There is a growing phenomenon of brand advocacy, where brands pressure a producer country government to take pro-worker actions such as respecting the rights of activists and raising minimum wages. This article examines the potential and limits of brand advocacy by developing a conceptual framework and analysing three recent cases of brand advocacy in Cambodia's garment industry. The study shows that brands' action and influence are shaped by issue salience, mobilization structures, political opportunities/contexts, and resource dependency. This article makes both (...) empirical and theoretical contributions. This is one of the first studies delving into the advocacy role of brands in promoting labour rights and conditions vis-à-vis government. Moreover, the article develops a testable framework specifying the conditions under which brands are likely to respond, act collectively, and influence government for pro-worker change. It also offers novel insights by applying social movement lenses and casting brands as social movement actors. (shrink)

This book, which deals with the life and ideas of the poet and philosopher Tadano Makuzu, presents insights into gender discourses of the late Tokugawa period, and thereby opens a way to break away from conventional intellectual history.

The present study investigated whether distinctive features influence speakers’ evaluations of metaphor aptness and their preference for metaphor use. We examined three types of topic-attributed fe...

西田哲学と語りえぬもの──その独創的な言語と思考の運動の、秘められた可能性の中心とは何か。西田と対話し続けた半生の記録。.

Study on the concept of reincarnation; with a special reference to India.

The concept of antinatalism is now becoming popular on the Internet. Many online newspaper articles deal with this topic, and numerous academic papers on antinatalism have been published over the past ten years in the fields of philosophy and ethics. The word “antinatalism” was first used in the current meaning in 2006, when the two books that justify the universal negation of procreation were published: one by David Benatar and the other by Théophile de Giraud. However, we can find various (...) prototypes of antinatalistic thoughts in ancient Greece, ancient India, and modern Europe. You might recall the name Schopenhauer. In this paper, I briefly summarize the history of antinatalistic thoughts and propose a set of categories on antinatalism and related thoughts. (shrink)

An e-book devoted to 13 critical discussions of Thaddeus Metz's book "Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study", with a lengthy reply from the author. -/- Preface Masahiro Morioka i -/- Précis of Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study Thaddeus Metz ii-vi -/- Source and Bearer: Metz on the Pure Part-Life View of Meaning Hasko von Kriegstein 1-18 -/- Fundamentality and Extradimensional Final Value David Matheson 19-32 -/- Meaningful and More Meaningful: A Modest Measure Peter Baumann 33-49 -/- Is Meaning (...) in Life Comparable?: From the Viewpoint of ‘The Heart of Meaning in Life’ Masahiro Morioka 50-65 -/- Agreement and Sympathy: On Metz’s Meaning in Life Sho Yamaguchi 66-89 -/- Metz’s Quest for the Holy Grail James Tartaglia 90-111 -/- Meaning without Ego Christopher Ketcham 112-133 -/- Death and the Meaning of Life: A Critical Study of Metz’s Meaning in Life Fumitake Yoshizawa 134-149 -/- Metz’ Incoherence Objection: Some Epistemological Considerations Nicholas Waghorn 150-168 -/- Meaning in Consequences Mark Wells 169-179 -/- Defending the Purpose Theory of Meaning in Life Jason Poettcker 180-207 -/- Review of Thaddeus Metz’s Meaning in Life Minao Kukita 208-214 -/- A Psychological Model to Determine Meaning in Life and Meaning of Life Yu Urata 215-227 -/- Assessing Lives, Giving Supernaturalism Its Due, and Capturing Naturalism: Reply to 13 Critics of Meaning in Life Thaddeus Metz 228-278 . (shrink)

In this paper, I propose the concept of the “animated persona,” a soundless voice that says, “I am here” and appears on the surface of someone or something. This concept can bring clarity to the experience of perceiving a kind of personhood on a corpse, a wooden mask, or even a tree. In the first half of this paper, I will examine some Japanese literature and a work of Viktor Frankl’s that discuss these phenomena. In the second half, I will (...) analyze the concept of animated persona from five perspectives: (1) a compelling power, (2) surface-ness, (3) religious experience, (4) universality, and (5) the meaning of “I.” Lastly, I will discuss the relationship among the three layers of biological object, animated persona, and self-conscious being. My aim is to shed new light on the meaning of the encounter between the living and the dead. (shrink)

