In Democracy and the Claims of Nature, the leading thinkers in the fields of environmental, political, and social theory come together to discuss the tensions and sympathies of democratic ideals and environmental values. The prominent contributors reflect upon where we stand in our understanding of the relationship between democracy and the claims of nature. Democracy and the Claims of Nature bridges the gap between the often competing ideals of the two fields, leading to a greater understanding of each for the (...) other. (shrink)

The inaugural collection in an exciting new exchange between philosophers and geographers, this volume provides interdisciplinary approaches to the environment as space, place, and idea. Never before have philosophers and geographers approached each other's subjects in such a strong spirit of mutual understanding. The result is a concrete exploration of the human-nature relationship that embraces strong normative approaches to environmental problems.

Optogenetics and DREADDs (Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs) are important research tools in recent neurobiology. These tools allow unprecedented control over activity in specifically targeted neurons in behaving animals. Two approaches in philosophy of neuroscience, mechanism and ruthless reductionism, provide explicit accounts of experiments and results using tools like these, but each offers a different picture about how levels of mechanisms relate. I argue here that the ruthless reductionist’s direct mind‐to‐cellular/molecular activities linkages “in a single bound” better fits (...) with both the experimental designs using these tools and some of the scientists’ own judgments about their results than does the mechanist’s “nested hierarchies of mechanisms‐within‐mechanisms.” So at least some important work in current neuroscience appears to be ruthlessly reductive. Mechanism may not correctly characterize all current work in neuroscience, despite its recent popularity. (shrink)

Blindsight is the term commonly used to describe visually guided behaviour elicited by a stimulus falling within the scotoma (blind area) caused by a lesion of the striate cortex. Such is normally held to be unconscious and to be mediated by subcortical pathways involving the superior colliculus. Blindsight is of considerable theoretical importance since it suggests that destriate man is more like destriate monkey than had been previously believed and also because it supports the classical notion of two visual systems. (...) It is also of potential clinical importance, since it has been claimed recently that systematic practice in blindsight can lead to the recovery of normal visual function in patients with cortical lesions. From a review of the literature it is concluded that all of the phenomena of blindsight can be attributed either to light scatter into unimpaired parts of the visual field or to residual vision resulting from spared striate cortex. The possible contribution f other factors is also considered. It is concluded that blindsight studies have generally failed to control for such nonblindsight interpretations partly because of poor methodology and partly because of difficulties in defining the term. (shrink)

Three enduring models -- What constitutes human being? -- What is the ethical aim? -- What is owed each other? -- Human rights in light of childhood -- The generative family -- The art of ethical thinking.

On April 30, 1982, the Eleventh Session of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea endorsed the final version of the Draft Convention of the Law of the Sea by a vote of 130 to 4, with 17 abstentions.1 The Session met at UN Headquarters in New York from March 8 to April 30.2.

[John Dupré] This paper attacks some prominent contemporary attempts to provide reductive accounts of ever wider areas of human behaviour. In particular, I shall address the claims of sociobiology (or evolutionary psychology) to provide a universal account of human nature, and attempts to subsume ever wider domains of behaviour within the scope of economics. I shall also consider some recent suggestions as to how these approaches might be integrated. Having rejected the imperialistic ambitions of these approaches, I shall briefly (...) advocate a more pluralistic approach to the understanding of human behaviour, and one which leaves some space for the possibility of genuine human autonomy. /// [John O'Neill] One response to Dupré's criticism of rational choice theory's unifying aspirations is that it is aimed at over-ambitious versions of the theory. Immodesty about the scope of rational choice theory may look more plausible given suitable modesty in assumptions about the rational agent. The paper examines problems with one immodest version of the theory-public choice theory-and show how these shed light on problems in modest versions employing minimal assumptions about the preference structure of rational agents. However, while rational choice theory may fail in its unifying ambitions, I argue those aspirations are defensible. (shrink)

In his search for an integrating image of the human - and of the universe - to counter the dualisms and fragmentations that were the early 20th century's inheritance from modem philosophy, Scottish philosopher John Macmurray found himself forced to rethink the whole of western philosophy. Macmurray imdertook his project in the light of two defining features: he articulated his thinking within the confines of philosophical method, while implicitly taking his Christian faith as the gjn-oscope or point de (...) repere for his sense of the truth he was seeking. (shrink)

(1980). The development of attitudes to the wave-particle duality of light and quantum theory, 1900–1920. Annals of Science: Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 59-79.

