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Books by Masahiro Morioka

Tokyo Philosophy Project, 2023

This is the English translation of Chapters Two and Three of Painless Civilization, which was pub... more This is the English translation of Chapters Two and Three of Painless Civilization, which was published in Japanese in 2003. In this volume, I examine the problems of painless civilization from the perspective of philosophical psychology and ethics. I discuss how the essence of love is transformed in a society moving toward painlessness and how the painless stream penetrates each of us and makes us living corpses.
In order to tackle the problems of painless civilization, we must look inside our inner world because the “desire of the body” that lurks within us is the ultimate cause of our society’s movement toward painlessness. Love and the meaning of life are the central topics of discussion in the following chapters.
Because the original manuscript was written in 1998, the discussion of social issues may seem slightly dated, especially when it comes to reproductive technologies and juvenile delinquency, but I believe my central argument here has not aged at all; on the contrary, I think the times have finally caught up with my theory of painless civilization. I hope readers will join me in thinking deeply about the essence of contemporary civilization.
(Painless Civilization 1 is available as an open access book: https://www.philosophyoflife.org/tpp/painless01.pdf).

Tokyo Philosophy Project, 2024

This book is a collection of essays on the philosophy of life’s meaning in contemporary society. ... more This book is a collection of essays on the philosophy of life’s meaning in contemporary society. Topics range from antinatalism, meaning of life, the trolley problem, to painless civilization. I am now writing a comprehensive philosophy book on those topics, but it will take several years to complete; hence, I decided to make a handy book to provide readers with an outline of the philosophical approaches to the meaning of life that I have in mind.
Chapter One discusses the definition, history, and category of antinatalism. Antinatalism is the thought that all human beings or all sentient beings should not be born. Although I am not an antinatalist, I believe that antinatalism poses an important question about procreation and the meaning of our lives. This is why I presented an overview of antinatalistic thoughts in the past and the present and also performed an analytical examination of their arguments.
In Chapter Two, I take up Philosopher Thaddeus Metz’s argument on meaning in life, especially his fundamentality theory, and claim that “the heart of meaning in life,” which is the concept I propose in this chapter, cannot be compared with anything whatsoever.
Chapter Three deals with the concept of “birth affirmation,” which means that I can say “yes” to my having been born. I believe that birth affirmation is one of the most promising ideas that can contribute to contemporary philosophical discussions on meaning in life, and I call this approach “an affirmation-based approach to meaning in life.” The concept of birth affirmation has two dimensions: the psychological dimension and the philosophical dimension. I would like to show in this chapter that it is difficult to clarify what it actually means to say “yes” to my having been born.
Chapter Four discusses the relationship between the dropping of the atomic bombs and the trolley problem. I argue that the dropping of atomic bombs was a typical example of the events that contained the logic of the trolley problem in both their decision-making processes and justifications. I further argue that the trolley problem has its own unique problems, which I call “the problem of the trolley problem.” This problem has been overlooked in academic discussions of the trolley problem. I also refer to a religious aspect of this problem.
In Chapter Five, I talk about the “philosophy of life” as an academic discipline. We have the philosophy of language, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of history, but why don’t we have the philosophy of life in the field of philosophy? Of course, we have Lebensphilosophie, but it does not cover philosophical discourses in ancient worlds, nor current analytical approaches to the concepts of life and death. A new research field is required to advance contemporary philosophy.
In Chapter Six, I illustrate an outline of my “painless civilization” theory, a criticism of contemporary civilization that deprives us of a joy of life in exchange for eliminating pain and suffering. I also discuss the concept of “fundamental sense of security,” which is considered indispensable for us to be able to live a life without regret.

Tokyo Philosophy Project, 2021

This is the English translation of Chapter One of Mutsu Bunmei Ron, which was published in Japane... more 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.

Tokyo Philosophy Project, 2021

This is perhaps the world’s first book in which a philosopher himself illustrates his own philoso... more This is perhaps the world’s first book in which a philosopher himself illustrates his own philosophical investigation into hard problems on time, being, solipsism, and life, in the form of “Manga.” This book was originally published in Japanese in 2013 and translated into English by Robert Chapeskie in 2021.

"Confessions of a Frigid Man: A Philosopher’s Journey into the Hidden Layers of Men’s Sexuality" ... more "Confessions of a Frigid Man: A Philosopher’s Journey into the Hidden Layers of Men’s Sexuality" is the translation of a Japanese 2005 bestseller, "Kanjinai Otoko." Soon after the publication, this book stirred controversy over the nature of male sexuality, male “frigidity,” and its connection to the “Lolita complex.” Today, this work is considered a classic in Japanese men’s studies.

