Chronic abdominal pain has many etiologies, one of them being parasites. The aim of this study was to find an association between chronic abdominal pain in children and Blastocystis hominis (Bh). Clinical files of patients with Bh and functional abdominal pain were reviewed. A comparison was made between patients who showed an improvement of their symptoms and those who did not. Out of the 138 patients who had functional abdominal pain and Bh, 37 patients did not receive any treatment (26.8%), while 101 received it and were treated with different antimicrobial agents (73.2%); regarding the improvement of symptoms, a statistically significant difference (p< 0.001) was observed. Chronic abdominal pain in children has different etiologies; however, we have documented through this work that it is appropriate to provide antimicrobial treatment for patients with Bh and chronic abdominal pain.
Berger and Nanay (2017, henceforth B&N) claim that naïve realism struggles to accommodate the existence of unconscious perception. Since there is said to be excellent evidence that perception of the same fundamental kind can occur, both consciously and unconsciously, this presents a problem for the view; it places a burden on the naïve realist to adequately address the phenomenon. Can this burden be met? After considering, and rejecting, three possible routes to an affirmative answer, B&N suggest a negative one. However, so far as we can see, all three routes considered remain perfectly plausible ways of addressing unconscious perception within a naïve realist framework. In each case, the burden then seems to remain with B&N, or their sympathisers, to make a case against the naïve realist, rather than vice versa. 1. The first route considered by B&N would involve denying the existence of unconscious perception. If adequately defended, this would amount to showing that naïve realism is under no obligation to account for the phenomenon-a view that has recently been defended by Phillips (2016). However, despite acknowledging Phillips' proposal, B&N simply state that it is one they are 'dubious' of. They do not actually engage with Phillips' arguments, something that would take them 'too far afield' (427). On a charitable reading, this might be because B&N see a fundamental problem with the whole approach. They note that even if Phillips' rejection of the current empirical evidence for unconscious perception was sound, it would leave naïve realism 'hostage to forthcoming experimental results' (ibid.). For B&N, this conflicts with naïve realism's claim to be a pretheoretical view of perception since it commits the view to empirical predictions that will be alien to the folk. But this is quite mistaken. Naïve realism, as a philosophical theory of perception, purports to provide a rich and sophisticated account of sense perception that vindicates an important and pretheoretically compelling claim: that mind independent objects feature as genuine constituents in perceptual experience. But this does not commit the naïve realist to all consequences of their view being equally amenable to common sense or pre-theoretical reflection (see Fish 2010: ch.6; Martin 2004: 39-40). Nor does it require the view to remain non-committal on the interpretation of complex experimental findings (see Campbell 2010). Rather, it leaves open the possibility that the view might make complex empirical predictions that offer to vindicate its (more intuitive) core
It has been claimed that naïve realism predicts phenomenological similarities where there are none and, thereby, mischaracterises the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. If true, this undercuts a key motivation for the view. Here, we defend naïve realism against this charge, proposing that such arguments fail (three times over). In so doing, we highlight a more general problem with critiques of naïve realism that target the purported phenomenological predictions of the view. The problem is: naïve realism, broadly construed, doesn't make phenomenological predictions of the required sort. So, as a result, opponents must resign themselves to attacking specific incarnations of naïve realism, or approach matters quite differently.
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