Hohwy (Hohwy 2016, Hohwy 2017) argues there is a tension between the free energy principle and leading depictions of mind as embodied, enactive, and extended (so-called ‘EEE1 cognition’). The tension is traced to the importance, in free energy formulations, of a conception of mind and agency that depends upon the presence of a ‘Markov blanket’ demarcating the agent from the surrounding world. In what follows I show that the Markov blanket considerations do not, in fact, lead to the kinds of (...) tension that Hohwy depicts. On the contrary, they actively favour the EEE story. This is because the Markov property, as exemplified in biological agents, picks out neither a unique nor a stationary boundary. It is this multiplicity and mutability– rather than the absence of agent-environment boundaries as such - that EEE cognition celebrates. (shrink)

1. The Situation in Cognition 2. Situated Cognition: A Potted Recent History 3. Extensions in Biology, Computation, and Cognition 4. Articulating the Idea of Cognitive Extension 5. Are Some Resources Intrinsically Non-Cognitive? 6. Is Cognition Extended or Only Embedded? 7. Letting Nature Take Its Course.

Many models of cognitive ability and disability rely on the idea of cognition as abstract reasoning processes implemented in the brain. Research in cognitive science, however, emphasizes the way that our cognitive skills are embodied in our more basic capacities for sensing and moving, and the way that tools in the external environment can extend the cognitive abilities of our brains. This chapter addresses the implications of research in embodied cognition and extended cognition for how we think about cognitive impairment (...) and rehabilitation, how cognitive reserve mitigates neural impairment, and the distinction between medical and social models of disability. (shrink)

This unpublished article was written around 2009 for a journal special issue of a journal which never materialized. In 2018, the article was rewritten and published in the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability. It can be found on PhilPapers as Drayson and Clark (2018), 'Cognitive Disability and the Embodied, Extended Mind'.

Clark and Chalmers (2002) advance two hypotheses that both cognition and the mind extend into the environment. Both hypotheses are grounded in active externalism about mental content and the Parity Principle. Active externalism proposes that the external features of the environment in the present directly influence our mental contents and behavior. The Parity Principle states that a process or state in the environment is cognitive if it is functionally equivalent to a comparable intracranial cognitive process. This paper reviews two (...) of the strongest replies to the hypotheses, namely that arguments for them commit the coupling-constitution fallacy and that the hypothesis of extended cognition is incompatible with any satisfactory criteria that distinguishes between cognitive and non-cognitive processes. This paper argues that a dynamical systems approach avoids both objections and offers a conceptual and methodological framework for an extended cognitive science. Lastly, an account of collective intentionality will be considered to show how groups of individuals can be the bearers of mental states. (shrink)

In this volume, a range of high-profile researchers in philosophy of mind, philosophy of cognitive science, and empirical cognitive science, critically engage with Clark's work across the themes of: Extended, Embodied, Embedded, Enactive, and Affective Minds; Natural Born Cyborgs; and Perception, Action, and Prediction. Daniel Dennett provides a foreword on the significance of Clark's work, and Clark replies to each section of the book, thus advancing current literature with original contributions that will form the basis for new (...) discussions, debates and directions in the discipline. (shrink)

A slow revolution in cognitive science is banishing this century's technological conception of mind as disembodied pure thought, namely a material symbol manipulation, and replacing it with next century's conception: mind as the organisation of bodily interaction, intelligent robotics.

The idea of dreams being mere internal artifacts of the mind does not seem to be essential to externalism and extended mind theories, which seem as if they would function as well without this additional assumption. The Many Bubble Interpretation could allow a simpler rationale to externalist theories, which may be even simpler if the assumption that dreams have no worthwhile content outside the mind is omitted.

A summary of The Rationality of Perception, and my replies to symposium papers on it by Andy Clark and Christopher Peacocke.

This study aims to evaluate whether the idea of ultimate reality in world religions contributes to the characteristics of the world religion paradigm, which is hierarchical cosmology or “subject-object cosmology.” Several research on this topic claims that one of the characteristics of the world religion paradigm is its hierarchical perspective. Discussing this issue is important to distinguish the world religions as the paradigm and the world religions as the most widely embraced religion. This study argues that the hierarchical perspective of (...) the world religion paradigm can be rooted in the idea of ultimate reality, that there is a supreme, foremost, and most principal reality in the continuity of this universe, namely the supernatural or God. The hierarchical cosmology consists of three main domains: supernatural/God, culture/human, and nature. This study uses a literature study methodology, relying on books, journals, and texts related to research questions. This study finds that the world religion paradigm or hierarchical cosmology or “subject-object cosmology” is prominent, especially in Abrahamic religions such as Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, even though the concept of ultimate reality in these three religions is different. (shrink)

