In his writings Philosophical Remarks, the Austrian-British Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein draws an octahedron with the words of pure colours such as “white”, “red” and “blue” at the corners and argues: “The colour octahedron is grammar, since it says that you can speak of a reddish blue but not of a reddish green, etc”. He uses the word “grammar” in such a specific way that the grammar or grammatical rules describe the meanings of words/expressions, in other words, how we use them (...) in our language. Accordingly, the colour octahedron can also be taken to represent grammatical rules about how we apply words of colour, e.g., that we can call a certain colour “reddish-blue”, but not “reddish-green”. In a different context, the Japanese philosopher Shūzō Kuki explores in his work The Structure of Iki what the Japanese word “iki” means. This word is often translated as “chic” or “stylistic” in English, but Kuki holds that it is an aesthetic Japanese concept that cannot be translated one-to-one, instead encompassing three aspects: “coquetry”, “pride and honour” and “resignation”. To explain the meanings of the word “iki” and other related words all of which Kuki calls “tastes”, he introduces a rectangular prism as a geometrical representation similar to Wittgenstein’s colour octahedron. In this paper, I argue that the rectangular prism does not solely explain how the modes of Japanese tastes are related to each other, but also has a grammatical character. On this score, I suggest that one can regard this rectangular prism as a description of the grammatical rules of the Japanese language. By appeal to the arguments of both philosophers and in comparison with them, I will not only clarify what they claim by geometrical representations but also examine what role this kind of representation plays as an explanation of grammar in general. Keywords: grammar, colour octahedron, rectangular prism, Shūzō Kuki, Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Quelle est la nature de la liberté réelle (réelle) dans notre société? Je présenterai ici une nouvelle théorie du libéralisme que j’appelle « libéralisme orienté vers la croissance ». D’abord, j’examine le concept de liberté positive et négative d’Isaiah Berlin et je pose la question fondamentale en matière de liberté, à savoir que la liberté est un idéal paradoxal. J’identifierai deux paradoxes : l’un porte sur la liberté ordinaire et les valeurs sophistiquées, l’autre sur la question de la libération et (...) de l’apathie des individus ou des populations. Comment pouvons-nous surmonter ces paradoxes? Pour répondre à cette question, j’examinerai l’argument de Charles Taylor sur la liberté positive (liberté) et en élargirai les implications. Le paradoxe est d’autant plus lorsqu’il s’agit de communautés, comme la société japonaise. Au-delà du mode de pensée communautaire de Taylor, par exemple, je construis une nouvelle théorie de la liberté en proposant de suivre trois principes : le principe de la vertu (estime de soi), le principe du changement générateur et le principe de la différenciation. Je soutiens que la pierre de touche d’une société libre dépend de la façon dont nous concevons notre gouvernance sociale sur la base de ces principes. JEL Codes : Z10, B25. (shrink)

The purpose of the current study was to examine the influence of individuals’ help-seeking preference and their collective perception of the organizational climate in school on teachers’ mental health. Previous studies demonstrated that HSP was negatively associated with risk of burnout, suggesting that teachers who hesitate to seek help from their colleagues are more likely to have mental health problems. Thus, the current study hypothesized that a collegial organizational climate would be negatively associated with burnout. To test this hypothesis, we (...) developed a scale to measure schoolteachers’ collective perception of their organizational climate, and the newly developed scale was used to assess its relationship with HSP and teachers’ burnout risk. The results demonstrated that younger teachers, a low level of help-seeking, and a less collaborative climate increased the risk of burnout. The results also showed a significant interaction effect, indicating that HSP was less closely associated with teachers’ burnout risk if their organization was perceived as having a collegial climate. These findings clearly show how the social environment of a school’s organizational climate can affect schoolteachers’ mental health in Japan. (shrink)

© 2016 Regents of the University of California.The Review summarizes much of particle physics and cosmology. Using data from previous editions, plus 3,062 new measurements from 721 papers, we list, evaluate, and average measured properties of gauge bosons and the recently discovered Higgs boson, leptons, quarks, mesons, and baryons. We summarize searches for hypothetical particles such as supersymmetric particles, heavy bosons, axions, dark photons, etc. All the particle properties and search limits are listed in Summary Tables. We also give numerous (...) tables, figures, formulae, and reviews of topics such as Higgs Boson Physics, Supersymmetry, Grand Unified Theories, Neutrino Mixing, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Cosmology, Particle Detectors, Colliders, Probability and Statistics. Among the 117 reviews are many that are new or heavily revised, including those on Pentaquarks and Inflation. The complete Review is published online in a journal and on the website of the Particle Data Group. The printed PDG Book contains the Summary Tables and all review articles but no longer includes the detailed tables from the Particle Listings. A Booklet with the Summary Tables and abbreviated versions of some of the review articles is also available. (shrink)

