In a memorable passage near the beginning of William James asks us to imagine a world in which all our dearest social utopias are realized, and then to imagine that this world is offered to us at the price of one lost soul at the farthest edge of the universe suffering eternal, intense, lonely pain. Then he asks.

Recent scholarship in business ethics has revealed the importance of privacy expectations as they relate to implicit privacy norms and the business practices that may violate these expectations. Yet, it is unclear how and when businesses may violate these expectations, factors that form or influence privacy expectations, or whether or not expectations have in fact been violated by company actions. This article reports the findings of three studies exploring how and when the corporate dissemination of consumer data violates privacy expectations. (...) The results indicate that consumer sentiment is more negative following intentional releases of sensitive consumer data, but the effect of data dissemination is more complex than that of company intentionality and data sensitivity alone. Companies can effectively set, and re-affirm, privacy expectations via consent procedures preceding and succeeding data dissemination notifications. Although implied consent has become more widely used in practice, we show how explicit consent outperforms implied consent in these regards. Importantly, this research provides process evidence that identifies perceived violation of privacy expectations as the underlying mechanism to explain the deleterious effects, on consumer sentiment, when company actions are misaligned with consumers’ privacy expectations. Ethical implications for companies collecting and disseminating consumer information are offered. (shrink)

This is a brief exploration of the notion of an objective fact. The form of objectivity at issue is distinct from epistemic objectivity or objectivity about truth. It is an ontological form of objectivity. Objective facts may obtain whether or not we know, believe or are aware of them. They depend upon objects, for example, on the properties that objects have or the relationships into which objects enter. Setting scepticism to one side, there is a perfectly mundane sense in (...) which we may come to have knowledge or fail to have knowledge of such facts. We must perceive objective facts from a perspective, but this does not enter into the facts. Nor does the fact that we must describe facts using language mean that facts are language-dependent. (shrink)

In recent literature on moral perception, much attention has been paid to questions about the relationship between metaethical commitments and moral experience. Far less attention has been paid to the nature of moral perception, its context-sensitivity, and the role it might play in carrying out everyday tasks with decency and care. I would like to reflect on just these features of moral perception in the context of healthcare. I will argue that healthcare providers do in fact have at least an (...) imperfect duty to develop their capacities to perceive with sympathy. I will further suggest, for some familiar reasons, that this development is not best accomplished through the model of adherence to ‘ethics codes.’. (shrink)

Perceptual representations have distal content: they represent external objects and their properties, not light waves or retinal images. This basic fact presents a fundamental problem for ‘input-oriented’ theories of perceptual content. As I show in the first part of this paper, this even holds for what is arguably the most sophisticated input-oriented theory to date, namely Karen Neander's informational teleosemantics. In the second part of the paper, I develop a new version of informational teleosemantics, drawing partly on empirical psychology, and (...) partly on philosophical considerations. I shall argue that this version has all the virtues of Neander's original theory, but also the further crucial advantage of being able to account for the distality of perceptual content. (shrink)

I argue that the direct perception of emotion (DP) is best conceived in terms of event perception, rather than fact perception or object perception. On neither of these two traditional models can the perception of emotion be as direct as its counterpart in ordinary perception; the proponent of DP must either drop the ‘direct’ claim or embrace a part-whole model of emotion perception and its problems. But our best account of how we perceive events directly can be applied to emotion (...) perception without any loss in directness. Not only this but there are good reasons to think that such a conception better respects both empirical evidence and the phenomenology of emotion perception. (shrink)

BackgroundThis study analyzed the difference in psychological distress of the healthcare workers in three different periods of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Argentina. Specifically, from the third week of the mandatory quarantine through the two following weeks.MethodsAnalysis of the responses of 1,458 members of the health personnel was done on a questionnaire on healthcare workers concerns regarding the care of patients with coronavirus, indicators of depression, anxiety, intolerance of uncertainty, and coping.ResultsThe psychological indicators that were considered presented differences (...) between the evaluated periods. Perceived concerns about the possibility of infecting loved ones and infecting themselves were greatest in the periods after the onset of the pandemic. In addition, the perception of how the work environment worsened and how lack of sleep interfered with their work was also higher in periods 2 and 3. The same results were found in the indicators of depression, anxiety, and intolerance of uncertainty. Finally, the indicators of high tension and concurrent lack of emotional control, which was greater in the last periods evaluated, were also expressed in the coping strategies (showing emotional lability, only contained by hypercontrol).ConclusionThe differences found in the psychological indicators between the evaluated periods support the need for early psychological care of health personnel which should be a priority of public health and a fundamental fact to increase its immediate effectiveness in the care of infected patients. (shrink)

Various illusions of meaning appear to be insensitive to counter-evidence. That is, in a similar fashion to the well-known Müller-Lyer illusion in vision, certain illusions of meaning seem not to fade away even after one endorses beliefs that rebut the illusion one is having. Such apparently evidence-insensitive illusions have been employed to support the view that we can perceive meanings because evidence-insensitivity is typically taken to be a perceptual trait. In this paper, I offer a comprehensive examination of allegedly evidence-insensitive (...) illusions of meaning and argue that none is, in fact, evidence insensitive in a way that might support the view that we can perceive meanings. (shrink)

It is difficult to find agreement on what constitutes perceiving.at Rovereto, Italy. The term is used in a wide array of domains ranging from psychology to physiology to aesthetics, and over time it has also acquired diverse connotations within various disciplines. Current perceptual science, however, even when it deals with qualitative aspects of experience, for example phenomena of lightness and colour, almost exclusively explains them in terms of primary qualities or stimuli quantitatively understood. The fact that science treats qualitative (...) experiences in terms of stimuli is important, because almost nothing of phenomenal perception as such is quantitative in nature. The paper argues for a qualitative science of perceiving, its methodology, its laws, and its possible developments. (shrink)

