20世紀後半アメリカを中心にしたラディカル・エコロジーの成果と、西田幾多郎・和辻哲郎の思想の比較検証を通して、仏教的な自然・環境観が明示する“今日的意義”を提起した労作。.

The present century has seen renewed interest in characterizing cognition, the object of inquiry of the cognitive sciences. In this paper, I describe the problem of cognition—the absence of a positive characterization of cognition despite a felt need for one. It is widely recognized that the problem is motivated by decades of controversy among cognitive scientists over foundational questions, such as whether non-neural parts of the body or environment can realize cognitive processes, or whether plants and microbes have cognitive processes. (...) The dominant strategy for addressing the problem of cognition is to seek a dichotomous criterion that vindicates some set of controversial claims. However, I argue that the problem of cognition is also motivated by ongoing conceptual development in cognitive science, and I describe four benefits that a characterization of cognition could confer. Given these benefits, I recommend an alternative criterion of success, ecumenical extensional adequacy, on which the aim is to describe the variation in expert judgments rather than to correct this variation by taking sides in sectarian disputes. I argue that if we had an ecumenical solution to the problem of cognition, we would have achieved much of what we should want from a “mark of the cognitive”. (shrink)

Cognitive science is unusual in that cognitive scientists have dramatic disagreements about the extension of their object of study, cognition. This paper defends a novel analysis of the scientific concept of cognition: that cognition is the sensitive management of an agent’s behavior. This analysis is “modular,” so that its extension varies depending on how one interprets certain of its constituent terms. I argue that these variations correspond to extant disagreements between cognitive scientists. This correspondence is evidence that the proposed analysis (...) models the contemporary understanding of cognition among scientists, without artificially resolving questions that are currently considered open. (shrink)

I draw attention to an ambiguity of the expression ‘phenomenal consciousness’ that is an avoidable yet persistent source of conceptual confusion among consciousness scientists. The ambiguity is between what I call phenomenality and what I call conscious states, where the former denotes an abstract property and the latter denotes a phenomenon or class of its instances. Since sentences featuring these two terms have different semantic properties, it is possible to equivocate over the term ‘consciousness’. It is also possible to fail (...) to distinguish between statements that are true about conscious states in virtue of their phenomenality, and statements that are true in virtue of other properties of conscious states. I review empirically informed arguments by scientists Bernard Balleine and Anthony Dickinson, Stevan Harnad, and Jeffrey Alan Gray, arguing that each of them makes errors based on the ambiguity. I conclude with some tentative suggestions for avoiding further confusion about the ambiguity. (shrink)

Cultural similarities and differences in facial expressions have been a controversial issue in the field of facial communications. A key step in addressing the debate regarding the cultural dependency of emotional expression is to characterize the visual features of specific facial expressions in individual cultures. Here we developed an image analysis framework for this purpose using convolutional neural networks that through training learned visual features critical for classification. We analyzed photographs of facial expressions derived from two databases, each developed in (...) a different country, in which corresponding emotion labels were available. While the CNNs reached high rates of correct results that were far above chance after training with each database, they showed many misclassifications when they analyzed faces from the database that was not used for training. These results suggest that facial features useful for classifying facial expressions differed between the databases. The selectivity of computational units in the CNNs to action units of the face varied across the facial expressions. Importantly, the AU selectivity often differed drastically between the CNNs trained with the different databases. Similarity and dissimilarity of these tuning profiles partly explained the pattern of misclassifications, suggesting that the AUs are important for characterizing the facial features and differ between the two countries. The AU tuning profiles, especially those reduced by principal component analysis, are compact summaries useful for comparisons across different databases, and thus might advance our understanding of universality vs. specificity of facial expressions across cultures. (shrink)

