We recently described a novel form of stress‐associated bidirectional plasticity at GABA synapses onto hypothalamic parvocellular neuroendocrine cells (PNCs), the apex of the hypothalamus‐pituitary‐adrenal axis. This plasticity may contribute to neuroendocrine adaptation. However, this GABA synapse plasticity likely does not translate into a simple more and less of inhibition because the ionic driving force for Cl−, the primary charge carrier for GABAA receptors, is dynamic. Specifically, stress impairs a Cl− extrusion mechanism in PNCs. This not only renders the steady‐state GABA (...) response less hyperpolarizing but also makes PNCs susceptible to the activity‐dependent accumulation of Cl−. Accordingly, GABA synapse plasticity impacts both the robustness of GABA voltage response and dynamic Cl− loading, imposing nonlinear influences on PNC excitability during circuit activities. This theoretical consideration predicts roles for GABA transmission far more versatile than canonical inhibition. We propose potential impacts of GABA synapse plasticity on the experience‐dependent fine‐tuning of neuroendocrine stress responses. (shrink)

In this paper, we develop the system LZF of set theory with the unrestricted comprehension in full linear logic and show that LZF is a conservative extension of ZF– i.e., the Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory without the axiom of regularity. We formulate LZF as a sequent calculus with abstraction terms and prove the partial cut-elimination theorem for it. The cut-elimination result ensures the subterm property for those formulas which contain only terms corresponding to sets in ZF–. This implies that LZF is (...) a conservative extension of ZF– and therefore the former is consistent relative to the latter. (shrink)

This paper aims to develop Nishida Kitarō’s “logic of place” into an “aesthetics of place.” While brilliantly fusing the Buddhist traditions of Japan with Western philosophy, in his later years, Nishida came up with his own unique philosophy, a “monadology with the concept of substance.” This is a concept anchored in mu or “emptiness.” From this standpoint, how is the individual understood and how does society take shape? The answers to these questions are fundamental keys to understanding Japanese philosophy. In (...) Japan, the individual in Japan is not locked up in itself, but it is possible for the “substantial ego” to vanish and be replaced by the ““I as an event.” Through a discussion of the “place” where the activities of the traditional poetic forms of renku and renga are performed, an attempt is made to develop an aesthetic approach to those questions. (shrink)

明治の世には、西欧的近代化の流れの中にあっても「日本人としての矜持と風格」といったものがあった。それはいわば凜乎とした倫理意識と、土着的な共同体意識である。それらは漢籍の教養に裏打ちされた至高なる精神 性であったと言ってよい。明治は、思想・文化の面において、日本の精神史上、「豊饒の時代」であった。.

In this paper, we shall show that the following translation \(I^M\) from the propositional fragment \(\bf L_1\) of Leśniewski's ontology to modal logic \(\bf KTB\) is sound: for any formula \(\phi\) and \(\psi\) of \(\bf L_1\), it is defined as (M1) \(I^M(\phi \vee \psi) = I^M(\phi) \vee I^M(\psi)\), (M2) \(I^M(\neg \phi) = \neg I^M(\phi)\), (M3) \(I^M(\epsilon ab) = \Diamond p_a \supset p_a. \wedge. \Box p_a \supset \Box p_b.\wedge. \Diamond p_b \supset p_a\), where \(p_a\) and \(p_b\) are propositional variables corresponding to (...) the name variables \(a\) and \(b\), respectively. In the last, we shall give some comments including some open problems and my conjectures. (shrink)

This paper aims to specify the precise conditions under which an agent is responsible for inequalities. Admittedly, the careful examination of the conditions in question has been the main focus of contemporary egalitarianism. As a matter of fact, contemporary political philosophers take responsibility to be a core conception which in principle justifies inequalities. In particular, they tend to flesh out the conception of responsibility in terms of choice, in such a way that we should hold individuals responsible for chosen inequalities (...) but not for unchosen inequalities. This core idea is intuitively appealing because, on the one hand, alleviation of inequalities that people do not choose would thereby be encouraged, and on the other hand, it avoids an egalitarian ‘moral hazard’: the situation in which people need care nothing for the consequences (economic or otherwise) of their own choice. G. A. Cohen thus goes so far as to say that egalitarianism successfully incorporates “within it the most powerful idea in the arsenal of the anti-egalitarian right: the idea of choice and responsibility.”. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the formation of sect Shinto in the second half of the nineteenth century. It is pointed out that the Shinto sects that constituted sect Shinto were constructed on the basis of preexisting infrastructures, which had developed in response to the profound social changes accompa- nying the modernization process of the Bakumatsu and Meiji periods. Sect Shinto took shape in a cross3re between the impact of modernization from below, and the vicissitudes of Meiji religious policy from above. The (...) essay further proposes to distinguish between two types of Shinto religious move- ments: Shinto sects, characterized by a typical “dish-structure,” and Shinto- derived New Religions, displaying a “tree-structure.” Of these two types, groups of the 3rst type were shaped more directly by Meiji religious policy than the latter, which 3rst arose as “founded religions” and adapted to Meiji policy only later, in the course of their institutionalization. (shrink)

Some cardinal invariants from Cichon's diagram can be characterized using the notion of cut-and-choose games on cardinals. In this paper we give another way to characterize those cardinals in terms of infinite games. We also show that some properties for forcing, such as the Sacks Property, the Laver Property and ω ω -boundingness, are characterized by cut-and-choose games on complete Boolean algebras.

