Naive realism and the scientific narration of perception

Naive realism is a widely debated topic in the philosophy of the mind. In this article I will review the theses of naive realism through the works of one of the most influential philosophers who supported and developed them, Michael Martin. Once the reasons why naive realism should be supported are discussed, I will propose an empirical argument to show that naive realism and the most basic scientific knowledge of perceptive processes are contradictory

Cultural representations of mental illness in contemporary Japan

This paper presents the results of a research project aimed at studying the cultural representations of mental illness and related interventions models in contemporary Japan, and providing the basis for a comparison between Japanese and Italian mental health cultures. The research methodology is based on interviews with scholars and professionals from multiple disciplinary areas and fields of practice, in order to analyze the interactions between medical, social sciences’ and humanities’ discourse on mental illness. The results highlight the significance of home custody within the modernization of the country, between Edo and Meiji periods; the cultural frameworks of contemporary psychiatry’s action; what anti-psychiatry and the ‘critical’ reflection on mental illness represented within the academic debate; the new demands and potentialities connected to the spread of psychology within the mental health sector; remarkably new experiences of social integration with the contribution of arts

We Are Not Alone: Perception and The Others

In this paper, I have outlined an original Metaphysics of Perception which takes into consideration some of the most common views about perception in the contemporary debate. Then I will look at the consequences of this metaphysics about our perception of others and what we know about them. In the third section, I suggest how to make sense of certain neuroscientific discoveries about social perception and social cognition. In the conclusion, I recap what has been done to say that others are what we can know after all

Chinese Americans and the Borderland Experience on Golden Mountain: The Development of a Chinese American Identity in the Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

In The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, Maxine Hong Kingston tells the story of her immigrant family and their efforts to rise above their working-class status in America, which optimistic Chinese regard as the Golden Mountain. The Hongs\u27 experience is not unlike that of other immigrants who come to America to escape hardship in their homeland and hope to live the American Dream. The road to American success has numerous obstacles, and immigrants encounter many conflicts on their journey. One conflict relates to their cultural identities. Gloria Anzaldúa uses the word borderland to refer to the meeting of two cultures, and she defines the borderland as a place of contradictions. Hatred, anger and exploitation are the prominent features of this landscape (n.p.). While Anzaldua\u27s discussion focuses on the borderland encountered by Mexican Americans, she believes that many share this painful experience

Small Asian Wonders

As curiosity grew in the Renaissance, so did the scope of collections of wonders. The Cricket Cage, Jade Screen, and Iron Dragon are three examples of rare collection items from the Far East. While these three east Asian small wonders may have been commonplace in their country of origin, they were considered marvelous to the collectors of Europe who had never seen objects such as these produced in their own countries. [excerpt

A theory of the infinite horizon LQ-problem for composite systems of PDEs with boundary control

We study the infinite horizon Linear-Quadratic problem and the associated algebraic Riccati equations for systems with unbounded control actions. The operator-theoretic context is motivated by composite systems of Partial Differential Equations (PDE) with boundary or point control. Specific focus is placed on systems of coupled hyperbolic/parabolic PDE with an overall `predominant' hyperbolic character, such as, e.g., some models for thermoelastic or fluid-structure interactions. While unbounded control actions lead to Riccati equations with unbounded (operator) coefficients, unlike the parabolic case solvability of these equations becomes a major issue, owing to the lack of sufficient regularity of the solutions to the composite dynamics. In the present case, even the more general theory appealing to estimates of the singularity displayed by the kernel which occurs in the integral representation of the solution to the control system fails. A novel framework which embodies possible hyperbolic components of the dynamics has been introduced by the authors in 2005, and a full theory of the LQ-problem on a finite time horizon has been developed. The present paper provides the infinite time horizon theory, culminating in well-posedness of the corresponding (algebraic) Riccati equations. New technical challenges are encountered and new tools are needed, especially in order to pinpoint the differentiability of the optimal solution. The theory is illustrated by means of a boundary control problem arising in thermoelasticity.Comment: 50 pages, submitte

Market Power and Growth in a Schumpeterian Framework of Innovation

Can market power really be considered as "the price" that a society as a whole is called to pay in order to have a more dynamically efficient economic system? The schumpeterian answer to this question would be certainly positive, the monopoly power being seen as the reward accruing to the successful innovator from his/her innovative activity. However, the idea to consider the existence of any possible positive linkage among market power, innovation and growth is not unambiguously present in the so-called deterministic, neo-schumpeterian, R&D-based growth models. On the basis of such very general considerations, in this paper we build two different models, sharing the same theoretical framework suggested by P. Romer (1990). What results from the analysis is that in the more familiar models of innovation and economic development, the relationship between some measure of market power and aggregate growth rate is not robust at all, depending on variables such as the kind of inputs each industry employs in order to obtain its own output and the way in which these inputs are combined. This is particularly relevant in terms of public policies towards the intermediate monopolies, suggesting the necessity for a growth-maximising regulator to assess case-by-case the type of his/her intervention.Monopoly Power; Technological Change; Economic Growth; Antitrust Policy

Product Market Competition, R&D Effort and Economic Growth

Empirical evidence has recently pointed to the lack of any relationship between R&D intensity (variously defined and measured) and economic growth in the post-war period in the United States and other OECD countries. Using a framework that integrates human capital accumulation and purposive (horizontal) innovation activity, this paper looks at product market competition as a possible solution to this puzzle. Indeed, we find that changes in product market competition may well have no influence on human capital investment (the growth engine), while affecting R&D effort.Endogenous Growth; R&D Investment; Human Capital Accumulation; Product Market Competition