The thesis addresses the nature of causation. It is argued that causation exists and is as local as its causes and effects. As a consequence, the position advocated is contrary to the as yet prevailing view that no 'causal tie' between cause and effect exists. Moreover, it is suggested that this tie can be perceived. The essay attempts to elucidate the nature of causes, effects, and causal mechanisms. It is argued that they are facts rather than particulars or universals. (...) Furthermore it is suggested that these facts can be conceived of as tropes. Finally, in the light of this thesis a few traditional issues are discussed: what is the relation between causation and explanation? How should we conceive of causal laws? Does the idea of mechanisms with different degrees of reliability further our understanding of the determinism/indeterminism issue? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Perceiving Particulars:A Buddhist DefenseMark SideritsIn a recent article in this journal, Monima Chadha claimed that the position of certain Buddhist philosophers concerning the perception of particulars is incoherent.1 Her defense of what she calls a "Nyāya-Kantian" position raises interesting questions concerning how we have knowledge of mind-independent reality. While the view that she subscribes to may well be right, I shall try to show that her arguments against (...) the views of the Yogācāra-Sautrāntika Buddhists fail to undermine their position. But some of the issues involved here intersect with underlying themes in the recent debate between Arindam Chakrabarti and Stephen Phillips over the status of indeterminate perception in Nyāya,2 so I shall have something to say about that as well.The basic position I shall seek to defend has the form of a conditional: if we wish to maintain anything like the broadly metaphysical-realist stance that is fundamental to both Yogācāra-Sautrāntika and Nyāya (as well as to Kant), then we need to hold that in at least some cases of perception it is individuals as such that are the objects of our cognitive states. Chadha's discussion leads her to the conclusion that we never perceive particulars as such. Instead, she says, what are cognized in perception are always universal features, so that what are ordinarily thought of as the particulars [End Page 367] that figure in perception are such only relative to a context. Now, I am sympathetic to such a view, since it may be compatible with the sort of antirealism advocated by the Madhyamaka school of Buddhism.3 But this should tell us that something has gone awry here, since the "Nyāya-Kantian" and the Mādhyamika make for uneasy bedfellows. My diagnosis will be that Chadha has misconstrued those realist intuitions that stand behind the Yogācāra-Sautrāntika position. A proper appreciation of these will also turn out to play a role in the defense of indeterminate perception in classical Nyāya.1Let me begin by attending to some terminological matters. In the preceding paragraph I applied the label "metaphysical realist" to the Yogācāra-Sautrāntika school of Buddhism, to Nyāya, and to Kant. Few will question my calling Nyāya realist in any sense of that term, but eyebrows may well go up over my calling Yogāca ¯ra Sautrāntika (or at least the Yogācāra wing of this syncretic school) by the same name in the same breath. Yogācāra is, after all, aptly called a species of subjective idealism, for it denies the existence of physical objects. Metaphysical realism is usually understood as the view that truth is determined by the nature of mind-independent reality (by "what is there anyway"), and do not subjective idealists deny the existence of all mind-independent entities? But "mind independence" here does not mean being independent of cognition, but rather being independent of the concepts that we happen to employ. The metaphysical realist is thus one who holds that there is a quite determinate way that things ultimately are apart from any and all schemes of conceptualization. Understood in this way, metaphysical realism is something that is subscribed to by such subjective idealists as the Yogācārins and Berkeley.4 While they maintain that nothing exists apart from mind or the mental,5 they also hold that this fact is quite independent of the ways in which we or any other cognizers conceptualize reality. Subjective idealism is but one of a large number of ontological views that might properly be called realist in the present sense.But, then, what of Kant? Surely Kant is rightly thought of as maintaining that all of the phenomenal world is in some sense the result of processes of conceptual construction, so how can he be called a metaphysical realist? It is true that much of what is currently called antirealism has a distinctively Kantian pedigree. But to read Kant himself in this way, one must either disregard or else reinterpret much of what he has to say concerning the thing-in... (shrink)

The fact that you see some particular object seems to be due to the causal relation between your visual experience and that object, rather than to your experiences’ phenomenal character. On the one hand, whenever some phenomenal element of your experience stands in the right sort of causal relation to some object, your experience presents that object (your experience’s phenomenology doesn’t need to match that object). On the other hand, you can’t have a perceptual experience that presents some object unless (...) you stand in the right sort of causal relation to that object (no matter how closely your experience’s phenomenology matches some object). According to the continuity thesis, property perception is similar to object perception in these two respects. A standard reason to reject the continuity thesis is the assumption that the environmental properties that a perceptual experience presents are determined by its phenomenal properties (which are not determined by the environmental properties that cause the experience). I maintain that the continuity thesis is false but for a different reason: perceptual experiences present both objects and properties via manners of presentation; but, whereas perceptual manners of presentation for objects are purely relational, perceptual manners of presentation for properties are satisfactional. (shrink)

In chapter 7 of the third book of De anima Aristotle is concerned with the activity of the intellect, which, here as elsewhere in the work, he explores by developing parallels with his account of sense-perception. In this chapter his principal interest appears to be the notion of judgement, and in particular intellectual judgements about the value of some item on a scale of good and bad. In this paper I shall argue, firstly that there is in fact a coherent (...) structure and focus to this chapter, which has therefore unjustly been criticized as disorganized or corrupt; and secondly that, in the light of such a coherent understanding of the chapter as a whole, we can resolve the difficulties in interpreting the central passage concerned with cross-modal perceptual judgements, and thereby also throw some further light on the related passages in the second chapter of De anima 3, which had been directly concerned with that topic. (shrink)

Although a succession of fashions swept the American philosophical scene, C. J. Ducasse was throughout his long career an effective practitioner of analytic philosophy in the classic tradition. As he explained in 1924 "[i]t is only with truths about such questions as the meaning of the term 'true', or 'real', or 'good', and the like . . . that philosophy is concerned. " Such truths are to be discovered inductively by comparing and analyzing concrete cases of the admittedly proper u/le (...) . . . The pressing problems of philosophy are thus in my view primarily problems of def'mition, and moreover, problems of framing def'mitions which must be in formal terms, under penalty of not being otherwise understandable by or acceptable to one or another philosophical school, since the formal elements of thought and tp. ey only are common to all schools. These def'mitions, of course are not to be arbitrary; their relation to the facts of admittedly meaningful linguistic usage is the same as exists between any scientific hypothesis and the facts which it attempts to 1 construe. (shrink)

