This article delves into ecopedagogy, grounded in the work of the Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire on popular education and critical pedagogies, to teach students to critically deconstruct the subjectivity and transformability of our world (all humans, human populations) with the rest of Earth (i.e., rest of Nature). As Friere emphasized humans’ unique characteristic of ‘unfinishedness’ with abilities of self-reflexivity through our histories and goal-setting from our dreams, (environmental) pedagogues must teach toward deepened and widened understandings for praxis grounded in socio-environmental (...) justice and planetary sustainability, including disrupting anthropocentricism. This ‘unfinishedness’ has made humans agents of world-Earth unsustainably and dominance in constructing the Anthropocene, but also allows for possibilities of transformation to counter them. I argue that ecopedagogy is essential in disrupting the following falsely taught ideologies that justifies the Anthroposphere: (1) false commonsense that separates environmental and social violence (i.e., socio-environmental violence) and instills anthropocentrism that separates humans from the rest of Nature (i.e., world-Earth distancing); (2) fatalism that extinguishes hope of ending humans’ acts of unsustainable environmental violence; (3) ‘development’ for sustaining hegemony and planetary unsustainability (i.e., Development rather than development); and (4) epistemological dominance that legitimizes the first three ideologies given (e.g., epistemologies of the North). (shrink)

A key aspect of teaching ‘development’ is understanding the conundrums and tensions between balance and imbalance with constructs of global and...

As a full-time foreign faculty member in the Chinese Normal university system for the past five years, I analyze the contested terrain of being a critical, Freirean educator/researcher as an insider and outsider of Chinese and Western academic systems and societies overall. This autobiographical analysis is within the contexts of China’s academic focus on raising their global higher education rankings, along with self-reflectivity of my own multiple, often-conflicting identities and Western-centric Orientalism, theorized by Edward Said, in my legitimization of academic (...) work. The following themes are analyzed through critical and Freirean frameworks: pursuit for top rankings coinciding and conflicting with scholarship breadth and depth, academic freedom, and politics of education; constructs of “harmony” that grounds teaching and research; and select pedagogical commonalities and differences between the East, the Global South, and the West. The article delves into preconceptions, including my own,... (shrink)

This article will discuss Paulo Freire’s global influences on environmental pedagogies and argue that ecopedagogical reinventions are essential for ‘quality’ education, as touted in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #4, for global, all-inclusive ‘development’ that is planetarily sustainable. The politics of how ‘development’ is taught or not taught to be critically read linguistically and dialogically will be problematized through Freire’s work, and reinventions of his work, on ecopedagogy. As Freire was a pedagogue of critical literacy, ecopedagogical literacy widens (...) ‘reading the word to read the world’ (all humans, human populations) to read Earth to read the world as part of Earth. Such reading is not anthropocentric. The article will first describe Freire’s influence on reinventing environmental pedagogies, including education for (un)sustainable development (ESD), with specific discussions on how language of ‘development’ and corresponding (un)sustainability is framed. These influences from Freire will then be discussed through his de/re/constructions of citizenship, utopia and education, and globalization. Throughout the article, I will argue the need for teaching ecopedagogical literacy with ecolinguistics is essential to better understand the politics of language and (non)hierarchical dialogue which influence how ‘development’ goals are constructed, including the SDGs. (shrink)

The points of inspiration—metaphorically given by Lauren Ila Misiaszek as illuminations or ‘glow[ing]’ as she utilizes MacLure’s (2010) work—from reading the SI’s authors’ analyses and reinventions...

The collection of articles in this special issue (SI) represents diverse reinventions of Freire’s work, from before he wrote his most famous book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), to the present....

Michael A. PetersBeijing Normal University, Beijing, PR China;There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds– Gregory Bateson (1972, p. 492)While there are classical anteced...

Two strategies for using a model as “null” are distinguished. Null modeling evaluates whether a process is causally responsible for a pattern by testing it against a null model. Baseline modeling measures the relative significance of various processes responsible for a pattern by detecting deviations from a baseline model. When these strategies are conflated, models are illegitimately privileged as accepted until rejected. I illustrate this using the neutral theory of ecology and draw general lessons from this case. First, scientists cannot (...) draw certain conclusions using null modeling. Second, these conclusions follow using baseline modeling, but doing so requires more evidence. (shrink)

This article reports the findings of a survey examining if there are gender and career stage differences between male and female practitioners regarding ethical judgment. The results show that, on average, females adopted a more strict ethical stance than their male counterparts on 7 out of 19 vignettes. Males on the other hand, demonstrated a more ethical stance than their female counterparts on 2 out of 19 vignettes. The results furthermore indicate there is a significant difference in ethical judgment across (...) career stages. Overall, it appears that practitioners in later career stages display higher ethical judgment than practitoners in lower career stages. Implications are provided for both practitioners and academicians. (shrink)