Drawing on recent work in the contemporary philosophy of economics, this book presents new ideas on liberalism, including the concept of 'growth-oriented liberalism'. Since the end of the Cold War, questions and definitions of liberalism have moved from the sphere of political systems (the socialism versus liberalism debates) to the sphere of ethics (what it means to live in a liberal society). The chapters in this work trace the trajectory of the concept of liberalism in the philosophy of economics by (...) exploring the ideological implications of the methodological debate between socialism and liberalism, the idea of liberty as real freedom, the ethical implications of Max Weber's methodology on autonomy and liberty, and new typological theories of ideologies in the context of contemporary economic ethics. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on liberalism in the philosophy of economics and economic methodology, and is highly recommended for readers who seek updated ideas on liberal society in its ethical and philosophical contexts. Tsutomu Hashimoto is a Professor at Hokkaido University and the President of the Synodos Institute of International Studies in Japan. (shrink)

In the case of Japan, we accepted the Chinese philosophy of morality when we received the Chinese character Yi: it means responsibility to Heaven (vertical) and, at the same time, responsibility to community (horizontal). An act having this structure might be our responsibility as human beings: yi means “justice”, keeping balance between Heaven and Earth. The Japanese people had such a balance until the Edo era. In 1868, when the Meiji Restoration occurred, the Japanese government tried to accept Western ideas. (...) Cyoumin Nakae introduced the Western philosophy of law and the constitutional system. He translated Rousseau’s The Social Contract into Japanese and gave a series of lectures on the social contract. The fundament of his thought is concentrated in the “rights of Liberty”. He emphasized transcendental liberty beyond personal, phenomenal liberty and found the same structure in Mencius. His idea of ft suggests the way of justice. Unfortunately, this idea was crushed with the death of his talented disciple in prison. After the book of Bushido, ft was only translated as “duty” for the community (horizontal), and we lost the vertical perspective: transcendental liberty. (shrink)

In the circular sphere around the Pacific Ocean many volcanos have erupted, and, because of tectonic plates, numerous earthquakes have occurred. In Tonga, especially, the resulting devastation has been beyond our wildest imagination. Regarding such natural phenomena, we could not predict anything. Likewise, the Covid-19 pandemic appeared suddenly, and no one can say when its destruction will end. Protective measures against infection have affected the nature of our social interactions: masking has changed our spatial consciousness; observing social distancing has made (...) us less dependent on one another and has influenced us to seek solitude. As a result, inter-subjectivity—the foundation of ethics—has been broken. All of these effects on our interpersonal relationships have instilled in us a new attitude towards nature, because the human being is a part of nature. This new attitude with nature opens up a new paradigm: dialogues with nature and their co-operative activities must be demanded, and we must wait for nature’s movement and ask for its help. It is, in a way, the traditional artistic attitude toward nature. (shrink)

The world’s population is currently aging, and the issue of ageism has become serious worldwide, including in Japan. Negative attitudes toward older adults can have undesirable effects on the mental and physical health of this group. We focused on the effects of contact experience with older adults and germ aversion, or the degree of aversion to infection, on negative attitudes toward older adults. Additionally, we included a moderating variable; youth identity, or the sense of belonging with younger rather than older (...) age groups. An online survey was conducted with Japanese participants. We conducted multiple regression analyses and the results showed that the interaction effect between youth identity and contact experience on negative attitudes toward older adults was significant. The findings suggest that contact experience may help in reducing negative attitudes toward older adults among people with low youth identity. The interaction effect between youth identity and germ aversion, however, was not significant. Academic research on the effects of some psychological interventions should pay particular attention to the role of youth identity. Future directions for empirical studies are also discussed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Studies on development and fairness judgments in resource allocations have mainly addressed the distribution of reward. However, the distribution of responsibility also requires exploration in the context of research on development and distributive justice. For an integrated understanding of reward and responsibility distributions, we briefly reviewed the studies on children’s fairness judgments in reward and responsibility distributions. We then discussed the theoretical basis and methodological framework to further our understanding. After reviewing a study which considered both reward and responsibility (...) distributions in the same experiment, we also discussed the questions to be solved to understand children’s fairness judgments in both types of distributions. Individual developmental process of fairness judgments, (in)consistency of judgments in reward and responsibility distributions, and generous judgments in allocations were discussed by referring to theoretical discussions of culture and reciprocity. (shrink)

