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)

M. F. Burnyeat; XII—Belief in Speech, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 68, Issue 1, 1 June 1968, Pages 227–248, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotel.

Philosophical Thought in Russia in the Second Half of the 20th Century is the first book of its kind that offers a systematic overview of an often misrepresented period in Russia's philosophy. Focusing on philosophical ideas produced during the late 1950s – early 1990s, it reconstructs the development of genuine philosophical thought in the Soviet period and introduces those non-dogmatic Russian thinkers who saw in philosophy a means of reforming social and intellectual life. Covering such areas of philosophical inquiry as (...) philosophy of science, philosophical anthropology, the history of philosophy, activity approach as well as communication and dialogue studies, the volume presents and thoroughly discusses central topics and concepts developed by Soviet thinkers in that particular fields. Written by a team of internationally recognized scholars from Russia and abroad, it examines the work of well-known Soviet philosophers (such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Evald Ilyenkov and Merab Mamardashvili) as well as those important figures (such as Vladimir Bibler, Alexander Zinoviev, Yury Lotman, Georgy Shchedrovitsky, Genrich Batishchev, Sergey Rubinstein, and others) who have often been overlooked. By introducing and examining original philosophical ideas that evolved in the Soviet period, the book confirms that not all Soviet philosophy was dogmatic and tied to orthodox Marxism and the ideology of Marxism-Leninism. It shows Russian philosophical development of the Soviet period in a new light, as a philosophy defined by a genuine discourse of exploration and intellectual progress, rather than stagnation and dogmatism. In addition to providing the historical and cultural background that explains the development of the 20th-century Russian philosophy, the book also puts the discussed ideas and theories in the context of contemporary philosophical discussions showing their relevance to nowadays debates in Western philosophy. With short biographies of key thinkers, an extensive current bibliography and a detailed chronology of Soviet philosophy, this research resource provides a new understanding of the Soviet period and its intellectual legacy 100 years after the Russian Revolution. (shrink)

In the past decades, an enormous amount of precious information has been collected about molecular and genetic characteristics of cancer. This knowledge is mainly based on a reductionistic approach, meanwhile cancer is widely recognized to be a ‘system biology disease’. The behavior of complex physiological processes cannot be understood simply by knowing how the parts work in isolation. There is not solely a matter how to integrate all available knowledge in such a way that we can still deal with complexity, (...) but we must be aware that a deeply transformation of the currently accepted oncologic paradigm is urgently needed. We have to think in terms of biological networks: understanding of complex functions may in fact be impossible without taking into consideration influences outside of the genome. Systems Biology involves connecting experimental unsupervised multivariate data to mathematical and computational approach than can simulate biologic systems for hypothesis testing or that can account for what it is not known from high-throughput data sets. Metabolomics could establish the requested link between genotype and phenotype, providing informations that ensure an integrated understanding of pathogenic mechanisms and metabolic phenotypes and provide a screening tool for new targeted drug. (shrink)

This article describes a practical example of the predicate grue, examining the economic relationship between the percentage rate of unemployment and the percentage change of money wage rates known as the simple Phillips curve which exhibited regular behaviour before 1969 and erratic behaviour thereafter. It is proposed that such practical examples of grue from the real world be redescribed as regulatic. i.e. regular before time t and erratic thereafter. In the instance of a scientific model or theory being falsified it (...) is proposed to describe the predicate as tralse, i.e true before time t and false thereafter. The example to be discussed is a stronger example since entities in the real world started to behave in an extremely unpredictable fashion. (shrink)

This article considers how legislators should respond to evidence that identifies a common and widely accepted parental practice as a potential source of harm to children, using domestic exposure to environmental tobacco smoke as a test case. It is claimed that children are parties to the Harm Principle, and that the State has an obligation to protect children from exposure to harm. Parental prerogative is limited by the need to avoid harming children. That said, there is considerable uncertainty about what (...) is harmful to children. Several sources of uncertainty, both empirical and conceptual, are explored, in order to demonstrate the complexity of the task legislators face. Seven considerations that are relevant to decisions about legislation of harmful parental practices are outlined, and these considerations are then employed to assess the case in favour of legislating to prohibit the exposure of children to environmental tobacco smoke in domestic settings. (shrink)