In this paper, the concept of birth affirmation is clarified in both the psychological dimension and the philosophical dimension. In the psychological dimension, we propose two interpretations: 1) Possible world interpretation: Even if I could imagine a possible world in which my ideal was realized or my grave sufferings were resolved, I would never think, at the bottom of my heart, that it would have been better to have been born to that possible world. 2) Anti-antinatalistic interpretation: I would never (...) think, at the bottom of my heart, that it would have been better not to have been born. In the philosophical dimension, we propose the following interpretation: The comparison of betterness or worseness between the actual world and a possible world and between my having been born and my not having been born should be impossible. In the final part of this paper, the differences from other related concepts and frequently asked questions are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to open a new horizon in the field of civilization studies by examining the concept of painless civilization from the perspective of the philosophy of biological evolution. Since the space is limited, the priority will be given to the clarification of an overall structure. Modern civilization has created systems that seek “comfort and pleasure” and eliminate “pain and suffering” and has spread them to every corner of our society. It is progressing like a great wave (...) in many developed countries. I have called a civilization advancing in this direction a “painless civilization.” At first glance, the elimination of pain and suffering seems like a good thing. Of course, it is considered good if unbearable suffering (such as the pain of terminal cancer) that we encounter in our lives can be avoided through technology. This is not the problem. The problem is that modern civilization is moving in a direction where various forms of suffering that we might experience in the future are going to be erased from our lives, one after another, through preventive technologies (preventive elimination of pain). ... (shrink)

The Japanese Transplantation Law is unique among others in that it allows us to choose between "brain death" and "traditional death" as our death. In every country 20 to 40 % of the popularion doubts the idea of brain death. This paper reconsiders the concept, and reports the ongoing rivision process of the current law. Published in Hastings Center Report, 2001.

The aim of this paper is to propose a new approach to the question of meaning in life by criticizing Thaddeus Metz’s objectivist theory in his book Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study. I propose the concept of “the heart of meaning in life,” which alone can answer the question, “Alas, does my life like this have any meaning at all?” and I demonstrate that “the heart of meaning in life” cannot be compared, in principle, with other people’s meaning in (...) life. The answer to the question of “the heart of meaning in life” ought to have two values, yes-or-no, and there is no ambiguous gray zone between them. I believe that this concept constitutes the very central content of meaning in life. (shrink)

To me, philosophy is the relentless pursuit of 1) how I am to live and die from this moment forward and 2) the meaning of my having been born. This pursuit does not stop until I reach an understanding that satisfies me. If I expand my field of view slightly, it is to understand where humanity came from and where it is going through an intellectual lens. When I entered the ethics program at the University of Tokyo, I thought I (...) could do this sort of thing at a university. This expectation, however, was utterly betrayed. The study of philosophy at Japanese universities in the 1980s was mainly the study of writings by Western philosophers. What was undertaken in the ethics program and neighboring philosophy program was the close reading and interpretation of detailed elements of texts by great philosophers, always in the original language, and this was considered to be philosophy and ethics. I strongly opposed this even as I entered graduate school, and my first presentation given to the Japanese Society for Ethics when I was a graduate student was a critique of this organization.... (This is an English translation of a slightly modified version of my Japanese essay “What Does Doing Philosophy Mean to Me?,” which was published in the August issue of Contemporary Thought (Special Feature: How Philosophy is Made). It offers insight not only into my way of thinking about philosophy but also into the world of contemporary Japanese philosophy.). (shrink)

