, significant decreasing trends were observed in these lengths. Convex downward and enclosed figures were significantly predominant in the L group, while convex upward figures were significantly predominant and a tendency toward predominance of no drawn mouths or line figures was found in the H and VH groups. Our results suggest that mood states can be significantly related to the size and figure characteristics of drawn mouths of FACED on a non-verbal common platform. That is, these findings mean that subjects with low negative mood may draw a greater and rounder mouth and figures that may be enclosed and downward convex, while subjects with a high negative mood may not draw the line, or if any, may draw the line shorter and upward convex. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with John Searle’s famous Chinese room argument. Despite being objected to by some, Searle’s Chinese room argument appears very appealing. This is because Searle’s argument is based on an intuition about the mind that ‘we’ all seem to share. Ironically, however, Chinese philosophers don’t seem to share this same intuition. The paper begins by first analysing Searle’s Chinee room argument. It then introduces what can be seen as the (implicit) Chinese view of the mind. Lastly, it (...) demonstrates a conceptual difference between Chinese and Western philosophy with respect to the notion of mind. Thus, it is shown that one must carefully attend to the presuppositions underlying Chinese philosophising in interpreting Chinese philosophers. (shrink)

We introduce a new construction of real closed fields by using an elementary extension of an ordered field with an integer part satisfying. This method can be extend to a finite extension of an ordered field with an integer part satisfying. In general, a field obtained from our construction is either real closed or algebraically closed, so an analogy of Ostrowski's dichotomy holds. Moreover we investigate recursive saturation of an o‐minimal extension of a real closed field by finitely many function (...) symbols. (shrink)

We give a simple game-theoretic proof of Silver's theorem that every analytic set is Ramsey. A set P of subsets of ω is called Ramsey if there exists an infinite set H such that either all infinite subsets of H are in P or all out of P. Our proof clarifies a strong connection between the Ramsey property of partitions and the determinacy of infinite games.

In this paper, we show within RCA 0 that weak Konig's lemma is necessary and sufficient to prove that any (separable) compact group has a Haar measure. Within WKL 0 , a Haar measure is constructed by a non-standard method based on a fact that every countable non-standard model of WKL 0 has a proper initial part isomorphic to itself [10].

Background Physical restraints are routinely employed to ensure patient safety in Japanese acute care. Little is known about nursing students' perspectives and how they begin to question their value and knowledge in the face of restraint experiences in clinical practice. Objective To investigate nursing students’ questions about patient restraints and how they understand the ethics of the use of restraints in nursing. Research design Qualitative descriptive research using narrative analysis. Participants and research context Experiential data were generated and thematically analyzed (...) from semi-structured interviews with 16 nursing students who had completed their bachelor’s degree program requirements. Ethical considerations The study was approved by academic and clinical ethics agencies. Participants provided written informed consent. Results Physical restraints were encountered in 16 incidents, 3 with children and 13 with older patients with dementia. Students struggled to comprehend the policies and protocols of restraint use and worried their use was primarily for security rather than therapeutic purposes. Five themes were identified: (1). Questioning the tension between person-centered care, patient autonomy, and restraints, (2). Questioning the nature of restraints in which participants analyzed the policies and protocols around restraint use, (3). Questioning the professional nursing self whereby students reflected on how restraint use challenged their nursing values, and (4). Questioning professional nursing practice, in which students explored how restraints fit within a nursing perspective and positioned themselves as patient advocates. Students encountering physical restraints should ask questions based on values of patient-centeredness, autonomy, and advocacy. There is a need for education that facilitates reflection and questioning so that it informs students’ ethical thinking which may enhance nurse advocacy to reduce restraint use. Conclusions Restraints provide contexts in which students must face tensions between nursing values and clinical reality. Further research on nursing education strategies within non-psychiatric settings is needed to reduce physical restraints. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the impact of practices of classification, organization, and presentation within U.S. academic libraries on systemic support for diversity in philosophy. It argues that present practices result in the preemptive marginalization of non-traditional perspectives and methods in the discipline of philosophy. The paper has three parts. First, an examination of the historical and philosophical roots of the predominant systems of classification in academic libraries, Library of Congress Classification (LCC) and Subject Headings (LCSH). Second, a consideration of how library (...) classification norms the research and practice of philosophy. Third, a response to potential objections about the impact of library classification on philosophers. (shrink)

