First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In previous decades, a regrettable divorce has arisen between two currents of theorizing and research about knowledge and science: the Mannheimian and Wittgensteinian traditions. The radical impulse of the new social studies of science in the early 1970s was initiated not by followers of Mannheim, but by Wittgensteinians such as Kuhn, Bloor, and Collins. This paper inquires whether this Wittgensteinian program is not presently running into difficulties that might be resolved to some extent by reverting to a more traditional and (...) broader agenda of research. A social theory of knowledge (or social epistemology) along Mannheimian lines would not only reinstate the "magic triangle" of epistemology, sociology, and ethics, and hence revive the vexed problem of "ideology critique," but would also need to reincorporate the social analysis of science into a broader macrosocial theory about the "knowledge society.". (shrink)

Despite the generally positive reception of Manuel DeLanda's Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, it has been pointed out that DeLanda's reconstruction of Deleuze's ontology has concentrated almost exclusively on the processes of becoming actual, and has thus far failed to address the processes of becoming virtual. In this article, I suggest a way of reading DeLanda which recovers for mathematical practice a capacity to clarify the meaning of events as they arise within a synthetic process of becoming interdisciplinary. First, I (...) attempt to show that modern mathematical practices can be understood as already characterized by a denial of essentialism in just the way required by Deleuze. Second, I argue that mathematical practice, so understood, is of a piece with literary practice, in the sense that both can be understood as the free and transformative production of concepts within the space of what Deleuze has characterized as a form of the comedic. I conclude with an outline of an argument showing that the transformative and the comedic can be embraced within a realist philosophy of the kind so clearly evident in DeLanda's reconstruction of Deleuze's ontology. (shrink)

Carl Knight argues that lexical sufficientarianism, which holds that sufficientarian concerns should have lexical priority over other distributive goals, is ‘excessive’ in many distinct ways and that sufficientarians should either defend weighted sufficientarianism or become prioritarians. In this article, I distinguish three types of weighted sufficientarianism and propose a weighted sufficientarian view that meets the excessiveness objection and is preferable to both Knight’s proposal and prioritarianism. More specifically, I defend a multi-threshold view which gives weighted priority to benefits directly above (...) and below its thresholds, but gives benefits below the lowest threshold lexical priority over benefits above the highest threshold. (shrink)

The profile of volunteering in English Higher Education [HE] has been enhanced in recent years through various initiatives that have not only funded activities, but have sought to expand the range of volunteering opportunities available to students and recognise the contribution that volunteering can make to students ' employability. This expansion has also brought about emergent interest in understanding the conditions of student volunteering, in particular why students volunteer and what they seek to achieve through their involvement. This paper adds (...) to this growing literature on indentifying student motivations through analysis of both survey and interview data on student volunteering. The use of mixed methods allows for a detailed interrogation of motivations and how students make sense of their own experiences with respect to dominant discourses about what volunteering can achieve. In particular the paper argues that students are reflective about why they volunteer, their motives can change over time and that for many students volunteering is not necessarily part of a strategic goal to enhance CVs or even 'do good'. (shrink)

The Intellectual as Stranger explores the historical association between images of the intellectual and those of the stranger, or the outsider to society. Using detailed case-studies, Pels examines the ambiguous strangerhood of political intellectuals such as Marx, Durkheim, Sorel, Freyer and Hendrik de Man.

Anthony Celano argues that after Thomas Aquinas the flexibility of Aristotle’s ethics gives way to the universal codes of Christian morality. His argument posits that the Schoolmen adopted a line of moral reasoning that follows a Platonic tradition of taking universal moral principles as the basis of moral reasoning. While Thomas does work in a tradition that, resemblant of the Platonic tradition, incorporates inerrant principles of moral reasoning in the habit of _synderesis_, his understanding of those principles is distinctly Aristotelian (...) in character and thus the flexible moral reasoning of Aristotle’s _phronimos_ is retained. For Thomas _synderesis_ is the first principle of practical reason and is the source rather than the inhibitor of personal and spontaneous moral reasoning. This article will first outline Celano’s position, detail the thought of Thomas’ predecessors, and then show how Thomas employs the principle of _synderesis_ in a distinctly Aristotelian framework. (shrink)

