Sleep is mandatory in most animals that have the nervous system and is universally observed in model organisms ranging from the nematodes, zebrafish, to mammals. However, it is unclear whether different sleep states fulfill common functions and are driven by shared mechanisms in these different animal species. Mammals and birds exhibit two obviously distinct states of sleep, i.e., non-rapid eye movement sleep and rapid eye movement sleep, but it is unknown why sleep should be so segregated. Studying sleep in other (...) animal models might give us clues that help solve this puzzle. Recent studies suggest that REM sleep, or ancestral forms of REM sleep might be found in non-mammalian or -avian species such as reptiles. These observations suggest that REM sleep and NREM sleep evolved earlier than previously thought. In this review, we discuss the evolutionary origin of the distinct REM/NREM sleep states to gain insight into the mechanistic and functional reason for these two different types of sleep. (shrink)

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)

This article methodologically explores Erich Fromm’s theory of narcissism in socio-theoretical terms while referring to his theory of alienation. It thereby portrays the foundations of an analytical method of far-right politics in the context of capitalism and demonstrates that malignant narcissism touches off fascism without regard to authoritarianism. Essentially, the Freudian psychoanalytic concept of narcissism lies in Fromm’s social theory. However, it is possible to discern the theoretical essence of his social theory characteristically in his conception of alienation. By focusing (...) on this theoretical concern, I argue that in Fromm’s social theory the concept of narcissism works on a sociopathological level, particularly in the way in which it synchronises with alienation, a social phenomenon that fulfils its important functions in conjunction with the marketing orientation under the conditions of a market society, and therefore that the concept plays an overriding role in his theory of alienation. I conclude that the relevance of a Frommian critical social theory of narcissism for our society is best showcased by the concept of postfascism. (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)

According to alethic pluralism, sentences belonging to different domains of discourse can be true by having different alethic (i.e., truth-constituting) properties. Against this pluralistic view, Jamin Asay has recently argued that pluralists' appeal to multiple alethic properties is ill-motivated because the main advantages of pluralism can already be obtained within the framework of standard truthmaker theory. In response to this objection, this paper argues that Asay's claim does not hold with respect to one of the central advantages of pluralism, namely, (...) the ability to offer a proper understanding of the realism/anti-realism debate. This is because, first, when simply construed, truthmaker theory can only provide an inadequate understanding of the debate, and second, when construed in certain ways that allow it to avoid inadequacy, it becomes committed to multiple alethic properties. (shrink)

In this translation of his 1936 essay, Tosaka Jun critically examines Tanabe Hajime’s “logic of species,” paying particular attention to its basis, i.e. the logic of “absolute mediation” that Tanabe had devised earlier. In 1936, the logic of species had only been developed within a few texts, including “The Logic of Social Being” (1934–5) and “The Logic of Species and the World Schema” (1935). Interestingly enough, Tosaka agrees to a certain extent with Tanabe’s criticism of the “logic of nothingness” lying (...) at the bottom of Nishida Kitaro’s philosophy, according to which criticism the place of nothingness represents a mystical immediacy. Tosaka, however, also criticizes Tanabe’s own position, claiming that his idea of absolute mediation, in which all immediacies are mediated, leads to a logical absolutism neglecting the materiality of nature. Tosaka claims that the temporal relationship between the mediator and the mediated should be addressed in terms of a “chronology” in which nature exists prior to the subject. Not only Tosaka’s immanent criticism of Tanabe contributed to the development of the “Kyoto School” (an expression Tosaka invented himself in 1932), but the question of “chronology,” with regard to mediation, has a modern theoretical significance as a point of contention in the contemporary debate between realism and constructivism. (shrink)

One most common problem in reinforcement learning systems (e.g. Q-learning) is to reduce the number of trials to converge to an optimal policy. As one of the solution to the problem, k-certainty exploration method was proposed. Miyazaki reported that this method could determine an optimal policy faster than Q-learning in Markov decision processes (MDPs). This method is very efficient learning method. But, we propose an improvement plan that makes this method more efficient. In k-certainty exploration method, in case there is (...) no k-uncertainty rule (rules which aren’t selected more than k times) in current state, an agent sometimes walks randomly until it finds a state where it can select a k-uncertainty rule. We think that this behavior is not efficient. To reduce this useless behavior, we propose combining k-certainty exploration method with Dynamic programming (DP). Miyazaki’s system uses DP after all rules are executed at least k times. But, our method uses k-certainty exploration method along with DP during learning. Our method, takes two pattern actions. In case an agent can select k-uncertainty rules, one of these rules is selected at random as k-certainty exploration method. In another case there is no k-uncertainty rule, behavior of agent is different from the behavior of k-certainty exploration method. In that case, our method uses DP to compute an optimal policy for moving from a current state to a state in which some k-uncertainty rules remain. The model for DP is constructed by using only known states. The outline will be described below. First, an agent makes a map constructed by using only known states. In the map, goals are states in which there are k-uncertainty rules and arbitrary state values are set in these states. Point to which attention should be paid is that the map is not given from outside. It is made from only experience. Next, each state values of states in which there are only k-certainty rules in the map are computed by DP (we used Policy Iteration). Finally, an agent continues to select greedy action until it arrives at a state in which it can select a k-uncertainty rule. By this improvement, we expect it can determine an optimal policy faster than k-certainty exploration method. And we have verified that our exploration method can determine an optimal policy faster than k-certainty exploration method by computer simulation. (shrink)

