Moral Perception and the Pursuit of Medical Philosophy

This paper begins by examining the claim that the practice of medicine is essentially a moral endeavor. According to this view, all clinical practice has moral content, and each clinical situation has a moral dimension. I suggest that in order to recognize this moral dimension, clinicians must engage in an interpretive process, and that they must be able to interpret clinical data in ethical terms. However, clinicians often lack the ‘moral perception’ required to appreciate this moral dimension. I will argue that physicians lack moral perception when the clinical data they are given do not offer sufficient opportunity for interpretation. This paper draws on the work of Merleau-Ponty to suggest that this loss of interpretation is, paradoxically, the result of the way that patients experience illness. This thesis may be productive, first, because it suggests opportunities to explore the process of moral perception. This thesis also suggests ways for ethicists and educators to enhance clinicians' perception of the ethical dimensions of clinical practice. Finally, the concept of moral perception, when grounded in the patient's experience of illness, creates a fruitful area of inquiry that warrants inclusion in what may someday be the philosophy of medicine's canon. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Overcoming Relativism? Levinas's Return to Platonism

Emmanuel Levinas's concept of "the face of the Other" involves an ethical mandate that is presumably transcultural or, in his terms, "precultural." His essay "Meaning and Sense" provides his most explicit defense of the idea that the face has a meaning that is not culturally relative, though it is always encountered within some particular culture. Levinas identifies his position there as a "return to Platonism." Through a careful reading of that essay, exploring Levinas's use of religious terminology and the (some-times implicit) relationships of the essay to the work of other phenomenologists and of Saussure, the author seeks to clarify (1) what Levinas retains and what he rejects in returning to Platonism "in a new way," (2) the sense in which this return constitutes an "overcoming" of relativism, and (3) the nature of the phenomenological warrant that he offers for his position.     

Perception,Body, and the Sense of Touch: Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind

In recent philosophy of mind, a series of challenging ideas have appeared about the relation between the body and the sense of touch. In certain respects, these ideas have a striking affinity with Husserl’s theory of the constitution of the body. Nevertheless, these two approaches lead to very different understandings of the role of the body in perception. Either the body is characterized as a perceptual “organ,” or the body is said to function as a “template.” Despite its focus on the sense of touch, the latter conception, I will argue, nevertheless orients its understanding of tactual perception toward visual objects. This produces a distorted conception of touch. In this paper, I will formulate an alternative account, which is more faithful to what it is like to feel.

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Woman as Vulnerable Self: The Trope of Maternity in Levinas's Otherwise Than Being

Much due criticism has been directed at Levinas's images of the feminine and “the Woman” in Time and the Other and Totality and Infinity, but less attention has been paid to the metaphor of maternity and the maternal body that Levinas employs in Otherwise Than Being. This metaphor should be of interest, however, because here we find an instance in which Levinas uses a female image without in any way seeming to exclude women from full ethical selfhood. In the first three sections of this paper I explain how maternity functions in Otherwise Than Being. I argue that maternity is used as (1) an image of the vulnerability or passive sensibility that characterizes the relation with the Other, as well as (2) a metaphor for Levinas's account of ethical responsibility as substitution. In the final section of the paper, I defend the claim that Levinas's maternal metaphors are not disparaging to real, empirical women. I also discuss a remaining worry that feminists may have about the metaphor: namely, that it characterizes pregnancy and motherhood in ways that challenge some pro‐choice assumptions.     

坐在扶椅上能追求到什么?

这是<哲学的哲学>一书的导言部分,作者指出了该书的基本思想是:第一,认为哲学不同于自然科学研究的例外论假定是错误的,甚至先验与后验之间的区分最终遮蔽了内在的相似性.第二,哲学与其他科学之间在主题上的差异,也不如我们通常认为的那样深.第三,当前的哲学主流未能清楚地阐明一种适当的哲学方法论,部分地是由于它陷入了对数据的心理学化的传统认识论错误.本书对哲学方法论的再思考,包含了在一种恰当的抽象水平上理解如何做哲学.     

Perception

Book Information Perception. Perception Barry Maund, Chesham : Acumen Publishing, 2003, 240, £12.95 (paper) By Barry Maund. Acumen Publishing. Chesham. Pp. 240. £12.95 (paper:),     

Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy

Philosophy can be divided into two systems, i.e. the vertical and the horizontal. Characterized with the creation of spirit and the logical evolution of concepts, the vertical system expresses historical reflections on the achievements of human culture. Meanwhile, the horizontal system focuses on the analysis of cognitive activities to explore the nature of subject and object, the elements of knowledge, and the basis of its certainty. Chinese philosophers, such as Hu Shih, Fung Yulan, Zhang Dainian, Mou Zongsan and Zhang Shiying, have previously explored the various definitions of philosophy. Their explorations manifest the internationalization of Chinese philosophy during different eras. This paper defines philosophy as human beings’ awareness of their environment and systematical reflections on their activities and ensuing consequences. As part of world philosophy, Chinese philosophy encapsulates the essence of Chinese culture, as the thinking method of Chinese people, and as a set of thought systems possessing a unique style.     

