Greeting message
From Prof .Allan Young, Ph.D.
McGILL UNIVERSITY
Professor of Anthropology,Marjorie Bronfman Chair in Social Studies in Medicine
Over the weekend, I had reason to leaf through the several volumes that you have either edited or co-edited,
and that are based on papers given at various conferences sponsored by the Centre for Advanced Research
on Logic and Sensibility. It was only after scanning the tables of contents that I grasped the Centre’sachievement. What impressed me most is the scope of this enterprise,bringing together so many
international scholars and diverse but connected objects of inquiry.
For me personally, the achievement is a vindication of the Enlightenment vision of human nature– one inwhich ‘nature’ encompasses not only the psychobiological nature of humanity, but equally the non-humans
that constitute our nature, figuratively and literally.As you know, my professional life has been devoted toinvestigating and interpreting the nexus of logic and sensibility. I am especially proud that my own talks at
the Centre are included in two of these volumes.
With my best wishes,Sincerely,Allan Young

From Prof. Edward A. Wasserman
The University of Iowa, USA
Human reason was claimed by Rene Descartes to be the “universal instrument” that permits us to act
flexibly and adaptively to any contingency we may encounter. Such a self-aggrandizing claim does notaccord well with the facts of human experience, where pollution, overpopulation, and warfare continue
unabated. David Hume seems to have been better attuned to the nature of human nature when he argued
that even causal reasoning is predicated on basic associative processes that we share with nonhumananimals.

Given these dramatically discrepant orientations, it is altogether appropriate that Keio

University should launch a new international center to better understand human judgment and decision
making: the Global Research Center for Logic and Sensibility. I salute this important effort.

From Prof. Zang-Hee Cho, Ph.D.
韓国 嘉泉医学大学神経科学研究所
Dear Professor Watanabe : Congratulation ! We all wish your success and sincerely hope you can accomplish
the goal of understanding the principles behind the logics and sensibility. With good wish and for your future
success.
ZH ChoFrom Prof. Ludwig Huber, PhD
University of Vienna
Department of Cognitive Biology
I am very pleased to hear these exciting news and would like to congratulate you on the development of thisnew centre in Tokyo. This is again a very promising endeavor and at the right time. Reconsidering how wehumans cope with tragedies like the one that happened in Japan last year is a very important and timely
business. Only the best scientists around will have a chance to make significant progress. Success will
critically depend on interdisciplinary collaboration. One discipline alone will quickly become stuck in theirnarrow approach to such a gigantic problem. Politicians and law people need to hear what cognitive
scientists, among others, have to say if they want to improve. Invited by my friend Shigeru Watanabe, I had
the chance to participate in the last "Global Research Center for Logic and Sensibility" and can confidently
say that this project has a very high potential to make significant contributions again. Personally, I would
like to express my gratitude, because it was one of the most exciting experiences in my scientific career. Ivery much enjoyed traveling to Japan (twice), meeting brilliant colleagues at Keio University and enjoying
the inspiring atmosphere of the city and the country. Let me end with this phrase by Piet Hein: “The way towisdom? Why, it’s plain, and easy to express: to err, and err, and err again, but less, and less and less.”
I wish you all the best for the future.
LudwigFrom Prof..Hans-Joachim Bischof
Universität Bielefeld, Fakultät für Biologie
Lehrstuhl für Verhaltensforschung
Dear Professor Watanabe,
congratulations for the foundation of the "Global Research Center for Logic and Sensibility"which intends toinvestigate the basis of human judgement. This is a very important question worldwide because the growing
number of global problems, be it the global warming, natural desaster, or the increase of violence byindividuals as well by states have to be assessed properly to find solutions. Your country had to face a big
catastrophe recently, and this is obviously a special motivation to found such a center there. I wish you andyour colleagues all the best for the upcoming conference and the whole adventure. Based on my own
experience according the scientific success of the preceding COE on the same subject but with a different
direction of impact, I have no doubt that the present research center will become a success.
With kind regards
BischofFrom Prof. Toru Shimizu, Ph.D.
University of South Florida
Associate Chair and Professor of Psychology
To Dr. Watanabe,
Congratulations on the inauguration of the new Global Research Center for Logic and Sensibility.
For the past several years, the Global COE Program at Keio University produced exceptionally fruitfulachievement to improve our understanding of the human mind. I am relieved and delighted to hear thatthe commitment initiated by the Global COE Program will not fade away, but carry on through the newGlobal Research Center for Logic and Sensibility. Due to the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami lastyear, there is no doubt that the coming years will be challenging for the people of Japan. More than ever, it
is critical to understand how logic and sensibility affect the decision making process in order to promote a
healthy society and avoid future mistakes.
I trust that the new Center will become a premier institute for research and education.
Sincerely,
Toru Shimizu, Ph.D.
Associate Chair and Professor of Psychology
University of South Florida

Prof. Dominique Lestel, Ph.D.
École Normale Supérieure, France
As a French philosopher of the country where Descartes has lived, I have been deeply interested to knowthat Keio University has made the decision to start a new research center being based upon logic andsensibility. « Descartes’ error », as Antonio Damasio has called it, is more the error of a culture, the Western
one, than just the error of a single man. On the reverse side, it is not a surprise that such a center exists inJapan, a country that has become a true virtuoso in the difficult art of meeting opposing positions such likemodernity and tradition. In that way, I have in mind the domain of autonomous robotics, in particular about
androids on which conception Japan has become a world leader. That domain of research and design has put
the interfaces between logic and sensibility at the heart of the works of scientists and engineers involved
within. We already knew that logicians were not very fond of sensibility but are condemned to live withlogical robots that exhibit an exquisite sensibility – or that show all the symptoms of it, that is largely
enough. Logic and sensibility are always together at the heart of living beings, as anthropologist,
cyberneticist, ethologist and epistemologist Gregory Bateson always recalled it, and I am sure that Bateson(one of the brightest mind of the 20th century) would have appreciated very much a Research Center on
Logic and Sensibility. That it be funded at Keio University, a university very important not only for the logic
part of me but also for my sensibility is a very good news for me. I wish it could have a long and fruitful life!
Dominique Lestel, Ph.D.