The infamous difficulty of Lacan's writing has its own, very apt synecdoche: the matheme. What makes this ‘little letter’ that structures the signifier so apposite a device is how it stymies even those sophisticated readers for whom Lacan is as close-readable as Mallarm e. The proposition offered here is that this crisis of reading is not the consequence of either some terrible mistake or egregious failing in character, but rather a typically Lacanian move by which his text stages the very (...) theory it is presumably explicating. This article suggests that by striving to read the matheme, instead of seizing upon excuses to avoid it, we can begin to understand what Lacan meant when he said that everything emerges from the structure of the signifier. (shrink)

In this article, we develop and clarify some of the basic combinatorial properties of the new notion of n-dependence recently introduced by Shelah. In the same way as dependence of a theory means its inability to encode a bipartite random graph with a definable edge relation, n-dependence corresponds to the inability to encode a random -partite -hypergraph with a definable edge relation. We characterize n-dependence by counting φ-types over finite sets, and in terms of the collapse of random ordered -hypergraph (...) indiscernibles down to order-indiscernibles. (shrink)

In this volume, a group of international scholars address issues relating to community well being and the role of politics, law and economics in Europe and Japan in achieving human-centered symbiotic governance. Case-studies and suggestions for reform are presented in the arenas of economy, government administration, management, university governance, health, agriculture, the environment and urban planning.

When a central government deals with local demands, it may strengthen political accountability of the local governments by political decentralization or offer benefits through economic assistance. An authoritarian regime uses economic assistance policy because political decentralization may contradict regime survival. Although economic benefits can be used to buy political support, the distribution of these benefits is seldom equal. We argue that the unequal distribution is more salient in regions where ethnic minorities reside because the unusual demographic composition of those areas (...) make it difficult for the national government to evaluate the performance of the local government who is responsible for the distribution of the economic benefits. As a result, economic assistance may backfire in ethnic regions and intensify their existing conflicts. We develop a simple formal model to illustrate our arguments and explore the cases of Xinjiang and Hong Kong for empirical analysis. (shrink)

Some people in Japan are still comfortable with the paternalistic role of doctors, but others wish that their own decisions would receive a greater amount of respect. A total of 747 students of universities and colleges and 114 parents of these students participated in a questionnaire survey. Most of the participants thought that autonomy should be respected in situations involving death with dignity and euthanasia, whereas it should not be respected in attempted suicide and involuntary admission of individuals with mental (...) illness. A cluster analysis revealed that the participants could be divided into the following groups: aid in dying advocates, complete libertarians, protectors of the mentally ill, complete paternalists, and questionables. The assertion of independence score of the Scale for Independent and Interdependent Construal of the Self showed a significant difference among the 5 clusters. These findings suggest that the traditional paternalistic relationship between doctor and patient is undergoing a gradual transformation in Japan. (shrink)

Nishida Kitaro's reformulation of the major issues of Western philosophy from a Zen standpoint of "absolute nothingness" and "absolutely contradictory self-identity" represents the boldest speculative enterprise of modern Japan, continued today by his successors in the "Kyoto School" of philosophy. This English translation of Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness evokes the movement and flavor of the original, clarifies its obscurities, and eliminates the repetitions. It sheds new light on the philosopher's career, revealing a long struggle with such thinkers as Cohen, (...) Natorp, Husserl, Fichte, and Bergson, that ended with Nishida's break from the basic ontological assumptions of the West. Throughout labyrinthine arguments, Nishida never loses sight of his theme: the irreducibility and unobjectifiability of the act of self-consciousness which constitutes the self. Extensive annotation is provided for the first time in any edition of Nishida's work. Historians of Japanese philosophy and culture, and all those interested in the interaction of Eastern and Western thought-forms, now have a document which highlights many of the cultural, psychological, and intellectual dynamics that have shaped Japanese intellectual life in one of its most fascinating and ambitious manifestations. (shrink)

BackgroundMany genetic counseling studies have focused on anxiety status because clients of GC often feel anxious during their visits. Metacognition is known to be one of the causes of having an inappropriate thinking style. In this study, we examined the relationship between anxiety and the metacognitive status of GC clients according to their characteristics.MethodsThe participants were 106 clients who attended their first GC session in our hospital from November 2018 to March 2021. The survey items were the clients’ characteristics, anxiety (...) status at the time of the visit, and metacognitive status.ResultsHigh state anxiety and high trait anxiety were observed in 34.9 and 11.3% of clients, respectively. Clients who were a relative or had a family history were significantly more likely to have high state anxiety. As for metacognitive status, only negative beliefs about thoughts concerning uncontrollability and danger were associated with having an anxiety status. Furthermore, multivariate analysis showed that negative beliefs about thoughts concerning uncontrollability and danger were an independent determinant of higher state anxiety, but not being a relative or having a family history. Metacognitive status scores were significantly lower in clients than in the control group.ConclusionState anxiety was shown to be more dependent on negative beliefs about thoughts concerning uncontrollability and danger of GC clients than their characteristics such as being a relative or having a family history. The results of this study will contribute to the development of new GC psychosocial support measures to address the anxiety of GC clients. (shrink)

We introduce several concepts concerning the indiscernibility of trees. A tree is by definition an ordered set such that, for any a∈O, the initial segment {b∈O:b (...) A of the form η∈O, where O is a tree, and aη labeled by η is an element in M. Such a set A is also called a tree in this paper. We study the indiscernibility of trees A in general settings and apply the obtained results to the study of unstable theories. (shrink)