My research re-introduces two social and political thinkers, Erich Fromm and Shōzō Fujita. It would seem that there is no need to go into any detail about the former. He has been generally regarded as a German-American social psychologist who integrated Marx’s historical materialism with Freud’s instinct theory by way of Weberian sociology. The latter is most commonly regarded as a Japanese political thinker who focused on the study of the Tennō system as a Japanese system of government. As we (...) shall see later, it appears that Fromm and Fujita share no link, in the sense of different disciplines and historical backgrounds. Despite these clear differences, however, their academic works have much in common in some respects. First, they both concern themselves with psychoanalytic theory with a focus on the concept of ‘narcissism’ in the social range. Second, they are both in favour of some important theoretical tools and components of philosophy, such as ‘dialectic’ and ‘immanent critique’. Third, they warn against the contemporary tendency and attitude to be indifferent to others and things that do not concern oneself and to exploit others to one’s own advantage in terms of one’s unconscious narcissistic state of mind. Perhaps the first and third common viewpoints are profoundly associated with their contemporaneousness, as both lived chiefly in the twentieth century. In other words, their standpoints are concerned with contemporary phenomena widely seen in many industrialised societies, and it is therefore quite natural that both theorists should lay stress on these two perspectives, particularly taking account of their academic foundations. Apart from these two examples of common grounds, it should be noted that the second common point of view is also related to their similar academic backgrounds. Roughly speaking, both Fromm and Fujita absorbed their intellectual knowledge primarily from Hegel, Marx and Freud. From this perspective, it is not surprising that they have similar theoretical ingredients. In this respect, it is even possible to believe that they are exact heirs of traditional Critical Theory in favour of the task of achieving Mündigkeit, even though many scholars are opposed to this view of their works despite Fromm’s early contributions to the Institute for Social Research and Fujita’s theoretical components capturing the essence of critique. Having said that, my research shines a light not only on their positive theoretical conventions but also on the common negative ingredients in their theories of narcissism. Both their standpoints regard narcissism as a major hindrance to social life. For this reason, we have considerable difficulty in dealing with the problem and therefore in curing the disease by applying their social and political theories due to the fact that narcissism is one of the most fundamental human needs. For the purpose of surmounting this theoretical aporia, I introduce Heinz Kohut’s psychoanalytic theory, which is in favour of and accepts the desire and existence of narcissism concerning human nature. On the basis of his stance on narcissism, as we shall see below, my research examines how we perceive and experience our democratic life. (shrink)

According to the subset view of realization, a property realizes another if the causal powers of the latter are a subset of those of the former. Against this view, some authors (in particular, Kevin Morris and Paul Audi) have argued that it has an untenable consequence that realizing properties are less fundamental than the properties they realize, because the subset view characterizes realized properties as parts (subsets) of their realizers whereas it is generally true that a part is prior to (...) its whole. This paper defends the subset view from this “part-whole” objection, by arguing that if we compare individual powers of realizer and realizee with particular attention to their manifestation conditions, it turns out that each power of a realizee is grounded in some power of its realizer. This grounding relation between powers, I shall argue, allows subset theorists to explain why a realizer is more fundamental than its realizee, even while having the latter as a part. (shrink)

The strong immanent realism (i.e., the view that there exist universals as entities capable of being wholly present wherever their instances are located) has been traditionally criticized for having certain absurd consequences. Although Gilmore (2003) replied to these criticisms by taking spatial relations involving universals as relativized to their locations, his reply has been rebutted by Keskinen et al. (2015). This paper aims to defend the strong immanent realism by proposing a new version of the relativization strategy, according to which (...) a spatial relation is to be relativized just to the extent that it contains universals or concrete particulars among its terms. This version, it will be argued, can satisfactorily address the objections hitherto posed to the strong immanent realism. (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)

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)

This article provides the first English translation of Tanabe’s early essay, “The Limit of Logicism in Epistemology: A Critique of the Marburg and Freiburg Schools”. The key notion that the young Tanabe seeks to define in relation to his detailed analyses of contemporary Neo-Kantian epistemology is the notion of “pure experience” presented in Nishida’s philosophy. The general theory of epistemology shared among the thinkers from these two prominent schools of philosophy in early 20 th century Germany aimed to eliminate the (...) empirical residues in Kant’s theory of knowledge while opposing naïve empiricism and the uncritical methodology of positive science. Their “logicistic” approach, according to Tanabe, seems to contradict Nishida’s notion of pure experience, for it cannot allow any vestige of empiricism in its systematic framework, which is specifically designed to ground scientific knowledge. Yet given that the Neo-Kantian configuration of epistemology does not create the object of knowledge, it must face sensation or representational content as its limiting instance. Thus, to ground a Neo-Kantian theory of knowledge while taking account of this limit of logicism involves explaining their understanding of the unity of subject and object in human knowing. For this, Tanabe argues, recourse to Nishida’s notion of pure experience is indispensable. (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。.

東洋学・自然科学の学問の伝統を生み出した京都学派「文」の精神を明らかにする。大学とは何か、学問とは何かを考えるための好著。.