We sometimes feel the presence of a person-like something on a non-biological object, such as a memento from a deceased family member or a well-engineered, human-shaped robot. This feeling—the sense of someone appearing there—has not been extensively investigated by philosophers. In this paper, I employ examples from previous studies, my own experiences, and thought experiments to conduct a philosophical analysis of the mechanism of the emergence of this person-like something by using the concept of an animated persona. This animation process (...) works not only in cases of deceased people and non-biological objects but also in cases of a living, conscious human being. This suggests that the appearance of the other mind on a human body is not necessarily a reflection of that human’s inner self-consciousness but can be considered a personhood that appears, animated by various surrounding factors. I also propose the concept of “the supremacy of surface-ness over behind-ness”. Finally, I categorize the appearance of an animated persona on a human body or an object into eight patterns and compare their characteristics. (shrink)

This book was first published in Japanese in 2013 and was warmly welcomed not only by general readers but also by specialists in philosophy. I believe that it succeeded in breaking new ground in the field of introductory approaches to philosophy. Many manga or comic books explaining the thought of major philosophers have already been published. There have also been manga whose story was conceived by philosophers. To the best of my knowledge, however, there has never been a book in (...) which a philosopher has illustrated his or her own philosophical thought entirely in manga form. There are no doubt many philosophers who can draw manga or illustrations, so it’s quite strange that no such book has been published until now. “I want to try drawing a manga introduction to philosophy myself!” After this idea came to me, I began by taking a draft of about twenty manga pages to the editing department at Kodansha Publications. The characters were awkward at first, but as I kept drawing they seemed to move more smoothly, and by the time I had finished it almost felt like they were speaking for themselves. I drew around 220 original pages in detail using a pencil. Manga creator Nyancofu Terada then gave these pencil drawings professional lines. It is entirely thanks to him that I was able to publish my manga in the Kodansha paperback series. As the title says, this book is an introduction to philosophy. I tried to write about questions like “What is philosophy?” and “What does it mean to think philosophically” for a general readership. This is not a book that presents easy-to-understand explanations of the theories of famous philosophers. Instead, I have tried to express as clearly as possible how I myself think about four major topics: “time,” “existence,” “I,” and “life.” By following this route, the reader will be led directly to the core elements of philosophical thought. My aim was to imbue this journey with a sense of speed and intensity. (shrink)

People who have encountered a tragic event and suffered from traumatic experiences can sometimes achieve, in their later lives, an affirmation of having been born to such devastating lives. But what does this “affirmation” exactly mean in such cases? In this paper, I investigate this problem from the viewpoint of philosophy of life’s meaning. Firstly, I distinguish among three types of affirmations: the affirmation of survival, the affirmation of having had traumatic experiences, and the affirmation of the occurrence of a (...) tragic event. Secondly, I discuss the differences between the event that affects only one person and the event that affects many people, and which of the three aforementioned affirmations is the most important to victims. I would like to contribute to the discussion of this topic by analyzing some basic concepts concerning human suffering and despair. (shrink)

In this paper, I make two arguments: 1) There is a solipsistic layer in meaning in life, which I call the “heart of meaning in life” (HML). The bearer of the heart of meaning in life is the solipsistic being. The heart of meaning in life cannot be compared with anything else whatsoever. 2) The heart of meaning in life can be dynamically incorporated into the affirmation of having been born into this world, which I call “birth affirmation.” There can (...) be two interpretations of birth affirmation, the anti-anti-natalistic interpretation and the possible world interpretation. Birth affirmation can be an alternative to anti-natalism, which is destined to be frustrated in this universe. (shrink)

Beyza Şen and Ali Tacar's interview with Masahiro Morioka on painless civilization and his recent works. "In our contemporary civilization we can experience pleasure, pleasantness, and comfort, and can avoid pain and suffering, albeit at the sacrifice of joy of life, which is indispensable for acquiring our life without regret. Of course we have a lot of pain and suffering in our society, so our lives are not painless at all, but I cannot help feeling that our contemporary scientific (...) civilization is progressing in the direction of eliminating pain and suffering irreversibly. ...". (shrink)

In his “A new argument for evidentialism” (Shah, Philos Q 56(225): 481–498, 2006 ), Nishi Shah argues that the best explanation of a feature of deliberation whether to believe that p which he calls transparency entails that only evidence can be reason to believe that p. I show that his argument fails because a crucial lemma that his argument appeals to cannot be supported without assuming evidentialism to be true in the first place.