Perception of gait

Our ability of perceive the identity and naturalness of a human gait is examined in a series of four experiments involving computer-animated stick figures. The results indicate that the perceived naturalness of a walking or running gait can be influenced by the motion of any limb segment, but the perceived identity of these gaits is primarily determined by the movements of the lower leg (i.e., the tibia). The results also demonstrate that a perceptually salient walking gait can be transformed into running (or vice versa) by adding or subtracting a constant value to the angle of the lower leg over the entire step cycle. The size of this constant value is affected by the shape of the lower leg angle function and the motion of other limb segments.     

Perception of illumination

Abstract.— Previous research on the perception of illumination has primarily been occupied with the apparent paradox that "we must know the object colour in order to utilize the reflected light as an index of illumination, while we must know the illumination in order to use the reflected light as an index of object colour". The present study shows this paradox to exist only as a long as the traditional one-dimensional conception of achromatic colours is maintained. Two experiments are reported. In Exp. 1 it is shown that by mere variation of the luminance difference of two adjacent areas, a consistent shift in colourlshadow discrimination is obtained; i.e. within a certain range of luminance differences the observer may find it difficult to decide whether the difference is one of colour (two fields of different greyness in common illumination) or one of illumination (two fields of equal greyness under different illumination), above this range the observer perceives the differences as one of illumination. Taking the bidimensionality of achromatic colours into account in Exp. 2, results are obtained which show the brightness (alternatively termed luminosity) relations of adjacent areas to be the critical factor for the perceptual shift.     

暴力的哲学还是哲学的暴力?--与冈特·嫩宁的谈话

布洛赫重申自己是一个马克思主义哲学家.对他来说,唯物主义问题并不是简单的唯物主义问题,马克思主义中一开始就包含了唯心主义,哲学的最伟大业绩多半是唯心主义思想家完成的.暴力是阶级社会特有的现象,国家乃是暴力的潜力本身,国家的消亡是一个无暴力的、和平的过程.被压迫者的革命运动依然存在,大学生运动不会消亡.无神论与基督教并不是二者择一的问题,无神论与基督教的对话也不是一场徒劳的对话.世界过程本身处于过程之中,而这一过程尚未被获取,但也尚未被挫败."已知的希望"取决于把科学投入于希望的国度之中.存在第二真理,即乌托邦的-具体的真理问题,这是真理所固有的问题.     

Perception2

The article is an overview of some central philosophical problems associated with perception. It discusses what distinguishes perception from other sensory capacities and from conception. It discusses anti‐individualism, a view according to which the nature of a perceptual state is dependent not just causally but for its identity or ‘essence’ on relations to a normal environment in which systems containing that state were formed. It discusses different views about epistemic warrant. By emphasising the deep ways in which human and animal perceptual systems, especially visual systems, are similar, it criticises a dominant view of the last century, in both philosophy and large parts of psychology, according to which a range of sophisticated supplementary abilities have to be learned before a child can perceive objective features of the physical world.     

Moral Perception

Abstract: In this paper, I defend the view that we can have perceptual moral knowledge. First, I motivate the moral perception view by drawing on some examples involving perceptual knowledge of complex non‐moral properties. I argue that we have little reason to think that perception of moral properties couldn't operate in much the same way that our perception of these complex non‐moral properties operates. I then defend the moral perception view from two challenging objections that have yet to be adequately addressed. The first objection is that the moral perception view has implausible commitments concerning the morally blind, people who would claim not to perceive wrongness. The second objection is that the moral perception view is not really compatible with a wide range of the main candidate moral theories. I argue that the moral empiricist has plausible responses to both of these objections. I then address three residual concerns that my defense raises.     

意识哲学,还是身体哲学——中国传统哲学理论范式的重新认识

在当代西方哲学面临从意识哲学向后意识的身体哲学的理论转型之际,其也为我们重新认识中国传统哲学的理论范式提供了契机。一种对中西传统哲学的深入比较将使我们发现,与传统西方哲学不同,中国传统哲学与其说是坚持一种“反思”的取向,不如说是坚持一种“反身”的取向;与其说是具有一种“祛性”的特征,不如说是具有一种“尊性”的特征;与其说是以“还原论”为其原则,不如说是以“系谱学”为其原则。凡此种种,都使中国传统哲学在其理论范式上,更多地体现为一种身体性哲学而非意识性哲学。故我们看到,在中国传统哲学中,古人不仅坚持“即身而道在”把身体提升到“道”的高度,而且还使该“身道”一以贯之地贯彻在诸如宇宙论、伦理学以及宗教观等中国古代的理论之中,使之成为通向中国传统哲学文化精神的真正的不二法门。