The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill, published in two volumes in 1963, were well received by critics and scholars alike. The publication of these four volumes of later letters completes this edition of Mill's personal correspondence. These volumes contain over 1,800 letters, most never before published, and some sixty earlier letters that have come to light since the publication of the first two volumes of correspondence. The letters have been assembled from widely dispersed collections in the libraries (...) of fifty-eight institutions and of some thirty private collections in Britain and in other countries of the Commonwealth, Europe, and North America. In addition, many personal letters of which no originals sirvived have been located in contemporary periodicals or biographies of Mill's correspondence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Free Will’s Value: Criminal Justice, Pride, and Love by John LemosJohn DavenportLEMOS, John. Free Will’s Value: Criminal Justice, Pride, and Love. New York: Routledge, 2023. 284 pp. Cloth, $160.00It is a pleasure to read John Lemos’s latest work on moral free will, understood as the control needed for us to be morally responsible in “the just deserts sense.” Lemos is a clear writer who carefully (...) lays out the positions that he reviews and critiques. This book would be wonderful as a main text in a graduate seminar: The first six chapters critically address most of the main theories and moves in this wide field during the last twenty to twenty-five years, providing a very helpful overview while setting up Lemos’s own position. He advances an “indeterministic weightings” version of leeway-libertarianism about moral freedom that builds on both Robert Kane’s event-causal account and Robert Nozick’s older account of fixing the weight of practical considerations in the moment of choice. Lemos’s new account significantly refines the position that he defended against hard incompatiblism in his 2018 book. [End Page 721]Free Will’s Value also discusses responsibility in applied contexts, such as criminal justice and loving relationships. There are two chapters arguing that hard incompatibilists cannot save the “just deserts” aspect of criminal punishment or explain all the wrongness of taking the liberty of innocent persons mistakenly convicted. Their “public health quarantine” account of criminal justice will be utilitarian, and thus have a hard time justifying the beyond-reasonable-doubt standard for conviction. And, building on the critiques of compatibilism that he develops partly from Derk Pereboom and Bruce Waller, Lemos includes three chapters arguing that “axiological/pragmatist reasons” provide more evidence for libertarian free will than psychological evidence alone can.The final chapter in particular offers a novel argument that valuable sorts of interhuman loves need to involve self- or character-forming initiatives that are not primarily determined by factors beyond our control. The intrinsic value of some types of love, such as deep friendships—including romantic friendships—involve their being autonomous (my term), which in turn requires a kind of leeway-control. This involves arguing that “our will, effort, or a decision to love” is important to values achieved in sustaining loving relationships.Lemos’s own theory contends that Kane’s account of “self-forming actions” (SFAs) and “willings” (SFWs) in terms of dual “tryings” (or decisions) to do A or B in a fraught situation suffers from the “phenomenological problem” stated by Laura Ekstrom and Marc Balaguer, namely, that we do not normally experience fraught choices as involving such opposed tryings. This is even more evident, I believe, if we consider choices involving three or more salient options. Lemos is not convinced by Kane’s reply that the dual or multiple simultaneous efforts are usually unconscious, because he thinks responsibility for unconscious mental processes will (normally) trace to patterns of conscious choices made earlier in life. In fact, unconscious efforts, Lemos says, cannot meet even “plausible minimal compatibilist standards of responsibility” for elements of agency.I’m not convinced by this last claim, because it seems that an unconscious choice, C, could be responsive to (or counterfactually guided by) reasons relevant to C that the agent has considered in the past. Perhaps the problem is that “trying” is normally associated with attempting to act on an intention, but Kane uses it to describe the more elusive processes of agency involved in forming an intention via decision in the face of competing relevant options, which thereby incorporates motives into the intention. This sheds light on the further problem that it appears irrational to try to do multiple incompatible things at once. Pace Lemos, I think that Kane is right that “will-settling” is a special context in which it is not irrational for a single person’s agency to be engaged along dual pathways. Even if we do not call this “trying,” the agent’s interactions with the salient options are not like those of a detached spectator; they are volitional as well as evaluative. [End Page 722]Lemos’s account recognizes three loci... (shrink)

