The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between a firm’s strategy and consumers’ decisions in the presence of the paradox of choice and sharing personal information. The paradox of choice implies that having too many choices does not necessarily ensure happiness and sometimes having less is more. A new model is constructed introducing a factor of information sharing into the model of a previous study that embedded the paradox of choice only (Kinjo and Ebina in AI Soc (...) 30(2):291–297, 2015). A key feature of the model is its disutility function. It is demonstrated that if the sign of the cross derivative of the function is positive (negative) at the optimum, there is a positive (negative) correlation between the degree of sharing personal information chosen by the consumers and the number of products offered by the firm in its recommendation systems. It is also numerically indicated that the profit function of the firm becomes convex or concave depending on the shape of the disutility function. These results suggest that firms should carefully investigate the shape of the disutility function, under the paradox of choice and sharing personal information. (shrink)

If a book title were comparable to the name of a restaurant, the table of contents would be their menu. Jason Wirth's Nietzsche and Other Buddhas initially reminded me of a fusion restaurant with a strong "Asian" flavor, an ambiguous genre that we would see anywhere in continental Europe. As one could easily imagine, this is not necessarily a compliment to the chef. By integrating various ingredients and different techniques from diverse culinary traditions, a fusion restaurant might claim to create (...) a new dish or a unique course that transcends the conventional categories of our dietary practice. Like what Kant says about the uniqueness of nonsense, however, their end product could fail to be... (shrink)

1. Kō to shi no shisōshi -- 2. Kō to shi no shakai kagaku -- 3. Nihon ni okeru kō to shi -- 4. Ō-Bei ni okeru kō to shi -- 5. Kokka to ningen to kōkyōsei -- 6. Keizai kara mita kōshi mondai -- 7. Chūkan shūdan ga hiraku kōkyōsei -- 8. Kagaku gijutsu to kōkyōsei -- 9. chikyū kankyō to kōkyōsei -- 10. 21-seiki kōkyō tetsugaku no chihei -- 14. Rīdāshippu kara kangaeru kōkyōsei.

This study compares Pairs of subjects with Single subjects in a task of discovering scientific laws with the aid of experiments. Subjects solved a molecular genetics task in a computer micro‐world (Dunbar, 1993). Pairs were more successful in discovery than Singles and participated more actively in explanatory activities (i.e., entertaining hypotheses and considering alternative ideas and justifications). Explanatory activities were effective for discovery only when the subjects also conducted crucial experiments. Explanatory activities were facilitated when paired subjects made requests of (...) each other for explanation and focused on them. The study extends from individual to collaborative discovery activities the importance to the discovery process of setting goals to find hypotheses and evidence (Dunbar, 1993) and to construct explanations of phenomena and processes encountered in examples (Chi, Bassok, Lewis, & Glaser, 1989). (shrink)

To investigate the cognitive processes underlying creative inspiration, we tested the extent to which viewing or copying prior examples impacted creative output in art. In Experiment 1, undergraduates made drawings under three conditions: copying an artist's drawing, then producing an original drawing; producing an original drawing without having seen another's work; and copying another artist's work, then reproducing that artist's style independently. We discovered that through copying unfamiliar abstract drawings, participants were able to produce creative drawings qualitatively different from the (...) model drawings. Process analyses suggested that participants' cognitive constraints became relaxed, and new perspectives were formed from copying another's artwork. Experiment 2 showed that exposure to styles of artwork considered unfamiliar facilitated creativity in drawing, while styles considered familiar did not do so. Experiment 3 showed that both copying and thoroughly viewing artwork executed using an unfamiliar style facilitated creativity in drawing, whereas merely thinking about alternative styles of artistic representation did not do so. These experiments revealed that deep encounters with unfamiliar artworks—whether through copying or prolonged observation—change people's cognitive representations of the act of drawing to produce novel artwork. (shrink)

Presentism is usually understood as the thesis that only the present exists whereas the rival theory of eternalism is usually understood as the thesis that past, present, and future things are all equally real. The significance of this debate has been threatened by the so-called triviality objection, which allegedly shows that the presentist thesis is either trivially true or obviously false: Presentism is trivially true if it is read as saying that everything that exists now is present, and it is (...) obviously false if read as saying that everything that has existed, exits or will exist is present. If eternalism is taken as the negation of presentism, it is also either trivially false or obviously true. In this paper, I try to respond to the triviality objection on behalf of presentism. In second section, I will examine how the argument proceeds. In third section, I will reflect on three possible ways to respond but will argue that none of them succeeds in giving a satisfactory solution. I will then try to clarify the core idea of presentism and to suggest that if we characterise presentism accurately, the problem will disappear. In fourth section, I will offer a plausible definition of presentism and will show how it can avoid the triviality objection and demonstrate why it is advantageous to accept the version of presentism I offer. (shrink)