This paper employs conversation analysis to examine the inter-connection between grammar and displays of contextual understanding, social identity, and social relationships as well as other activities clustering around turn-endings in Japanese talk-in-interaction, while undertaking a restricted comparison with the realisation of similar activities in English. A notable feature of turn-endings in Japanese is the particular salience of grammatical construction on the interactional activities they accomplish. Complete turns which are also syntactically complete are shown to be associated with the explicit display (...) of contextual features, whereas syntactically incomplete turns are designed to circumvent or minimise such displays. The explicit or implicit display of one's social and contextual relationship to the interactional environment is therefore seen to be an integral part of the performance of social actions in Japanese. On the other hand, in English, it is more difficult to establish a clear association between grammar and the inclusion or avoidance of contextual displays. (shrink)

We give an extension of the Jónsson‐Tarski representation theorem for both normal and non‐normal modal algebras so that it preserves countably many infinite meets and joins. In order to extend the Jónsson‐Tarski representation to non‐normal modal algebras we consider neighborhood frames instead of Kripke frames just as Došen's duality theorem for modal algebras, and to deal with infinite meets and joins, we make use of Q‐filters, which were introduced by Rasiowa and Sikorski, instead of prime filters. By means of the (...) extended representation theorem, we show that every predicate modal logic, whether it is normal or non‐normal, has a model defined on a neighborhood frame with constant domains, and we give a completeness theorem for some predicate modal logics with respect to classes of neighborhood frames with constant domains. Similarly, we show a model existence theorem and a completeness theorem for infinitary modal logics which allow conjunctions of countably many formulas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:201 HUME TO SMITH: AN UNPUBLISHED LETTER* In all probability, a newly-discovered letter by David Hume, written on 17 November 1772 and published here for the first time, was addressed to Adam Smith. Purchased in May 1982 by Kwansei Gakuin University Library, it now forms part of the Adam Smith Collection there. The vendors stated the letter was acquired from a French collector, but there seems to be no (...) other information available about its provenance. The letter itself is a brief one in which Hume urges the addressee to move to an excellent house in the New Town of Edinburgh which will be empty next Whitsuntide, one of the Scottish quarterdays or term-days, fixed for the beginning and end of tenancy and usually falling on 15 May. There is a postscript, in which Hume adds that he is enclosing an account of the importing of money into Spain that was once requested from him. This enclosure has not been traced. There is no doubt about the authenticity of the Hume letter, but there is a technical difficulty about the identity of the addressee. This is made known by a slip pasted on the foot of the letter. A suspicious mind might think of an owner doing this to enhance the value of the letter, but the words 'Adam Smith Esqr Kirkaldy' are probably in Hume's hand, and the slip may well have been cut from the cover of the letter. The contents of the letter, to be sure, point definitely to Adam Smith as the recipient. For one thing, Hume stresses that the house he has in mind for his correspondent 'has a Prospect of... even I believe Kirkaldy,' and Smith was certainly the most prominent of Hume's intimate friends then living in 202 the 'lang toun' visible across the Firth of Forth from many parts of Edinburgh. There were others associated with Kirkcaldy, of course, such as James Oswald of Dunnikier, also Smith's childhood friend and someone with a great interest in political economy, but he had died in 1769. One might think, too, of the brothers Adam, in particular Robert and John, rising architects and later designers of Hume's memorial on Carlton Hill, but the focus of their life was London by this date, and they were unlikely to be asking Hume for an account of the money imported into Spain. In Hume's later years, he delighted in conversing with his friends in his home, and would call on them to pass time with him, even to move to Edinburgh to be near him. For example, he wrote to Smith on 23 November 1772 (corr. 134) that Adam Ferguson 'comes over next week, to a house in this neighbourhood. Pray, come over this winter, and join us.' On other occasions, too, he urged Smith to come to Edinburgh to visit him or to settle there so that they could enjoy each other's company. Thus, the first point suggesting that the new letter must be addressed to Smith arises from awareness of the relationship between Hume and Smith at this period. As is well known, Smith left the service of the Duke of Buccleuch in 1767 and returned from London to Kirkcaldy. There he lived with his mother and immersed himself in writing the Wealth of Nations until he left for London in May 1773 to see to the publication of his great book. As John Rae wrote of the intervening years: 'Hume, who thought the country an unsuitable place for a man of letters, used every endeavour to persuade [Smith] to remove to 2 Edinburgh, but without success.' 203 In a letter from James's Court of the Old Town, dated 20 August 1769 (Corr. 121), Hume asked Smith with all sincerity, ¦ but with a pleasing sense of humour, to spend some time with him: I am glad to have come within sight of you, and to have a View of Kirkaldy from my Windows: But as I wish also to be within speaking terms of you, I wish we coud concert measures for that purpose. I am mortally sick at Sea, and regard with horror, and a kind of... (shrink)