Cognitive science has been beset for thirty years by foundational disputes about the nature and extension of cognition—e.g. whether cognition is necessarily representational, whether cognitive processes extend outside the brain or body, and whether plants or microbes have them. Whereas previous philosophical work aimed to settle these disputes, I aim to understand what conception of cognition scientists could share given that they disagree so fundamentally. To this end, I develop a number of variations on traditional conceptual explication, and defend a (...) novel explication of cognition called the sensitive management hypothesis. -/- Since expert judgments about the extension of “cognition” vary so much, I argue that there is value in explication that accurately models the variance in judgments rather than taking sides or treating that variance as noise. I say of explications that accomplish this that they are ecumenically extensionally adequate. Thus, rather than adjudicating whether, say, plants can have cognitive processes like humans, an ecumenically adequate explication should classify these cases differently: human cognitive processes as paradigmatically cognitive, and plant processes as controversially cognitive. -/- I achieve ecumenical adequacy by articulating conceptual explications with parameters, or terms that can be assigned a number of distinct interpretations based on the background commitments of participants in a discourse. For example, an explication might require that cognition cause “behavior,” and imply that plant processes are cognitive or not depending on whether anything plants do can be considered “behavior.” Parameterization provides a unified treatment of embattled concepts by isolating topics of disagreement in a small number of parameters. -/- I incorporate these innovations into an account on which cognition is the “sensitive management of organismal behavior.” The sensitive management hypothesis is ecumenically extensionally adequate, accurately classifying a broad variety of cases as paradigmatically or controversially cognitive phenomena. I also describe an extremely permissive version of the sensitive management hypothesis, arguing that it has the potential to explain several features of cognitive scientific discourse, including various facts about the way cognitive scientists ascribe representations to cognitive systems. (shrink)

Dysfunctional attentional control is observed in patients with mental disorders. However, there is no established neurophysiological method to assess attention in such patients. We showed a discrepancy in alpha-band power in the tasks that evoked internal and external attention event-related alpha-band power changes in healthy subjects during self-reflection and working memory tasks in a preliminary study. In this study, we aimed at elucidating event-related alpha-band power changes in healthy subjects during the tasks, addressing the shortcomings of the previous study. Sixteen (...) healthy volunteers were examined for the event-related power change during the tasks. The results demonstrated the discrepancy of alpha-band ERpow at 8, 10, and 12 Hz in the parieto-occipital area between the WM and SR tasks for a period between a target stimulus and a command stimulus, where a participant switched to internal attention from external attention according to the SR task and remained at external attention according to the WM task. The results suggest that alpha-band ERpow in this area is associated with the direction of attention in response to cognitive stimuli, indicating that the findings of ERpow during the two tasks would potentially aid in the clarification of the pathophysiology of the dysfunctional change in attention in patients with psychiatric disorders. (shrink)

Microaggressions are, roughly, acts or states of affairs that express prejudice or neglect toward members of oppressed groups in relatively subtle ways. There is an apparent consensus among both proponents and critics of the microaggression concept that microaggressions are “subjective.” We examine what subjectivity amounts to in this context and argue against this consensus. We distinguish between microaggressions as an explanatory posit and microaggressions as a hermeneutical tool, arguing that in either case there is no reason at present to regard (...) microaggressions as subjective and that microaggressions in the hermeneutical sense should be regarded as objective. (shrink)

The term ‘functionalism’ is usually heard in connection with the philosophy of mind or cognition. The functionalism of Wilfrid Sellars, however, is in the first instance as response to the worries about the metaphysics not of mental states, but of meaning. Only late in his career did Sellars explore the possibility of extending his functionalism into an account of cognition. It has been suggested, though, that Sellars’ extension of his functionalist theory into subpersonal territory is not successful. In particular, there (...) is a worry abroad that in order to be a functionalist about cognitive states, Sellars must succumb to a special form of the Myth of the Given. In this essay I will review and elucidate what I take to be the structure of Sellars’ functionalism, defending it from this worry. I will suggest a resolution of some apparent textual contradictions based in part on the chronology of Sellars’ writing, with the assumption that later writings express Sellars’ more nuanced views. -/- Draft of 2009. (shrink)

Examining the notion of wavefunction collapse (WFC) in quantum measurements, which came again to be in question in the recent debate on the quantum Zeno effect, we remark that WFC is realized only through decoherence among branch waves by detection, after a spectral decomposition process from an initial object wavefunction to a superposition of branch waves corresponding to relevant measurement propositions. We improve the definition of the decoherence parameter, so as to be fitted to general cases, by which we can (...) quantitatively estimate the degree of WFC given by detectors. Finally, we briefly discuss whether two special detector models, with very huge and very small degrees of freedom, can provoke WFC. (shrink)

