The last two decades have seen the proliferation of the empirical study of philosophy. This dissertation defends the practice and argues that to understand the way contingent features of the practice of philosophy affect the epistemic standing of philosophers, we need to draw upon a wider and more varied set of empirical data than is sometimes supposed. To explore this, the dissertation focuses on two places where the practices of the discipline of philosophy have an effect on the epistemology of (...) philosophy. -/- First, the dissertation discusses the interaction between notable works of philosophy and their readers. In particular, it critiques the method of defending the epistemic standing of philosophers through careful examination of notable works of philosophy to discern the methods in the text. Ultimately this method is epistemically unmotivated. It is instead far more important to study how people have interacted and reacted to works of philosophy. -/- Second, the dissertation defends the use of lexicography in philosophy. Using "intuition" as a case study, the dissertation argues metasemantically and lexicographically that philosophers often use common words with meanings unique to philosophy. -/- Through both discussions it is argued that experimental philosophers and epistemologists of philosophy need to drastically expand the sorts of data they collect and consider in their theorizing. -/- ​. (shrink)

After a brief survey of arguments for a unitary particle theory of matter, offered by the writer in previous publications, the following new items are discussed. (1) The wave part of the dual aspect of matter, resting on the translation formula λ=h/p, is not covariant in the nonrelativistic domain. And relativistically, it is untenable not only on methodological grounds, but because it leads to obvious contradictions to elementary experience, e.g., in the equilibrium between a material oscillator and radiation. (2) The (...) photon story as usually presented is rectified historically and factually. (3) The previous derivation by the writer of quantum mechanical theory from a nonquantal background is supplemented, in order to be conclusive, by the postulate that the general probability relation is to become the ordinary addition law in the average. (4) Quotations from the writings of prominant dualists, intended by the latter to support their ideology, disclose a fantastic disarray of pseudophilosophical standpoints which can be cleared up only by repudiating the alleged dual nature of matter and of light and by ceasing to constantly mix up the contrast between particles and fields with that between particles and waves, and by returning to a strictly unitary aspect. (shrink)

(1) The idea that diffraction of matter particles can only be understood in terms of a temporary wave transformation or 'double manifestation' is an uneconomical ad hoc hypothesis, shattered already in 1923 by the unitary quantum theory of diffraction of Duane which in 1926 became part of the quantum mechanics, with a statistical interpretation of wave-like appearances. (2) Bohr's re-interpretation of Heisenberg's uncertainty of prediction as an indeterminacy of existence rests on an illegitimate literal translation of a wave result into (...) particle language which is at variance with experience as well as with the statistical interpretation. (3) The fact that one can transform the simple and unitary particle mechanics into a complicated wavelike form is only a weak substitute for genuine dualism -- as if one would see dualism in the transformability from the geo- to the heliocentric reference system. (4) The strongest argument against a symmetry of the particle and the wave theory of matter is the explainability of the former in terms of simple postulates of invariance, leaving the wave formalism as a purely ad hoc construction. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell in “New Hopes for a Changing World” writes the following passage: “The science of economics has been wrapped around by the theorists in a series of many veils, which have caused the plain man to suppose that there must be something indecent about its naked form. I think that the only thing to do in view of this situation is to begin at the beginning with matters of such simplicity that the reader may be indignant at finding (...) them mentioned …”. (shrink)

The Bohr-Heisenberg doctrine of wave-particle duality has been attacked in the past for its methodical defects, over-complication, internal contradictions, its positivistic phenomenalism, etc. The present investigation shows that duality, the doctrine of equivalence of the particle picture and the wave picture of matter, is untenable since its wave part leads to empirically wrong results in the relativistic domain, and violates the postulate of independence of the arbitrary choice of reference system in the non-relativistic realm. Therefore, when methodical objections were never (...) quite conclusive, the physical failure of the duality idea seals its fate irrefutably, together with all its pseudo-philosophical implications. (shrink)