Research in expert categorization is consistent with the Schyns et al. claim that functional features are determined by constraints imposed by the learning history of the categorizer and the demands of the categorization task. However, the expertise work also suggests that a distinction should be drawn between the categorizer's perceptions of the constituent parts of the object and its functional features. Although experts and novices may parse a domain-specific object into the same parts, their featural interpretations of those parts may (...) differ significantly. (shrink)

Motoori often criticized China, saying “Adashi Michi ” or “Kara Gokoro.”“In China, they often say heaven’s way, heaven’s order or heaven’s reason and regard them as the most reverential and awesome things … firstly heaven is … not a thing with the mind, there cannot be such a thing as heaven’s order …” He concludes that there is no “way of nature” in China. He also mentions in his essay Tamakatsuma [Beautiful Bamboo Basket]: “We think that heaven and earth grow (...) all things, but this is not true. It is the deed of Kami that all things grow. Heaven and earth is only the place where Kami grows all things. It is not heaven and earth that grow them.” Kami in this case seems to be different from heaven and earth, but this Kami is one with “nature” and he does not mean that Kami is above “nature.” I think that Motori resumes the essence of Shinto, comparing the thoughts of China. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Individual in Relation to the Sangha in American Buddhism:An Examination of "Privatized Religion"Kenneth K. TanakaIn his celebrated book Bowling Alone (2000), Robert Putnam noted the increased level in the phenomenon of "privatized religion" within the previous thirty-five years. Many of the Baby Boomer generation left churches in the late 1960s and the 1970s. Some sought out new religious movements and religious therapies, but most simply "dropped out" of (...) organized religion altogether. He cites Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney, specialists in American religion, who describe the outcome of this trend in American religious behavior: "[The consequence was a] tendency toward highly individualized religious psychology without the benefits of strong supportive attachments to believing communities. A major impetus in this direction in the post-1960s was the thrust toward greater personal fulfillment and quest for the ideal self.... In this climate of expressive individualism, religion tends to become "privatized," or anchored in the personal realms."1 Putnam observes that although privatized religion may be "morally compelling and psychologically fulfilling," it involves less social capital than environments in which individuals are connected to other individuals in shared faith commitment.Interestingly, American Buddhism may be one of the beneficiaries of this trend, for the recent growth of Buddhism in the United States is partly attributable to the climate of "privatized" religion. Nowhere is this symbolized more than by the so-called Nightstand Buddhists.2The Nightstand Buddhists derive their name from their practice of placing a Buddhist meditation book on the nightstand after reading it before they go to sleep. They get up the next morning and practice to the best of their ability the meditation they had read about the night before. Further, they may frequently attend lectures at the local university and visit a Buddhist center's web-page or participate in an online Buddhist discussion group. And if we were to visit them, we might find their homes decorated with Buddhist artifacts.But these Nightstand Buddhists do not show up in any statistics on the [End Page 115] American Buddhist population because they would not identify themselves as Buddhists. According to Thomas Tweed, who coined the term Nightstand Buddhists, "Sympathizers (= Nightstand Buddhists) are those who have some sympathy for Buddhism but do not embrace it exclusively or fully. When asked, they would not identify themselves as Buddhists. They would say they are Methodists, or Jewish, or unaffiliated."3 However, they have been an important part of the story of Buddhism in America from its beginning and continue to be so today.Among the three million Buddhists currently estimated to be in the United States, I believe there are Buddhists who exhibit many of the same characteristics as the Nightstand Buddhists. And this number is significant, particularly among those converts to Buddhism whose main practice is meditation. This group of convert Buddhists is one segment of the larger Buddhist community in the United States, which I have categorized into four groups.41. New Asian American Buddhists (those who have mostly arrived in the United States since the 1960s: Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Cambodian, Myanmar, Laotian, and Sri Lankan).2. Old-line Asian American Buddhists (those who were established before World War II: Chinese and Japanese).3. Convert Buddhists whose main practice is meditation (predominately Euro-Americans practicing in the Zen, Vipassanā, and Tibetan traditions).4. Convert Buddhists whose main practice is chanting (Sōkagakkai International–USA, a sizable percentage of whom are African and Hispanic Americans).In this paper, I wish to focus on a Jōdo Shinshū temple from the second group (old-line Asian American Buddhists) and on several centers collectively that belong to the Zen, Vipassanā, and Tibetan traditions from the third group (convert Buddhists whose main practice is meditation), looking at the manner in which individuals relate to their respective institutions and traditions, with special attention given to the phenomenon of "privatized religion."For purposes of this paper, my definition of "privatized religion" is based on the observation of Roof and McKinney, cited above, as "a tendency for individuals (1) to emphasize practicing at home over religious centers, and (2) to value the subjective and the inward." The homebound orientation is connected... (shrink)

