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A critical recuperation of Watsuji’s Rinrigaku
Get PDFWatsuji is recognised as one Japan’s foremost philosophers. His work on ethics, Rinrigaku, is cosmopolitan in engaging the Western philosophical tradition, and in presupposing an international audience. Yet Watsuji’s ethical thought is largely of niche interest outside Japan, and it is critiqued on the ground that it ratifies totalitarianism, demanding individuals’ unquestioning subordination to communal demands. We offer a reading of Rinrigaku that, in attempting to trace the text’s intention, disputes these arguments. We argue that Rinrigaku makes individual autonomy central to ethical action, despite the fact that its treatment of coercion may lead one to think otherwise; that it does not reduce ethical obligations to whatever demands any given society imposes on its members; that it draws a distinction between socio-ethical orders that are genuinely ethical and those that are not; and that, in insisting on the grounding of individuals in the Absolute, it makes adequate room for individuals’ resistance to unjustifiable socio-ethical demands
Space and belonging
Get PDFA particularly significant relation between subjects and spaces is that of belonging, which manifests in many ways, both legally and socially. Cooper considers belonging in two ways: firstly, the relationship whereby an object, space, or rights over it belong to a subject, and secondly, the constitutive relationship of part to whole whereby attributes, qualities, or characteristics belong to a thing or a subject. In order to constitute property, the set of networked relations that Cooper describes must form a space that holds up relations of belonging: conceptually, socially, and physically supporting them. Focusing on space and belonging requires the reader to broaden the focus of analysis away from the individual subject and onto the broader networks of relations in which the subject exists. Social and legal questions become less straightforward, as shifting spaces and relations is more difficult than disciplining individuals, but this complexity matches that of the world, and makes for rich research
Life and death in early modern philosophy
Get PDFThis book sets out to convey the breadth of early-modern philosophical interest in life and death. It ranges over debates in metaphysics, the life sciences, epistemology, the philosophy of mathematics, philosophical psychology, the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of education and ethics. It aims to illuminate the relationships between the problems explored under these headings, as they shift with the changing intellectual and cultural environments in which philosophers found themselves working. Much of the fascination of early modern discussions of life and death lies in the way apparently disparate commitments merge into strange and unfamiliar outlooks that challenge some of our most deeply rooted assumptions.
In recent years there has been a wave of interest in the place of the life sciences within early modern natural philosophy, and biological questions about life and death form part of the subject matter under discussion here. But this book has a further ambition: to link the predominantly theoretical preoccupations associated with the study of organisms to the practical aspect of philosophy. Rather than giving priority to themes that anticipate the preoccupations of modern science, the organisation of the volume aims to remind us that philosophy, as our early modern predecessors construed it, was also about learning how to live and die. This is above all why life and death mattered to them
The “Matthew Effect” and market concentration: search complementarities and monopsony power
Get PDFThis paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms that face search complementarities in the formation of vendor contracts. Search complementarities amplify small differences in productivity among firms. Market concentration fosters monopsony power in the labor market, magnifying profits and further enhancing highproductivity firms’ output share. Firms want to get bigger and hire more workers, in stark contrast with the classic monopsony model, where a firm aims to reduce the amount of labor it hires. The combination of search complementarities and monopsony power induces a strong “Matthew effect” that endogenously generates superstar firms out of uniform idiosyncratic productivity distributions. Reductions in search costs increase market concentration, lower the labor income share, and increase wage inequality
The return of the state: restructuring Britain for the common good
No full textBook synopsis: This book offers both a vision of a future Britain and a roadmap to getting there. It is now clear that the Covid-19 pandemic hit the UK harder than other countries in Europe not least because of the government’s ill-timed and ill-conceived response, but also because of the chronic failure of the state to fund public services adequately and to reduce societal inequality in the neoliberal decades since 1979. Pushed by crisis, the government has borrowed massively to save jobs, businesses and the economy from collapse, making a mockery of the austerity policies that it had vocally championed for a decade – policies that undoubtedly created a divided country and precipitated a Brexit vote that has since consumed parliament and stymied social progress.