A short essay that discusses whether it is possible for AI to do philosophy in its true sense of the word.

Social presence, or the subjective experience of being present with another existing person, varies with the interaction medium. In general, social presence research has mainly focused on uni-directional aspects of each exchanged message, not on bidirectional interactions. Our primary purpose is to introduce such bidirectional evaluation by quantifying the degree of social presence with a few statistical measures. To this end, we developed a software called “TypeTrace” that records all keystrokes of online chat interactants and reenacts their typing actions and (...) analyzed the results from different chat conditions, mainly focusing on the characterization of bi-directional interactions. We also compared the chat interaction patterns with the patterns from phone call datasets to investigate the difference of live communication in different media. The hypothesis of the experiment was that either richness or concurrency of communication is important for organizing social presence. Richness is defined by the variety of information at a time in communication and the concurrency is the number of temporal thread being processed at the same time. Our results show that when we merely increase the richness of information by presenting the typing process, the cognition of others' presence does not significantly increase. However, when the information concurrency is augmented by introducing the transmission of realtime text, we found that the transfer entropy between the interactants becomes considerably higher, and the social presence and emotional arousal, intimacy increased. High transfer entropy was also observed in the phone call dataset. This result shows that the mere augmentation of information richness does not necessarily lead to increased social presence, and concurrent communication is another critical factor for fostering vivid conversation in digital environments. (shrink)

In this paper, the ethical and spiritual aspects of the trolley problem are discussed in connection with the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. First, I show that the dropping of atomic bombs was a typical example of the events that contained the logic of the trolley problems in their decision-making processes and justifications. Second, I discuss five aspects of “the problem of the trolley problem;” that is to say, “Rarity,” “Inevitability,” “Safety Zone,” “Possibility of Becoming a Victim,” (...) and “Lack of Perspective of the Dead Victims Who Were Deprived of Freedom of Choice,” in detail. Third, I argue that those who talk about the trolley problem are automatically placed in the sphere of the expectation of response on the spiritual level. I hope that my contribution will shed light on the trolley problem from a very different angle, which has not been made by our fellow philosophers. (shrink)

This paper considers fair betting odds for certain bets that might be placed in the situation discussed in the so-called Sleeping Beauty Problem. This paper examines what Thirders, Halfers, and Double Halfers must say about the odds as determined by various decision theoretic approaches and argues that Thirders and Halfers have difficulties formulating plausible and coherent positions concerning the relevant betting odds. Double Halfers do not face this problem and that is an important consideration in favor of Double Halfers.

We introduce the Easton collapse and show that the two-stage iteration of Easton collapses gives a model in which the successor of a regular cardinal carries a strongly saturated filter. This allows one to get a model in which many successor cardinals carry saturated filters just by iterating Easton collapses.

The objective of this paper is to contribute to the international discussions on life and scientific technology by examining the images and concepts of life in contemporary Japan. In English the word Inochi can be rendered as "life". However, the nuances of the Japanese term differ in certain cases, and therefore I have chosen to use the term much as is. I first discuss the linguistic meanings of the word, and then consider several important features of the images of inochi (...) that have appeared in publications and responses from questionnaires on this topic. Some philosophical and metaphysical interpretations of the concept of inochi are then proposed. Finally a brief outline of the study of life is presented, suggesting a new way to approach bioethics and discussions on environmental issues. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to contribute to the international discussions on life and scientific technology by examining the images and concepts of life in contemporary Japan. In English the word Inochi can be rendered as "life". However, the nuances of the Japanese term differ in certain cases, and therefore I have chosen to use the term much as is. I first discuss the linguistic meanings of the word, and then consider several important features of the images of inochi (...) that have appeared in publications and responses from questionnaires on this topic. Some philosophical and metaphysical interpretations of the concept of inochi are then proposed. Finally a brief outline of the study of life is presented, suggesting a new way to approach bioethics and discussions on environmental issues. This paper is a republication of Morioka (1991) in "Japan Review" under the permission of "Japan Review" and "Global Bioethics.". (shrink)