It has been suggested that hierarchically structured symbols, a remarkable feature of human language, are produced via the operation of recursive combination. Recursive combination is frequently observed in human behavior, not only in language but also in action sequences, mind-reading, technology, et cetera.; in contrast, it is rarely observed in animals. Why is it that only humans use this operation? What is the adaptability of recursive combination? We aim (1) to identify the environmental feature(s) in which recursive combination is effective (...) for survival and reproduction, and that has facilitated the evolution of this ability, and (2) to demonstrate the possible evolutionary processes of recursive combination. To achieve this, we constructed an evolutionary simulation of agents that generated products using recursive combination and used the results to explore the types of fitness functions (that reflect the kinds of adaptive environments) that give rise to this ability. We identified two types of adaptability of the recursive combination: (1) diversifiability of production and (2) diversifiability of products. Through the former, recursive combination promotes robustness against failure of production caused by inaccurate manipulations or irreversible changes. In an environment in which diversified products are preferable, sharing a portion of the production process for these products entails producing multiple products in which recursive combination plays a key role. We suppose that recursive combination works as a driving force of material culture. Finally, we discuss the possible evolutionary scenarios of recursive combination that is later generalized to encompass many aspects of human cognition, including human language. (shrink)

Philosophers have argued that stakes affect knowledge: a given amount of evidence may suffice for knowledge if the stakes are low, but not if the stakes are high. By contrast, empirical work on the influence of stakes on ordinary knowledge ascriptions has been divided along methodological lines: “evidence‐fixed” prompts rarely find stakes effects, while “evidence‐seeking” prompts consistently find them. We present a cross‐cultural study using both evidence‐fixed and evidence‐seeking prompts with a diverse sample of 17 populations in 11 countries, speaking (...) 14 languages. Our study is the first to use an evidence‐seeking prompt cross‐culturally, and includes several previously untested populations (including indigenous populations). Across cultures, we do not find evidence of a stakes effect with our evidence‐fixed prompt, but do with our evidence‐seeking prompt. We argue that the divergent results reveal a tension within folk epistemology: people's beliefs about when it is appropriate to ascribe knowledge differ significantly from their actual practice in ascribing knowledge. (shrink)

Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended (...) to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one’s actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one’s actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhibiting greater cognitive reflection were more likely to view free will as incompatible with causal determinism. We discuss these findings in light of documented cultural differences in the tendency toward dispositional versus situational attributions. (shrink)

IntroductionPrevious studies on metacognitive ability were explored using self-report questionnaires that are difficult to adequately measure and evaluate when the capacity for self-reference is undeveloped. This study aimed to validate the Congruency-based Metacognition Scale to measure metacognition and the feeling of confidence abilities and to investigate the development of metacognition during adolescence.MethodsThe CMS was administered to 633 child–parent pairs in Japan. The CMS metacognition score was assessed based on congruency scores between the self-report of the child from a third-person perspective (...) and the parent’s report from the first-person perspective. The CMS self-judgment accuracy score was assessed by the congruency scores between the children’s self-report from the 1PP and 3PP. For both measures, the more distant the 3PP on the self-report was from the 1PP on the parent’s report and child self-report means low ability. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to examine construct validity and then a confirmatory factor analysis was used. Criterion validity was examined by calculating Pearson’s correlation coefficients with scores on the Beck Cognitive Insight Scale and Autism Quotient. We used intraclass correlation and Cronbach’s alpha to examine the test–retest and internal consistency reliability.ResultsBased on the results of the EFA and CFA, we adopted one factor structure with five items. The CMS metacognition and CMS self-judgment accuracy showed evidence criterion validity, exhibiting significant correlations with the BCIS self-reflectiveness and self-certainty scores, respectively. Regarding to the AQ, only the CMS metacognition score had significant correlations with the social skills and total scale score. The test–retest reliability showed adequate. Adolescents were found to have significantly lower metacognitive ability compared to young adults.ConclusionCMS could be a valid and reliable measure to examine metacognitive abilities for adolescents. (shrink)

Emotion-processing impairment represents a risk factor for the development of somatic illness, affecting negatively both health-related quality of life and disease management in several chronic diseases. The present pilot study aims at investigating the associations between alexithymia and depression, anxiety, and HRQoL in patients with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis ; examining the association between these three psychological conditions together with HRQoL, and thyroid autoantibodies status as well as thyroid echotexture in patients with HT; and comparing the intensity of all these clinical (...) psychological features in patients with HT versus controls. Twenty-one patients with serologically or ultrasonographically verified HT and 16 controls with non-toxic goiter or postsurgical hypothyroidism were recruited for this study. Serum thyrotropin and free thyroxine, as well as thyroid autoantibodies, were assayed. Alexithymia, depression, anxiety, and HRQoL were assessed with Toronto Alexithymia Scale; Beck Depression Inventory, second edition; Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale; and Health Survey Short-Form 36, respectively. A negative relationship between the difficulty to describe feelings and the cognitive component of depression was found. Besides, patients with seronegative HT had lower somatic anxiety than patients with HT who tested positive. Besides, no statistically significant difference was found between patients with HT and controls with regard to somatic anxiety. The present study suggests the relevance of alexithymia in patients suffering from HT, which may be intertwined with a possible state of underreported depression that is mainly expressed through physical complaints. Promoting the capability to describe and communicate feelings could contribute to psychological elaboration and coping with the disease and, consequently, to the improvement of self-management and perceived HRQoL. (shrink)