Theories of philosophy of perception are too simplifying. Direct realism and representationalism, for example, are philosophical theories of perception about the nature of the perceived object and its location. It is common sense to say that we directly perceive, through our senses, physical objects together with their properties. However, if perceptual experience is representational, it only appears that we directly perceive the represented physical objects. Despite psychological studies concerning the role of memory in perception, what these two philosophical theories do (...) not explicate are the continuity of the external describable object and the role of memory in perceiving the continuity, difference, break or ending. Using empirical evidence of particular cases and the hypothetico-deductive model, this research article analyses how one is able to perceive the continuity of same things. The early stages of perceptual process are not sufficient for the perception of continuity. Empirical evidence of memory disorders shows that persons with a memory disorder do not perceive the same thing or the familiar place they previously saw and now experience or remember what they are thinking about, even if the object, the place or the person has remained the same. I will argue that the perception of continuity requires memory. In fact, observation indicates how the memory runs at the same time, when the object is seen over time. This fact implies the memory system’s essential role for perceiving the continuity of the same things. (shrink)

One evolutionary advantage is that, because of sensory and perceptual relativity (acknowledged as an empirical fact), the tracking of portions of the real relevant to the living creature can be enhanced if updating from species-member to species-member can take place. In human perception, the structure is therefore in the form of a triangulation (Davidson's metaphor) in which continual mutual correction can be performed. Language, that which distinguishes human beings from other animals, capitalizes on that structure. The means by which updating (...) of adaptiveness takes place in the human species is shown to involve a covert hypothesis of singularity in co-reference, a structure that brings the idea of mutual faith and its character to the fore. (shrink)

The general theory of perception proposed by Roderick Chisholm in his book Perceiving: A Philosophical Study1 has gained considerable acceptance among contemporary philosophers of perception. In this paper, I will review and evaluate one part of this theory and show where I believe an important modification is necessary. Chisholm distinguishes what he thinks are two importantly different senses of “perceive,” a propositional and a nonpropositional sense, and then proposes a definition of each. The propositional sense of “perceive” is expressed (...) in contexts in which what is perceived is referred to by a propositional clause, as in 1. George perceives that this is a door. The nonpropositional sense is expressed in contexts in which the perceptual object is referred to by a noun or noun phrase, as in 2. George perceives the door. The problem areas I will deal with are, first and foremost, the adequacy of the definitions Chisholm gives of these two senses, and second, the ways in which these senses are related to one another. In the first section, dealing with the propositional sense, I will not be concerned with propositional perceivings in their entirety. Specifically, I will not be concerned with them as instances of knowing that something is such and such, which is a central feature of Chisholm’s definition. Rather, I will be concerned mainly with the mental state, qua mental, which is involved in these perceptions, that is, the mental state considered apart from any relation it may have to the object it is about. I will assume that the mental state involved in a propositional perceiving is a conceptual state, i.e., one which involves the exercise of concepts or thoughts, together with an accompanying propositional attitude. The key locution Chisholm uses to describe this conceptual mental state is “S takes something to have some property.” I will argue that Chisholm’s definition of taking will not do the job it is intended to do in these perceptual contexts. In the second section, I will explore what Chisholm calls the “simplest” nonpropositional sense of “perceive,” which he defines wholly in terms of a causal relation existing between the object perceived and the subject’s sensory state. Significantly, this definition does not make any reference to a taking or to any propositional state on the part of the subject, but only to the subject’s sensory state. Consequently, if one accepts the idea, as I believe Chisholm would, that sensing is a nonconceptual state, then Chisholm’s nonpropositional sense of “perceive” would not refer to any conceptual fact at all. I will consider Chisholm’s definition, and raise the question of whether nonpropositional perceptual contexts should ever be construed as having a propositional meaning, that is, as including the idea that the subject exhibits some thought. As we shall see, Chisholm makes allowance for such a possibility. (shrink)

Humans interact with animals in numerous ways and on numerous levels. We are indeed living in an “animal”s world,’ in the sense that our lives are very much intertwined with the lives of animals. This also means that animals, like those dogs we commonly refer to as our pets, are living in a “human’s world” in the sense that it is us, not them, who, to a large degree, define and manage the interactions we have with them. In this sense, (...) the human-animal relationship is nothing we should romanticize: it comes with clear power relations and thus with a set of responsibilities on the side of those who exercise this power. This holds, despite the fact that we like to think about our dogs as human’s best friend. Dogs have been part of human societies for longer than any other domestic species. Like no other species they exemplify the role of companion animals. Relationships with pet dogs are both very widespread and very intense, often leading to strong attachments between owners or caregivers and animals and to a treatment of these dogs as family members or even children. But how does this relationship look from the dogs’ perspective? How do they perceive the humans they engage with? What responsibilities and duties arise from the kind of mutual understanding, attachment, and the supposedly “special” bonds we form with them? Are there ethical implications, maybe even ethical implications beyond animal welfare? The past decades have seen an upsurge of research from comparative cognition on pet dogs’ cognitive and social skills, especially in comparison with and reference to humans. We will therefore set our discussion about the nature and ethical dimensions of the human–dog relationship against the background of the current empirical knowledge on dog (social) cognition. This allows us to analyze the human–dog relationship by applying an interdisciplinary approach that starts from the perspective of the dog to ultimately inform the perspective of humans. It is our aim to thereby identify ethical dimensions of the human–dog relationship that have been overlooked so far. (shrink)

John McDowell's conception of perceptual knowledge commits him to the claim that if I perceive that P then I am in a position to know that I perceive that P. In the first part of this essay, I present some reasons to be suspicious of this claim - reasons which derive from a general argument against 'luminosity' - and suggest that McDowell can reject this claim, while holding on to almost all of the rest of his conception of perceptual knowledge, (...) by supplementing his existing disjunctive conception of experience with a new disjunctive conception of perceiving. In the second part of the essay, I present some reasons for thinking that one's justification, in cases of perceptual knowledge, consists not in the fact that one perceives that P but in the fact that one perceives such-and-such. I end by suggesting that the disjunctive conception of perceiving should be understood as a disjunctive conception of perceiving such-and-such. (shrink)