In The March of Unreason, Dick Taverne expresses his concern that irrationality is on the rise in Western society, and argues that public opinion is increasingly dominated by unreflecting prejudice and an unwillingness to engage with factual evidence. Discussing topics such as genetically modified crops and foods, organic farming, the MMR vaccine, environmentalism, the precautionary principle, and the new anti-capitalist and anti-globalization movements, he argues that the rejection of the evidence-based approach nurtures a culture of suspicion, distrust, and cynicism, (...) and leads to dogmatic assertion and intolerance. Science, with all the benefits it brings, is an essential part of a civilized and democratic society: it offers the most hopeful future for humankind. (shrink)

Modernity is founded on the belief that the world we build is a human invention, not a part of nature. The ecological consequences of this idea have been catastrophic. We have laid waste to natural ecosystems, replacing them with fundamentally unsustainable human designs. With time running out to address the environmental crises we have caused, our best path forward is to turn to nature for guidance. In this book, Henry Dicks explores the philosophical significance of a revolutionary approach to sustainable (...) innovation: biomimicry. The term describes the application and adaptation of strategies found in nature to the development of artificial products and systems, such as passive cooling techniques modeled on termite mounds or solar cells modeled on leaves. Dicks argues that biomimicry, typically seen as just a design strategy, can also serve as the basis for a new environmental philosophy that radically alters how we understand and relate to the natural world. By showing how we can imitate, emulate, and learn from nature, biomimicry points us toward a genuinely sustainable way of inhabiting the earth. Rooted in philosophy, The Biomimicry Revolution has profound implications spanning the natural sciences, design, architecture, sustainability studies, science and technology studies, and the environmental humanities. It presents a sweeping reconception of what philosophy can be and offers a powerful new vision of terrestrial existence. (shrink)

Clifford, Dick The world outlook is rather grim. Greece is bankrupt, the efforts to cure the problem by making new loans to the banks and cutting living standards is likely only to postpone the date when bankruptcy is declared. Italy and Spain are in a similar position. Britain, Europe and the USA are loaded with debt, only a few countries like Iceland are adopting methods which are the reverse of what conventional economics requires and seem to be recovering from (...) their problems slowly. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that limitarian policies are a good means to further political equality. Limitarianism, which is a view coined and defended by Robeyns, is a partial view in distributive justice which claims that under non-ideal circumstances it is morally impermissible to be rich. In a recent paper, Volacu and Dumitru level two arguments against Robeyns’ Democratic Argument for limitarianism. The Democratic Argument states that limitarianism is called for given the undermining influence current inequalities in income and wealth (...) have for the value of democracy and political equality. Volacu and Dumitru’s Incentive Objection holds that limitarianism places an excessive and inefficient burden on the rich in ensuring political equality. The Efficacy Objection holds that even if limitarianism limits excessive wealth it still fails to ensure the preservation of political equality. In this paper, I will argue that both of these objections fail, but on separate grounds. I argue that the Incentive objection fails because one could appeal to limitarian policies that are different from the ones discussed by Volacu and Dumitru and which escape the problem of reduced productivity. I argue against the Efficacy Objection that limitarian policies are a partial but highly valuable step towards establishing political equality, and that they can and should complement or be complemented by other strategies. (shrink)

Limitarianism holds that there is an upper limit to how many resources, such as wealth and income, people can permissibly have. In this article, I examine the conceptual structure of limitarianism. I focus on the upper limit and the idea that resources above the limit are ‘excess resources’. I distinguish two possible limitarian views about such resources: (i) that excess resources have zero moral value for the holder; and (ii) that excess resources do have moral value for the holder but (...) that their claim to such resources is outweighed by other normative concerns. Moreover, I argue that, depending on the values limitarianism seeks to promote, limitarians should care about the number of people with excess resources or the total amount of excess resources (or both), that they can adopt redistributive measures and/or predistributive measures, and that some versions of limitarianism should take into account the distribution of risk among those above the riches line. (shrink)

In a recent paper I discussed the origin of the concept of the climata in Greek geography, and adduced reasons for attributing the formulation and elaboration of the concept to Hipparchus . The above passage in Strabo was naturally mentioned in the course of the argument, and I drew attention in a footnote to the unsatisfactory nature of the account given by him of the climata. I now propose to examine the passage in more detail.

