Humanist and scientific analyses of the Anthropocene concept may be distinctive as a coinvestigation across disciplinary borders. While scientists only in 2023 hypothesized the Anthropocene’s inception in the 1950s (as measured by atomic residue), humanists have for several decades been investigating the concept as a probable reality and argue for its longer chronology. The six books reviewed here identify the early modern period, especially the eighteenth century, as a convincing moment of transition, indicating a longer era of relevant anthropogenic activity. (...) This periodization has important implications for addressing the ongoing environmental crisis, which will require both humanist and scientific knowledge. (shrink)

This book, first published in 1990, takes a critical look at the major assumptions which support critical thinking programs and discovers many unresolved questions which threaten their viability. John McPeck argues that some of these assumptions are incoherent or run counter to common sense, while others are unsupported by the available empirical evidence. This title will be of interest to students of the philosophy of education.

Over the past 40 years, scholars and practitioners of public relations have often cast public relations workers in the role of the public relations-person-as-corporate-conscience. This work, however, maintains that this construct is so problematic that invoking it is of negligible use in addressing ethical issues that emerge during a crisis. In fact, a complex crisis, such as the Jahi McMath “brain death” case at Children’s Hospital Oakland, demonstrates the need to abandon the PRPaCC construct to better engage affected stakeholders, including (...) “outsiders” to the organization, who often determine whether an organization is facing a crisis. Through an examination of both the concept of the PRPaCC and the McMath crisis, this work makes the case for moving beyond the PRPaCC construct in favor of a more modest role for the public relations person: facilitating widespread ethical deliberation and discussion throughout an organization, potentially helping the organization alleviate concerns that contribute to crises. (shrink)

_A new theory of how and why we cooperate, drawing from economics, political theory, and philosophy to challenge the conventional wisdom of game theory_ Game theory explains competitive behavior by working from the premise that people are self-interested. People don’t just compete, however; they also cooperate. John Roemer argues that attempts by orthodox game theorists to account for cooperation leave much to be desired. Unlike competing players, cooperating players take those actions that they would like others to take—which Roemer (...) calls “Kantian optimization.” Through rigorous reasoning and modeling, Roemer demonstrates a simpler theory of cooperative behavior than the standard model provides. (shrink)

Continuous recordings of brain electrical activity were obtained from a group of 176 patients throughout surgical procedures using general anesthesia. Artifact-free data from the 19 electrodes of the International 10/20 System were subjected to quantitative analysis of the electroencephalogram (QEEG). Induction was variously accomplished with etomidate, propofol or thiopental. Anesthesia was maintained throughout the procedures by isoflurane, desflurane or sevoflurane (N = 68), total intravenous anesthesia using propofol (N = 49), or nitrous oxide plus narcotics (N = 59). A set (...) of QEEG measures were found which reversibly displayed high heterogeneity of variance between four states as follows: (1) during induction; (2) just after loss of consciousness (LOC); (3) just before return of consciousness (ROC); (4) just after ROC. Homogeneity of variance across all agents within states was found. Topographic statistical probability images were compared between states. At LOC, power increased in all frequency bands in the power spectrum with the exception of a decrease in gamma activity, and there was a marked anteriorization of power. Additionally, a significant change occurred in hemispheric relationships, with prefrontal and frontal regions of each hemisphere becoming more closely coupled, and anterior and posterior regions on each hemisphere, as well as homologous regions between the two hemispheres, uncoupling. All of these changes reversed upon ROC. Variable resolution electromagnetic tomography (VARETA) was performed to localize salient features of power anteriorization in three dimensions. A common set of neuroanatomical regions appeared to be the locus of the most probable generators of the observed EEG changes. (shrink)

This review of Martin Jay’s recent published collection of essays examines his ongoing rethinking, supplementation, and revision of central themes—the negative and positive dialectics of historical totalization, the varieties and uses of conceptions of experience, the nature of visual cultures and scopic regimes, and the ambiguities of truth-construction in the public realm—that have been the focus of his major works since the 1970s. It argues that his more recent work indicates a gradual shift toward an affirmation of the kinds of (...) paratactic and deconstructive thinking of Adorno and Derrida as models for producing appropriate forms of historical consciousness and historical critique in the present, and it raises the question of how the issues of historical truth-telling, consensual collective identity, ethical action, and the cultural role of the critical intellectual are reformulated in this process. (shrink)

Introduction Marxism is a set of ideas from which sprang particular approaches to economics, sociology, anthropology, political theory, literature, art, ...

In light of recent reevaluations of the work of Hugo Grotius, this essay analyzes the respective roles of Francisco de Vitoria and Grotius in the construction of the “Grotian tradition” of international law and human rights. In contrast to conventional accounts which understand the two within a progression, this essay argues that Vitoria and Grotius can alternatively be understood as representing two distinct strains of international law and ethics, forms of which persist to this day. The first is that strain (...) which privileges local governance based on the natural law and which insists that international law must have a moral or equitable valence (represented today by liberal internationalism). The second, competing strain which, with its focus on “neutral” rules of commerce and international order, presumes that it need not have such a valence (essentially, neoliberalism). In the process, this essay examines the role of the natural law in Vitoria’s thought, which for him was most often a reason against interference or intervention, not for. The essay also highlights the role of the Eighty Years’ War between the Dutch United Provinces and Spain in the development of Grotius’s understanding of sovereignty, in contrast to the Thirty Years’ War which is given more prominence in conventional accounts. (shrink)

The topic of the present article is a conceptualization of the notion of contemplation and will develop its reflection around three principal questions: What is the role of desire in contemplation? Is it we who contemplate, or the god who contemplates in us? What is the relation between contemplation and the rest of human life?