In his précis of a recent book, Richard Joyce writes, “My contention…is that…any epistemological benefit-of-the-doubt that might have been extended to moral beliefs…will be neutralized by the availability of an empirically confirmed moral genealogy that nowhere…presupposes their truth.” Such reasoning – falling under the heading “Genealogical Debunking Arguments” – is now commonplace. But how might “the availability of an empirically confirmed moral genealogy that nowhere… presupposes” the truth of our moral beliefs “neutralize” whatever “epistemological benefit-of-the-doubt that might have been extended (...) to” them? In this article, I argue that there appears to be no satisfactory answer to this question. The problem is quite general, applying to all arguments with the structure of Genealogical Debunking Arguments aimed at realism about a domain meeting two conditions. The Benacerraf-Field Challenge for mathematical realism affords an important special case. (shrink)

J.M. Coetzee’s book, 'Elizabeth Costello' is one of the stranger works to appear in recent years. Yet if we focus our attention on the book’s two chapters dealing with animals, two preoccupations emerge. The first sees Coetzee use animals to evoke a particular conception of ethics, one similar to that of the philosopher Mary Midgley. Coetzee’s second theme connects animals to the phenomena of scapegoating, as it has been characterized by the philosophical anthropologist René Girard. While both themes involve human (...) interactions with animals, each transcends application to that particular issue and raises deeper questions, respectively concerning the foundations of morality and the therapeutic allure of political violence. Making explicit these two preoccupations enhances our understanding of Coetzee’s fiction, particularly Disgrace. However, when Coetzee’s two philosophical strands are analyzed in their own terms, the ethics of sympathy is shown to be a more coherent notion than the understanding of politics he takes over from Girard. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that the intelligibility of modal metaphysics has been vindicated. Quine's arguments to the contrary supposedly confused analyticity with metaphysical necessity, and rigid with non-rigid designators.2 But even if modal metaphysics is intelligible, it could be misconceived. It could be that metaphysical necessity is not absolute necessity – the strictest real notion of necessity – and that no proposition of traditional metaphysical interest is necessary in every real sense. If there were nothing otherwise “uniquely metaphysically significant” about (...) metaphysical necessity, then paradigmatic metaphysical necessities would be necessary in one sense of “necessary”, not necessary in another, and that would be it. The question of whether they were necessary simpliciter would be like the question of whether the Parallel Postulate is true simpliciter – understood as a pure mathematical conjecture, rather than as a hypothesis about physical spacetime. In a sense, the latter question has no objective answer. In this article, I argue that paradigmatic questions of modal metaphysics are like the Parallel Postulate question. I then discuss the deflationary ramifications of this argument. I conclude with an alternative conception of the space of possibility. According to this conception, there is no objective boundary between possibility and impossibility. Along the way, I sketch an analogy between modal metaphysics and set theory. (shrink)

A very simple contextualist treatment of a sentence containing an epistemic modal, e.g. a might be F, is that it is true iff for all the contextually salient community knows, a is F. It is widely agreed that the simple theory will not work in some cases, but the counterexamples produced so far seem amenable to a more complicated contextualist theory. We argue, however, that no contextualist theory can capture the evaluations speakers naturally make of sentences containing epistemic modals. If (...) we want to respect these evaluations, our best option is a relativist theory of epistemic modals. On a relativist theory, an utterance of a might be F can be true relative to one context of evaluation and false relative to another. We argue that such a theory does better than any rival approach at capturing all the behaviour of epistemic modals. (shrink)

The distinction between perception and cognition frames countless debates in philosophy and cognitive science. But what, if anything, does this distinction actually amount to? In this introductory article, we summarize recent work on this question. We first briefly consider the possibility that a perception-cognition border should be eliminated from our scientific ontology, and then introduce and critically examine five positive approaches to marking a perception–cognition border, framed in terms of phenomenology, revisability, modularity, format, and stimulus-dependence.

The moral status of animals is a subject of controversy both within and beyond academic philosophy, especially regarding the question of whether and when it is ethical to eat meat. A commitment to animal rights and related notions of animal protection is often thought to entail a plant-based diet, but recent philosophical work challenges this view by arguing that, even if animals warrant a high degree of moral standing, we are permitted - or even obliged - to eat meat. (...) class='Hi'>Andy Lamey provides critical analysis of past and present dialogues surrounding animal rights, discussing topics including plant agriculture, animal cognition, and in vitro meat. He documents the trend toward a new kind of omnivorism that justifies meat-eating within a framework of animal protection, and evaluates for the first time which forms of this new omnivorism can be ethically justified, providing crucial guidance for philosophers as well as researchers in culture and agriculture. (shrink)

Logical monism is the view that there is ‘One True Logic’. This is the default position, against which pluralists react. If there were not ‘One True Logic’, it is hard to see how there could be one true theory of anything. A theory is closed under a logic! But what is logical monism? In this article, I consider semantic, logical, modal, scientific, and metaphysical proposals. I argue that, on no ‘factualist’ analysis (according to which ‘there is One True Logic’ expresses (...) a factual claim, rather than an attitude like approval), does the doctrine have both metaphysical and methodological import. Metaphysically, logics abound. Methodologically, what to infer from what is not settled by the facts, even the normative ones. I conclude that the only interesting sense in which there could be One True Logic is noncognitive. The same may be true of monism about normative areas, like moral, epistemic, and prudential ones, generally. (shrink)