In Our Stories, John Martin Fischer offers readers a characteristically thoughtful and engaging presentation of his views on a variety of topics, most notably death, immortality and self-expression. Having come to this collection familiar primarily with Fischer's work on freedom and responsibility, I was impressed with the range of issues treated in this latest volume. While each essay is independently appealing, perhaps the most compelling aspect of Our Stories is its cohesiveness. Fischer discerns a variety of subtle connections among (...) the diverse array of subjects he treats; this imbues his work with a degree of continuity that is remarkable in light of the extensiveness of his subject matter. Here, I focus mainly on self-expression, and discuss other topics covered in Our Stories principally in relation to this central concept.According to Fischer, the value of self-expression is ‘the value of acting freely, or acting in such a way as to be morally responsible … this value is a kind of aesthetic value, or akin to an aesthetic value’. The sense of freedom at issue here does not require alternative possibilities; rather, it involves guidance control, which agents possess when their behaviour is appropriately responsive to reasons and they take ‘ownership’ of the causal mechanism that produces this behaviour. While the value of free action is, …. (shrink)

The purpose of this AV Column is to describe a physical paradox involving what seems to be an loophole in a well established physical law, the famous Second Law of Thermodynamics. The 2nd Law states that the amount of disorder (entropy) always either increases or remains constant for any isolated system of particles, whether they are gas molecules or light photons. An yet, as we will see, laser physicists seem to have provided us with a way of making the (...) 2nd Law work backwards for a system of photons, so that the disorder decreases. (shrink)

What is the effect of light as it measures the seasons? How does light leave different traces on the terrain—on a Pacific Island, in the Aegean Sea, high in the Alps, or in the forest? John Sallis considers the expansiveness of nature and the range of human vision in essays about the effect of light and luminosity on place. Sallis writes movingly of nature and the elements, employing an enormous range of philosophical, geographical, and historical knowledge. (...) Paintings and drawings by Alejandro A. Vallega illuminate the text, accentuating the interaction between light and environment. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION This volume of essays is meant as a tribute to Alistair Crombie by some of those who have studied with him. The occasion of its publication is ...

I use concepts of Karol Wojtyla’s personalism, especially the concept of subjectivity, to explain Newman’s personalism. There is a “turn to the subject” in Wojtyla, and there is a similar “turn to the subject” in Newman; and they explain each other. Thus Newman’s distinction between the theological intellect and the religious imagination, and his particular concern with the latter, is shown to be an expression of his personalism. I try not only to throw new light on Newman’s personalism, but (...) also to explain why his personalism, as Wojtyla’s, has been mistaken for subjectivism. I show that there is in Newman, as in Wojtyla, a unity of subjectivity and objectivity that secures his thought against subjectivism. (shrink)

The essay begins by recalling the words of Homer that to live is to behold the light of the sun. For it is the ‘elementals’ of sky, sun, and light that give all things to mortal beings, including time itself, beginning with the daily alternation between day and night. But contemporary commercial and scientific projects threaten to change all this. Whether it be through the launching of tens of thousands of communication satellites to fill the night sky or (...) the creation of a sulfuric blanket in the atmosphere to block the sun’s rays to combat global warming, what is threatened is our very relationship to the sun and to light. The essay thus argues that what is today needed is a new ‘politics of light’, one that would guard the clarity of the sky. Needed as well is a philosophy that attends to things beyond the human life-world, to the elementals of sun, sky, and light, but also to the invisibility at the heart of light itself. Appealing to some of the most recent scientific discoveries regarding the hyper-giganticness of the cosmos, the essay concludes that philosophy must attend to ‘phenomena’ whose nature is precisely to remain concealed, phenomena such as black holes, dark matter, and dark energy that are today thought to comprise an astonishing 95% of the matter and energy of the universe. Turned in this direction, the essay concludes, philosophy can perhaps reawaken the wonder that is at its very origin. (shrink)