The purpose of retracting published papers is to maintain the integrity of academic research. Recent work in research ethics has devoted important attention to how to improve the system of paper retraction. In this context, the focus has primarily been on how to handle fraudulent or flawed research papers and how to encourage the retraction of papers based on honest mistakes. Less attention has been paid to whether papers that report unethical research—for example, research performed without appropriate concern for the (...) moral rights and interests of the research participants—should be retracted. The aim of this paper is to examine to what extent retraction policies of academic journals and publishers address retractions of unethical research and to discuss critically various policy options and the reasons for accepting them. The paper starts by reviewing retraction policies of academic publishers. The results show that many journals do not have explicit policies for how to handle unethical research. Against this background, we then discuss four normative arguments for why unethical research should be retracted. In conclusion, we suggest a retraction policy in light of our empirical and normative investigations. (shrink)

Most accounts of mechanism discovery have focused on mechanisms that perform the work required to produce a phenomenon. These mechanisms are often subject to regulation by control mechanisms. Using the example of the molecular motor dynein, this paper examines one process by which such control mechanisms are discovered—the process by which researchers, after identifying additional components required to produce the phenomenon but not directly involved in the work of producing that phenomenon, investigate both how these components act on the original (...) mechanism and how they do so in response to measurements of conditions relevant to the operation of the controlled mechanism. (shrink)

Digital technology, including artificial intelligence, is having a dramatic impact on the professions of medicine, law, journalism, finance, and others. Some suggest that clergy will also be affected. We describe recent progress in designing artificially intelligent systems, suggesting that this is possible, perhaps even likely. We investigate ways in which technology currently is affecting ministry and outline some plausible scenarios in which digital systems could supplement or supplant clergy in some areas, specifically preaching and pastoral care. We also raise some (...) theological issues raised by the use of digital systems in ministry. (shrink)

Taking an analytic and historical approach, this work develops and defends Althusserian critical theory. This theory, it is argued, produces knowledge of how a particular class of people, in a particular time, in a particular place, is dominated, oppressed, or exploited. Moreover, without relying on a general notion of human emancipation, concrete critical theory can suggest political means for the alleviation of these conditions. Because it puts Althusser’s ideas in dialogue with contemporary social science and philosophy, the book as a (...) whole makes contributions to Althusser studies, to Anglo-American political philosophy, and to current debates in the philosophy of the social sciences. (shrink)

In the fall of 1869, the first of eight students set off from the tiny Sadowara Domain in southeastern Kyushu to pursue study in America and Europe. Overshadowed by more famous peers from other domains, the Sadowara students have been all but forgotten, and their lives abroad remain an untold story. Yet they played an important role in the early development of Japanese studies in the United States. Enrolling at diverse institutions mostly in the Northeast, six of the students came (...) to form a close relationship with Yale’s university librarian, a philologist named Addison Van Name. Inspired by his new friends to study the Japanese language, within a year Van Name was offering America’s first college course in Japanese, and he quickly began to produce scholarship on Japan and its language, literature, and history. By the mid-1870s, the Sadowara students had returned to their home country, where their subsequent careers constituted a microcosm of the paradox and transformation of the early Meiji period. Van Name maintained contact with his Japanese friends, and through this long-distance relationship succeeded in building America’s first significant Japanese library collection: a 3,000-volume collection of Edo and early Meiji titles that still survives today. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

How is a legitimate state possible? Obedience, coercion and intrusion are three ideas that seem inseparable from all government and seem to render state authority presumptively illegitimate. This book exposes three fallacies inspired by these ideas and in doing so challenges assumptions shared by liberals, libertarians, cultural conservatives, moderates and Marxists. In three clear and tightly argued essays William Edmundson dispels these fallacies and shows that living in a just state remains a worthy ideal. This is an important book (...) for all philosophers, political scientists and legal theorists as well as other readers interested in the views of Rawls, Dworkin and Nozick, many of whose central ideas are subjected to rigorous critique. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper, I outline two concerns regarding Avner de Shalit’s proposal for a public reflective equilibrium. Firstly, de Shalit's work suggests a division between the philosopher and the people. We, therefore, need to clarify what the relation between the philosopher and the public is. Secondly, who is the ‘public’ that de Shalit is discussing? By bringing de Shalit's work into contact with the work of Jacques Rancière, this paper will deepen the question who the ‘people’ or ‘public’ in (...) de Shalit's work are, and how would a public reflective equilibrium allow for the implicit democratic vision that de Shalit believes it has. (shrink)

To avoid potential abuse and respect patient autonomy, physicians have a moral obligation to obtain informed consent before performing any significant medical intervention. To give informed consent, a patient must be competent, understand her condition, options and their expected risks and benefits and must freely and expressly consent to one of those options. Shlomo Cohen challenges this conception of informed consent by constructing cases based on Edmund Gettier’s classic counterexamples to traditional theories of knowledge. In this paper, I argue Cohen-style (...) cases are not genuine threats to the concept of informed consent, however they provide an interesting challenge to theories of conscientious objection. (shrink)

Eleonore Stump and Katherin Rogers have recently defended the doctrine of divine timelessness in separate essays, arguing that the doctrine is consistent with libertarian free will and that timeless divine knowledge is providentially useful. I show that their defenses do not succeed; a doctrine of eternity having these features cannot be saved.