The Handmaid’s Tale depicts a United States taken over by a fundamentalist dictatorship called Gilead that also resembles Plato’s ideal city. Attempts to explain Gilead’s debt to Plato face two challenges. First, aspects of Gilead that recall Plato also contain features that differ, at times dramatically, from the Platonic original. Second, Gilead invokes distorted versions of ideas from philosophies other than Plato’s. I explore two ways of making sense of Gilead’s distorted philosophical appropriations. The explanations differ over whether such distortions (...) are best explained by the nature of the philosophies they misrepresent, or by the nature of Gilead. The explanation that emphasizes Gilead’s own agency is ultimately best able to make sense of how illiberal regimes misappropriate philosophical concepts, both in the novel and in reality, in order to limit the political imagination of their subjects. (shrink)

I this article, I introduce the notion of pluralism about an area, and use it to argue that the questions at the center of our normative lives are not settled by the facts -- even the normative facts. One upshot of the discussion is that the concepts of realism and objectivity, which are widely identified, are actually in tension. Another is that the concept of objectivity, not realism, should take center stage.

This article brings animal protection theory to bear on Temple Grandin’s work, in her capacity both as a designer of slaughter facilities and as an advocate for omnivorism. Animal protection is a better term for what is often termed animal rights, given that many of the theories grouped under the animal rights label do not extend the concept of rights to animals. I outline the nature of Grandin’s system of humane slaughter as it pertains to cattle. I then outline four (...) arguments Grandin has made defending meat-eating. On a protection-based approach, I argue, Grandin’s system of slaughter is superior to its traditional counterpart. Grandin’s success as a designer of humane slaughterhouses however is not matched by any corresponding success in offering a moral defence of meat-eating. Despite, or perhaps because of, the popularity of her work, Grandin’s arguments for continuing to eat animals are noteworthy only in how disappointing and rudimentary they are. If we can thank Grandin for making a difference in the lives of millions of farm animals, her work can also be criticized for not engaging the moral status of animals with the depth and rigor that it deserves. (shrink)

One of the starting assumptions in the debate over the ethical status of animals is that someone who is committed to reducing animal suffering should not eat meat. Steven Davis has recently advanced a novel criticism of this view. He argues that individuals who are committed to reducing animal suffering should not adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet, as Tom Regan an other animal rights advocates claim, but one containing free-range beef. To make his case Davis highlights an overlooked form (...) of animal harm, that done to field animals in crop production. Yet while Davis's argument is ingenious and thought-provoking, it is not a successful challenge to vegetarianism and veganism's status as the diets that most advance animal rights. Scientific studies of crop production that Davis draws on document two different forms of harm done to field animals: those that are directly killed by harvesting equipment and those that are killed by other animals. Once this distinction is made explicit, the degree to which such studies pose a problem for animal protection theory considerably weakens. Davis also overlooks philosophically significant forms of harm to human beings that are present in beef production but not crop harvesting. Finally, he bases his argument on the controversial assumption that there is no difference between deliberate and accidental killing - either of animals or people. Although these problems defeat Davis's attempt to offer an immanent critique of Regan's animal rights position, his analysis does have important dietary ramifications that animal advocates should take into account. (shrink)

The motivating question of this paper is: ‘How are our beliefs in the theorems of mathematics justified?’ This is distinguished from the question ‘How are our mathematical beliefs reliably true?’ We examine an influential answer, outlined by Russell, championed by Gödel, and developed by those searching for new axioms to settle undecidables, that our mathematical beliefs are justified by ‘intuitions’, as our scientific beliefs are justified by observations. On this view, axioms are analogous to laws of nature. They are postulated (...) to best systematize the data to be explained. We argue that there is a decisive difference between the cases. There is agreement on the data to be systematized in the scientific case that has no analog in the mathematical one. There is virtual consensus over observations, but conspicuous dispute over intuitions. In this respect, mathematics more closely resembles stereotypical philosophy. We conclude by distinguishing two ideas that have long been associated -- realism (the idea that there is an independent reality) and objectivity (the idea that in a disagreement, only one of us can be right). We argue that, while realism is true of mathematics and philosophy, these domains fail to be objective. One upshot of the discussion is that even questions of fundamental physics may fail to be objective in roughly the sense that the question, ‘Is the Parallel Postulate is true?’, understood as one of pure mathematics, fails to be. Another is a kind of pragmatism. Factual questions in mathematics, modality, logic, and evaluative areas go proxy for non-factual practical ones. -/- . (shrink)