The “land community” (or “biotic community”) that features centrally in Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic has typically been equated with the concept of “ecosystem.” Moreover, some have challenged this central Leopoldean concept given the multitude of meanings of the term “ecosystem” and the changes the term has undergone since Leopold’s time (see, e.g., Shrader-Frechette 1996). Even one of Leopold’s primary defenders, J. Baird Callicott, asserts that there are difficulties in identifying the boundaries of ecosystems and suggests that we recognize (...) that their boundaries are determined by scientific questions ecologists pose (Callicott 2013). I argue that we need to rethink Leopold’s concept of land community in the following ways. First, we should recognize that Leopold’s views are not identical to those of his contemporaries (e.g., Clements, Elton), although they resemble those of some subsequent ecologists, including some of our contemporaries (e.g., O’Neill 2001, Post et al. 2007, Hastings and Gross 2012). Second, the land community concept does not map cleanly onto the concept of “ecosystem”; it also incorporates elements of the “community” concept in community ecology by emphasizing the interactions between organisms and not just the matter/energy flow of the ecosystem concept. Third, the boundary question can be illuminated by considering some of the recent literature on the nature of biological individuals (in particular, Odenbaugh 2007; Hamilton, Smith, and Haber 2009; Millstein 2009), focusing on concentrations of causal relations as determinative of the boundaries of the land community qua individual. There are challenges to be worked out, particularly when the interactions of community members do not map cleanly onto matter/energy flows, but I argue that these challenges can be resolved. The result is a defensible land community concept that is ontologically robust enough to be a locus of moral obligation while being consistent with contemporary ecological theory and practice. (shrink)

Barkdull examines the land ethic in the contexts of just war theory, economic liberalism, and international environmental law, offering a new outlook for the behavior of states in matters affecting ecosystems.

Elemental matter.--From element to plant and animal tissue.--Tissue plant and animal.--The spirit of search.--The method of search.--The need for inquiry.--Difference.--The fluidity of tissue.--Continuous oneness of nature and man.--Definition.--Change of man.--The law of activity.--Life of man.--The growth of water.--The origin of cancer.--Land and houses.--Training.--Acitvity of body.

This important book on Land Education offers critical analysis of the paths forward for education on Indigenous land. This analysis discusses the necessity of centring historical and current contexts of colonization in education on and in relation to land. In addition, contributors explore the intersections of environmentalism and Indigenous rights, in part inspired by the realisation that the specifics of geography and community matter for how environmental education can be engaged. This edited volume suggests how place-based pedagogies (...) can respond to issues of colonialism and Indigenous sovereignty. Through dynamic new empirical and conceptual studies, international contributors examine settler colonialism, Indigenous cosmologies, Indigenous land rights, and language as key aspects of Land Education. The book invites readers to rethink 'pedagogies of place' from various Indigenous, postcolonial, and decolonizing perspectives. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Environmental Education Research. _. (shrink)

Africa, before European colonization, knew no other form of legal system outside customary arrangements. Based on secondary sources and a primary survey conducted between 2009 and 2010 on the situation of women and land rights in anglophone Cameroon, this paper examines the grounds for discrimination in customary laws against women's rights to land in the context of legal pluralism, and discusses the implications of this custom of gender discrimination. In drawing from Cameroon as an exemplar, it concludes that (...) the strong influence and impact of customs on current land tenure systems have global implications on women's land rights, food security and sustainable development, and that gender equality in land matters can be possible only where the critical role of ethics is recognized in pursuit of the economic motive of land rights. (shrink)

The recent phenomenon of land grabbing—that is, the large-scale acquisition of private land rights by foreign investors—is an effect of increasing global demand for farmland, resources, and development opportunities. In 2008–2010 alone, land grabs covered approximately 56 million hectares of land, dispossessing and displacing inhabitants. This article proposes a philosophical framework for evaluating land grabbing as a practice of territorial alienation, whereby the private purchase of land can, under certain conditions, lead to a de (...) facto alienation of territorial sovereignty. If land grabs alienate territorial sovereignty, it follows that inhabitants can claim a violation of the people’s right to “permanent sovereignty over natural resources.” However, because sovereignty is entangled in the historical and contemporary causes of land dispossession, I cast doubt on this strategy. Territorially sovereign regimes often undermine democratic land governance by obstructing participation in activities such as zoning, land use, property regulation, and environmental stewardship. These activities, which I theorize as practices of “world-building,” are key to democracy because they give occupants a say in the shape of their common home. The perplexities of sovereignty in matters of land governance suggest that establishing democratic participation in rule over land requires fracturing sovereignty. (shrink)

