Context: The dominant approach to the study of perception is representational/computational, with an emphasis on the achievements of the brain and the nervous system, which are taken to construct internal models of the world. Alternatives include ecological, embedded, embodied, and enactivist approaches, all of which emphasize the centrality of action in understanding perception. Problem: Despite sharing many theoretical commitments that lead to a rejection of the classical approach, the alternatives are characterized by important contrasts and points of divergence. Here we (...) focus on the enactive and ecological approaches, in particular, on how they construe the status of the environment and the content of perception. Method: We begin with a review of James Gibson’s ecological psychology, highlighting it as a psychology for all organisms not just humans. Against this backdrop, we consider enactivist arguments against direct perception - a central assertion of the ecological approach - and in favor of interpreting the activity of perceptual agents as a kind of construction of a perceptually meaningful world. Results: We assess the merits of this interpretation and we conclude that it cannot be grounded on fundamental principles such as thermodynamics and organism-environment mutuality. Implications: As a consequence, enactivism remains close to representationalism and entails a form of dualism. Constructivist content: We advance a criticism of the constructivist foundations of the enactive approach to perception. Perception-action mutuality at the heart of enactivism does not require mental construction; indeed, perception-action mutuality obviates construction. (shrink)

This article explores the accounts of Canadian-trained health professionals working in humanitarian and development organizations who considered not treating a patient or group of patients because of resource limitations. In the narratives, not treating the patient(s) was sometimes understood as the right thing to do, and sometimes as wrong. In analyzing participants’ narratives we draw attention to how medications and equipment are represented. In one type of narrative, medications and equipment are represented primarily as scarce resources; in another, they are (...) represented as patient care. In the contexts respondents were working, medications and equipment were often both patient care interventions and scarce resources. The analytic point is that health professionals tend to emphasize one conceptualization over the other in coming to assert that not treating is right, or wrong. Rendering tacit ethical frameworks more explicit makes them available for reflection and debate. (shrink)

Today's modern car is an assemblage of mechanical and digital components, of metal panels that comprise its structure and silicon chips that run its functions. Communication and information studies scholars have interrogated the problematic aspects of the programs that run those functions, revealing serious issues surrounding privacy and security, worker surveillance, and racial, gendered, and class-based bias. This article contributes to that work by taking a step back and asking about the issues inherent not in the software running on these (...) chips, but on the microchips themselves. Using the lens of “chipification”—the process by which a device is rendered capable of reading and processing data through the embedding of microchips—this article explores how the integration of microchips also involves processes that are often borne from, replicate, or create troubling power dynamics of their own. It takes light-duty passenger vehicles as a case study into how chipification is radically reshaping such processes as resource allocation, labor flows, and cultural practices around car manufacture, use, repair, and modification. By naming the process of chipification, this article allows researchers to identify and analyze the ways that integrating data processing capabilities into everyday devices is not a frictionless practice, but rather one that implicates a variety of power dynamics within these massive industries. (shrink)

In The Tyranny of the Ideal, Gerald Gaus gives an extended argument on behalf of the “Open Society.” Instead of claiming that it is uniquely best from some privileged moral perspective, he argues for the Open Society by showing why it is acceptable to many perspectives. In this way, Gaus argues for a liberal market-based society in a way that treats deep diversity as a fundamental feature of social life. However, the argument falters at four important points. When taken together, (...) these four problems significantly limit the significance of Gaus’s conclusions. (shrink)

Rawlsians argue for principles of justice that apply exclusively to the basic structure of society, but it can seem strange that those who accept these principles should not also regulate their choices by them. Valid moral principles should seemingly identify ideals for both institutions and individuals. What justifies this nonintuitive distinction between institutional and individual principles is not a moral division of labor but Rawls’s dual commitments to conventionalism and constructivism. Conventionalism distinguishes the relevant ideals for evaluating institutions from those (...) for evaluating actions, while constructivism explains why this distinction is morally fundamental. (shrink)