The many-Hilbert-spaces approach to the measurement problem in quantum mechanics is reviewed, and the notion of wave function collapse by measurement is formulated as a dephasing process between the two branch waves of an interfering particle. Following the approach originally proposed in Ref. 1, we introduce a “decoherence parameter,” which yields aquantitative description of the degree of coherence between the two branch waves of an interfering particle. By discussing the difference between the wave function collapse and the orthogonality of the (...) apparatus' wave functions, we analyze critically two proposals, recently appeared in the literature, (2, 3) and argue that neither one describes a dephasing process. We conclude that the concept of “wave function collapse,” according to the conventional Copenhagen interpretation, is to be replaced by that of a statisticallydefined dephasing process. (shrink)

The many-Hilbert-spaces theory of quantum measurements, which was originally proposed by S. Machida and the present author, is reviewed and developed. Dividing a typical quantum measurement in two successive steps, the first being responsible for spectral decomposition and the second for detection, we point out that the wave packet reduction by measurement takes place at the latter step, through interaction of an object system with one of the local systems of detectors. First we discuss the physics of the detection process, (...) using numerical simulations for a simple detector model, and then formulate a general theory of quantum measurements to give the wave packet reduction in an explicit form as a sort of phase transition. The derivation is based on the macroscopic nature of the local system, to be represented in a continuous direct sum of many Hilbert spaces, and on the finite-size effect of the local system, to give phase shifts proportional to size parameters. We give a definite criterion for examining any instrument as to whether it works well as a detector or not. Finally, we compare the present theory with famous measurement theories and propose a possible experimental test to discriminate it from others. A few solvable detector models are also discussed. (shrink)

Microaggressions are hypothesized to play a causal role in undesirable population effects such as racial health gaps, but the mechanisms through which this occurs are not yet well understood. I call inquiry about these mechanisms the “explanatory project.” I suggest that the explanatory project has been hindered by microaggression concepts tailored to be applicable under conditions of lived uncertainty, rather than to facilitate understanding of structural causes. I defend a pluralist, structural account of microaggressions from arguments by Regina Rini that, (...) while appropriate for ethical projects, do not apply to the explanatory project. (shrink)

The Hypothesis of Extended Cognition (HEC) holds that that not all human cognition is realized inside the head. The related but distinct Hypothesis of Extended Mentality (HEM) holds that not all human mental items are realized inside the head. Clark & Chalmers distinguish between these hypotheses in their original treatment of cognitive extension, yet these two claims are often confused. I distinguish between functionalist theories on which functional roles are individuated according to computational criteria, and those on which functional roles (...) are individuated according to rational criteria. I then present an argument for a modest version of HEC from computational functionalism, based on Clark & Chalmers’ original argument. In doing so I articulate a successor to their parity principle, and review studies by Wayne Gray et al. that provide plausible evidence for actual cognitive extension. I then respond to a new criticism of HEC by Mark Sprevak using the modest account I have developed, arguing that Sprevak conflates HEC and HEM. (shrink)

Functionalism is widely regarded as the central doctrine in the philosophy of cognitive science, and is invoked by philosophers of cognitive science to settle disputes over methodology and other puzzles. I describe a recent dispute over extended cognition in which many commentators appeal to functionalism. I then raise an objection to functionalism as it figures in this dispute, targeting the assumption that generality and abstraction are tightly correlated. Finally, I argue that the new mechanist framework offers more realistic resources for (...) understanding cognitive science, and hence is a better source of appeal for resolving disagreement in philosophy of science. (shrink)

Many philosophers worry that cognitive scientists apply the concept REPRESENTATION too liberally. For example, William Ramsey argues that scientists often ascribe natural representations according to the “receptor notion,” a causal account with absurd consequences. I rehabilitate the receptor notion by augmenting it with a background condition: that natural representations are ascribed only to systems construed as organisms. This Organism-Receptor account rationalizes our existing conceptual practice, including the fact that scientists in fact reject Ramsey’s absurd consequences. The Organism-Receptor account raises some (...) worrying questions, but as a more faithful characterization of scientific practice it is a better guide to conceptual reform. (shrink)