In The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing explains how bare land is formed. Capitalism produces ‘ruins’ by stripping living beings of the capacity to form their own ecological relations, a necessary condition for the reproduction of life. Contemporary capitalism alienates living beings from ecological relations, i.e. capitalism generates “the ability to stand alone, as if the entanglements of living did not matter. Through alienation, people and things (...) become mobile assets; they can be removed from their lifeworlds in distance-defying transport to be exchanged with other assets from other life worlds, elsewhere” (Tsing 2021, 5). Cutting the threads of the web of life through capitalist alienation, however, produces bare land as a side effect, infertile waste deprived of the means to reproduce itself without capitalist support. Alienation is the deracination of living beings from their lifeworld, transforming them into passive cogs for capitalist accumulation. However, Tsing upholds matsutake mushrooms, rare fungi popular among Japa- nese foodies, as exemplars of the resilience of ecological relations. Even amidst ruins, matsutakes successfully form beneficial relations with other living beings, like pine trees, other fungi and human beings. The insistent capacity to regenerate ecological relations is the ineluctable means of reproduction for the matsutake mushroom. Even at the end of the world, the matsutake persists by perpetually co-producing new lifeworlds for itself and fellow living beings (see also Haraway 2016). I claim that Tsing’s approach to capitalist alienation is descriptively convinc- ing but lacks the affective force for ecological class consciousness. Tsing surveys the web of life from the perspective of living beings quite distant from humankind, articulating a theoretical diagnosis rather than a political exhortation. On an affective level, it is challenging to generate ecological class consciousness among the (presumably) human readers of my chapter if they are presented with only the biographies of mushrooms growing far beyond my home. As Chantal Mouffe (2018, 72) argues, the construction of an emphatically political identity requires an appeal to the affects, like hope, indignation or compassion. Latour and Schultz also stress that ecological politics currently suffers from an affective misalignment, with people failing to identify with the fate of their increasingly inhospitable environments (2022, 47). Why would European humans care about these unknown fungi? The reproduction of our CO2-intensive livelihoods largely depends on the emission of bare land elsewhere, so in the short run, we stand to benefit more from putting our heads in the sand. I employ Chakrabarty’s (2021) suggestion of grounding post-humanist politics first in strategic anthropocentrism to subsequently push for a post-humanist expansion of our human understanding. One must first feel personally interpellated by the crisis of the global means of reproduction before one can grasp the need for an ecological class politics beyond human confines. I turn to John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath as a kindred spirit with more mobilising potential. Steinbeck tells the story of a family of impoverished farmers from Oklahoma, the Joads, travelling to California in pursuit of a better life, yet only encountering more poverty, exploitation and anti-immigrant racism. Steinbeck describes in detail the environmental and social devastation, but he focuses on the commodified labour power of migrant farmers rather than commodified mushrooms. Steinbeck’s main characters are also uprooted from their entangled histories in the land and community of rural Oklahoma, but they present a more familiar face of the ecological class deprived of the means of reproduction. Steinbeck’s outcry against alienation-as-deracination is clear, but the shift in perspective facilitates the empathetic outrage required for building ecological class consciousness. Steinbeck’s strategic anthropocentrism helps human readers understand why alienation-as-deracination is a concern. (shrink)

In areas of land conflict, fear and the threat of violence work to reproduce imaginaries of land as a resource that powerful people can grab. An urgent question for agrarian scholars and activists is how people can overcome fear so that alternative imaginaries might flourish. In this article, we argue for attention to the affective dimension of imaginaries; ideas of what land is and should be are co-constituted through the material and social, imbued with powerful emotions that (...) enable imaginaries to be reproduced, to be challenged, and even to be transformed. We draw from long-term research projects in Cambodia—a country known for plantation-fuelled dispossession—where the Prime Minister’s surprise announcement of a land titling campaign in 2012 ruptured the wave of land grabbing, creating openings to imagine different outcomes that are rooted in the potential for legal recognition of smallholder claims. Although the campaign was an uncertain rupture in land imaginaries, these moments matter. Land claimants sought to create affective ties with volunteer land surveyors that embedded hopeful land imaginaries in rural areas and into the national cadastral system. The land title in this context is the material bearer of a land imaginary that centres on rural people’s connection to the land, and also reinforces rural people’s connection to the Cambodian state and the potential to gain the state’s protection. We contribute to an emerging literature that locates the formative effects of hope as an orientation and as a method by exploring the possibilities inherent in rupture. (shrink)