Boltzmann’s lectures on natural philosophy point out how the principles of mathematics are both an improvement on traditional philosophy and also serve as a necessary foundation of physics or what the English call “Natura Philosophy”, a title which he will retain for his own lectures. We start with lecture #3 and the mathematical contents of his lectures plus a few philosophical comments. Because of the length of the lectures as a whole we can only give the main points of each (...) but organized into a coherent study. Behind his mathematics stands his support of Darwinian evolution interpreted in a partly Lamarckian way. He also supported non-Euclidean geometry. Much of Boltzmann’s analysis of mathematics is an attempt to refute Kant’s static a priori categories and his identification of space with “non-sensuous intuition”. Boltzmann’s strong attention toward discreteness in mathematics can be seen throughout the lectures. Part II of this paper will touch on the historical background of atomism and focus on the discrete way of thinking with which Boltzmann approaches problems in mathematics and beyond. Part III briefly points out how Boltzmann related mathematics and discreteness to music. (shrink)

Narrative views of the self argue that we constitute our self in self-narratives. Embodied views hold that our self is shaped through embodied experiences. In that case, what is the relation between embodiment and narrativity in the process of self-constitution? The question demands a clear definition of embodiment, but existing studies remains unclear on this point (section 2). We offer a correction to this situation by drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the body that highlights its habituality. On this account, the (...) body has an inherent tendency to cultivate an organization of habits through its history of engagement with the world (section 3). Next, we explore its role in narrative self-constitution by distinguishing between two aspects of the narrative self, the narrated I and the narrating I (section 4). We argue on phenomenological grounds that self-narratives are informed by bodily perspectives in both respects. Furthermore, a focus on the habituality of the body allows for a better explanation of self-constitution than those based on implicit self-narratives (section 5). For these phenomenological and theoretical reasons, we conclude that narrative self-constitution is an embodied and embedded practice (section 6). (shrink)

In one of his key texts, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Nāgārjuna famously sets out to refute the ontology of essence.1 He presents numerous arguments to show that things don’t exist essentially—that is, that things are empty of essence or inherent existence. The doctrine of emptiness has been variously understood by traditional and contemporary commentators. Most radical is the recent interpretation presented by Garfield and Priest. They have rationally reconstructed Nāgārjuna’s doctrine of emptiness as an endorsement of the contradictory nature of reality. According (...) to them, Nāgārjuna can be seen to be arguing that the way in which things exist in reality and what we can truly say about them must be... (shrink)

Nearly a decade has past since Grove gave a semantics for the AGM postulates. The semantics, called sphere semantics, provided a new perspective of the area of study, and has been widely used in the context of theory or belief change. However, the soundness proof that Grove gives in his paper contains an error. In this note, we will point this out and give two ways of repairing it.