The Bugis-Makassar indigenous people who live around Mount Bawakaraeng perform a ritual pilgrimage (hajj) to the top of Mount Bawakaraeng (as a sacred space). This ritual is often considered heretical and deviant. These negative assumptions are the result of the monopoly definition of “sacred place” by the world religion paradigm which is only limited to the doctrine of the holy book and is hierarchical-exclusive. Meanwhile, in the indigenous religion paradigm, “sacred place” is closely related tothe surrounding environment (nature) which also (...) gives life to indigenous peoples. The Bugis-Makassar indigenous people who live around Mount Bawakaraeng construct the sacredness of the mountain, not only as a place for religious rituals but also as a guarantor of their life. There were lacking previous researches discussing “sacred place” through the indigenous religion paradigm approach. This research contributes to that lack. This study examines how the indigenous religion paradigm interprets “sacred place”. The research method used in this research is qualitative. This study argues that there is no better way to understand why indigenous people perform rituals on Mount Bawakaraeng than using the indigenous religion paradigm. This study also shows that the “sacred place” associated with Mount Bawakaraeng is a way for the indigenous people who live around the mountain to preserve the nature around them which has enabled them to live and make a living such as accessing water, gathering medicines from nature, and so on. Eventually, with research that provides a better explanation of what a “sacred place” is in the indigenous religion paradigm, negative assumptions about indigenous people who regard a mountain as sacredplace can be better understood. (shrink)

During long-term refugee displacements, it is common for the refugees’ country of origin to be called on to recognize a right of return. A long-standing tradition of philosophical theorizing is sceptical of such a right. Howard Adelman and Elazar Barkan are contemporary proponents of this view. They argue that, in many cases, it is not feasible for entire refugee populations to return home, and so the notion of a right of return is no right at all. We can call Adelman (...) and Barkan’s view the feasibility objection. Many defenders of rights will deny that empirical facts such as the kind to which Adelman and Barkan appeal are relevant to determining whether a moral entitlement amounts to a right. In contrast, I offer a response to the feasibility objection that does admit the relevance of facts. In my view, considerations of feasibility do matter when determining what rights human beings possess. Nevertheless, the feasibility objection is undone by its failure to acknowledge a distinction between two different kinds of feasibility constraints. ‘Hard’ constraints include logical, nomological and biological considerations. ‘Soft’ constraints include political, cultural and institutional factors. A necessary condition of a moral entitlement achieving the status of a right, I argue, is that it be feasible in the hard sense. Crucially, however, a right need not always be feasible in the soft sense. Refugees can have rights that it is not currently possible to implement politically. (shrink)

Extended Cognition (EC) hypothesizes that there are parts of the world outside the head serving as cognitive vehicles. One criticism of this controversial view is the problem of “cognitive bloat” which says that EC is too permissive and fails to provide an adequate necessary criterion for cognition. It cannot, for instance, distinguish genuine cognitive vehicles from mere supports (e.g. the Yellow Pages). In response, Andy Clark and Mark Rowlands have independently suggested that genuine cognitive vehicles are distinguished from (...) supports in that the former have been “recruited,” i.e. they are either artifacts, or, products of evolution. I argue against this proposal. There are counter examples to the claim that “Teleological” EC is either necessary or sufficient for cognition. Teleological EC conflates different types of scientific projects, and inherits content externalism’s alienation from historically impartial cognitive science. (shrink)

The past decade has seen a protracted debate over the semantics of epistemic modals. According to contextualists, epistemic modals quantify over the possibilities compatible with some contextually determined group’s information. Relativists often object that contextualism fails to do justice to the way we assess utterances containing epistemic modals for truth or falsity. However, recent empirical work seems to cast doubt on the relativist’s claim, suggesting that ordinary speakers’ judgments about epistemic modals are more closely in line with contextualism than relativism (...) (Knobe & Yalcin 2014; Khoo 2015). This paper furthers the debate by reporting new empirical research revealing a previously overlooked dimension of speakers’ truth-value judgments concerning epistemic modals. Our results show that these judgments vary systematically with the question under discussion in the conversational context in which the utterance is being assessed. We argue that this ‘QUD effect’ is difficult to explain if contextualism is true, but is readily explained by a suitably flexible form of relativism. (shrink)

Efforts to ‘green’ civic republican thought link environmentalist with democratic ends. Such efforts cast both as contributions to virtuous world-making that contests ‘actually existing unsustainability’ and, so, seeks to realize freedom as nondomination. In the context of the erosion of both democratic and environmentalist achievements since the 1970s, however, a focus on contestation’s other side, the ‘world-unmaking’ virtue of obstruction, is warranted. ‘Democratic’ interpreters of Niccolò Machiavelli’s work urge such an understanding of political virtue, which they ground not in equal (...) freedom as nondomination but in civic liberty. Civic liberty is realized when all are able (1.) to participate in formulating rules and (2.) to defend procedures sufficient to subject all to constraint by so-formulated rules. Civic liberty therefore requires mobilization of majorities’ latent capacity to (re.1.) contest ‘public’ government decisions and (re. 2.) obstruct elites’ ‘private’ capacity to act with impunity in relation to such rules. This concept offers two insights into the current ‘crises’ of democracy and the environment. First, if, as empirical observers suggest, a significant cohort of elites have ‘seceded’ from electoral democracies, the normative concept ‘civic liberty’ unsettles contestatory presumptions about the deliberative character of contemporary politics. Second, if it is also true that a significant cohort of the poor are ‘seceding’ from mainstream politics out of frustration with the inegalitarian consequences of elite malfeasance, then the emphasis the concept places on the politics of majoritarian veto-power aimed at reining-in elite impunity might be useful to those who hope to make anti-democratic populists less attractive to at least some of this cohort. (shrink)