The article uses the ideal of a New Left to conceptualize the underlying unity of diverse political experiences during the past half century. Although Marx is not the direct object of this reconstruction, his specter is a recurring presence at those “nodal points” where the imperative to move to “another element” becomes apparent. These are moments when the spirit that has animated a movement can advance no further; it is faced with new obstacles, which may be self-created. The article analyzes (...) from a participant’s perspective the development of the New Left in the U.S., France and West Germany as it tried to articulate what is dubbed the "unknown dimension" of Marx’s theoretical project. (shrink)

Semiotic objections to markets urge us not to place a good on the market because of the message that doing so would send. Brennan and Jaworski reject them on the grounds that either the contingent semiotics of a market can be changed or the weakness of semiotic reasons allows them to be ignored. The scope of their argument neglects the impure semiotic objections that claim that the message a market sends causes, constitutes, or involves a nonsemiotic wrong. These are the (...) most compelling class of semiotic objections and are the kind actually advanced in the literature. Rather than focusing on the necessity or contingency of a market's semiotics, we should instead attend to a semiotic objection's most important feature: its purity or impurity. (shrink)

The philosophy of biomimicry, I argue, consists of four main areas of inquiry. The first, which has already been explored by Freya Mathews, concerns the “deep” question of what Nature ultimately is. The second, third, and fourth areas correspond to the three basic principles of biomimicry as laid out by Janine Benyus. “Nature as model” is the poetic principle of biomimicry, for it tells us how it is that things are to be “brought forth”. “Nature as measure” is the ethical (...) principle of biomimicry, for it tells us that Nature places ethical limits or standards on what it is possible for us to accomplish. And “Nature as mentor” is the epistemological principle of biomimicry, for it affirms that Nature is the ultimate source of truth, wisdom, and freedom from error. Within this overall framework, I argue that seeing Nature as physis—understood as “self-production” or “self-placing-into-the-open”—constitutes the requisite ground for the poetic, ethical, and epistemological principles of biomimicry, and that biomimicry thus conceived involves a new philosophical paradigm, which I call “enlightened naturalism”. (shrink)

The author investigates how the conception of legal validity as a specific mode of existence, adopted by Kelsen in Allgemeine Theorie der Normen (General Theory of Norms), can be reconciled with a conception of the legal system in which conflicts of legal norms remain of logical concern. To this end he makes use of Ludwig Wittgenstein's picture theory of the proposition as set out in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The conclusion is that in order to reconcile the two conceptions, the legal (...) system itself must be conceived of as consisting of three sub-systems, namely, (i) a sub-system of perceptible legal judgments, (ii) a sub-system of valid legal conditions, and (iii) a sub-system of observable social practices. (shrink)

First published in 1912, and originally intended as a textbook for students in secondary school, this book gives an overview of the human and physical geography of the occupied areas of the earth's surface. The text is richly illustrated with diagrams, tables, and contemporary photographs of places of interest. Although in general Dicks manages to rise above the colonial viewpoint prevalent at the time, certain aspects of the text are reflective of racial attitudes during this period of the twentieth century. (...) This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of education. (shrink)

As the new director of Esprit, Paul Thibaud finds himself in an enviable, yet difficult and complex situation. Nearly half a century's tradition is a mixed blessing. The journal can call on contributors whose horizons extend beyond the tenacles of Paris, to the provinces, Europe and the Third World. Its reputation assures it a farflung readership and influence as well. Tradition can, of course, easily become habit and govern expectations: that is the danger that Jean-Marie Domenach successfully confronted when he (...) took over the directorship from Albert Benuin in 1957; and it is now Thibaud's problem in different social and political conditions. (shrink)

Despite the prominence of thresholds in theories of distributive justice, there is no general account of what sort of role is played by the idea of a threshold within such theories. This has allowed an ongoing lack of clarity and misunderstanding around views that employ thresholds. In this article, I develop an account of the concept of thresholds in distributive justice. I argue that this concept contains three elements, which threshold views deploy when ranking possible distributions. These elements are (i) (...) the level of the threshold, (ii) what constitutes the value of the threshold, and (iii) how benefits above and below the threshold must be allocated. I highlight three contributions that this particular account of thresholds makes: it clarifies the nature of the shift that occurs at the threshold; it resolves a common misunderstanding about headcount principles; and it shows how the arbitrariness objection can be met. (shrink)