In his most recent collection of papers, J. Baird Callicott has continued to advance a communitarian environmental ethic inspired by the mid–century “land ethic” writings of Aldo Leopold. One subject of concern is a dilemma. Either: the position is open to a charge of “eco–fascism” because it holds that only one maximal community fundamentally matters and interests of smaller communities and individuals can be swamped by a fundamental concern with the whole. Or: it is a “paper tiger” because (...) it says that many communities fundamentally matter, but offers no advice about how we are settle prima–facie conflicts of obligations tied to our various communities. Callicott now offers two new second–order priority principles designed to steer the communitarian position through the dilemma. I outline the relevant parts of his new position. However, I argue that one of the principles ends up offering no coherent advice over the priority of the very communities that inspire interest in the position of Leopold. Callicott proposes that the more intimate and venerable of our communities should have priority, but these elements can come apart in the relevant cases. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century, Uchiyama Gudō, Seno’o Girō, Lin Qiuwu, and others advocated a Buddhism that was radical in two respects. Firstly, they adopted a more or less naturalist stance with respect to Buddhist doctrine and related matters, rejecting karma or other supernatural beliefs. And secondly, they held political and economic views that were radically anti-hegemonic, anti-capitalist, and revolutionary. Taking the idea of such a “radical Buddhism” seriously, A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical (...) Buddhism asks whether it is possible to develop a philosophy that is simultaneously naturalist, anti-capitalist, Buddhist, and consistent. Rather than a study of radical Buddhism, then, this book is an attempt to radicalize it. The foundations of this “radicalized radical Buddhism” are provided by a realist interpretation of Yogācāra, elucidated and elaborated with some help from thinkers in the broader Tiantai/Tendai tradition and American philosophers Donald Davidson and W.V.O. Quine. A key implication of this foundation is that only this world and only this life are real, from which it follows that if Buddhism aims to alleviate suffering, it has to do so in this world and in this life. Twentieth-century radical Buddhists (as well as some engaged Buddhists) came to a similar conclusion, often expressed in their aim to realize “a Buddha land in this world.” Building on this foundation, but also on Mahāyāna moral philosophy, this book argues for an ethics and social philosophy based on a definition of evil as that what is or should be expected to cause death or suffering. On that ground, capitalism should be rejected indeed, but utopianism must be treated with caution as well, which raises questions about what it means – from a radicalized radical Buddhist perspective – to aim for a Buddha land in this world. (shrink)

This article examines the nature of the wrongs that are inflicted on individuals and groups who have been expelled from the land that they previously occupied, and asks what they might consequently be owed as a matter of corrective justice. I argue that there are three sorts of potential wrongs involved in such expulsions: being deprived of the moral right of occupancy; being denied collective self-determination; and having one's property rights violated. Although analytically distinct, all of these wrongs are (...) likely to be perpetrated when people are expelled from their homelands. Although there is substantial literature on corrective justice dealing with such cases, most of that literature focuses on the expropriation of property only, and is therefore unlikely to grasp the full implications of the wrong done or to reveal the full extent of what might be owed to people as a matter of corrective justice. (shrink)

This article introduces a novel use of technologies to visualize space and temporary structures in public space as a critical and speculative method for artistic research. Imitation and iconification have been vital in visual culture since civilization began. Science has become proficient in picturing invisible matter and numerical data. However, we are limited to visualizing these data in an iconic, ‘understandable’ way, that is, to some extent, reductionist. A non-naturalistic artistic visualization (NNAVi) method is proposed to discover and present the (...) underlying context of objects and space. First, this article discusses the representational function of artistic images and the artistic use of emerging technologies to represent invisible information. Following the discussion, the case study of the virtual reality (VR) artwork The Last Recreational Land shows how NNAVi can be applied. The case study starts with an exploration of the pandemic’s context and nature and then moves to an explanation of the multisensory and immersive setting of the artwork. Interweaving case studies and theoretical references, the article elaborates on how the VR experience is used as a device to respond to the pandemic. By deconstructing the relationship between visualization, imitation and iconification, the article theorizes NNAVi as a new methodology for artistic research that provides tangible insights into the nature of the pandemic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Violent Inheritance: Sexuality, Land, and Energy in Making the North American West by E. CramNathan StormerViolent Inheritance: Sexuality, Land, and Energy in Making the North American West. By E. Cram. Oakland: University of California Press, 2022. 