It is known that for any subdirectly irreducible finite Heyting algebra A and any Heyting algebra, B, A is embeddable into a quotient algebra of B, if and only if Jankov's formula ${\rm{\chi A}}$ A for A is refuted in B. In this paper, we present an infinitary extension of the above theorem given by Jankov. More precisely, for any cardinal number ${\rm{\kappa }}$, we present Jankov's theorem for homomorphisms preserving infinite meets and joins, a class of subdirectly irreducible complete (...) ${\rm{\kappa }}$ - Heyting algebras and ${\rm{\kappa }}$ - infinitary logic, where a ${\rm{\kappa }}$ -Heyting algebra is a Heyting algebra A with ${\rm{\# A}} \le {\rm{\kappa }}$ and ${\rm{\kappa }}$ - infinitary logic is the infinitary logic such that for any set ${\rm{\Theta }}$ of formulas with ${\rm{\# \Theta }} \le {\rm{\kappa }}$ ⌈ Θ and ‷ Θ are well defined formulas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Acceptance of the Other as a Similarly Valid Path and Awareness of One's Self-Culpability:A Deepening Realization of My Religious Identity through DialogueKenneth K. TanakaAs the title of my paper indicates, two features of my identity have become more vivid as the result of my participation in the International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter (IBCTE) sessions. The first of the two stemmed from my rude awakening that not everyone involved with our (...) sessions accepted the assumption that the other was a similarly valid soteriological path.In one of our sessions a few years back, the discussion moved to a topic of the nature of "ultimate path," which, as it turned out, began to raise some extremely sensitive issues. An unusually tense atmosphere hung over the discussion table, a rare turn of events for our usually jovial dialogue group composed mostly of liberal-minded members. One of the Christian members gave voice to her fundamental view that Jesus was the sole path through which one can be saved. It was clearly what anyone would regard as an exclusivist position. In asking for further clarification, she reiterated her view that her Christian faith necessitated that she took that position, and that I as a Buddhist was, therefore, not included in that soteriological scheme. I responded to her that I understood that I would not be in her scheme since I was not Christian, but would I nevertheless be saved? After some hesitation, in so many words, she replied that I would not be! Had she been a member of a more conservative group, it would have been easier to accept that kind of a response, but coming from an academic with liberal leanings, her comments caught me off guard. But on the other hand, I appreciated her honesty in being true to her understanding of the tradition, for it seemed to me that it was not an easy thing for her to say.This short encounter has been etched firmly in my mind and, ironically, remains for me the most memorable moment among all of the IBCTE sessions attended. I did not pursue the matter further at that time (aside from the fact that time had run [End Page 41] out for that particular session), since I was aware that such an exclusive position (as distinguished from those of inclusivism and pluralism) was common among Christians. I just happened to have encountered it in a rather unexpected circumstance and was not prepared with a comeback.This encounter forced me to inquire about my own position concerning the salvation of people other than Buddhists. Would I regard her as not being saved? After some probing and reflection on my part, I can say with little hesitation that I would never be able to say, "no, you are not." I have no basis on which to refute what her time-tested tradition promises. I am not in a position to negate the claims of her tradition or to question the sincerity of her commitment. From my Buddhist perspective there is no universal criterion on which to make judgments about others. My personal view on this issue has been similar to John Hick's pluralism position, but without his insistence that all paths reflect and lead to the same truth.Perhaps, my view reflects a prevailing, modern or postmodern understanding of Shinran (1173–1262), the founder of my tradition (Jodo-Shinshu), who is often portrayed as an extremely liberal thinker as seen in the following words attributed to him from the Tannisho (emphasis added):Now, whether you accept the Nembutsu, entrusting yourself to it, or reject it, that is your own decision.These rather well-known passages reinforce the image of Shinran, particularly in the Jodo-Shinshu community in the United States, as an accommodating and tolerant thinker.However, the picture is a little more complex, for I am also aware that Shinran held what I refer to as an "exceptionalist" view. Based largely on his historical belief that with the arrival of Mappo, the Last Period of the Dharma, there were no other teachings appropriate for the age of spiritual decadence. While he was tolerant of others, thereby allowing even his... (shrink)

To determine the role Latino community gardens play in community development, open space, and civic agriculture, we conducted interviews with 32 community gardeners from 20 gardens, and with staff from 11 community gardening support non-profit organizations and government agencies. We also conducted observations in the gardens, and reviewed documents written by the gardeners and staff from 13 support organizations and agencies. In addition to being sites for production of conventional and ethnic vegetables and herbs, the gardens host numerous social, educational, (...) and cultural events, including neighborhood and church gatherings, holiday parties, children’s activities, school tours, concerts, health fairs, and voter registration drives. In some cases, the gardens also serve to promote community activism. The primary concern of gardeners is to secure land tenure in the face of pressures to develop the garden sites for housing. The support organizations and agencies provide help with land tenure, as well as with advocacy, organization, and horticultural practices. Although the role of the Latino gardens in community development appears to be more important than their role in open space or agricultural production, the gardens can also be viewed as unique “participatory landscapes” that combine aspects of all three movements, as well as provide a connection between immigrants and their cultural heritage. (shrink)

We try to find a possible origin of the holographic principle in the Lorentz-covariant Yang’s quantized space-time algebra (YSTA). YSTA, which is intrinsically equipped with short- and long-scale parameters, λ and R, gives a finite number of spatial degrees of freedom for any bounded spatial region, providing a basis for divergence-free quantum field theory. Furthermore, it gives a definite kinematical reduction of spatial degrees of freedom, compared with the ordinary lattice space. On account of the latter fact, we find a (...) certain kind of kinematical holographic relation in YSTA, which may be regarded as a primordial form of the holographic principle suggested so far in the framework of the present quantum theory that appears now in the contraction limit of YSTA, λ→0 and R→∞. (shrink)