This article is a defence of the Fact-Value distinction against considerations brought up by Ruth Anna Putnam in three articles in Philosophy, especially her ‘Perceiving Facts and Values’ January 1998. I defend metaphysical realism about facts and anti-realism about values against Putnam' intermediate position about both and I relate the matter to the logic of imperatives. The motivations of scientists or historians to select fields of investigation are irrelevant to the objectivity of their hypotheses, and so is (...) the goodness or badness of the social consequences of their work though these may affect their motivations. (shrink)

Recent research has investigated whether people think of their moral beliefs as objectively true facts about the world, or as subjective preferences. The present research examines variability in the perceived objectivity of different moral beliefs, with respect both to the content of moral beliefs themselves (what they are about), and to the social representation of those moral beliefs (whether other individuals are thought to hold them). It also examines the possible consequences of perceiving a moral belief as objective. (...) With respect to the content of moral beliefs, we find that beliefs about the moral properties of negatively valenced acts are seen as reliably more objective than beliefs about the moral properties of positively valenced acts. With respect to the social representation of moral beliefs, we find that the degree of perceived consensus regarding a moral belief positively influences its perceived objectivity. The present experiments also demonstrate that holding a moral belief to be objective is associated with a more ‘closed’ response in the face of disagreement about it, and with more morally pejorative attributions towards a disagreeing other person. (shrink)

This book proposes a substantially new solution to a classic philosophical problem: how is it possible that morality genuinely obligates us, binding our wills without regard to our perceived well-being? Building on Immanuel Kant’s idea of the fact of reason, the book argues that the bindingness of obligation can be traced back to the fact, articulated in different ways by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Serres, and Jean-Luc Nancy, that we find ourselves responsive, prior to all reflection, to a pre-personal, originary dimension (...) of sense. (shrink)

We investigate the impact of perceived greenwashing on customer satisfaction. Unlike prior research that largely examines customer perceptions associated with irresponsible behavior, we focus on cases where firms overcommit and/or do not deliver on promised socially responsible actions. We theorize that this type of greenwashing is associated with lower customer satisfaction because customers perceive greenwashing through the lens of corporate hypocrisy. Using data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) for U.S. companies during the period 2008–2016, we document a negative (...) link between perceived greenwashing related to green product innovation (GPI) and the ACSI index. We demonstrate that this effect is primarily triggered by corporate policies exceeding the corresponding implementation actions and not by lower levels of implementation. We also show that a firm’s capability reputation mitigates the negative effect of greenwashing on customer satisfaction. Moreover, we conduct an experiment and provide evidence confirming that GPI greenwashing is in fact perceived by customers as corporate hypocrisy. (shrink)

I examine some recent claims put forward by L. A. Paul, Barry Dainton and Simon Prosser, to the effect that perceptual experiences of movement and change involve an (apparent) experience of ‘passage’, in the sense at issue in debates about the metaphysics of time. Paul, Dainton and Prosser all argue that this supposed feature of perceptual experience – call it a phenomenology of passage – is illusory, thereby defending the view that there is no such a thing as passage, conceived (...) of as a feature of mind-independent reality. I suggest that in fact there is no such phenomenology of passage in the first place. There is, however, a specific structural aspect of the phenomenology of perceptual experiences of movement and change that can explain how one might mistakenly come to the belief that such experiences do involve a phenomenology of passage. (shrink)

According to David Hume values do not belong to the world of facts and cannot be derived from facts. However, Hume’s argument is based on questionable presumptions. His conception of experience as sense perception is erroneous. On contemporary standards it is simply false because sense organs are not channels that passively receive inputs from the world. It is too narrow as it does not take the role of action into account. Further, Hume’s argument is based on the dichotomy (...) between external and internal. Mind is strictly separated from the external world of facts. This entails that experiences, perceptions and ideas do not belong to the world of facts. Causality and values cannot be literally perceived. Therefore they are beyond the scope of empirical knowledge. Hume’s presumptions can be rejected. The consequence is that mind is embodied, and bodies belong to the world of facts. And so do embodied minds. Broadening the notion of experience brings causality and values within the scope of experience. They are experienced on a daily basis in various practices. Values related to vital needs are based on biological facts. More generally, the relation of facts and values can be analyzed if one rejects the hidden causes of perceptions as the object of knowledge. The alternative is the operational conception of knowledge. To know is to know what to do in order to proceed from a problematic situation to future circumstances where the problems are solved. (shrink)

Locke’s theory of personal identity was philosophically groundbreaking for its attempt to establish a non-substantial identity condition. Locke states, “For the same consciousness being preserv’d, whether in the same or different Substances, the personal Identity is preserv’d” (II.xxvii.13). Many have interpreted Locke to think that consciousness identifies a self both synchronically and diachronically by attributing thoughts and actions to a self. Thus, many have attributed to Locke either a memory theory or an appropriation theory of personal identity. But the former (...) stumble on circularity and the latter is insufficient for Locke’s moral theory insofar as he is committed to a theory of divine rectification. The common problem is that Locke’s theory seems to demand an objective, or metaphysical, fact of a continuing consciousness that does not appeal to a traditional notion of substance for the continuity. I’m suggesting something new. In II.xxvii of the Essay, we see an ambiguity in Locke’s use of the term ‘consciousness’. Locke seems to see consciousness as both a mental state by means of which we are aware of ourselves as perceiving and as the ongoing self we are aware of in these conscious states. First, I make the textual argument why we should read Locke as having a conception of a metaphysical fact of a continuing consciousness that does not appeal to thinking or bodily substance to establish its continuity. I then argue that the metaphysical fact of an enduring consciousness is revealed to us as a phenomenological fact of experience. Due to the nature of certain kinds of perceptual situations we have an experience of ourselves as temporally extended. Although the text bears out that Locke seemed to think there is a fact of an ongoing consciousness, I argue that it is consistent with his reluctance elsewhere that he makes no further epistemological or ontological claims about it. Finally, I provide an account of Locke’s understanding of memory and its relation to consciousness that supports the claim that consciousness is something ontologically distinct from either thinking or bodily substance. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore Turkish students’ perceived relevance of Facebook, the value of Facebook advertisements and the ethics of Facebook targeting users with advertisements. Design/methodology/approach Latent class cluster analysis is estimated to determine whether segments exist and whether covariates differ among segments. Findings Segments differ on Facebook relevance and advertisement targeting ethics and usefulness and the covariates gender, hours spent on Facebook during the week and personality. The segment that finds Facebook most relevant and uses (...) it the most disapproves of Facebook’s targeted advertisements. Facebook is an organization that relies heavily on advertising dollars for survival. This fact should be emphasized; otherwise, Facebook may not be able to sustain itself. Originality/value The paper provides an understanding of Facebook from a marketing perspective for a country at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. (shrink)