The purpose of our study is to investigate the effects of the number of products, product attributes, and prices on consumer confusion, conduct a numerical analysis to check the robustness of the results, and present an example of the cell phone market in Japan. Following an ideal point model and embedding the number of products and product attributes, we clarify how these factors affect consumer confusion and purchase probability. We show that as the number of product attributes increases, the choice (...) probability of each product becomes equal, implying that consumer confusion occurs. This result is robust to the introduction of prices as strategic variables. (shrink)

The Manifestation Requirement, advanced by Dummett in his critique of semantic realism, has been criticized for being behavioristic, and the responses have been made that the critics are mistaken. However, the dispute has failed to exhibit the point of the Requirement. In this paper, I shall argue (1) that, in the light of Anscombe's theory of practical knowledge, knowledge of linguistic meaning is to be seen as the knowledge-how that forms the basis of the practical knowledge that an agent has (...) of his own intentional actions, (2) that such knowledge of linguistic meaning is to be based on mutual agreements in a community, and (3) that the Manifestation Requirement is a condition for the possibility of such mutual agreements. As a result, the Manifestation Requirement finds its basis on the idea that language and linguistic acts are tools that we use while continually improving them. (shrink)

This is a review essay on Daisuke Kachi’s recent book, Agents: Contemporary Substance Ontology (sic. Shunjusha, 2018). The book develops and partially defends an ontology that takes the category of substance as the most fundamental one. The author provides in it a new perspective on substance, which consists in characterizing substances as bearers of what he calls “substance modalities” (of which there are four kinds, that stem from the factors of essence, power, past persistence, and future persistence respectively). The first (...) part of this review essay gives an extended overview of Kachi’s book while the second discusses some problems it may face. (shrink)

宇宙はなぜ“果てない”のか、ヒトはなぜ“考える”のか、微生物はなぜ“小さい”のか―分野を横断し、時制を越境して、生きものの可能性をラディカルに照らす、生物学界の「風雲児」長沼毅の集大成。.

Reading “The Tale of Genji”: Sources from the First Millennium. Edited by Thomas Harper and Haruo Shirane. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. Pp. xx + 610. $65.

This introduction to Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962), the critical successor of the "father of contemporary Japanese philosophy" Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945), focuses on Hajime's central philosophical ideas and perspective on "self," "world," "knowledge," and the "purpose of philosophizing". Exploring his notable philosophical ideas including the logic of species, metanoetics, and philosophy of death, it addresses his life-long study of the history of Western philosophy. It sets out his belief that Western framework of thinking is incapable of giving sufficient answers to the philosophical (...) questions concerning the self and the world together and discusses the central ideas he developed while working in Eastern traditions such as Confucianism and Daoism. Featuring comprehensive further reading lists, discussion questions and teaching notes, this is an ideal introductory guide to Tanabe Hajime suitable for anyone interested in Japanese and World philosophy, as well as the development of the Kyoto School. (shrink)

One short passage on what is called the Receptacle in Plato’s Timaeus has been the subject of much controversy since Cherniss presented an alternative reading of it in 1954. In this paper, I criticize an influential argument presented by Zeyl for a traditional reading, and propose a new interpretation which adopts the alternative reading on important sentences of the passage, but is not accompanied by the defects of Cherniss’ interpretation.

This study examined the effect of fake news on electoral outcome. Using post-election surveys, previous studies found associations between exposure to fake news and voting behavior, though these observational studies failed to show that these changes were actually caused by fake news. To examine whether fake news really affects voting behavior, we need to experimentally manipulate voters’ exposure to fake news in real elections and see if voters regret their vote choice knowing that the information was false. For this purpose, (...) our study focused on Mexico’s 2018 presidential election, which provided an ideal setting. During the campaign, false information about a scandal allegedly involving Ricardo Anaya, a candidate from the National Action Party, was widely disseminated. However, his innocence was officially acknowledged after the election. Using this correction of fake news as a treatment, we tested a sample of 1,561 individuals to assess whether the retraction of fake news caused post-election regret: would Mexican voters have voted differently if they had not been exposed to such false information. Our multivariate analyses found that the retraction of fake news did cause post-election regret among voters with lower internal political efficacy, but voters associated with higher political knowledge and internal political efficacy were not affected by the retraction and were less likely to experience regret. About 20% of the respondents experienced post-election regret, and of those, about 35% would have switched their vote to Anaya. The findings corroborate lasting effects of fake news, which may have non-negligible effects on electoral outcomes. (shrink)

According to the “truthmaker maximalism”, every true contingent proposition is made true by something in the world, called its truthmaker. Although at first sight the maximalism seems to be a natural position, it has serious difficulties, especially concerning negative truths. In view of this, many truthmaker theorists adopt some non-maximalist position. It is not clear, however, whether these non-maximalists are justified, since existing reasons to justify the non-maximalism are not good enough. In this paper, then, I shall propose a new (...) reason for the non-maximalism, which consists in the observation that the maximalism cannot acknowledge the widely accepted view that certain inferences involving logical constants are valid in the properly logical sense. (shrink)