We discuss puzzles of prisoners and hats with infinitely many prisoners and more than two hat colors. Assuming that the set of hat colors is equipped with a commutative group structure, we prove strategic equivalence among puzzles of several protocols with countably many prisoners.

On April 5 2000, the Diet elected Yoshiro Mori as Japan's 55th prime minister. His predecessor, Keizo Obuchi, had suffered a stroke and became unable to carry out his official responsibility. Mori, who was the former Secretary General of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), inherited the three party coalition between the LDP, the new Komei Party and the Conservative Party, and reappointed all of Obuchi's cabinet members. Yohei Kono was reposted as the Minister of Foreign Affairs; Hideo Usui as (...) Justice; Kiichi Miyazawa as Finance; Hirofumi Nakasone as Education, Science and Technology; Yuya Niwa as Health and Welfare; Tokuichiro Tanazawa as Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries; Takeshi Fukaya as International Trade and Industry; Toshihiro Nikai as Transport; Eita Yashiro as Posts and Telecommunications; Takamori Makino as Labor; Masaaki Nakayama as Construction; Kosuke Hori as Home Affairs, Mikio Aoki as Chief Cabinet Secretary; Kunihiro Tsuzuki as Management and Coordination; Tsutomu Kawara as Defense; Taichi Sakaiya as Economic Planning; Kayoko Shimizu as environment; and Sadakazu Tanigaki as Financial Reconstruction. (shrink)

Political developments in Japan from the latter part of 2000 to the year 2001 were highlighted by the executive transition from unpopular Yoshiro Mori to exceptionally popular Junichiro Koizumu as the nation's leader.

From the latter half of 2001 to the middle of 2002, prime minister Junichiro Koizumi was plagued by a series of scandals and administrative mishandlings, which led to some important executive turnovers. Although Koizumi has thus far upheld his principle of for the sake of policy stability, his campaign promise not to reshuffle cabinet has already been compromised somewhat, and is likely to be abandoned entirely in the near future.

日米開戦前夜、京大の哲学教授はいかにしてエリート学生を洗脳し、戦地へ送ったのか? 悪魔の講義の構造を解明する合宿講座全記録。.

自分の頭で考えることはなぜ大切で、なぜ難しいのか。〈つながり〉に着目することで、哲学的に考えることの真の意味を明らかにする。.

Originally published as 「明治の哲学界：有機体の哲学とその系譜」in 井上克人編『豊饒なる明治』, Kansai Daigaku Shuppannbu, 2012, 3–22. Translated by Morisato Takeshi. German Idealism was introduced to Japanese intellectuals in the middle of Meiji era and was mainly received from a mystical or religious perspective, as we see in Inoue Tetsujirō’s “harmonious existence,” Inoue Enryō’s “unity of mind and body,” and Kiyozawa Manshi’s “existentialism.” Since these theories envisioned true reality as a unified and living whole, I group them under the label “philosophy of organism” and from (...) there argue that their conviction that “all is truth and truth is all” was shaped in large part by the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana. The understanding of Buddhist concepts by Meiji philosophers was philosophical in its content, and those who devoted themselves to the study of Western philosophy were encouraged to describe Eastern thought in Western philosophical terms. As a result, the philosophical world of the Meiji era developed an original standpoint that unified Eastern and Western perspectives by means of a logic of “phenomena-in-reality.”. (shrink)

It is often argued that relational egalitarianism has a fundamental problem with intergenerational justice when compared to other theories of justice such as utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and luck egalitarianism. Recently, Timothy Sommers argued that there is no such comparative disadvantage for relational egalitarianism. His argument is quite modest: it merely aims to reject the claim that there could be no way to extend relational egalitarianism to intergenerational justice. This may be called the ‘No Comparative Disadvantage Thesis’. The present article challenges Sommers’s (...) argument in two ways. First, I show that Sommers fails to provide a reasonable constraint on causal efficacy, which is crucial to his argument for our relation (not relationship) to future generations. Second, I show that the chain-relatedness problem casts a shadow over Sommers’s argument for the No Comparative Disadvantage Thesis. More specifically, compared to the other theories of justice, relational egalitarianism (as it stands) can less easily justify that present persons have duties to future others. This is because relational egalitarianism cannot appeal to a specific principle in regard to the duties in question, because its principle is sensitive to current context and practice. I conclude that the No Comparative Disadvantage Thesis does not hold much promise. (shrink)