This volume deals with the question of value-perception. It is discussed from different philosophical, psychiatric, theological, and anthropological perspectives. The leading hypothesis of all contributions is the realization that we live in a relational, dynamic world, in which we primarily percieve, and that to dissolve values from facts is fundamentally misleading, both in theory as in life."--Back cover.

Argumentation is considered crucial in numerous disciplines in schools and universities because it constitutes an important proficiency in peoples' daily and professional lives. However, it is unclear whether argumentation is understood and practiced in comparable ways across disciplines. This study consequently examined empirically how students perceive argumentation in science and language lessons. Specifically, we investigated students' beliefs about the relevance of discourse and the role of facts. Data from 3,258 high school students from 85 German secondary schools were analyzed (...) with multigroup multilevel structural equation modeling in order to disentangle whether or not differences in argumentation across disciplines exist and the extent to which variation in students' beliefs can be explained by gender and school track. Results showed that students perceived the role of facts as highly relevant for science lessons, whereas discursive characteristics were considered significantly less important. In turn, discourse played a central role in language lessons, which was believed to require less knowledge of facts. These differences were independent of students' gender. In contrast, school track predicted the differences in beliefs significantly. Our findings lend evidence on the existence of disciplinary school cultures in argumentation that may be the result of differences in teachers' school-track-specific classroom practice and education. Implications in terms of a teacher's role in establishing norms for scientific argumentation as well as the impact of students' beliefs on their learning outcomes are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 497 interaction and interdependence. Our practice can be governed by that ontological hypothesis. Much of Timpanaro's ranting and raving and name calling rests upon his unhelpful conflation of the epistemological and the ontological and upon a false dichotomy between materialism and idealism that no longer is or ought to be the basic and important issue in Marxism. DONALDC. LEE University of New Mexico Causing, Perceiving and (...) Believing: An Examination of the Philosophy of C. J. Ducasse. By Peter H. Hare and Edward H. Madden. (Dordrecht and Boston: Reidel, 1975. Pp. vii + 211. $26.00) Hare and Madden have performed a service to the philosophical community in summarizing and evaluating the contributions to philosophy of C. J. Ducasse. They have distilled from ten books, scores of articles, and some unpublished manuscripts of Ducasse, analyses of causality, sensation, perception, substance, agency, belief, knowledge, mind, beauty, education, and religion that can fairly be regarded as the philosophy of Ducasse. They point out some inconsistencies in Ducasse's views, but they suggest emendations to overcome the difficulties-emendations that Hare and Madden have developed in their own writings, so that the reader is offered, in effect, a composite Ducasse-Hare-Madden system of philosophy. I agree with most of the authors' judgments regarding the defects of Ducasse's views, but I doubt that their proposed improvements succeed in making the overall vision coherent. In the first three chapters the authors explain Ducasse's theories of causality and agency and claim that his account of causality as a necessary but nonlogical connection was a significant advance over Hume. They consider Ducasse to have been wrong in limiting causality to events and in maintaining that it is directly observable. They argue that an effect is deducible from the "nature" of its cause, although not from the nontheoretical description of its cause. This proposed improvement on Ducasse and Hume seems to me either a mere gloss on Hume or a muddle. If Hare and Madden mean that scientific theories establish entailments between concepts such as pressure and volume or mass and acceleration, and that the explanatory and predictive success of such entailments serves as a criterion of causal processes, they are right. But what they have identified is not a relation of nonlogical necessity but rather two relations: a logical relation between two theoretical concepts, and a contingent relation between two classes of events that correspond to the theoretical concepts. If, on the other hand, they mean to agree with Aristotle and the scholastics that the nature of a thing is an entity or process inside it that compels it to behave as it does, then, like their ancient predecessors, they make causal explanation into a "dormative virtue" fallacy; for the nature of a thing is then identical with its causal powers, and the latter follow vacuously from the concept of its nature. They seem to ignore the fact that any conceptual relation between theoretical concepts is only a rough approximation to actual events. It is a logically necessary truth that EMF is proportional to current times resistance, but it is neither logically nor nonlogically necessary that a booster battery will start a recalcitrant car. In brief, theoretical relations are idealizations of real processes in nature. Hare and Madden claim that their conceptual connection analysis of causality blunts the edge of the "logical connection argument" that motives cannot be causes of actions. They fail to realize that the "logical connection argument" applies to the nontheoretical descriptions of motives and actions (there are no theories worth considering), while their own conceptual relation analysis applies only to theoretical descriptions of natural processes. The Hare-Madden emendation produces special difficulties when applied to Ducasse's account of human agency and mind-body interaction. Ducasse defended the dualist conception of voluntary action as bodily movement caused by mental volitions. The possibility of 498 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY such causal intereaction makes some sense on Ducasse's basically Humean view that causality can hold between any two kinds of event but not on the Hare-Madden view that cause and effect must be conceptually related. For we have no well-confirmed theories, nor is it likely that we ever will... (shrink)