As Funayama has shown, Dharmakīrti’s successors had an animated discussion on the nature and function of the initial statement of scientific treatises in terms of its effectiveness and requisites. Arcaṭa in his comments on the initial statement of the Hetubindu considers that the initial statement, which contains the purpose of the treatise, is useless in prompting people to undertake the activity of reading the treatise because judicious people are supposed to undertake action only due to certainty which never arises from (...) something that is not a pramāṇa. For Arcaṭa, the initial statement is set forth only to dispel the objection of an opponent who criticizes the treatise for not having a purpose. Kamalaśīla criticizes Arcaṭa on this point; for him the initial statement is effective to prompt people to undertake the reading of the treatise because people act also on the basis of doubt, which arises from the initial statement that is not a pramāṇa but an abhyupāya for action. This paper attempts to consider how such doubt can cause reading by examining the debate in the Tattvasaṅgrahapañjikā and related texts. As Kamalaśīla presupposes, when people act due to doubt, they may attain the desired purpose by chance but cannot escape the risks of not attaining an desired purpose and also of attaining an undesired purpose. Taking these risks into consideration, it is reasonable for Granoff to take up Kamalaśīla’s position as an example of the maxim of kākatālīya in the introduction of her paper in the present volume. However, the probability for the readers of the Tattvasaṅgraha to achieve easy comprehension of tattva as a result of reading a full treatise, which they undertake due to doubt out of the initial statement, is higher than that for a crow being suddenly killed by a falling palm-fruit. According to Kamalaśīla, the risk of not attaining the desired purpose does not prevent people from reading because such fear equally occurs in activities based on certainty. Furthermore, there is no risk of attaining an undesired purpose from the treatise because authors are supposed to undertake action only for the sake of others. Therefore, doubt which arises from an abhyupāya can make people undertake action. (shrink)

This paper aims at examining the arguments between Śubhagupta (c.720–780) and Śāntarakṣita (c.725–788) over the Buddha’s cognition of other minds and shows how the question of the Buddha’s cognition of other mindsis incorporated into the proof of vijñaptimātratā or “consciousness-only” by Śāntarakṣita. According to Śāntarakṣita, Śubhagupta assumes that the Buddha’s cognition, which is characterized as “the cognition [of the Blessed One] which follows the path of cognition” (aupalambhikadarśana), grasps other minds when the Buddha’s cognition is similar (sārūpya) to other minds. (...) For Śāntarakṣita, the Buddha’s cognition cannot be aupalambhika. If the Buddha’s cognition were similar to the other minds, it would follow that the Buddha, whose cognition erroneously grasps other minds as something distinct from it, has not yet removed the hindrance constituted by objects of knowledge (jñeyāvaraṇa). But if it is accepted that the Buddha’s cognition is beyond the grasped-grasper duality, can the Buddha, who does not know other minds, be called sarvajña “omniscient”? According to Śāntarakṣita, even though the Buddha has no seeing (adarśana), the Buddha causes all sentient beings to gain benefits by virtue of seeing other minds and hence deserves to be called sarvajña. What underlies this argument is that the Buddha knows other minds without making a distinction between his own mind and other minds, which is possible only on the basis of self-cognition (ātmasaṃvedana). (shrink)

In the Böhm theorem workshop on Crete, Zoran Petric called Statman’s “Typical Ambiguity theorem” the typed Böhm theorem. Moreover, he gave a new proof of the theorem based on set-theoretical models of the simply typed lambda calculus. In this paper, we study the linear version of the typed Böhm theorem on a fragment of Intuitionistic Linear Logic. We show that in the multiplicative fragment of intuitionistic linear logic without the multiplicative unit the weak typed Böhm theorem holds. The system IMLL (...) exactly corresponds to the linear lambda calculus with multiplicative pairing. The system IMLL also exactly corresponds to the free symmetric monoidal closed category without the unit object. As far as we know, our separation result is the first one with regard to these systems in a purely syntactical manner. (shrink)

The 2002 FIFA World Cup Korea/Japan significantly promoted football in the host countries. However, it remains unclear how the event has changed mass football participation. This study applies points of attachment —a well-developed concept in the field of sport management—to the 2002 FIFA World Cup and aims to examine which specific POA promoted football participation frequency immediately after the event and the present frequency of football participation in the host countries. An online questionnaire survey was conducted in South Korea and (...) Japan. The samples included adults aged > 19 as of the hosting date of the 2002 World Cup. Hierarchical regression analyses were performed to test all the datasets by employing four POAs as independent variables. Multiple control variables and two dependent variables were included in the model. Correspondingly, those who had a higher attachment to each point during the event showed a higher frequency of football participation immediately after the event. In contrast, only two POAs led to a higher frequency of present football participation. These findings provide the first empirical evidence highlighting the influence of the 2002 FIFA World Cup on mass football participation depending on the POA. (shrink)