292 pp. Cloth $85.00, paper $34.95. ISBN: 0520379470.E. Cram’s Violent Inheritance is an exceptional work that presents a distinctive synthesis of queer, decolonial, and mixed-method scholarship. The goal of the (...) book, Cram states, is to both “reimagine the place of racialized sexualities in contemporary conversations about environment, energy, and systems of violence” and “anchor these questions in contested memories of the North American West” (5). The book does just that, drawing from many contemporary streams of thought in rhetoric as well as the environmental and energy humanities to fashion a new and subtle analytic of infrastructures of feeling, which is supported by a range of conceptual innovations. For readers of this journal, Cram’s choice to ground theory quite literally in the land will be, I suspect, highly rewarding for those with interests crossing a wide range of topics: queer studies, violence, affect, Indigenous thought, sexuality and modernity, memory studies, rhetoric and materialism, ecological thought, ambience, regionalism. The breadth of scholarly dialogues that Cram harmonizes is simply impressive, reflecting the many years and the care they have devoted to this project.The book is composed of five chapters including a conceptual first chapter followed by four separate yet reinforcing studies. These are framed by a tidy introduction that prepares the reader admirably for the synergistic work to follow and a conclusion that stresses the bonds between the chapters without compromising the particularity of each study. In that regard, Violent Inheritance is both a single work guided by several cross-cutting ideas and questions and an anthology of sorts that prompts a series of discrete, rich conversations. The careful writing is evident in every paragraph, often presenting the reader with elegant, thought-provoking formulations [End Page 199] of deep onto-epistemological problems that never feel weighted down by the complexity of dwelling on “onto-epistemic” matters.The introduction sets out the question of the book in engaging fashion. Cram asks, in the first sentence, “What does it mean to route ‘sexuality’ through modernity’s relationship to energy?” They use nineteenth-century eugenic physician John Harvey Kellogg’s Rocky Mountain climatic therapeutics to exemplify how “climate and the environment” became crucial to “the production of theories of sexuality” (3). Cram proposes energy to be “perhaps the dominant relationship between humans and the environment” and points to the ways that “racial and sexual value” have been assigned to a broad range of practices of “revitalization and exhaustion,” such that “racial and sexual vitality converge in extractivism” (3, 5, 4). In this way, the “bodily vitality” of the “normative sexual subject” demands privileged access to land and the energy that can be taken from it, be it affective or petrochemical. The emergence of sexual modernity, Cram thus contends, is inextricably tied to the regime of energy extraction. Through selected cases, Cram follows “nonlinear traces of this regime’s enduring materiality and sedimentation: the ecological, energetic, and affective inheritance that I call ‘land lines’” (6). The term “land lines” refers to how “political and economic actions tether, or forge connections, between domains of sexuality and land use,” and “names the aggregation of layers of cultural sediment or the violent inheritance of any given place.... As method, to trace land lines asks in earnest how places of memory and memorialization mediate these relationships” (6,7, emphasis original). The choice of the North American West follows from Cram having grown up there and the particular land lines that bind them to its violent inheritance, as well as the West’s stature as a colonial reservoir of myth and abundant energy.The separate chapters are saturated with meticulous detail, studied reflection, and constant insight that reward slow reading, making a synoptic view misleading. Nevertheless, chapter 1 travels through the 1893 journal of author Owen Wister (who helped create the myth of the West) to map a rhetoric of reinvigorated, masculinized settler sexuality by way of access to the West and the healing energy... (shrink)