In the Transcendental Aesthetic (TA), Kant is typically held to make negative assertations about “things in themselves,” namely that they are not spatial or temporal. These negative assertions stand behind the “neglected alternative” problem for Kant’s transcendental idealism. According to this problem, Kant may be entitled to assert that spatio-temporality is a subjective element of our cognition, but he cannot rule out that it may also be a feature of the objective world. In this paper, I show in a new (...) way how Kant’s view (focusing on his conclusions about space) is not subject to this objection, by showing that he does not make the denial about mind-independent reality that he is typically held to make. The argument develops consequences of a new reading of Kant’s expression “an sich selbst” (‘in itself’; ‘in themselves’). I argue that “an sich selbst” or “per se” has a special, judgment-level role, so that this expression does not form new noun-terms adjectivally. It follows that the conceptual unit of Kant’s “Conclusions” in the TA is simply “things” (Dinge), since “things in themselves” is not a nominal expression; Kant adopts the Wolffian ontological use of “thing” as the basic kind-term for any existent. The arguments that things per se are not in space are arguments that space cannot be a necessary property or relations of things as a kind. I show that this does not involve the positive claim about mind-independent reality that inspires the neglected alternative objection. (shrink)

Freeganism is the practice of eating food that is free. It is commonly associated with recovering food that grocery stores and restaurants have thrown away, but vegetables grown in one’s garden and other free foods, such as leftovers from a work event, would also qualify. It is worth asking whether there is a form of freeganism that can be justified in new omnivorist terms. Could it be consistent with animal protection to eat meat, just so long as we don’t pay (...) for it? -/- I argue that from an animal protection point of view, freegan meat consumption faces two difficulties. The first is that when it involves the consumption of animal flesh conventionally regarded as edible (chicken, pork, beef, etc.) but not other types of flesh commonly considered inedible (mice, dogs, etc.), the practice is likely to be rooted in speciesism. This runs contrary to new omnivorism’s own principles, which are anti-speciesist. In addition, when the meat in question is the product of animal agriculture, consuming it will amount to a form of complicity in the industry’s wrong-doing, as the rationale for the animal’s slaughter will be retroactively endorsed. Either of these two considerations taken by itself will suffice to generate a presumption against freegan meat consumption. -/- My analysis, however, does not address every conceivable defense of freegan meat consumption. In particular, neither consideration generates a reason to avoid all animal by-products, such as eggs from backyard chickens that are well cared for. But given that the by-products in question will not be industrially produced, such consumption is likely to be permissible only in exceptional instances, rather than a practice available to society at large. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt argued that refugees pose a major problem for liberalism. Most liberal theorists endorse the idea of human rights. At the same time, liberalism takes the existence of sovereign states for granted. When large numbers of people petition a liberal state for asylum, Arendt argued, these two commitments will come into conflict. An unwavering respect for human rights would mean that no refugee is ever turned away. Being sovereign, however, allows states to control their borders. States supposedly committed to (...) human rights will thus often violate the rights of refugees by denying them entry. I attempt to defend liberalism from Arendt’s criticism by outlining a rights-based model of asylum that is enforceable by sovereign states. This approach avoids the question of what border-enforcement measures, if any, are defensible at the level of ideal justice, and instead seeks to outline a framework of refugee rights that can be realized in a world in which migration controls are a fact of life. Central to my argument is a distinction between the place where a person is recognized as a rights-bearing agent and the potentially different place where he or she exercises those rights. (shrink)

A comprehensive theory of agency will encompass not just acting but also omitting to act and refraining from acting. Some theorists maintain that a causal theory can be applied to acting, omitting, and refraining in a perfectly uniform manner, for each omission or instance of refraining can be identified with some garden-variety action. Here it is argued that in plenty of cases this strategy fails. Sufficient conditions for omitting or refraining are offered that do not require there to be, in (...) every case, anything that is an omission or act of refraining. Disjoining these with a causal theory of action would leave us with a view of agency that is less uniform than what might have been preferred; but diversity in the subject matter, it is suggested, might preclude any more uniform theory. (shrink)

Religious discourse is one of the instruments that are often used by the dominant class (the majority, who are in power) to carry out a symbolic violence mechanism against the dominated class (the minority, who are ruled). For example, through religious discourses that seem plural and open, the power and domination of the dominant class are continuously perpetuated. This study aims to analyze the symbolic violence that occurs in religious discourse in Indonesia, especially in the study of religion, by reviewing (...) the discourse of “agama vs. kepercayaan” and “moderasi beragama”. The symbolic violence referred to here is, according to Pierre Bourdieu's theory, violence that does not appear asviolence and is latent. Victims of this type of violence do not feel that they are victims ofviolence as if what happened was natural and it should have been. This study also argues that symbolic violence in religious discourse in Indonesia is widely produced in educational institutions, especially through the hands of academics, because through educational institutions, discourses of “agama vs. kepercayaan” and “moderasi beragama” are formulated and then implemented in government policies, as if the discourse has accommodated all religions and beliefs, but only perpetuates the way of thinking and tastes of the dominant class. In short, this study argues that religious discourses such as “agama vs. kepercayaan” and “moderasi beragama” are produced by the dominant class through educational institutions and so on and produce symbolic violence. (shrink)