Animals in Disasters is a comprehensive book on animal rescue written by Dr. Dick Green who shares his experiences, best practices and lessons learned from well over 125 domestic and international disasters. It provides a step-by-step process for communities and states to more effectively address animal issues and enhance their animal response capabilities. Sections include an overview of the history of animal rescue, where we are today, and the steps needed to better prepare for tomorrow. This how-to book for (...) emergency managers who want to develop programs, craft policy, and build response capability/capacity is an ideal companion to their work. Clearly identifies the components of building a resilient community Introduces the Community Preparedness Checklist Helps readers develop and deliver effective animal response training. (shrink)

Almost everyone believes that freedom from deprivation should have significant weight in specifying what justice between generations requires. Some theorists hold that it should always trump other distributive concerns. Other theorists hold that it should have some but not lexical priority. I argue instead that freedom from deprivation should have lexical priority in some cases, yet weighted priority in others. More specifically, I defend semi-strong sufficientarianism. This view posits a deprivation threshold at which people are free from deprivation, and an (...) affluence threshold at which people can live an affluent life, even though their lives may be even further improved beyond that point. I argue that freedom from deprivation in one generation lexically outweighs providing affluence in another generation; in all other cases, freedom from deprivation does not have lexical priority. (shrink)

The 'subjective reduction' interpretation of measurement in quantum physics proposes that the collapse of the wave-packet, associated with measurement, is due to the consciousness of human observers. A refined conceptual replication of an earlier experiment, designed and carried out to test this interpretation in the 1970s, is reported. Two improvements are introduced. First, the delay between pre-observation and final observation of the same quantum event is increased from a few microseconds in the original experiment to one second in this replication. (...) Second, rather than using the final observers' verbal response as the dependent variable, his early brain responses as measured by EEG are used. These early responses cover a period during which an observer is not yet conscious of an observed event. Our results support the 'subjective reduction' hypothesis insofar as significant differences in the brain responses of the final observer are found, depending on whether or not the pre-observer has been looking at the quantum event . Alternative 'normal' explanations are discussed and rejected. It is concluded that the present results do justify further research along these lines. (shrink)

We argue that the prudential benefits of long-distance leisure travel can justify such trips even though there are strong and important reasons against long-distance flying. This is because prudential benefits can render otherwise impermissible actions permissible, and because, according to dominant theories about wellbeing, long-distance leisure travel provides significant prudential benefits. However, this ‘wellbeing argument’ for long-distance leisure travel must be qualified in two ways. First, because travellers are epistemically privileged with respect to knowledge about what is good for them, (...) they must look critically at their own assessment of the prudential benefits of a trip. Second, the wellbeing argument is unlikely to support prudential arguments for long-distance leisure trips made by frequent flyers. (shrink)

This paper discusses some of the anthropological andphilosophical features of the use of self-managementplans by patients with a chronic disease, focusing onpatients with asthma. Characteristics of thistechnologically mediated form of self-care arecontrasted with the work of Mauss and Foucault on bodytechniques and techniques of self. The similaritiesand differences between self-management of asthma andFoucault's technologies of self highlight some of theways in which self-management contributes tomodifications in the definitions of patients andphysicians. Patients, in measuring their lungfunction, first come to rely on (...) measurements more thanon felt disturbances, but next, felt disturbancesbecome modified by previous measurements. Physicians,on the other hand, see their role changed from expertto being a participant in a joint treatment. It isargued that the concept of agency is more appropriatefor describing the advantage of self-management forpatients than autonomy. (shrink)

While the contemporary biomimicry movement is associated primarily with the idea of taking Nature as model for technological innovation, it also contains a normative or ethical principle—Nature as measure—that may be treated in relative isolation from the better known principle of Nature as model. Drawing on discussions of the principle of Nature as measure put forward by Benyus and Jackson, while at the same time situating these discussions in relation to contemporary debates in the philosophy of biomimicry : 364–387, 2011; (...) Dicks in Philos Technol, doi: 10.1007/s13347-015-0210-2, 2015; Blok and Gremmen in J Agric Environ Ethics 29:203–217, 2016), the aim of this paper is to explore the relation between the principle of Nature as measure and environmental ethics. This leads to the argument that mainstream formulations of environmental ethics share the common trait of seeing our ethical relation to Nature as primarily involving duties to protect, preserve, or conserve various values in Nature, and that, in doing so, they problematically either overlook or dismiss as anthropocentric the possibility that Nature may provide measures, understood in terms of ecological standards, against which our own practices, or at least some of them, may be judged—a way of thinking I call “biomimetic ethics”. The practical consequences of this argument are significant. Whereas mainstream environmental ethics has been applied above all to such issues as wilderness preservation, natural resource management, and animal rights and welfare, biomimetic ethics is applicable rather to the question of how we produce, use, and consume things, and, as such, may potentially provide the basic ethical framework required to underpin the transition to a circular, bio-based, solar economy. (shrink)