Begegnung des Verlegers mit Karl Jaspers, von K. Piper.-Philosophische Autobiographie, von K. Jaspers.- Jaspers und der Staat, von D. Sternberger.- Jaspers als geschichtlicher Denker, von G. Mann.- Jaspers in Frankreich, von J. Hersch.- Karl Jaspers und die italienische Philosophie, von L. Quattrocchi.- Die Philosophie von Karl Jaspers in Japan, von F. Hashimoto.-Karl Jaspers und der Rundfunk, von P. Meyer-Gutzwiller.- Karl Jasper's Lebensdaten.- Bibliographie der Werke und Schriften, von H. Saner [p.[173] -[216]].

In our previous paper Algebraic Logic for Classical Conjunction and Disjunction we studied some relations between the fragmentL of classical logic having just conjunction and disjunction and the varietyD of distributive lattices, within the context of Algebraic Logic. The central tool in that study was a class of closure operators which we calleddistributive, and one of its main results was that for any algebraA of type (2,2) there is an isomorphism between the lattices of allD-congruences ofA and of all distributive (...) closure operators overA. In the present paper we study the lattice structure of this last set, give a description of its finite and infinite operations, and obtain a topological representation. We also apply the mentioned isomorphism and other results to obtain proofs with a logical flavour for several new or well-known lattice-theoretical properties, like Hashimoto's characterization of distributive lattices, and Priestley's topological representation of the congruence lattice of a bounded distributive lattice. (shrink)

Heidegger’s characterization of Dasein as Being-in-the-world suggests a natural relation to environmental philosophy. Among environmentalists, however, closer inspection must raise alarm, both since Heidegger’s approach is in some senses inescapably anthropocentric and since Dasein discovers its environment through its usability, serviceability, and accessibility. Yet Heidegger does not simply adopt a traditionally modern, instrumental view. The conditions under which the environment appears imply neither that the environment consists only of tools, nor that what is true of the parts is also true (...) of the whole, nor that an orientation to use—where appropriate—precludes any other orientation. Heidegger’s anthropocentric commitments thus do not rule out the possibility of a non-instrumental perspective on the natural world. (shrink)

Criticism of Sairu s-Salikin, an old Indonesian manuscript on ethics in Islam.

This is a study of the development of Western inwardness from Plato to Augustine. It traces the origin of three concepts: inward turn, private inner space, and outward expression. All three were originally theological concepts; i.e., they belonged to philosophical theories that related God to the soul. ;Part I examines the precursors of these three concepts in Plato, then notes the central contribution made by Aristotle's doctrine that the mind is identical with the Forms it knows. This allows Plotinus to (...) identify the divine Mind with the intelligible world and locate it within the soul. This then is the foundation of Plotinus' inward turn: in turning its mind into its own interior, the soul is turning to the divine. ;Part II argues that it was Augustine who invented the concept of a private inner space of the self. Augustine's search for God builds on Plotinus' inward turn, but must adjust to the fact that Christian doctrine denies the divinity of the soul. Hence the inner self in Augustine is no longer the intelligible world, but the soul's own inner world. It only becomes a private world, however, inasmuch as the soul is fallen and therefore separated from other souls by the opacity of mortal bodies. (shrink)

Common hospital and surgical center responses to the Covid‐19 pandemic included curtailing “elective” procedures, which are typically determined based on implications for physical health and survival. However, in the focus solely on physical health and survival, procedures whose main benefits advance components of well‐being beyond health, including self‐determination, personal security, economic stability, equal respect, and creation of meaningful social relationships, have been disproportionately deprioritized. We describe how female reproduction‐related procedures, including abortion, surgical sterilization, reversible contraception devices and in vitro fertilization, (...) have been broadly categorized as “elective,” a designation that fails to capture the value of these procedures or their impact on women's overall well‐being. We argue that corresponding restrictions and delays of these procedures are problematically reflective of underlying structural views that marginalize women's rights and interests and therefore threaten to propagate gender injustice during the pandemic and beyond. Finally, we propose a framework for triaging reproduction‐related procedures during Covid‐19 that is more individualized, accounts for their significance for comprehensive well‐being, and can be used to inform resumption of operations as well as subsequent restriction phases. (shrink)