Mueller's gibbons ( Hylobates muelleri ) sing both sex-specific and duet songs. These songs are thought to be involved in territory maintenance, as well as the maintenance of pair or family bonds. However, few observational studies have examined how gibbons interact with their neighbors through song in the wild. We have been conducting field observations of wild gibbon groups in northeast Borneo since 2001. In the Borneo Rainforest Lodge (BRL) and Danum Valley Field Center (DVFC) at the Danum Valley Conservation (...) Area (DVCA), we observed seven episodes of alternating songs between males. Here, we describe the process of song exchange between males. During male interactions, song bouts rarely overlapped and were alternately emitted. Several studies have reported antiphonal vocalizations in New World and Old World primate species, but rarely in apes. Our observations of antiphonal songs in gibbons indicate that gibbons not only unilaterally advertise information, but also interactively communicate with neighbors and family members through songs. Since gibbons are phylogenetically similar to humans, and turn-taking has an important role in human conversation, our research on gibbon communication may provide insight into the evolution of human language. (shrink)

Mating activity of a wild Mueller’s gibbon group was observed in the Danum Valley Conservation Area, Sabah, Malaysia. The purpose of this study was to investigate the function of copulation calls in gibbons. The female emitted copulation calls at the time of intromission and pelvic thrusting. Copulation calls were composed of two notes and one of them was sung only while mating. Approximately half of copulation calls were sung near the range boundary. Mating with copulation calls sometimes occurred while singing. (...) According to the model that female copulation calls have evolved under the selective pressures of risk of infanticide and sperm competition, copulation calls should be rare in species with little female promiscuity. As gibbons usually live in pair-living social organization and have a monogamous mating system, no vocal signals by female gibbons are considered to be needed. However, clear copulation calls were emitted by the female. It suggests that the relationship between paired gibbons is unstable. Copulation calls by the female Mueller’s gibbon may function to increase mate guarding and strengthen the pair bond. (shrink)

of (from Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy).

Previous studies have shown that people often use heuristics in making inferences and that subjective memory experiences, such as recognition or familiarity of objects, can be valid cues for inferences. So far, many researchers have used the binary choice task in which two objects are presented as alternatives (e.g., “Which city has the larger population, city A or city B?”). However, objects can be presented not only as alternatives but also in a question (e.g., “Which country is city X in, (...) country A or country B?”). In such a situation, people can make inferences based on the relationship between the object in the question and each object given as an alternative. In the present study, we call this type of task a “relationships‐comparison task.” We modeled the three inference strategies that people could apply to solve it (familiarity‐matching [FM; a new heuristic we propose in this study], familiarity heuristic [FH], and knowledge‐based inference [KI]) to examine people's inference processes. Through Studies 1, 2, and 3, we found that (a) people tended to rely on heuristics, and that FM (inferences based on similarity in familiarity between objects) well explained participants' inference patterns; (b) FM could work as an ecologically rational strategy for the relationships–comparison task since it could effectively reflect environmental structures, and that the use of FM could be highly replicable and robust; and (c) people could sometimes use a decision strategy like FM, even in their daily lives (consumer behaviors). The nature of the relationships–comparison task and human cognitive processes is discussed. (shrink)

In political philosophy, reflective equilibrium is a standard method used to systematically reconcile intuitive judgments with theoretical principles. In this paper, we propose that survey experiments and a model selection method—i.e., the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC)-based model selection method—can be viewed together as a methodological means of satisfying the epistemic desiderata implicit in reflective equilibrium. To show this, we conduct a survey experiment on two theories of distributive justice, prioritarianism and sufficientarianism. Our experimental test case and AIC-based model selection method (...) demonstrate that the refined sufficientarian principle, a widely accepted principle of distributive justice, is no more plausible than the prioritarian principle. This tells us that some changes of certain intuitions revolving around sufficientarianism should be examined (separately) based on the findings of the survey experiment and AIC model selection. This shows the potential of our approach—both practically and methodologically—as a novel way of applying reflective equilibrium in political philosophy. (shrink)

A dialectical contradiction can be appropriately described within the framework of classical formal logic. It is in harmony with the law of noncontradiction. According to our definition, two theories make up a dialectical contradiction if each of them is consistent and their union is inconsistent. It can happen that each of these two theories has an intended model. Plenty of examples are to be found in the history of science.

According to a renowned left-libertarian, Michael Otsuka, a libertarian right of self-ownership can be so robust that one need not sacrifice the use of one's mind and body to help others. In this article, I demonstrate that Otsuka's way of reconciling this robust conception of self-ownership with equality is not appealing and, at best, would provide limited guidance in the face of real-life uncertainty.

This theoretical paper develops a conceptual framework that explains how companies can influence consumer behavior in terms of both social and business benefits through their corporate social marketing initiatives. Drawing from the source credibility literature, the article asserts that the effectiveness of CSM depends largely on the corporate credibility of a company in supporting a social cause. Based on this assertion, the framework identifies ten different antecedents of CSM credibility, which are organized into attributes of the company, attributes of the (...) CSM initiative, and attributes of the cause. Furthermore, this framework shows that CSM credibility affects the two examined consequences, intended prosocial behavior and consumer loyalty. Several research and managerial implications are developed based on the propositions specified in the framework. (shrink)