Purpose: In the educational field a lack of focus on the process of arriving at a level of profound understanding of a phenomenon can be observed. While classical approaches in education focus on "downloading," repeating, or sometimes optimizing relatively stable chunks of knowledge (both facts and procedural knowledge), this paper proposes to shift the center of attention towards a more dynamic and constructivist perspective: learning as a process of individual and collective knowledge creation and knowledge construction. The goal of this (...) process is to profoundly understand a phenomenon in its multi-dimensionality and complexity and to reflect on the processes that have lead to this understanding. The issue we want to tackle in this paper is how this profound understanding can be brought about in a technology-enhanced learning environment. Method: Part 1 of this paper explores strategies of technology-enhanced knowledge sharing/creation in the field of higher education. Part 2 presents a successful blended learning scenario that illustrates the implementation of these learning strategies in a concrete course design. In this case study students are involved in active theory construction processes by conducting virtual experiments with a virtual organism. Part 3 elaborates on the epistemological implications of this case study. Findings: A constructivist framework for modes of knowing and modes of coming to know is developed. It is shown that -- in order to reach a profound understanding of a phenomenon -- it is essential to take into account the multi-facetted character of knowledge and to use the strategy of double-loop learning. Conclusion: This leads to an understanding of learning/teaching as a process of socio-epistemological engineering. Furthermore, the role of the teacher changes in such a constructivist setting of learning/teaching: Their primary task is to provide a "pedagogically (and technologically) augmented environment." They are responsible for creating an atmosphere of collective knowledge construction and reflection. Beyond the role of a coach and moderator the teacher has to act as a facilitator or "enabler" for the (individual and collective) processes of double-loop learning. (shrink)

This book traces the history of philosophy in Great Britain from the time when it began to be written until the end of the Victorian era. A valuable feature is the extensive bibliography, which was revised especially for the first printing of this 1965 back edition.

The question contrasts two ways of expressing the role of the sense organ in perception. In one the expression referring to the sense organ is put into the dative case ; the other is a construction with the preposition δiá governing the genitive case of the word for the sense organ.

This essay argues that the Putnam-Nussbaum thesis that modern functionalism is Aristotelian is false. It fails as an interpretation of Aristotle since it fails to notice that Aristotle’s conception of the material or physical side of the soul-body relation is one which no modern functionalist could share. The Putnam-Nussbaum thesis is examined within the context of the theory of perception. This involves the need to understand one of the most mysterious Aristotelian doctrines – the doctrine that in perception, the sense-organ (...) assumes the sensible form of the object perceived without its matter. (shrink)

Overzicht van het leven en de filosofische ideeën en betekenis van de Griekse wijsgeer (469-399 voor Chr.).

In spite of vast global improvements in living standards, health, and well-being, the persistence of absolute poverty and its attendant maladies remains an unsettling fact of life for billions around the world and constitutes the primary cause for the failure of developing states to improve the health of their peoples. While economic development in developing countries is necessary to provide for underlying determinants of health – most prominently, poverty reduction and the building of comprehensive primary health systems – inequalities in (...) power within the international economic order and the spread of neoliberal development policy limit the ability of developing states to develop economically and realize public goods for health. With neoliberal development policies impacting entire societies, the collective right to development, as compared with an individual rights-based approach to development, offers a framework by which to restructure this system to realize social determinants of health. The right to development, working through a vector of rights, can address social determinants of health, obligating states and the international community to support public health systems while reducing inequities in health through poverty-reducing economic growth. At an international level, where the ability of states to develop economically and to realize public goods through public health systems is constrained by international financial institutions, the implementation of the right to development enables a restructuring of international institutions and foreign-aid programs, allowing states to enter development debates with a right to cooperation from other states, not simply a cry for charity. (shrink)