In almost 40 per cent of households in North America, dogs are kept as companion animals. Dogs may be man's best friends, but what are humans to dogs? If these animals' loyalty and unconditional love have won our hearts, why do we so often view closely related wild canids, such as foxes, wolves, and coyotes, as pests, predatory killers, and demons? Re-examining the complexity and contradictions of human attitudes towards these animals, Dog's Best Friend? looks at how our relationships with (...) canids have shaped and also been transformed by different political and economic contexts. Journeying from ancient Greek and Roman societies to Japan's Edo period to eighteenth-century England, essays explore how dogs are welcomed as family, consumed in Asian food markets, and used in Western laboratories. Contributors provide glimpses of the lives of street dogs and humans in Bali, India, Taiwan, and Turkey and illuminate historical and current interactions in Western societies. The book delves into the fantasies and fears that play out in stereotypes of coyotes and wolves, while also acknowledging that events such as the Wolf Howl in Canada's Algonquin Park indicate the emergence of new popular perspectives on canids. Questioning where canids belong, how they should be treated, and what rights they should have, Dog's Best Friend? reconsiders the concept of justice and whether it can be extended beyond the limit of the human species. (shrink)

Site‐specific phosphorylation of intermediate filament (IF) proteins on serine and threonine residues leads to alteration of the filament structure, in vitro and in vivo. Protein kinases involved in cell signaling and those activated in mitosis dynamically control spatial and temporal organization of intracellular IF phosphorylation. Thus, IF phosphorylation appears to be one of the most predominant strategies in coordinating intracellular organization of the IF network.

Volume 27, Issue 4, October 2019, Page 584-591.

Beyond Concepts: Unicepts, Language, and Natural Information. By Millikan Ruth Garrett.

The laser chaos decision maker has been demonstrated to enable ultra-high-speed solutions of multiarmed bandit problems or decision-making in the GHz order. However, the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. In this paper, we analyze the chaotic dynamics inherent in experimentally observed laser chaos time series via surrogate data and further accelerate the decision-making performance via parameter optimization. We first evaluate the negative autocorrelation in a chaotic time series and its impact on decision-making detail. Then, we analyze the decision-making ability (...) using three different surrogate chaos time series to examine the underlying mechanism. We clarify that the negative autocorrelation of laser chaos improves decision-making and that the amplitude distribution of the original laser chaos time series is not optimal. Hence, we introduce a new parameter for adjusting the amplitude distribution of the laser chaos to enhance the decision-making performance. This study provides a new insight into exploiting the supremacy of chaotic dynamics in artificially constructed intelligent systems. (shrink)

Despite the police preventing special fraud victimisation of older adults, both the number of cases and the amount of damage have remained high in Japan. ‘Special fraud’, in Japan, is a crime in which victims are tricked by fraudsters who through phone or postcards impersonate the victims’ relatives, employees and other associates, to dupe the victims of their cash or other valuables. The number of recognised cases of special fraud has been turned to increase in 2021. Although police or consumer (...) affairs administrations have been conducting all-encompassing enlightenment or public education for prevention, it is also necessary to reach out to those who are vulnerable to fraud. In this study, we determine the psychosocial characteristics of victims of special fraud in Japanese older adults. We analysed the age, gender, education, residential status, household satisfaction, risk perception and scam vulnerability scale of 56 older adults aged 60 years or older who had been victims of special fraud and 99 older adults aged 60 years or older who had never been victims of special fraud. The study found that the victimised older adults were more likely to be females who live alone and go out less frequently than the non-victimised older adults. The total scores of the scam vulnerability scale were higher among the elderly victims of special fraud compared to those who had never been scammed, suggesting that the psychosocial characteristics of victims of special fraud among older adults are being female, living alone, going out infrequently, having high confidence against fraud victimisation and responding quickly to phone calls and unknown visitors. Therefore, government agencies or family members should take care of older women who meet these characteristics to reduce their contact with fraudsters. (shrink)