In his major work, An Inquiry into the Modes of Existence, Bruno Latour sets out to establish an anthropology of the Moderns based on the plurality of the modes of existence that make up their world. What about the beings of science, politics, art, religion, economics and so on? How do these beings relate to one another, and how do they constitute the specific forms of thought of the Moderns? Taking as its starting point one of the central notions of (...) modern thought, namely the notion of matter, this article seeks to identify the way in which Latour shows its importance in the constitution of modern thought. It examines its topicality through the double prism of an ecological and decolonial approach that animates Latour’s work, and which this article proposes to revisit. (shrink)

Mindfulness has emerged as a potential motivator for sustainable lifestyles, yet few studies provide insight into the relationship between mindfulness practice levels and individual engagement in pro-environmental behaviors. We also lack information about the significance of meditators’ behavioral differences in terms of their measurable environmental impact and the motivational processes underlying these differences in pro-environmental performance. We classified 300 individuals in three groups with varying meditation experience and compared their pro-environmental motivations and levels of animal protein consumption. Exceeding prior attempts (...) to compare high-impact behaviors of mindfulness practitioners and non-practitioners, we created the most detailed classification of practice engagement by assessing frequency, experience and type of meditation practice. This nuanced view on mindfulness practice reveals that advanced meditators, who reported high levels of connectedness with nature, subjective happiness and dispositional mindfulness showed significantly more concern for the environment. They also demonstrated the lowest levels of greenhouse gas emissions, land occupation and water use related to their animal-protein consumption. This study is the first to follow a self-determination theory perspective to deepen our understanding of the motivational differences between meditator groups. We revealed that advanced meditators reported significantly more integrated motivation toward the environment than non-meditators. We also provided preliminary evidence for a new theoretical framework suggesting that experiential strategies such as mindfulness practices could strengthen the relational pathway of pro-environmental behaviors. Using sequential mediation analysis, we confirmed that the negative effect of mindful compassion practice on greenhouse gas emissions from animal-protein consumption is partially mediated by CWN and integrated motivation toward the environment. While our study does not support assumptions of causality, it shows that much can be learned by studying the motivations of advanced meditators for maintaining high levels of pro-environmental behavior. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Sri Lanka: Portuguese Imperialism in a Buddhist LandTerry C. MuckKingship and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Sri Lanka: Portuguese Imperialism in a Buddhist Land. By Alan Strathern. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 304 pp.Buddhist-Christian relationships in Southeast Asian countries have a history that goes back to colonizations of the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and French beginning in the sixteenth century. By studying the story (...) of those early occupations, one can predict with some accuracy the nature of the relationships between Buddhists and Christians today.In Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Sri Lanka, Alan Strathern, research fellow in history at Clare Hall, Cambridge, unearths a piece of the story that helps us understand the antipathy that exists today between Buddhists and Christians in Sri Lanka. As the title indicates, it is a book with a small thesis, limited geographical scope, and of short temporal duration. That is, it is a scholarly book that examines why a Christian monarchy was never established in sixteenth century coastal Sri Lanka during the one hundred years of colonial presence and rule of the maritime regions (ca. 1600–1658) by Roman Catholic Portugal.Strathern breaks new ground by delving into letters written by Portuguese churchmen, which have not previously been used in histories of this period. He ignores neither traditional Buddhist sources (the vaṃsa tradition in Sri Lanka) nor traditional Christian sources (principally Portuguese Jesuit Fernao de Queiros’s The Temporal and [End Page 221] Spiritual Conquest of Ceylon). And he is candid about his debt to the “presiding scholar” of the Portuguese period in Sri Lanka, C.R. de Silva, and also the “other expert in the field,” Jorge Manuel Flores. But the heretofore unused Portuguese letters provide the other side of the conversation that helps explain much.Strathern’s broader periodization begins with the Portuguese’s first incursions into Sri Lanka in 1505 and ends with the collapse of the Portuguese rule in the coastal regions to the Dutch in 1658. But his real focus is on the reign of the most important Sri Lankan monarch during this period, King Bhuvanekabāhu VII, who reigned from 1521 to 1551. It was King Bhuvanekabāhu’s policies regarding the Portuguese and particularly his welcoming of Christian missionaries that have created such controversy among historians of this period, both Sinhalese and Portuguese (and other Western historians). For some, Bhuvanekabāhu was weak and vacillating, for others strong and consistent. For some Bhuvanekabāhu was a captive, powerless vassal, for others a ruler of agency and foresight, making decisions that were the very best he could do given the overwhelming might of the Portuguese navy.Strathern’s conclusion, finely argued and carefully nuanced, is that Bhuvanekabāhu should be given more credit that he is usually given for wise kingship. But the pointed question that Strathern decides is key to the role Bhuvanekabāhu plays is his decision not to convert to Christianity, at an important period in Southeast Asian history when “conversion” to Christianity had become more than a religious decision—it had become a political and economic strategy of some weight, a decision that many other rulers of this period in south India and elsewhere were making as a matter of expedience. Why, asks Strathern, did Bhuvanekabāhu not make the same decision?The answer comes in three explorations that form the three parts of the book. The first is an exploration of the question of kingship in South and Southeast Asia during this period, specifically the role that kings conquered by colonial powers played. Strathern calls this the Temporal Question. The second is an exploration of what happened to these political dynamics when Christian missionaries are thrown in the mix. Strathern calls this the Spiritual Question. Third is an exploration of the overall effect on these two factors on the colonial powers, indigenous nationhoods, and the two religious institutions, Buddhism and Christianity.The TemporalThe sixteenth century in Sri Lanka was a time of unavoidable political alliances. The irresistible power of the colonizing power in Sri Lanka, beginning with Portuguese in 1505, meant that one could either fight to the death... (shrink)

Modern rationalism transformed the modern homeland to a discursive space and time by means of institutes governing the modern society in all its walks. Based on the Newtonian and Kantian conception of space and time the discursive field is just a scene wherein any human individual adopts stewardship to create progress by reducing landscape and non-human life to auxiliary items for human’s benefit. In contrast, Aldo Leopold considered humans, non human life and the landscape as mutually influencing participants and enlarged (...) ethical care to all living participants and the landscape, called ´the land´. Integrity and autonomy of the homeland are the central topics of Leopold’s land ethics. Baird Callicott suggested to complete it with new metaphysical conceptions of space and time. -/- We formulated a metaphysical background for Leopold’s land ethics by phenomenology of space and time based on the Leibnizian conception of space-time. The latter is constructed by particular places and events called ´ecotopois´ embracing all human participants, locals and foreigners in a varying symbolic temporal and spatial field of dynamic process of identification and self consciousness. Adopting Warwick Fox´ transpersonal identification idea non-human life and landscape enriches these processes. Finally, it is not a matter of conquering the land, it is matter of making a community. -/- Though landscape and participants are particular, integrity and autonomy of the homeland claim the universal status of the land. Adopting Gadamer hermeneutical way of understanding, we reject mutual and equally understanding. Only acceptance of mutual prejudice makes room for asymmetric praxis between locals and foreigners as well as between humans and non-humans. What is more, Gadamer´s hermeneutics makes an ontological status of the foreigner possible and recognizes the interest of homeland’s particularity. This universal status is guaranteed as a priori space-time that links subject’s tradition and that of the land to actual contact with the foreigner. Transpersonal identification is a consequence of converging hermeneutical understanding of foreigner’s particularity and that of the landscape. Ethics of the land evolves from the ethical status of any foreigner in the own homeland. -/- . (shrink)