One prominent feature of belief is that a belief cannot be formed at will. This paper argues that the best explanation of this fact is that belief formation is a process that takes aim at the truth. Taking aim at the truth is to be understood as causal responsiveness of the processes constituting belief formation to what facilitates achieving true beliefs. The requirement for this responsiveness precludes the possibility of belief formation responding to intentions in a way that would count (...) as forming a belief at will. (shrink)

This is the English translation of Chapter One of Mutsu Bunmei Ron, which was published in Japanese in 2003. Since this book’s publication I have received many requests for an English translation from people around the world. I decided to begin by publishing this first chapter under the title Painless Civilization 1 and make it available to readers who have a keen interest in this topic. * The original text of this chapter was written in 1998, more than twenty years (...) ago, but I believe what I argued there is becoming increasingly important today. Painless civilization is a pathology of contemporary society. We will be pulled much deeper into a painless stream in the future. What is needed is the wisdom to see through the fundamental structure of our painless civilization and its relationship with the meaning of life. ** Modern society seems on the verge of being swallowed up by the pathology of “painless civilization.” I have written this book for people who, in the midst of anxiety studded with pleasure, joyless repetition, and a maze from which they cannot escape no matter how far they walk, nevertheless retain in some corner of their hearts a desire to live life fully and without regrets. * When we feel a vague anxiety, like being bound in gossamer cords, in the midst of modern society, we are perhaps intuitively sensing the existence of “painless civilization.” This book is an attempt to give words to this feeling that the reader has, I am sure, already experienced at least once in their life. (shrink)

This book is a collection of all the papers published in the special issue “Artificial Intelligence, Robots, and Philosophy,” Journal of Philosophy of Life, Vol.13, No.1, 2023, pp.1-146. The authors discuss a variety of topics such as science fiction and space ethics, the philosophy of artificial intelligence, the ethics of autonomous agents, and virtuous robots. Through their discussions, readers are able to think deeply about the essence of modern technology and the future of humanity. All papers were invited and completed (...) in spring 2020, though because of the Covid-19 pandemic and other problems, the publication was delayed until this year. I apologize to the authors and potential readers for the delay. I hope that readers will enjoy these arguments on digital technology and its relationship with philosophy. *** -/- Contents*** -/- Introduction : Descartes and Artificial Intelligence; Masahiro Morioka*** -/- Isaac Asimov and the Current State of Space Science Fiction : In the Light of Space Ethics; Shin-ichiro Inaba*** -/- Artificial Intelligence and Contemporary Philosophy : Heidegger, Jonas, and Slime Mold; Masahiro Morioka*** -/- Implications of Automating Science : The Possibility of Artificial Creativity and the Future of Science; Makoto Kureha*** -/- Why Autonomous Agents Should Not Be Built for War; István Zoltán Zárdai*** -/- Wheat and Pepper : Interactions Between Technology and Humans; Minao Kukita*** -/- Clockwork Courage : A Defense of Virtuous Robots; Shimpei Okamoto*** -/- Reconstructing Agency from Choice; Yuko Murakami*** -/- Gushing Prose : Will Machines Ever be Able to Translate as Badly as Humans?; Rossa Ó Muireartaigh***. (shrink)

This book is a collection of all the papers published in the special issue “Philosophy and Meaning in Life Vol.4: Selected Papers from the Pretoria Conference,” Journal of Philosophy of Life, Vol.12, No.1, 2022, pp.1-115. -/- Theorizing About Meaning in Life Cheshire Calhoun -/- Is It Possible to Say ‘Yes’ to Traumatic Experiences?: A Philosophical Approach to Human Suffering Masahiro Morioka -/- Why Beauvoir Is Not a Subjectivist about Meaning in Life Kiki Berk -/- Axiological Values Grounded in Basic (...) Motivational Dispositions: How to Be a Subjectivist about Meaning in Life Frank Martela -/- Pessimism, Political Critique, and the Contingently Bad Life Patrick O’Donnell -/- Reason, Luck, and Meaning: A Critique of the Moralist View of Meaning in Life Kazuki Watanabe. (shrink)