The prediction potential of the model "emotional intelligence and self-reliance" to students' mathematical performance was investigated in this study. This research was conducted in the third and fourth quarters of the academic year 2021-2022. The quantitative research design, specifically comparative and regression analysis, was used in this study. The comparative design was utilized to assess the differences in emotional intelligence and self-reliance between male and female students, and the regression analysis was performed to see if the model "emotional intelligence and (...) self-reliance" can predict students' mathematical performance. In terms of emotional intelligence and self-reliance, the findings show no significant difference between male and female students. Furthermore, the student's emotional intelligence and self-reliance were strong predictors of mathematics performance. It implies that emotional intelligence and self-reliance are essential factors in better math learning. The study suggested that teachers may improve their students' emotional intelligence and self-reliance by integrating social and emotional learning programs into their classes. (shrink)

It is often assumed that adaptation — a temporary change in sensitivity to a perceptual dimension following exposure to that dimension — is a litmus test for what is and is not a “primary visual attribute”. Thus, papers purporting to find evidence of number adaptation motivate a claim of great philosophical significance: That number is something that can be seen in much the way that canonical visual features, like color, contrast, size, and speed, can. Fifteen years after its reported discovery, (...) number adaptation’s existence seems to be nearly undisputed, with dozens of papers documenting support for the phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to offer a counterweight — to critically assess the evidence for and against number adaptation. After surveying the many reasons for thinking that number adaptation exists, we introduce several lesser-known reasons to be skeptical. We then advance an alternative account — the old news hypothesis — which can accommodate previously published findings while explaining various (otherwise unexplained) anomalies in the existing literature. Next, we describe the results of eight pre-registered experiments which pit our novel old news hypothesis against the received number adaptation hypothesis. Collectively, the results of these experiments undermine the number adaptation hypothesis on several fronts, whilst consistently supporting the old news hypothesis. More broadly our work raises questions about the status of adaptation itself as a means of discerning what is and is not a visual attribute. (shrink)

This study explores the core teachings of Buddhism and Confucianism, especially about homosexuality, and compares the two. This study argues that the attitude of Buddhism and Confucianism towards homosexuality is highly dependent on the cultural context in which these religions exist and are practiced. In other words, certain Buddhist/Confucian societies are sometimes more tolerant of homosexual practices than other Buddhist/Confucian societies. That is, the core teachings of religions cannot be merely a measure; culture participates in shaping religious responses to homosexuals. (...) However, it also does not mean that these two religions do not have a unique view on homosexuality. Using the literature study method, this study will focus on exploring the attitudes of these two religions, Buddhism and Confucianism, towards the practice of homosexuality, especially to queering the core teachings of both. The results of this study indicate that in both Buddhism and Confucianism, acceptance and rejection of homosexual practices exist, and almost all use their respective core teachings as arguments. In short, this study contributes to providing an overview of how homosexuality is accepted and rejected in Buddhism and Confucianism. (shrink)

Philosophers have highlighted a dilemma for the criminal law. Unjust, racist policies in the United States have produced conditions in which the dispossessed are more likely to commit crime. This complicity undermines the standing of the state to blame their offenses. Nevertheless, the state has reason to punish those crimes in order to deter future offenses. Tommie Shelby proposes a way out of this dilemma. He separates the state’s right to condemn from its right to punish. I raise doubts about (...) Shelby’s proposed resolution. So long as punishment is widely and reasonably understood to condemn crime, Shelby’s proposal does not resolve the dilemma. Moreover, there is reason to think the blaming aspect of punishment plays a role in the justification of its hard treatment. I conclude by considering some other ways out of the dilemma, focusing especially on how the United States might take responsibility for its complicity. (shrink)

Recent decades have witnessed the rise of chefs to a position of cultural prominence. This rise has coincided with increased consciousness of ethical issues pertaining to food, particularly as they concern animals. We rank cookbooks by celebrity chefs according to the minimum number of sentient animals that must be killed to make their recipes. On our stipulative definition, celebrity chefs are those with their own television show on a national network in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada or Australia. (...) Thirty cookbooks by 26 such chefs were categorized according to the total number of cows, pigs, chicken, fish and other species they included as ingredients. The total number of animals killed was divided by the number of non-dessert recipes to generate an average number of animal deaths per recipe for each book. We outline the rationale for our project and its methodology before presenting a ranked table of 30 cookbooks by celebrity chefs. This method generates several interesting findings. The first concerns the wide variation in animal fatalities among cookbooks. The chef with the heaviest animal footprint killed 5.25 animals per recipe, while the omnivorous chef with the smallest footprints killed 0.19 per recipe. Clearly, not all approaches to meat eating are equal when it comes to their animal mortality rate. Pigs and large ruminants are all substantially bigger than poultry, which are themselves bigger than many fish. The prime determinant of a chef’s place in the index was the number of small animals his or her recipes required. Whether a chef cooked in the style of a particular cuisine (Italian, French, Mexican etc.), by contrast, had no discernible influence on his or her ranking. We analyze how different chefs present themselves—as either especially sensitive or insensitive to ethical issues involving animals and food—and note cases where these presentations do or do not match their index ranking. -/- . (shrink)