The partisan and ideological polarization of American politics since the 1970s appears to have affected pubic opinion in striking ways. The American public has become increasingly partisan and ideological along liberal-conservative lines on a wide range of issues, including even foreign policy. This has raised questions about how rational the public is, in the broad sense of the public's responsiveness to objective conditions. Widespread partisan disagreements over what those conditions arei.e., disagreements about the factssuggest that large proportions of the public (...) may be perceiving the facts incorrectly. The facts in question are important enough that these partisan disagreements may translate into sub-optimal policy preferences and electoral decisions. (shrink)

Drawing insight from affective events theory, this study presents a new dimension of perceived organizational politics and job attitudes. The motivation for this study was based on the fact that perceived organizational politics affect job attitudes and that personal resources moderate the direct relationship between perceived organizational politics and job attitudes in the context of the higher-education sector. In this regard, the data was collected through purposive sampling from 310 faculty members from higher-education institutions in Pakistan. To test the relationships (...) among the variables, we employed structural equation modeling via the AMOS software version 24.0. The results indicated that perceived organizational politics were significantly negatively related to job satisfaction. Moreover, perceived organizational politics were non-significantly related to job involvement. Political skill and work ethic weakened the relationship between perceived organizational politics and job satisfaction. We anticipated that these personal resources could mitigate the negative effect of perceived organizational politics and job attitudes. This study also suggests organizations to train their employees to develop essential personal skills. (shrink)

Separating wheat from chaff in regard to the hyperbole surrounding media coverage about genes for violence, born killers, et cetera provides a launch pad for two experienced behavioral geneticists who have conducted research on aggression and crime with twins, families, and adoptees to provide an essay on the facts and limitations of current knowledge; they conclude that any current threats to jurisprudence lie in perception rather than in empirical facts.

We enjoy modes of sensory imagining corresponding to our five modes of perception - seeing, touching, hearing, smelling and tasting. An account of what constitutes these different modes of perseption needs also to explain what constitutes the corresponding modes of sensory perception. In this paper I argue that we can explain what distinguishes the different modes of sensory imagination in terms of their characteristic experiences without supposing that we must distinguish the senses in terms of the kinds of experience involved. (...) thus the fact that we enjoy different modes of sensory imagining poses no threat to someone who thinks that the five senses are to be distinguished by appeal to the kinds of mechanism or psychological capacities their exercise involves, and not by appeal to experience. (shrink)

After outlining an enactive account of fact perception, I consider J. L. Austin's discussion of the argument from illusion. From it I draw the conclusion that when fact perception is primary the objects perceived are those involved in the fact. A consideration of Adelson's checkershadow illusion shows that properties as basic as luminance are perceived in the contexts of facts as well. I thus conclude that when facts are perceived they structure our perception of objects and properties. I (...) then argue that which facts are perceived is determined by contexts which are themselves determined by our interests. Here I appeal to Heidegger's views on everyday coping as a foundational form of intentional directedness. A discussion of Simons and Chabris? gorilla experiment provides contemporary empirical support of the Heideggerian analysis. Finally, I argue that there cannot be context-free perception on the enactive account inasmuch as perception, qua action, is always permeated with the interests of the subject. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:James J. Gibson's Ecological Approach:Perceiving What ExistsWilliam M. Mace (bio)Environmental Philosophy and EpistemologyThe purpose of this paper is to help an audience attracted to environmental philosophy get to the core of Gibson's system in a compact form and to appreciate the necessity for an account of the environment in epistemology. I hope to show that Gibson's is a consistent and scientifically progressive account of knowing that gives the (...) environment its due and that this is not a simple matter of fiat but a call to extended scientific investigation. I want to stress that Gibson's work is scientifically progressive in the sense that it has consistently opened new avenues for research. If one could be assured tomorrow that Gibson was correct and his critics wrong, the ecological psychology enterprise would not have to be shut down with nothing left to do. The goal of the enterprise, certainly for Gibson, was not to be declared a winner but to open doors for discovery. Because Gibson has developed a theory of perceiving the environment, it would be worth exploring as an important topic for environmental philosophers covering a wide range of issues. It offers an intriguing, environmentally based, grounding for epistemology; it offers ways to deal [End Page 195] with practical issues within "pure science"; and it is open to reorganizing ways to conceptualize problems beyond epistemology.Gibson developed a richly articulated system that grew steadily over a period of 50 years, 1929 to 1979, which he devoted to "puzzling over" the "perplexities" of vision (1979, xiii). From Gibson's standpoint, knowledge begins with perception, and perception is perceiving the environment. The environment, for Gibson, is at least as essential as the brain to the existence and exercise of "the mind."As an empiricist, knowledge is based on perception for Gibson. But perception, at root, turns out to be perception of the environment. Entities like sense data and representations become "after the fact" curiosities for Gibson, and have no role to play in the foundations of perceptual experience and, a fortiori, knowledge. If Gibson is correct, then scientific accounts of perception must converge on environmental perception. A philosopher whose primary focus is epistemology, and who works within Gibson's system, would perforce be an environmental philosopher—not (first) because of a special concern for the environment, but because an adequate appreciation of relevant facts requires it. Of great importance to environmental philosophers is that Gibson not only provides an account of perceiving grounded in access to environmental properties, but he establishes a basis for perceiving this particular world as a specific arrangement of surfaces. The world we perceive, according to Gibson, is a connected, public world that we share. It is, again, the world, the logical individual world and not an abstraction. This is not an account of the experience of abstract shapes, distances, and motions. It is a system in which travelers can visit the pyramids and in which I can trip over your garbage.Is there a symmetric direction of influence? Just as a commitment to understanding knowledge scientifically and philosophically can lead one to focal considerations of the environment, could a deep concern for the environment as a value lead to the serious study of perception and, more broadly, epistemology? It seems entirely plausible. Gibson's is a "yin and yang" system of scientific complementarities beginning with animal and environment and extending to knowledge and value (in his concept of affordance). In each complementarity, the terms are differentiable but not entirely independent. Animals and their environments are different entities and should not be confused with one another, but they also are so [End Page 196] mutually dependent that one should not imagine a thorough account of one without the other. In like manner, objects and value (first through use) are not independently comprehensible in Gibson's system. This is a theme worthy of careful examination of detailed examples. I am not doing that in this paper, but hope that enough of the flavor of Gibson's work will come through to allow a reader to understand how one might be steered to epistemology from an initial concern with environment and values and... (shrink)