A comprehensive look at the intellectual and cultural innovations of the Weimar period During its short lifespan, the Weimar Republic witnessed an unprecedented flowering of achievements in many areas, including psychology, political theory, physics, philosophy, literary and cultural criticism, and the arts. Leading intellectuals, scholars, and critics—such as Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, and Martin Heidegger—emerged during this time to become the foremost thinkers of the twentieth century. Even today, the Weimar era remains a vital resource for (...) new intellectual movements. In this incomparable collection, Weimar Thought presents both the specialist and the general reader a comprehensive guide and unified portrait of the most important innovators, themes, and trends of this fascinating period. The book is divided into four thematic sections: law, politics, and society; philosophy, theology, and science; aesthetics, literature, and film; and general cultural and social themes of the Weimar period. The volume brings together established and emerging scholars from a remarkable array of fields, and each individual essay serves as an overview for a particular discipline while offering distinctive critical engagement with relevant problems and debates. Whether used as an introductory companion or advanced scholarly resource, Weimar Thought provides insight into the rich developments behind the intellectual foundations of modernity. (shrink)

Several recent articles raise an issue long unaddressed in the medical literature: physician compliance with patient or family requests for futile or ineffectice therapy. Although they agree philosophically that such treatment ought not be given, most physicians have followed the course described by Stanley Fiel, in which a young patient dying of cystic fibrosis was accepted “for evaluation” by a transplant center even though he has already passed the threshold of viability as a candidate for a heart-lung transplant. Dr. Fiel (...) reported this action was taken not in the hope of doing the transplant but so that the family could assure themselves they had done “everything possible.” The patient, after a long and stressful cross-country flight, arrived at the hospital in respiratory failure. He died soon thereafter far from home and familiar surroundings. (shrink)

This essay seeks to link management action with business ethics. It utilizes two conceptual models of decision making to examine the important processes of information gathering and information processing. This analysis is then related to the ethical aspects of a business decision to help explain differences in the selection of ethical criteria.

This article defines a public good, arguing that higher education should be considered a public good. This requires moving away from an orthodox economistic understanding of public goods. It also requires understanding the relationship between higher education as both a private good and a public good to the extent that it promotes individual flourishing necessary to the public good.

Emerald City: The Birth and Evolution of an Indian Gemstone Industry. By Lawrence A. Babb. Albany: SUNY Press, 2013. Pp. xii+ 220, 33 figs. $80 ; $26.95.

The authors present a materialist analysis of the effects of neoliberalism in education. Specifically, they contend that neoliberalism is a form of cultural invasion that begets necrophilia. Neoliberalism is necrophilous in promoting a cultural desire to fix fluid systems and processes. Such desire manufactures both individuals known and culturally felt experiences of alienation which are, it is argued, symptomatic of an imperialist nostalgia that permeates educational policy and practice. The authors point to ‘unschooling in schools’ as a mechanism for resisting (...) the necrophilous tendencies of contemporary formations of education. (shrink)

Research has shown that in the private sector, values-based ethics programs are more effective than compliance-based ethics programs. Since religious affiliations are a significant driver of values-based behavior, it is appropriate to investigate the means of formally applying a values schema rather than allowing such factors to determine the pedagogy on an ad hoc basis. This paper uses the example of the Catholic Church’s Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae as a guide for designing and implementing a values-based ethics course to (...) fulfil the educational ethics requirements to sit for the CPA exam. A classroom strategy is presented for use that helps students select priorities that align their values with a successful career in accounting. The paper then addresses the process of teaching students how to address and reconcile individual values, organizational culture, social mores, and the client’s expectations. (shrink)

As a work of a scholarship it seems to me to compare favourably with the best books on the subject, including those by Marcus Singer and Onora Nell.' Prof.

This essay argues that the book of Ruth's reopening of Israel's history and national mythology functions in such a way as to redeem, as it were, the plight of the subaltern Moabite—a plight begun with the daughters of Lot in Genesis 19. A parallel is then drawn with the 1619 Project, the recent journalistic project which posits the entire historical sweep of African slavery in North America since 1619 as the defining arc of the United States' founding. As theoretical frames, (...) the essay draws on the work of literary critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (including her concept of “moral love”) and political philosopher Arash Abizadeh. In so doing, the essay illustrates how a “functionalist” approach to biblical ethics that balances the content of the biblical narrative with attention to how the text functions in its broader context can provide guidance for contemporary ethical application. (shrink)

A simple numerical procedure is presented for the problem of estimating the parameters of models for the distribution of eggs oviposited in a host. The modelling is extended to incorporate both host density and time dependence to produce a remarkably parsimonious structure with only seven parameters to describe a data set of over 3,000 observations. This is further refined using a mixed model to accommodate several large outliers. Both models show that the level of superparasitism declines with increasing host density, (...) and the rate declines over time. It is proposed that the differing behaviours represented by the mixed model may reflect a balance between behavioural strategies of different selective benefit. (shrink)

Professor Roemer's goal in this book is to give a rigorous view of classical Marxian economic theory by presenting specific analytic models. The theory is not extended to deal with new problems, but it is deepened: Marxian theory is given micro-foundations and upon those foundations the author begins to rebuild a tightly constructed Marxian economics. The book begins, after a methodological introduction, with an examination of the Marxian notion of equilibrium and the theory of exploitation, and goes on to deal (...) with the theory of the falling rate of profit. The next section explores one of the points made in the first section of the book, that the Marxian theory of exploitation can be constructed completely independently of the labor theory of value as a theory of exchange. Technical study of this problem allows comment on various issues, such as the relative importance of 'marginal utilities' and 'class struggle' in determining relative prices. The final part examines models of various Marxian concepts. (shrink)