Calls to recognize a right of return are a recurring feature of refugee crises. Particularly when such crises become long-term, advocates of displaced people insist that they be allowed to return to their country of origin. I argue that this right is best understood as the right of refugees to return, not to a prior territory, but to a prior political status. This status is one that sees not just any state, but a refugee's state of origin, take responsibility for (...) safeguarding their welfare. This entitlement I characterize as an institutional right: a right that presupposes, and is a necessary feature of, a particular institution. The institution of which the right of return is an indispensable part is the international political system that sees authority exercised by sovereign states. The institutional argument for a right of refugee return presupposes two basic factual claims about states: they play a central role in safeguarding rights and they pursue exclusionary policies of border control. Importantly, the institutional view presupposes only that states do perform both functions, not that they are justified in doing so. On a purely normative level, the institutional account assumes little more than the moral equality of human beings. (shrink)

Jurisdictionism offers a new rationale for restricting immigration. Immigrants impose new obligations on the people whose territories they enter. Insofar as these obligations are unwanted, polities are justified in turning immigrants away, so long as the immigrants are from a country that respects their rights. The theory, however, employs a flawed account of obligation, which overlooks how we can be obliged to take on new duties to immigrants. Jurisdictionism also employs different standards when determining whether an obligation exists, only one (...) of which is sensitive to consequences. Finally, the theory falsely claims that obligations necessarily reduce the freedom of the obliged. (shrink)

Bunge (2000) distinguishes two main methodological approaches of holism and individualism, and associates with them policy prescriptions of centralism and laissez-faire. He identifies systemism as a superior approach to both the study and management of society. The present paper, seeking to correct and develop this line of thought, suggests a more complex relation between policy and methodology. There are two possible methodological underpinnings for laissez-faire: while writers such as Friedman and Lucas fit Bunge’s pattern, more sophisticated advocates of laissez-faire, such (...) as Smith and Hayek, base their policy prescription in a methodology quite divergent from the individualism Bunge describes. (shrink)

Recent work in moral theory has seen the refinement of theories of moral standing, which increasingly recognize a position of intermediate standing between fully self-conscious entities and those which are merely conscious. Among the most sophisticated concepts now used to denote such intermediate standing is that of primitive self-consciousness, which has been used to more precisely elucidate the moral standing of human newborns. New research into the structure of the avian brain offers a revised view of the cognitive abilities of (...) birds. When this research is approached with a species-specific focus, it appears likely that one familiar species, the chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus), also exhibits primitive self-consciousness. Given the likelihood that they are primitively self-consciousness, chickens warrant a degree of moral standing that falls short of that enjoyed by persons, but which exceeds the minimal standing of merely conscious entities. (shrink)

The notion of a spontaneous order has a long history in the philosophy of economics, where it has been used to advance a view of markets as complex networks of information that no single mind can apprehend. Traditionally, the impossibility of grasping all of the information present in the spontaneous order of the market has been invoked as grounds for not subjecting markets to central planning. A less noted feature of the spontaneous order concept is that when it is applied (...) to ecosystems it yields a reasonably strong environmental ethic. Thinking of ecosystems as spontaneous orders generates a presumption against interfering with their natural functioning in a manner that results in anthropogenic species loss. Such a presumption will permit some interventions in nature while precluding others. Environmental ethics could potentially make valuable use of the spontaneous order idea, without necessarily endorsing its traditional application to markets. (shrink)

In a world of partially overlapping and partially conflicting interests there is good reason to doubt that self-seeking behaviour at the micro-level will spontaneously lead to desirable social outcomes at the macro-level. Nevertheless, some sophisticated economic writers advocating a laissez-faire policy prescription have proposed various 'invisible hand' mechanisms which can supposedly be relied upon to 'educe good from ill'. Smith defended the 'simple system of natural liberty' as giving the greatest scope to the unfolding of God's will and the working (...) out of 'natural' providential processes free of interference by 'artificial' state intervention - the expression not of divine order but of fallible human reason. Hayek, adopting a similar policy stance, based it in an evolutionary process in which those institutional forms best adapted to reconciling individual interests would, he believed, spontaneously be selected for in the inter-group struggle for survival. Keynes shares the holistic approach of Smith and Hayek, but without their reliance on invisible hand mechanisms. If spontaneous processes cannot be relied upon to generate desirable social outcomes then we have to take responsibility for achieving this ourselves by establishing the appropriate institutional framework. Keynes takes a historical view of the role of capitalism and analyses its pathology as rooted in what we would now refer to as a multi-player prisoners' dilemma. The paper draws out the significance of his methodological standpoint here. Keynes's policy standpoint assigns a critical role to his own class, the 'educated bourgeoisie' in the reform process he maps out. A distinction, but also an intimate connection, is highlighted between, on the one hand, micro-level individualism (the 'Manchester System, and, on the other, the macro-level collective action ('planning') required to preserve it. Finally Keynes is considered in relation to the themes of laissez-faire, holism, reductionism, providentialism and the invisible hand. (shrink)