The most striking feature of this book is that it was written from the author’s first-person perspective. The author is a professor who teaches philosophy and ethics at a university in Japan, and in this book he talks about his own sexual fetishism, his feeling of emptiness after ejaculation, and his huge obsession with young girls and their developing female bodies. He undertakes a philosophical investigation of how and why sexuality took such a form within a person who had grown up as a “normal,” heterosexual man.

This may be the first case in which a philosopher delves deep into his own sexuality and poses an ambitious hypothesis about the formation of male “frigid” sexuality, which might actually be shared by many “normal” men in our society in a hidden way. Reading this book, female readers will come to know, for the first time, some hidden aspects of male sexuality which men have skillfully submerged in a deep layer of their psyches.

Table of Contents

Foreword to English Readers
Preface
Chapter 1: As Long as There’s a Miniskirt I Don’t Need a Flesh and Blood Woman!?
Chapter 2: Men Who Avert Their Eyes from “Male Frigidity”
Chapter 3: Why am I Attracted to School Uniforms?
Chapter 4: Delving into the Psychology of Men with “Lolita Complexes”
Chapter 5: Moving Beyond Being a “Frigid Man”
Epilogue: Further Thoughts on a Frigid Man – Year 2013

* You can read a newspaper article on this book entitled "Professor examines Lolita complex by first looking at his own experience" in Japan Times, May 5, 2017.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/05/05/national/social-issues/professor-examines-lolita-complex-first-looking-experience/#.WQ7-Xvnyipo

From "Preface"

"In this book I am going to write about the idea that men may not feel much sexual pleasure or satisfaction, and that it is because of this lack of feeling that they become absorbed in sexual fantasies involving things like miniskirts, uniforms, “lolicon” [a Japanese term for “Lolita complex”], and rape. In order to support this assertion I will speak extensively about myself. I intend to consider this issue not in terms of a general theory of male sexuality but rather from the point of view of my own specific case.

But I hope male readers read this text as if it were written just for them. I hope female readers read it with a sense of urgency, imagining that the man they are with may be subject to some of the same psychological workings it describes. I have resolved to speak with complete frankness; I intend to explore this unknown world without any fear or reservation. ....."

Books (edited by Morioka) by Masahiro Morioka

Journal of Philosophy of Life, 2023

Contents Introduction : Descartes and Artificial Intelligence Masahiro Morioka Isaac Asimov and... more 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

Journal of Philosophy of Life, 2022

This book is a collection of all the papers published in the special issue “Philosophy and Meanin... more 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.
We held the Fourth International Conference on Philosophy and Meaning in Life online at the University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa, on January 17–19, 2022. This conference was hosted by the University of Pretoria and supported by the Waseda Institute of Life and Death Studies. We accepted about 50 presentations from around the world. Professor Cheshire Calhoun, Professor Guy Kahane, and Professor Berit Brogaard gave keynote lectures.
After the conference, we called for papers for publication from the speakers, and we accepted six papers for the special issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Life. We would like to give special thanks to the anonymous referees who kindly reviewed the submitted manuscripts. The accepted papers deal with a variety of topics, such as the methodology of ethics, the meaning of affirmation, Simone de Beauvoir, and subjectivism, and they are all discussed from the perspective of the philosophy of life’s meaning.
In January 2022, we were still in the midst of the Covid19 pandemic. Professor Thaddeus Metz, the chair of the conference, and supporting staff members decided to hold the conference online, and with the help of their devotion we were able to hold the three–day meeting successfully. We had many participants from around the world and we had lively discussions online. I would like to sincerely thank them for their contributions.
As the editor-in-chief, I hope that readers will enjoy the stimulating papers in this volume.

Journal of Philosophy of Life, 2021

This book is a collection of all the papers and the essay published in the special issue “Philoso... more This book is a collection of all the papers and the essay published in the special issue “Philosophy and Meaning in Life Vol.3,” Journal of Philosophy of Life, Vol.11, No.1, 2021, pp.1-154.
We held the Third International Conference on Philosophy and Meaning in Life online at the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK, on July 21–23, 2020. This conference was co-hosted by the Birmingham Centre for Philosophy of Religion, and the Waseda Institute of Life and Death Studies. We accepted about 50 presentations from around the world. Professor Lisa Bortolotti and I gave keynote lectures.
After the conference, we called for papers for publication from the speakers, and we accepted seven papers and an essay for the special issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Life. We would like to give special thanks to the anonymous referees who kindly reviewed the submitted manuscripts. The accepted papers deal with a variety of topics, such as the subjective/objective debate, narrative meaning, Simone de Beauvoir, and Alain Badiou, and they are all discussed from the perspective of the philosophy of meaning in life.