In the late twelfth century the mystical philosopher Suhrawardi developed a metaphysics based on metaphysical light that combined the Islamic Neoplatonism of Avicenna with ideas and symbols drawn from Islamic mysticism, classical Platonism, and Iranian mythology. This book analyzes how Qutb al-Din Shirazi, an Iranian scientist and philosopher of the thirteenth century and a leading exponent of Suhrawardi's thought, understood Suhrawardi's metaphysics of light and how he applied it in his own writings. Also discussed are Shirazi's own views (...) on such subjects as the nature of existence, reincarnation and the transmigration of souls, and the spiritual universe known as the "World of Image." The book contains several appendices, including a detailed bibliography of Shirazi's writings and the text and translation of Shirazi's essay on the World of Image. (shrink)

Books reviewed in this article:Roger Crisp and Brad Hooker (eds), Well–being and Morality: essays in honour of James GriffinJames Griffin, Value JudgementJohn O’Neill, The Market: ethics, knowledge and politicsE. F. Paul, F. D. Miller and J. Paul (eds), Human FlourishingJoseph Raz, Engaging ReasonL. W. Sumner, Welfare, Happiness and Ethics.

The concept of the person, and the notion that the latter is an entity separate and distinct from other persons, has persisted as one of the more secure ‘givens’ of philosophical thought. We have very little difficulty, in observer language, in pointing to a person, describing his or her attributes, distinguishing him or her from other persons, etc. Likewise, it is ordinarily not much of a problem to subjectively experience, both sensorially and conceptually, the self – that is, to distinguish (...) in agent language ‘my person’ from the rest of the universe. The second of these two perspectives on the person defines the ‘I,’ ‘ego,’ or ‘identity.’ Several recent developments in experimental psychology and brain science – while not defeating the ordinary notion of the person on the merits of data per se – at least force a re-thinking of tacit assumptions basic to our sense of the concepts of both the person and personal identity. In this paper, I would like to show how the concept of the person needs revision, and at the same time to raise some objections to Shaffer's (1977) account of the consequences of brain bisection and brain transplant with respect to the fate of the person and his identity. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This dissertation evaluates the ethical challenges posed by the prospect of human germ line gene transfer . It argues that GLGT presents a new, unprecedented and complex ethical challenge. While GLGT has not yet been attempted with human beings, it has the potential not only to introduce changes into human nature that are radical and different, but also to substantially affect attitudes about human dignity and human rights. This dissertation focuses on the principled ethical arguments and the frameworks, both rational (...) and theological, which must frame the practice of GLGT in order for it to be used in a constructive manner. Additionally it assesses which applications of GLGT are ethically acceptable, taking into account the different goals that GLGT will serve, the means by which it is practiced and the research that is required to make it possible. ;Chapter One reviews the history of genetics and genetic science, locating GLGT in the context of the rapid development in genetic science and biotechnology. Chapter Two examines the history of the debates about genetic engineering and GLGT, with particular focus on the political, regulatory, and theological analyses of the 1970s--1980s. Chapter Three explores the theoretical frameworks utilized by proponents and opponents of GLGT. Utilizing categories provided by Kurt Bayertz, principled arguments are delineated and analyzed based on whether they represent a substantialist or a subjectivist approach to human nature and identity. The shortcomings of each framework taken individually, and the impasse reached by the two sides of the debate evidence the need for an expanded ethical framework. The expanded ethical framework is comprised of an enhanced critical approach that draws on the critical thought of Gerald McKenny and Michel Foucault and of an enhanced appreciation for human embodiment that draws on Pope John Paul II's theology of the body. Chapter Four applies the principles identified in Chapter Three in the course of examining: the possible goals for applications of GLGT technology; the ethics of the means by which germ line changes could be introduced; and whether and how GLGT can be regulated. (shrink)

This response addresses a series of themes from my writings on imagination, on art, and on ancient philosophy.

Philosophy and Science are subject to conflicting interpretations, such as the rules of positivism and analytic thought. Bernard Lonergan and Gilles Deleuze have both assessed such issues in complementary fashion. This book examines their arguments through the application of mathematical theories and Buddhist-Christian ethics in an attempt to bridge the religious-secularist divide exacerbated by postmodernism.