The dominant conventionalist view explains the wrong of breaking a promise as failing to do our fair share in supporting the practice of promise-keeping. Yet, this account fails to explain any unique moral standing that a promisee has to demand that the promisor keep the promise. In this paper, I provide a conventionalist response to this problem. In any cooperative practice, participants stand as both beneficiary and contributor. As a beneficiary, they are morally required to follow the rules of the (...) practice. As a contributor, they have claims on other participants to follow the rules. According to the rules of promise-keeping, a promisee has a unique claim on the promisor, and the personal wrong of breaking a promise should be understood as the violation of this unique and practice-dependent claim. (shrink)

We give an example of a countable theory $T$ such that for every cardinal $\lambda \geq \aleph_2$ there is a fully indiscernible set $A$ of power $\lambda$ such that the principal types are dense over $A$, yet there is no atomic model of $T$ over $A$. In particular, $T$ is a theory of size $\lambda$ where the principal types are dense, yet $T$ has no atomic model.

I argue that acknowledging Hume as a doxastic naturalist about belief in a deity allows an elegant, holistic reading of his Dialogues. It supports a reading in which Hume's spokesperson is Philo throughout, and enlightens many of the interpretive difficulties of the work. In arguing this, I perform a comprehensive survey of evidence for and against Philo as Hume's voice, bringing new evidence to bear against the interpretation of Hume as Cleanthes and against the amalgamation view while correcting several standard (...) mistakes. I ultimately isolate the interpretation of Philo's Reversal at the end of the Dialogues as of paramount importance, and show how my naturalistic interpretation makes this, and other notoriously difficult passages, unproblematic. (shrink)

Nevertheless, and in spite of these drawbacks, it will be clearly intimated to him that the value of philosophy is, indeed, very great, although it happens ...

In Strategic Justice, Peter Vanderschraaf introduces a “Baseline Consistency” criterion for Justice as Mutual Advantage. This criterion requires assessing how well individuals fare under existing conventions with how well they would fare under hypothetical social conditions. However, this comparison requires the impossible. Under different social conditions, individuals would have different preferences and different interests. As such, we cannot make any direct comparison between how well an individual fares across the two social conditions. The standard of assessment would change from one (...) context to the other. In order to apply the Baseline Consistency criterion, Vanderschraaf would need to justify an interpersonally valid standard for individual welfare, but this is incompatible with his Neo-Hobbesian method. If he abandoned the Baseline Consistency criterion, however, Vanderschraaf faces the “too many equilibria” problem. Conventions that are clearly objectionable would be considered just. (shrink)

Among the scanty remains of poetry attributed to Eumelus of Corinth two lines 2 stand out as different from the rest, first because they are concerned not with the legendary past but with an actual, present occasion, and secondly because they are composed not for Corinthians but for Messenians. Our evidence comes from Pausanias and may be set out at the start.

Those who teach or are taught medical ethics with a heavy reliance on case studies should be warned first of all that the practice tends to exaggerate the degree to which morality is controversial. Secondly, they ought to realise that it is often quite unclear what problems count as moral problems. Thirdly, they will need to bear in mind that there may be -- and presumably are -- limits to what we may regard as open to discussion. It would be (...) quite superficial to assume that ethics teachers, going along with what is generally accepted by their colleagues in this matter, would never tempt students to disregard these limits. (shrink)

Most liberals agree that governments should protect certain basic liberties, such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of the person. Liberals disagree, however, about whether free market rights should also be protected. By “free market rights,” we mean those rights typically associated with laissez-faire economic systems such as freedom of contract, a right to market returns, and claims to privately own the means of production.We do not use the phrase “economic liberties,” as Tomasi does, because it does (...) not distinguish between the “economic rights” defended by classical liberal and those defended by socialists. Those on the right often see such freedoms as core liberal commitments, while those on the left argue that an economic system should be organized to protect the interests of the less advantaged members of society. If free market rights should be protected, then most existing societies are unjust. These societies fail the liberal standard in the same ways as th .. (shrink)

In his own writings, Rawls purposively used only a loose characterization of the basic structure, but two prominent misinterpretations highlight the current need for a more detailed account. First, G.A. Cohen argues that the Rawlsian focus on the basic structure is arbitrary due to the Rawlsian appeal to profound effects. Second, some theorists conflate the justification of coercion with the assessment of a basic structure by defining the basic structure as the coercive structure. Both misinterpretations can be corrected by carefully (...) specifying what social institutions are and explaining which social institutions come together to form the basic structure of society. (shrink)