The American Indian Movement, founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, burst into that turbulent time with passion, anger, and radical acts of resistance. Spurred by the Civil Rights movement, Native people began to protest the decades--centuries--of corruption, racism, and abuse they had endured. They argued for political, social, and cultural change, and they got attention. The photographs of activist Dick Bancroft, a key documentarian of AIM, provide a stunningly intimate view of this major piece of American history from 1970 to (...) 1981. Veteran journalist Laura Waterman Wittstock, who participated in events in Washington, DC, has interviewed a host of surviving participants to tell the stories behind the images. The words of Russell Means, Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt, Eddie Benton Banai, Pat Bellanger, Elaine Salinas, Winona LaDuke, Bill Means, Ken Tilsen, Larry Leventhal, Jose Barreiro, and others tell the stories: the takeovers of federal buildings and the Winter Dam in Wisconsin, the founding of survival schools in the Twin Cities, the Wounded Knee trials, international conferences for indigenous rights, the Trail of Broken Treaties Caravan and the Longest Walk for Survival, powwows and camps and United Nations actions. This is the inside record of a movement that began to change a nation. Dick Bancroft has been the unofficial photographer for the American Indian Movement since 1970. He has traveled the world to take these photographs. Laura Waterman Wittstock, a writer and media consultant, covered the early years of the American Indian Movement as a journalist. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, recipient of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, is an activist for indigenous rights in Guatemala. (shrink)

Cultural Writing. This classic of alternative art theory is available again in this second edition. Dick Higgins was co-founder of Happenings and later Fluxus. He was active in music, studying with John Cage and Henry Cowell and is the author of many books of poetry including Buster Keaton Enters Into Paradise (Left Hand) and Book About Love And Death (Something Else), also available from SPD. From his early (1964) essay on Intermedia, which gave the term to the language, up (...) through the his influential essay on the concept of an allusive referential, the impulse of his work was to describe rather than to prescribe. These essays continue to offer tools which may be useful in developing theories and opinions for the next generation of artists, writers and critics. A Dialectic Of Centuries is book to work within the new century. (shrink)

In this article, I propose a novel characterization of sufficientarianism. I argue that sufficientarianism combines three claims: a priority claim that we have non-instrumental reasons to prioritize benefits in certain ranges over benefits in other ranges; a continuum claim that at least two of those ranges are on one continuum; and a deficiency claim that the lower a range on a continuum, the more priority benefits in that range have. This characterization of sufficientarianism sheds new light on two long-standing philosophical (...) debates, namely about the distinctiveness of sufficientarianism as a distributive principle and about the common objections to sufficientarianism. (shrink)

A central question in contemporary ethics and political philosophy concerns which entities have moral status. In this article, I provide a detailed analysis of the view that moral status comes in degrees. I argue that degrees of moral status can be specified along two dimensions: (i) the weight of the reason to protect an entity’s morally significant rights and interests; and/or (ii) the rights and interests that are considered morally significant. And I explore some of the complexities that arise when (...) we link degrees of moral status to the weight of reasons to protect bundles and/or the content and size of these bundles, in particular regarding the attribution of moral status to nonparadigmatic entities (e.g. people with severe cognitive disabilities, children, embryos and foetuses, robots, non-human animals, ecosystems, and rivers). (shrink)

To the standard propositional modal system of provability logic constants are added to account for the arithmetical fixed points introduced by Bernardi-Montagna in [5]. With that interpretation in mind, a system LR of modal propositional logic is axiomatized, a modal completeness theorem is established for LR and, after that, a uniform arithmetical (Solovay-type) completeness theorem with respect to PA is obtained for LR.