This article traces the ubiquitous geopolitical metaphors used by researchers in the field of pregnancy-related microchimerism. In this research domain, immunologists and medical geneticists locate ‘non-self’ cells in women by marking Y chromosomes in cells derived from their sons. In the course of this research trajectory, experiments have yielded a number of surprises, beginning with the very presence of these cells in women decades after pregnancy. This finding confounded the expectations predicted by classical immunology, which posits the destruction of such (...) ‘foreign’ entities. Once they were known to be present, fetal cells were implicated in pathological and destructive activity. In a series of reorientations in which metaphor, theory and practice are entangled with matter, the characterization of these cells has shifted from invaders to insurgent foreigners to assimilated productive immigrants. The article reflects on this rich domain of material-semiotic practice to demonstrate that the case of fetomaternal cell trafficking contributes to a growing uneasiness with dominant ontologies of bodies as bounded, defended, pure collectives of homogeneous inhabitants. (shrink)

Arguments set out by Timothy Morton, Ted Toadvine, and J. Baird Callicott et al. suggest that the remedy to the dualistic account that places “human” in binary opposition to “nature” is not to deny difference, but to understand the process of differentiation in a way that recognizes our interdependence, and yet still leaves space for the unknowable “Otherness” of nature. Callicott et al. argue that Aldo Leopold’s land ethic authentically recognizes the difference and freedom of wild animal Others, arguing (...) that Levinas’ ethics of the Other is really a “same-based” ethics in disguise. Morton and Toadvine have considered ways in which another aspect of Levinas’ thought, the “il y a” (the “there is”), could be a means by which we might understand “wild” nature. A more metaphysical understanding of Levinas’ “face” recognizes the Other’s unknowability, but frames the ethical relation as external. Jean-Paul Sartre’s account of negation and human reality as “lack” frames this relation as one that arises internally, and thus can usefully inform the strand of environmental thought that is concerned with acknowledging the irreducible Otherness of nature. (shrink)

Because so little work in most fields of thought has been done from a Whiteheadian perspective, bringing that perspective to bear often highlights what has been little noticed. This essay seeks to contribute to the understanding of the financial crisis and to propose responses from a Whiteheadian perspective. At the same time it reflects explicitly on the difference that this perspective makes as well as the continuing dependence on the work of those who have approached matters from other perspectives.

This study seeks to investigate the nature of ownership of land, and how the right to its control and use can be inferred from self-ownership as a premise. Hence, the question asked is how ownership can be justified considering the nature of man from a natural rights point of view. The starting point for the argument is self-ownership as being, where man is identified as an indivisible entirety with inalienable rights to his self emanating from his complex nature. This (...) identification is the point of departure in examining the relation between man and the world, and the concept of ownership. Man’s right to self implies the right to use externals through choice, to “focus his consciousness” in order to achieve values beneficial to his being. The discussion on ownership, as inferred from self-ownership as being, ends in a discussion of the distinct features of land, and how ownership of such can be obtained. The conclusion is that man as a rights-bearer to self can obtain natural use-rights through possession and constructive use of resources, rights which are valid throughout the value-achieving process. (shrink)