First published in 1840, this two-volume treatise by Cambridge polymath William Whewell remains significant in the philosophy of science. The work was intended as the 'moral' to his three-volume History of the Inductive Sciences, which is also reissued in this series. Building on philosophical foundations laid by Immanuel Kant and Francis Bacon, Whewell opens with the aphorism 'Man is the Interpreter of Nature, Science the right interpretation'. Volume 1 contains the majority of Whewell's section on 'ideas', in which he (...) investigates the philosophy underlying a range of different disciplines, including pure, classificatory and mechanical sciences. Whewell's work upholds throughout his belief that the mind was active and not merely a passive receiver of knowledge from the world. A key text in Victorian epistemological debates, notably challenged by John Stuart Mill and his System of Logic, Whewell's treatise merits continued study and discussion in the present day. (shrink)

This paper traces the intellectual development of the workplace privacy construct in the course of American thinking. The role of technological development in this process is examined, particularly in regard to the information gathering/dissemination dilemmas faced by employers and employees alike. The paper concludes with some preliminary considerations toward a theory of workplace privacy.

Récurrente sous différentes formes dans le domaine de la lexicométrie, l’analyse cooccurrentielle vise à dévoiler les attractions lexicales qui opèrent dans un texte en restituant un état intermédiaire entre la séquence textuelle et l’inventaire lexical, état qui doit combiner l’explicitation syntagmatique de l’une avec la hiérarchisation statistique de l’autre. Pour dépasser les résultats des méthodes de cooccurrence classiques et identifier des systèmes cooccurrentiels plus complexes à l’oeuvre dans le texte, il s’avère nécessaire de substituer à l’approche analytique des associations lexicales (...) une vue synthétique de ces attractions prééminentes en contexte. (shrink)

One way in which philosophy of science can perform a valuable normative function for science is by showing characteristic errors made in scientific research programs and proposing ways in which such errors can be avoided or corrected. This paper examines two errors that have commonly plagued research in biology and psychology: 1) functional localization errors that arise when parts of a complex system are assigned functions which these parts are not themselves able to perform, and 2) vacuous functional explanations in (...) which one provides an analysis that does account for the inputs and outputs of a system but does not employ the same set of functions to produce this output as does the natural system. These two kinds of error usually arise when researchers limit their investigation to one type of evidence. Historically, correction of these errors has awaited researchers who have employed the opposite type of evidence. This paper explores the tendency to commit these errors by examining examples from historical and contemporary science and proposes a dialectical process through which researchers can avoid or correct such errors in the future. (shrink)

‘[I]ntrospection’ is just a convenient word to describe our way of knowing what is going on in our own mind, and anyone convinced that we know—at least sometimes—what is going on in our own mind and therefore, that we have a mind and, therefore, that we are not zombies, must believe that introspection is the answer we are looking for. I, too, believe in introspection.

At the end of the 1990s, Brazil was faced with a potentially explosive HIV/AIDS epidemic. Through an innovative and multifaceted campaign, and despite initial resistance from multinational pharmaceutical companies, the government of Brazil was able to negotiate price reductions for HIV medications and develop local production capacity, thereby averting a public health disaster. Using interview data and document analysis, the authors show that the exercise of corporate social responsibility can be viewed in practice as a dynamic negotiation and an interaction (...) between multiple actors. Action undertaken in terms of voluntary CSR alone may be insufficient. This finding highlights the importance of a strong role for national governments and international organizations to pressure companies to perform better. (shrink)

This study examines the effects of ethical pressure on management accountants' perceptions of organizational-professional conflict, and related work outcomes. It was hypothesized that organizational pressure to engage in unethical behavior would increase perceived organizational-professional conflict, and that this perceived conflict would reduce organizational commitment and job satisfaction, and increase the likelihood of employee turnover. A survey was mailed to a random sample of Certified Management Accountants to assess perceptions of the relevant variables. The results of a structural equations model indicated (...) that, as hypothesized, ethical pressure was associated with higher levels of perceived organizational-professional conflict. Also as hypothesized, higher levels of conflict were associated with lower levels of organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Finally, lower levels of commitment and satisfaction were associated with higher turnover intentions. (shrink)

In this paper, I approach the trolley problem from a different angle, and align the perspective with non-Western models of philosophy as instruction for life. I argue that the trolley problem is an...