Searching for rightness: Ecological perspectives on realizing values in acting and perceiving

What explains the skill and effectiveness of perceiving and acting? Cognitive accounts often appeal to rules, and ecological accounts often appeal to laws and goals to explain how actions can be right: directed, coordinated, timely, functional, and flexible. Three ecological approaches are considered which claim that perceiving and acting rightly is a matter of seeking to realize values in a meaningful world. The third of these, ecological values-realizing theory, is described in greater depth and briefly illustrated with respect to driving, vision, and conversing. Questions about the ability of physics and biology to explain the rightness of acting and perceiving are explored. In both cases, the tables are turned; rather than the rightness of animate actions being subsumed under physical mechanics or biological control, the agency of animate actions comes to the fore. Goal-directed, rule-following, or affordance-realizing actions can be treated as forms of rightness but are too limited to account for skills outside of a larger context of values. The evidence considered suggests that agency is directed at realizing values, which are best defined at the level of ecosystems.