A major part of Einstein’s 1905 light quantum paper is devoted to arguing that high frequency heat radiation bears the characteristic signature of a microscopic energy distribution of independent, spatially localized components. The content of his light quantum proposal was precarious in that it contradicted the great achievement of nineteenth century physics, the wave theory of light and its accommodation in electrodynamics. However the methods used to arrive at it were both secure and familiar to Einstein in (...) 1905. A mainstay of Einstein’s research in statistical physics, extending to his earliest publications of 1901 and 1902, had been the inferring of the microscopic constitution of systems from their macroscopic properties. In his statistical work of 1905, Einstein dealt with several thermal systems consisting of many, independent, spatially localized components. They were the dilute sugar solutions of his doctoral dissertation and suspended particles of his Brownian motion paper. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to consider the ethical, political, and epistemological dimensions of upward mobility, through higher education, from a personal perspective. I explore some of the contradictions exposed in my experience pursuing aphilosophy Ph.D., in light of scholarship highlighting challenges for low socio-economic status (SES) undergraduate students. I evaluate the proposal from the philosopher Jennifer M. Morton (2019) that low-SES students need ‘clear-eyed ethical narratives’ to navigate higher education. I argue that, in order to develop these (...) narratives, low-SES graduate students must self-conceive in a way that incorporates ‘oppositional consciousness’. (shrink)

There is a single unified conception of religious faith in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and Concluding Unscientific Postscript: existential faith is absolute trust in an eschatological promise, i.e. a miraculous realization of ethical ideals that is beyond all human power to accomplish or even predict. Faith in this sense has the precondition of "infinite resignation," which is a purified state of ethical willing in which the agent accepts her/his own inability to actualize the ethical, outwardly or inwardly. This condition is (...) explored extensively by Climacus in this discussion of "existential pathos," which shows why the resigned agent has to trust in an absolute source of eschatological possibilities to guarantee the ultimate meaningfulness of his/her ethical striving. The distinction between Religiousness A and B, along with different senses of "the absurd" and "the absolute paradox" can all be explained in terms of different kinds of eschatological possibility. /// Segundo o autor do artigo, há uma única concepção do religioso presente nas obras Temor e Tremor e Postscript Conclusivo e Não-Científico de Søren Kierkegaard, concepção essa fundada na ideia de que a fé existencial consiste numa confiança absoluta na promessa escatológica, ou seja, numa realização miraculosa de ideais éticos que estão para além de todo e qualquer poder humano de os realizar ou mesmo sequer de os antecipar. Neste sentido, a fé tem como condição prévia a "resignação infinita", a qual consiste num estado purificado de vontade ética em que o agente aceita a sua própria incapacidade de actualizar o ético, seja isso de forma exterior ou interior. Esta condição é extensivamente explorada por Climacus na sua discussão do "pathos existencial", o qual mostra precisamente por que razão o agente resignado tem que confiar numa fonte absoluta de possibilidades escatológicas em ordem a poder fazer face ao mais radical sem-sentido inerente ao seu processo de actualização do ético. Assim, o artigo pretende mostrar até que ponto a distinção kierkegaardiana entre Religiosidade A e B, bem como os diferentes sentidos do "absurdo" e do "paradoxo absolute" podem ser explicados em termos dos diferentes tipos de possibilidade escatológica que o pensamento pode identificar. (shrink)

Campbell came to the Klamath marshes, a wetland in southern Oregon formed by three ancient, shallow lakes, a vast emptiness that is paradoxically home to an amazing diversity of life, of untold thousands of birds both migratory and resident, of all the interconnected life forms that make up one of North America's richest natural environments.".

This paper argues that structural elements of Bonaventure’s illumination theory significantly parallel Kantian transcendental philosophy. The question of whetherand what elements of transcendental thought can be found in Bonaventure’s philosophy is potentially instructive both for understanding medieval influences on transcendental philosophy and for raising the philosophical question of why substantially similar premises and thought-patterns result in substantially different solutions. After defining what I mean by “transcendental philosophy” and justifying that definition I turn to Bonaventure’s illumination theory and highlight thought patterns (...) parallel to Kantian transcendental philosophy that emerge in Bonaventure’s epistemology. Finally, I discuss how their differences help us to understand the variations in medieval and modern solutions to what is sometimes termed “the transcendental problem.”. (shrink)

Levack, John Having just read another poem about how a city-bred agnostic finds God after spending a weekend away in the Australian bush..