It is common for an object to present different colour appearances to different perceivers, even when the perceivers and viewing conditions are normal. For example, a Munsell chip might look unique green to you and yellowish green to me in normal viewing conditions. In such cases, there are three possibilities. Ecumenism: both experiences are veridical. Nihilism: both experiences are non-veridical. Inegalitarianism: one experience is veridical and the other is non-veridical. Perhaps the most important objection to inegalitarianism is the ignorance objection, (...) according to which inegalitarianism should be rejected because it is committed to the existence of unknowable colour facts. The goal of this paper is to show that ecumenists are also committed to unknowable colour facts. More specifically, I argue that, with the exception of colour eliminativism, all major philosophical theories of colour are committed to unknowable colour facts. (shrink)

Fact-finding hearings may be held to determine disputed allegations of domestic violence in child contact cases in England and Wales, and can play a vital role for mothers seeking protection and autonomy from violent fathers. Drawing on the author’s empirical study, this article examines the implications for the holding of fact-finding hearings of judges’ and professionals’ understandings of domestic violence and the extent to which they perceive it to be relevant to contact. While more judges and professionals are developing their (...) understanding of domestic violence, the ambit of when and how it is considered relevant to contact has grown increasingly narrow, which suggests that many disputed allegations of domestic violence are disregarded and women and children continue to be put at risk from violent fathers. This bifurcated approach is likely to have significant implications for recent developments in this area of family law which are considered in this article. (shrink)

The process of optimizing psychical distance to achieve the best possible aesthetic effect has been well-known among philosophers of art ever since Edward Bullough formulated the concept in 1912. Although it is typically analyzed as a one-way process, it nevertheless becomes a reciprocal or intersubjective process when the object of our aesthetic perception is our “other.” This is equally true for animal “others” as for our fellow human “others.” Anything animate can fix us in its gaze and thereby prompt or (...) even force us toward self-confrontation as an object of someone or something else’s perception. This reciprocity may be manifest as a sort of psychological pas de deux between the two confronting subjects, each confronting the other as object, each recognizing the other as subject, and each confronting its own self as recognizer of this relationship and recipient of this attention. The level of our awareness of our being an object for some “other” subject has a proportionately significant impact on our aesthetic perception of this “other, ” i.e., the fact that an “other” perceives us adds a dimension of “unnatural” intersubjectivity which changes our aesthetic appreciation of that “other.”. (shrink)

According to the snapshot view of temporal experience, instances of movement and change cannot, strictly speaking, be objects of sensory perception. Perceptual consciousness instead consists of a succession of individual momentary experiences, none of which is itself an experience of movement or change. The snapshot view is often presented as an intuitively appealing view of the nature of temporal experience, even by philosophers who ultimately reject it. Yet, it is puzzling how this can be so, given that its central claim (...) – that we can never just perceive things moving or changing – clearly flies in the face of our common sense view of the phenomenology of experience. In this paper, I offer a diagnosis of how it is possible that the deep conflict between the snapshot view and our phenomenological intuitions can sometimes go unnoticed. The materials for this diagnosis can, I think, be found in some passages in Thomas Reid’s Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, in which he criticises John Locke’s account of the origins of the idea of succession, as presented in chapter 14 of book II of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. As I argue, a crucial aspect of Reid’s criticisms can be seen to turn on the idea that Locke fails to distinguish between two quite different variants of the snapshot view, which I call the memory theory and the mirroring theory of temporal experience, respectively. It is the failure to distinguish between these two different variants of the snapshot view, I suggest, that can also make the snapshot view appear more compatible with our phenomenological intuitions than it in fact is. (shrink)

Combine the following: medicine, ethics, jurisprudence, behavioral genetics, and antisocial behavior. Given our level of scientific knowledge today, this combination is more akin to a cerebral smorgasbord than to a dinner where starter, entree, wine, and dessert are carefully chosen to complement one another. Hence, any survey of menus must be highly selective. We accept as a given that there is a noteworthy genetic influence on ASB no matter how it is defined. In terms of behavioral research, the magnitude of (...) that genetic influence is substantial, but so is the impact from the environment, broadly defined to include pre-and post-natal, physical as well as psychosocial elements.We will discuss some of the major issues raised by this fact of genetic influence that have most applicability to topics usually raised by observers outside of behavioral genetics. (shrink)

It is argued that, while there is no such property as truth, there is a feature of factuality which certain states of affairs have and others lack. Since states of affairs can appear before the mind as having this feature when, in reality, they do not have it, a most difficult epistemological problem arises, namely, how to distinguish between a state of affairs which merely appears to have factuality and a state of affairs which really is factual. The test for (...) factuality, it is maintained, is twofold. It consists, on the one hand, of perception and introspection, and on the other, of coherence. What we perceive and introspect is not only presented to us as factual, but justifiedly taken to be factual. In case of doubt, though, we cannot but fall back on coherence, comparing some of our beliefs, perceptions, assumptions etc. with others. (shrink)

While training design choices seem amoral, they interact to determine training (in)effectiveness, potentially harming/benefiting trainees and organizations. These moral implications intensify when training is administered at scale (e.g., e-training) and focuses on social issues like sexual harassment (hereafter, SH). In fact, research on SH training shows it can elicit trainees’ gender-based biases against content messengers. We suggest that one such bias, resulting from messenger gender-occupation incongruence and influencing training effectiveness, is lowered perceptions of the messenger’s integrity. We also investigate whether (...) rich media will increase or decrease this perceived integrity penalty. Using an excerpt from real SH e-training and a sample [_N_ = _210_] consistent with the targeted training audience, we conducted a 2 × 2 × 2 relative comparison experiment (messenger gender x messenger occupation x media richness) and tested a moderated mediation model of the interactive effects of messenger gender-occupation incongruence and media richness on trainees’ perceptions of messenger integrity and training outcomes. Results suggest that trainees’ perceptions of messenger integrity decrease when the messenger’s gender is incongruent with their occupation, leading to worse outcomes in text-based training. These effects, however, are mitigated by increased media richness, providing support for media richness theory. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed. (shrink)

At the bottom of all human activities are “values,” the conviction that some things “ought to be” and others not. Science, however, with its immense interest in mere facts seems to lack all understanding of such‘requiredness.’… A science … which would seriously admit nothing but indifferent facts … could not fail to destroy itself.