The role of the state is now in sharp focus: the contributors to this book assesses what that role should be and how it should be harnessed for the good of the British people in all four of its nations. They call for nothing short of a new settlement and a complete redesign of the economy. The contributors argue passionately and persuasively for a state that is properly funded, one that looks after its citizens regardless of age, class or ethnicity and enables them to live well. To do this requires the establishment of a functional, fair and green economy managed with a social and public purpose.
Bringing together some of the brightest and most-engaged scholars and thinkers in the UK, this book offers solutions and suggestions for how to re-establish the strong state, how to generate a new social settlement and how to manage a long-term and equitable economic recovery post-pandemic
Robustness and performance of Deep Reinforcement Learning
Get PDFDeep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has recently obtained considerable attention. It empowers Reinforcement Learning (RL) with Deep Learning (DL) techniques to address various difficult tasks. In this paper, a novel approach called the \emph{Genetic Algorithm of Neuron Coverage} (GANC) is proposed. It is motivated for improving the robustness and performance of a DRL network. The GANC uses Genetic Algorithm (GA) to maximise the Neuron Coverage (NC) of a DRL network by producing augmented inputs. We apply this method in the self-driving car applications, where it is crucial to accurately provide a correct decision for different road tracking views. We evaluate our method on the SYNTHIA-SEQS-05 databases in four different driving environments. Our outcomes are very promising - the best driving accuracy reached 97.75% - and are superior to the state-of-the-art results
Appagamento, atteggiamento/motivazione e ansia nello studio della lingua madre e della lingua straniera in una scuola italiana all’estero
Get PDFThe present study looks at the relationship between classroom Enjoyment, Attitudes/Motivation and Language Anxiety in 110 Turkish pupils’ first language (L1) and in Italian, their foreign language (FL) in an immersion school. This is one of the first studies to compare emotions in the L1 and FL classrooms. It revealed similar levels of Attitude/Motivation in Turkish and Italian but significantly higher levels of Anxiety and marginally higher levels of Enjoyment in the FL classroom. A positive correlation was found between Enjoyment in Turkish and Italian Language classrooms. Age and gender had limited effects. Anxiety was the only variable that was correlated (negatively) to exam results in both languages, both confirming previous findings for FL and expanding it into L1 performance.
In questo articolo si riportano i risultati di uno studio sulle emozioni positive (appagamento e atteggiamento/motivazione) e quelle negative (l’ansia) nella classe di lingua e letteratura turca come lingua madre (L1), in una scuola italiana all’estero. Lo studio delle emozioni coinvolte nel processo di insegnamento/apprendimento della Lingua Straniera (LS) nella cornice teorica della psicologia positiva stanno guadagnando l’attenzione degli studiosi, ma questo è tra i primi studi in cui il focus si sposta dalle emozioni nella LS verso quelle nella L1. Si presentano i dati raccolti da 110 studenti sul livello di appagamento nella classe di lingua, l’atteggiamento/motivazione e l’ansia e il loro rapporto con i risultati scolastici ottenuti per queste due lingue. I risultati dimostrano che vi è una correlazione positiva tra l’appagamento nella classe di lingua e letteratura turca e in quella di lingua italiana. Come in altri studi (Dewaele e MacIntyre, 2014), l’ansia si dimostra essere un’emozione indipendente dalle emozioni positive ed è l’unica variabile correlata in maniera negativa ai risultati ottenuti negli esami
Is a European recovery possible without high-tech public corporations?