Journal of Philosophy of Life, 2020

I examine Wolf's hybrid theory of meaning in life and her recommendation of an important addition... more I examine Wolf's hybrid theory of meaning in life and her recommendation of an important additional consideration for persons wishing to live meaningfully. Her advice is that we consider whether and to what extent our caring for something would create additional unique and transformative value. I call this fecundity. Wolf is correct to think that the prospect of fecundity matters to agents who wish to life meaningfully, though it is not a requirement on meaning like affinity and worth. Still the advice raises questions about her analysis. I pose the objectivists' query about the necessity of the subjective "affinity" condition, but also argue that key elements of the affinity condition are better captured by an emotional state theory of happiness.

This book is a collection of all the papers and essays published in the Special Issue “Philosophy... more This book is a collection of all the papers and essays published in the
Special Issue “Philosophy and Meaning in Life: International Perspectives
Vol.1,” Journal of Philosophy of Life, Vol.9, No.1, 2019, pp.1-97.

Preface Masahiro Morioka i Précis of Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study Thaddeus Metz ii-vi ... more 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

This book is a collection of all the papers and essays published in the Special Issue “Nihilism a... more This book is a collection of all the papers and essays published in the
Special Issue “Nihilism and the Meaning of Life: A Philosophical Dialogue
with James Tartaglia,” Journal of Philosophy of Life, Vol.7, No.1, 2017,
pp.1-315. Two years ago, in 2015, we published the book Reconsidering
Meaning in Life: A Philosophical Dialogue with Thaddeus Metz, and after
the publication, one of the contributors to the above book, James Tartaglia, published his own intriguing philosophical book on the meaning of life and its connection with nihilism, entitled Philosophy in a Meaningless Life: A System of Nihilism, Consciousness and Reality (Bloomsbury 2016). I thought it would be a good idea to have a symposium on his book in the Journal of Philosophy of Life.
I invited ten philosophers who have a strong interest in this topic, and
edited a special volume dedicated to Tartaglia’s book. After receiving their papers, I asked James to write a reply to each of them, and in July this year we published a special issue in the Journal. You can read all of them, along with the replies by Tartaglia, in this single book.

Papers by Masahiro Morioka

Imagining a Common Horizon for Humanity and the Planet, 2023

Painless civilization is a term I coined in my Japanese book of the same title, which was publish... more Painless civilization is a term I coined in my Japanese book of the same title, which was published in 2003. Contemporary civilization aims to provide pleasure and comfort and eliminate pain and suffering as much as possible. This is especially evident in advanced countries. Contemporary civilization is moving toward a painless civilization. However, in a painless civilization, we are deprived of the joy of life, which is considered a undamental source of meaning in life, and we are led toward the situation of drowning in a sea of pleasure. This is a kind of dystopia, and we cannot find an easy way to escape from it. It is important to pay special attention to this aspect of contemporary civilization when we think about the future of our planet.

Human Studies, 2023

We sometimes feel the presence of a person-like something on a non-biological object, such as a m... more 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.

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 2010

A brain death case is presented and reinterpreted using the narrative approach. In the case, two ... more A brain death case is presented and reinterpreted using the narrative approach. In the case, two Japanese parents face a dilemma about whether to respect their daughter's desire to donate organs even though, for them, it would mean literally killing their daughter. We argue that the ethical dilemma occurred because the parents were confronted with two conflicting narratives to which they felt a ''narrative responsibility,'' namely, the responsibility that drives us to tell, retell, and coauthor the (often unfinished) narratives of loved ones. We suggest that moral dilemmas arise not only from conflicts between moral justifications but also from conflicts between narratives and human relationships. Keywords Brain death in Japan Á Organ donation Á Narrative ethics Á Moral dilemma Á Narrative dilemma Á Narrative responsibility

Journal of Philosophy of Life, 2023

In this paper, I provide an overview of today’s philosophical approaches to the problem of “intel... more In this paper, I provide an overview of today’s philosophical approaches to the problem of “intelligence” in the field of artificial intelligence by examining several important papers on phenomenology and the philosophy of biology such as those on Heideggerian AI, Jonas's metabolism model, and slime mold type intelligence.

European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2022

In this review, I argue that Chōmei’s hermitism can be another realistic strategy to respond to N... more In this review, I argue that Chōmei’s hermitism can be another realistic strategy to respond to Nagasawa's argument that only transcendentalism can constitute a potentially successful response to the problem of impermanence. Chōmei lived in a small house in the remote mountains and interacted with the surrounding nature. His lifestyle is considered a good example of reconciling one’s finite life with the impermanence of the world and human sufferings. I conclude that Nagasawa’s interpretation of hermitism might be one-sided.

Journal of Philosophy of Life, 2022

People who have encountered a tragic event and suffered from traumatic experiences can sometimes ... more 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.

The Review of Life Studies, 2022

To me, philosophy is the relentless pursuit of 1) how I am to live and die from this moment forwa... more 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.