Lecture I begins with a brief history of changing views on what the Trolley Problem is and attempts to solve it. The lecture then critically examines Judith Thomson’s recent view that a moral distinction between killing and letting die, and between what a conductor of the trolley or a mere bystander may do to save people from the trolley, eliminates what she now thinks of as the Trolley Problem. The last part considers a different argument for the conclusion that Thomson (...) now favors, but ultimately attempts to resurrect the Trolley Problem, suggesting that it is not who turns the trolley that makes the turning permissible. (shrink)

"M. F. Simone Roberts's A Poetics of Being-Two is animated by a lively and engaging voice, drawing readers in with a sense of serious purpose working (delightfully) in tandem with a sense of humor. Roberts's aesthetics and her close readings of Yves Bonnefoy, St-John Perse, and Jorie Graham clearly demonstrate the literary effectiveness of Irigarayan sexual difference as an analytic trope, even as they emphasize the philosophical and political possibilities sexual difference opens up for feminism, environmentalism, and all levels of (...) contemporary cultural critique and activism."—Gail M. Schwab, Hofstra University -/- In An Ethics of Sexual Difference, Irigaray calls for a new poetics in the sense of both art and life. Rather than a critique from within philosophy, A Poetics of Being-Two tests Irigaray's ethics by extending it to other sites of cultural production. Where Irigaray's method finds stirrings and repressions of sexual difference in philosophy, this project explores that tension in poetics. Building from Irigaray's ethics, the book describes a poetics of being-two as concerns gendered subjectivity in literary poetics and then traces the on-going emergence of a poetics of being-two in the post-symbolist poetic tradition. Irigaray scholars will be interested in the sustained interpolation of Irigaray's ethical concepts as principles for a critical aesthetics and in their hermeneutic application in reading a literary tradition. Readers in comparative literature will find the first sustained feminist engagements with the major French poets Bonnefoy and Perse and an elucidation of their influence on the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Jorie Graham. (shrink)

M. F. Burnyeat taught for 14 years in the Philosophy Department of University College London, then for 18 years in the Classics Faculty at Cambridge, 12 of them as the Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy, before migrating to Oxford in 1996 to become a Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at All Souls College. The studies, articles and reviews collected in these two volumes of Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy were all written, and all but two published, before that decisive (...) change. Whether designed for a scholarly audience or for a wider public, they range from the Presocratics to Augustine, from Descartes and Bishop Berkeley to Wittgenstein and G. E. Moore. Their subject-matter falls under four main headings: 'Logic and Dialectic' and 'Scepticism Ancient and Modern', which make up the first volume, with 'Knowledge' and 'Philosophy and the Good Life' contained in this, the second volume. The title 'Explorations' well expresses Burnyeat's ability to discover new aspects of familiar texts, new ways of solving old problems. In his hands the history of philosophy becomes itself a philosophical activity. (shrink)

Background: Nursing students on clinical placements as part of their professional training are routinely faced with situations involving ethical conflicts. The initial act of perceiving a situation as causing an ethical dilemma is the result of both the students’ personal values, drawn from their culture and families, and of the professional knowledge and values that they have acquired through training and experience. Objectives: Nursing students’ experiences on clinical placements in primary care settings were investigated in order to identify situations that (...) they perceived as involving ethical conflict and describe the elements they took into consideration during their decision-making processes in these situations. Methods: The research design was qualitative descriptive case study. Around 50 students from three different intakes to a nursing degree answered a questionnaire and discussed it in focus groups. Ethical considerations: The study was designed in accordance with the principles guiding research with human beings and was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee. Results: Synthesised into two principal axes: (a) ethical conflicts in primary care, linked with the domains of working processes, professional nursing ethics and human and social rights and (b) students’ decision-making processes – realisation, reflection and intervention. Conclusion: The student nurses saw themselves both as actors and spectators in situations involving ethical problems and demanding moral deliberation, demonstrating the ability to base their arguments soundly. They tended to emphasise the possibilities offered by dialogue and that different ethical values must be respected to find fair solutions to ethical problems. (shrink)