Get PDFPervasive new technologies associated with ICTs and software are dominated by a restricted
oligopoly of US-based corporations. The challengers are not any longer European firms, but rather
Japanese or Chinese companies. The actions taken by the EU to fill this technology gap, including
the EC Framework Programmes, are beneficial but still insufficient in terms of the resources
committed. This article argues that the EU urgently needs to add another economic policy
instrument to defy these incumbent firms, namely to create a few publicly supported large
corporations in the areas of greater scientific and technological opportunities. This will be
complementary to the already ongoing mission-oriented innovation policies. While we are aware of
the political and economic difficulties to implement such a strategy, we recall the pioneering
venture of Airbus, established more than 50 years ago and which, despite several economic and
political controversies, has successfully managed to challenge the dominant US-based passengers’
aircraft producers. Could similar attempts be replicated for Green technologies, Healthcare services,
ICTs, and Artificial Intelligence
Paraphyly of the genus Boehmeria (Urticaceae): a response to Liang et al. ‘Relationships among Chinese Boehmeria species and the evolution of various clade’
Get PDFBoehmeria, as currently circumscribed, comprises 52 species and has a pantropical distribution. Liang et al. propose a sectional classification of Boehmeria based on the phylogenetic analysis of SNP data for 20 species and an additional 10 subspecific taxa of these at the rank of variety or form. They restrict their sampling to species documented in China. We found many shortcomings in the sampling and analyses which we feel have resulted in a misleading phylogeny for the genus and the economically important fibre-plant, Boehmeria nivea. By sampling only Chinese species of this genus for their in-group and using a single distantly related outgroup, Liang et al. have failed to capture the diversity of the genus and so erroneously concluded that it forms a monophyletic group. Previous published research clearly demonstrates that Boehmeria is paraphyletic and polyphyletic, comprising at least four monophyletic groupings most closely related to several genera within the Boehmerieae. For these reasons, the sections that Liang et al. (Ind Crops Prod 148:112092, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2020.112092) propose for Boehmeria are not effective tools for its classification. The important fibre-plant, Boehmeria nivea, should therefore not be considered as part of the genus Boehmeria for the purposes of crop breeding, but as sister to Archiboehmeria. Breeding programmes for ramie should therefore focus on populations and germplasm of Archiboehmeria atrata. We conclude that poor taxon sampling, overlooking relevant molecular and taxonomic literature, internal conflict within their SNP data and the overinterpretation of low support values has resulted in the erroneous conclusion that Boehmeria represents a monophyletic or ‘natural’ genus.
Alexandre K. Monro, Steven Dodsworth, Long-Fei Fu, Ib Friis, Christine M. Wilmot-Dear & Olivier Mauri
Seasonal variability in silicate weathering signatures recorded by Li isotopes in cave drip-waters
Get PDFSilicate weathering is a critical process in Earth’s carbon cycle, but the fundamental controls on weathering are poorly understood and its response to future climate change is uncertain. In particular, the potential for changes in seasonality or extreme weather events to control silicate weathering rates or mechanisms has been little studied. Here, we use lithium (Li) isotope measurements in bimonthly sampled drip-waters from two caves in the Yorkshire Dales (U.K.) to assess the response of silicate weathering processes to changes in temperature and hydrology over seasonal timescales. While the caves are contained in limestone bedrock, the drip-water Li isotope signal predominantly reflects silicate weathering of the overlying soils that are dominated by glacial till. Drip-water Li isotope compositions record spatial and temporal variability ranging from δ7Li values of +1 to +17‰, with a mean of +11‰. These values are significantly higher than local lithogenic inputs (δ7Li = −1 ± 1‰), consistent with isotope fractionation during secondary mineral formation. Comparison to temperature, precipitation, drip rates, and drip-water chemistry enables the controls on the Li isotope weathering signatures to be explored, revealing possible roles for both temperature and fluid residence time in setting the balance between primary rock dissolution and secondary mineral formation. Specifically, our Li isotope data are consistent with a scenario in which cooler temperatures and/or longer fluid residence times lead to enhanced secondary mineral formation relative to silicate dissolution. Overall, our results indicate the potential for Li isotope variability over short temporal and spatial scales, which is important to consider when interpreting past changes in weathering processes or fluxes from paleo-records. In addition, the seasonal changes in Li isotopes suggest that weathering processes may be sensitive to seasonality or to extreme weather events, rather than responding only to the mean climate state. With warmer temperatures and more intense rainfall events expected in future, both increased primary rock dissolution and enhanced weathering efficiency (due to reduced secondary mineral formation) could potentially contribute to increased carbon dioxide drawdown by silicate weathering.
Wilson, David J
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