It is argued that, while there is no such property as truth, there is a feature of factuality which certain states of affairs have and others lack. Since states of affairs can appear before the mind as having this feature when, in reality, they do not have it, a most difficult epistemological problem arises, namely, how to distinguish between a state of affairs which merely appears to have factuality and a state of affairs which really is factual. The test for (...) factuality, it is maintained, is twofold. It consists, on the one hand, of perception and introspection, and on the other, of coherence. What we perceive and introspect is not only presented to us as factual, but justifiedly taken to be factual. In case of doubt, though, we cannot but fall back on coherence, comparing some of our beliefs, perceptions, assumptions etc. with others. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:James J. Gibson's Ecological Approach:Perceiving What ExistsWilliam M. Mace (bio)Environmental Philosophy and EpistemologyThe purpose of this paper is to help an audience attracted to environmental philosophy get to the core of Gibson's system in a compact form and to appreciate the necessity for an account of the environment in epistemology. I hope to show that Gibson's is a consistent and scientifically progressive account of knowing that gives the (...) environment its due and that this is not a simple matter of fiat but a call to extended scientific investigation. I want to stress that Gibson's work is scientifically progressive in the sense that it has consistently opened new avenues for research. If one could be assured tomorrow that Gibson was correct and his critics wrong, the ecological psychology enterprise would not have to be shut down with nothing left to do. The goal of the enterprise, certainly for Gibson, was not to be declared a winner but to open doors for discovery. Because Gibson has developed a theory of perceiving the environment, it would be worth exploring as an important topic for environmental philosophers covering a wide range of issues. It offers an intriguing, environmentally based, grounding for epistemology; it offers ways to deal [End Page 195] with practical issues within "pure science"; and it is open to reorganizing ways to conceptualize problems beyond epistemology.Gibson developed a richly articulated system that grew steadily over a period of 50 years, 1929 to 1979, which he devoted to "puzzling over" the "perplexities" of vision (1979, xiii). From Gibson's standpoint, knowledge begins with perception, and perception is perceiving the environment. The environment, for Gibson, is at least as essential as the brain to the existence and exercise of "the mind."As an empiricist, knowledge is based on perception for Gibson. But perception, at root, turns out to be perception of the environment. Entities like sense data and representations become "after the fact" curiosities for Gibson, and have no role to play in the foundations of perceptual experience and, a fortiori, knowledge. If Gibson is correct, then scientific accounts of perception must converge on environmental perception. A philosopher whose primary focus is epistemology, and who works within Gibson's system, would perforce be an environmental philosopher—not (first) because of a special concern for the environment, but because an adequate appreciation of relevant facts requires it. Of great importance to environmental philosophers is that Gibson not only provides an account of perceiving grounded in access to environmental properties, but he establishes a basis for perceiving this particular world as a specific arrangement of surfaces. The world we perceive, according to Gibson, is a connected, public world that we share. It is, again, the world, the logical individual world and not an abstraction. This is not an account of the experience of abstract shapes, distances, and motions. It is a system in which travelers can visit the pyramids and in which I can trip over your garbage.Is there a symmetric direction of influence? Just as a commitment to understanding knowledge scientifically and philosophically can lead one to focal considerations of the environment, could a deep concern for the environment as a value lead to the serious study of perception and, more broadly, epistemology? It seems entirely plausible. Gibson's is a "yin and yang" system of scientific complementarities beginning with animal and environment and extending to knowledge and value (in his concept of affordance). In each complementarity, the terms are differentiable but not entirely independent. Animals and their environments are different entities and should not be confused with one another, but they also are so [End Page 196] mutually dependent that one should not imagine a thorough account of one without the other. In like manner, objects and value (first through use) are not independently comprehensible in Gibson's system. This is a theme worthy of careful examination of detailed examples. I am not doing that in this paper, but hope that enough of the flavor of Gibson's work will come through to allow a reader to understand how one might be steered to epistemology from an initial concern with environment and values and... (shrink)

This article presents preliminary considerations and results from a research project designed to investigate the relation between gestures, graphic traces and perceptions. More specifically, the project aims to test the hypothesis that graphic traces, including handwriting, can set up graphetic empathy between writers and readers of traces across long temporal and spatial distances. Insofar as a graphic trace is lawfully related to the gesture by which it came into being, the trace itself will hold information about the gesture, which may (...) resonate with the sensorimotor system of a perceiver, as if they themselves performed the gesture. If this is in fact so, it will have important and hitherto unanticipated implications for our understanding of the embodiment of reading. As part of the article we will present and discuss the results of a neurophenomenological trial study through which we attempt to operationalize the gesture-trace and trace–perception relations respectively. (shrink)

This work describes the perceptions that Industrial Engineering students have regarding Colombian firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. It also explores the incidence of gender, academic level, work experience and entrepreneurial intention on students’ vision. A survey with 70 CSR practices was designed based on previous research. Practices were grouped in ten dimensions: shareholders, customers, employees, suppliers, stakeholders, ethics, environment, legal, human rights and society. A representative sample of 142 students was used. Results show that students perceive a higher commitment (...) of Colombian companies with the shareholders dimension, while a lower with the society, ethics and environmental CSR practices. Work experience and entrepreneurial intention are the only variables affecting the identified perceptions. Thus, as they gain experience, their perceptions become more favorable. On the other hand, potential entrepreneurs have a more critical view on the companies’ commitment. Additionally, the fact that the academic level does not impact students’ perceptions constitutes a challenge for the academic program, since it is expected that this will affect the vision of future engineers. This is the first study that evaluates perceptions of Industrial Engineering students, who, given their object of study, will be responsible for designing and managing production processes in organizations of the future. Results respond to a specific context (students at a Colombian public university), therefore further research to explore the subject is recommended. (shrink)