Marginal comments on student essays are a near-universal method of providing feedback in philosophy. Widespread as the practice is, however, it has well-known drawbacks. Commenting on students' work in the form of a video has the potential to improve the feedback experience for both instructors and students. The advantages of video feedback can be seen by examining it from both the professor's and the student's perspective. In discussing the professor's perspective, this article shares observations based on the author's experience delivering (...) feedback through video. Turning to the student's view, it discusses qualitative feedback solicited from students that indicates a clear preference for video feedback over written marginalia. In particular, students describe video feedback as more informative, more personal, better at suggesting improvements on future assignments, enhancing the professor's ability to communicate through tone of voice and gesture, and easier to understand compared to written feedback. (shrink)

The phenomenon of abbreviation used on Instagram is an interesting thing since the users modify the abbreviation form of expansion words making deviation from the original meaning. The principle of meaning relation between abbreviations and their expansions is used to make a change to the purposes of Instagram users. This research was aimed to describe the principle of abbreviation used in Instagram. An exploitation method was used by the technique of making screenshots and recording the abbreviation data. The results of (...) research indicate that the principle of abbreviation consists of three forms namely inclusion, contact, and complementary. The results of this research can be very effective in understanding as well as how to use abbreviations, especially on Instagram. The Novelty of the study is in investigating the abbreviation used in Instagram. (shrink)

This thesis argues for the fundamental importance of the opposition between holistic and reductionistic world-views in economics. Both reductionism and holism may nevertheless underpin laissez-faire policy prescriptions. Scrutiny of the nature of the articulation between micro and macro levels in the writings of economists suggests that invisible hand theories play a key role in reconciling reductionist policy prescriptions with a holistic world. An examination of the prisoners' dilemma in game theory and Arrow's impossibility theorem in social choice theory sets the (...) scene. The prisoners' dilemma epitomises the collective irrationality coordination problems lead to. The source of the dilemma is identified as the combination of interdependence in content and independence in form of the decision making process. Arrovian impossibility has been perceived as challenging traditional views of the relationship between micro and macro levels in economics. Conservative arguments against the possibility in principle of a social welfare function are criticised here as depending on an illicit dualism. The thesis then reviews the standpoints of Smith, Hayek and Keynes. For Smith, the social desirability of individual self-seeking activity is ensured by the 'invisible hand' of a god who has moulded us so to behave, that the quantity of happiness in the world is always maximised. Hayek seeks to re-establish the invisible hand in a secular age, replacing the agency of a deity with an evolutionary mechanism. Hayek's evolutionary theory, criticised here as being based on the exploded notion of group selection, cannot underpin the desirability of spontaneous outcomes. I conclude by arguing that Keynes shares the holistic approach of Smith and Hayek, but without their reliance on invisible hand mechanisms. If spontaneous processes cannot be relied upon to generate desirable social outcomes then we have to take responsibility for achieving this ourselves by establishing the appropriate institutional framework to eliminate macroeconomic prisoners' dilemmas. (shrink)

We know that animals are harmed in plant production. Unfortunately, though, we know very little about the scale of the problem. This matters for two reasons. First, we can’t decide how many resources to devote to the problem without a better sense of its scope. Second, this information shortage throws a wrench in arguments for veganism, since it’s always possible that a diet that contains animal products is complicit in fewer deaths than a diet that avoids them. In this paper, (...) then, we have two aims: first, we want to collect and analyze all the available information about animal death associated with plant agriculture; second, we try to show just how difficult it’s to come up with a plausible estimate of how many animals are killed by plant agriculture, and not just because of a lack of empirical information. Additionally, we show that there are significant philosophical questions associated with interpreting the available data—questions such that different answers generate dramatically different estimates of the scope of the problem. Finally, we document current trends in plant agriculture that cause little or no collateral harm to animals, trends which suggest that field animal deaths are a historically contingent problem that in future may be reduced or eliminated altogether. (shrink)

The visual system adapts to a wide range of visual features, from lower-level features like color and motion to higher-level features like causality and, perhaps, number. According to some, adaptation is a strictly perceptual phenomenon, such that the presence of adaptation licenses the claim that a feature is truly perceptual in nature. Given the theoretical importance of claims about adaptation, then, it is important to understand exactly when the visual system does and does not exhibit adaptation. Here, we take as (...) a case study one specific kind of adaptation: visual adaptation to size. Supported by evidence from four experiments, we argue that, despite robust effects of size adaptation in the lab, (1) size adaptation effects are phenomenologically underwhelming (in some cases, hardly appreciable at all), (2) some effects of size adaptation appear contradictory, and difficult to explain given current theories of size adaptation, and (3) prior studies on size adaptation may have failed to isolate size as the adapted dimension. Ultimately, we argue that while there is evidence to license the claim that size adaptation is genuine, size adaptation is a puzzling and poorly understood phenomenon. (shrink)