Israel is a country of many cultures and languages and of several religions. The majority of the population adheres to the Jewish religion. The Moslem and the Christian religions come next in size, in that order. Similarly to many other countries in the region, religion fills a more central role in the public sphere of Israel than in most Western countries. It also influences the private sphere immensely, as for example in the matter of marriages and funerals which in most (...) cases are conducted by state employees who have been appointed by the religious establishments of each of the official religions. We are thus discussing religion in a context where it matters highly. Power, welfare and the very right to reside in the country are connected with religion. Symbols of statehood and collective identity are lent from religious texts, objects and rituals. The symbol of the state, the seven-armed golden candelabra, suggests the memory of the temples of Solomon and Herod where a similar one was standing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Truth MattersOnce in a while stunning new ideas that energize a scholarly discipline—or even wreck it altogether—come from the outside. The most influential philosopher of science in the last generation was not a philosopher at all, but an historian and physicist, Thomas Kuhn. Ernst Gombrich, an art historian, has deeply informed the philosophy of art, as the linguist Noam Chomsky has affected the philosophy of language. And Jacques Derrida (...) continues to cast his stupefying spell over many a literature department, even if most philosophers remain unimpressed.In a minor but spectacular way (how else to describe an event first encountered on the front page of the New York Times?), Alan Sokal has barged in on this honorable tradition. As a physicist, he successfully placed a barely-coherent, factually ludicrous, jargon-ridden article in a major journal of cultural studies.When we caught up with Sokal’s hoax, our initial reaction was sympathy for the hapless editors of Social Text. They weren’t the first journal editors to be landed with a contribution that went sour (though the only other episodes we could recall were plagiarism, not parody). However, when one of these chaps, Stanley Aronowitz, reacted in the Times by calling Sokal “ill-read and half-educated” (May 18, 1996), editorial fellow-feeling began to evaporate. And when Stanley Fish, executive director of the Duke University Press, which publishes Social Text, launched a bitter counterattack on Sokal three days later, it was hard not to regard Fish’s indignation, as E. D. Hirsch described it in a subsequent letter to the Times, as “the indignation of Tartuffe on being exposed.” [End Page 299]After some tedious preliminaries, Fish accused Sokal of failing to understand that the sociology of science is an enterprise “distinct” from science, “with objects of study, criteria, and goals all its own.” Sokal knows this, naturally, as he had already made clear in his Lingua Franca article on the hoax, and as he explains again in his afterword in this issue of our journal. But Fish went on to a more sweeping generalization. Imagining Sokal believed that cultural studies threaten the stability or integrity of the sciences, Fish said not to worry: “A research project that takes the practice of science as an object of study is not a threat to that practice because, committed to its own goals and protocols, it doesn’t reach into, and therefore doesn’t pose a danger to, the goals and protocols it studies.”With this account of a well-ordered academic world, Fish inadvertently reveals what some see as a serious failing of cultural studies and postmodern theory: it poses a threat to absolutely nothing. Leave science aside for a moment, and consider a sociology of, say, astrology, or medicine, or the fashion industry. Could we envision a proper sociology of astrology which posed no danger to “the goals and protocols” in using planetary/zodiacal patterns to predict the future or retrodict the characters of subjects? Hardly; it’s the business of the sociology of any human activity to identify and question the intellectual claims and practical ambitions of that enterprise. And that is exactly what Alan Sokal did: he invented a clever test of the intellectual rigor of cultural studies in general and its version of poststructuralist sociology of science in particular. He then subjected Social Text—and implicitly in many minds the intellectual standards of the field it represents—to the test. It failed.Sokal’s methodology was not unique; it can be applied in different ways to many other disciplines. If you want to evaluate, for example, the intellectual pretensions of astrologers there is a fine way to do it; it essentially adapts the double-blind placebo procedure used in drug research, another celebrated testing methodology. Allow a group of astrologers to agree on a set of character readings based on accurate birth charts. Give these back, shuffled, with identifying information stripped off, to the subjects of the astrological readings. If the subjects can pick out their own readings from character descriptions alone (descriptions created by astrologers on the basis of birth information only, without meeting the subjects in question), then astrology must possess... (shrink)

This study addresses the gap between policy and practice on the issue of women’s right to own rural land through a qualitative study conducted in Pakistan’s two largest provinces, Punjab and Sindh. A recent survey finds that only 4% of women own rural land in Pakistan. Given the relatively large agrarian economy, land is a key resource determining women’s agency. To understand the dynamics that maintain this status quo, I use two distinct strands of feminist theory. First (...) is Joan Acker’s organizational theory of gender and class structures, to explore the inequality regimes embedded in rural patriarchy. Second, I adapt Suad Joseph’s conceptualization of patriarchal connectivity to show how in rural Pakistan, valorizing kinship works to exclude women from matters pertaining to land and silencing demands for their inheritances. This framework simultaneously allows for a fine-grained analysis of the politico-economic and social structures of rural society, while building an intimate understanding of familial relations. The findings show how land is discursively defined as a collective good to ensure that landed patriarchs remain entrenched within the political and economic order of the state, limiting possibilities, for women, of acquiring agency through owning and controlling rural land. The study also upends the widespread myth of Islamic misogyny, for it demonstrates the political economy of patriarchal domination over religion in Pakistan. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 25 (2005) 49-65 [Access article in PDF] The Three Minds and Faith, Hope, and Love in Pure Land Buddhism Sharon Baker Southern Methodist University,Messiah College Generally, the Buddhist path to nirvana calls a person to leave the mundane life and live as a monk, a sage, or a saint who continually works toward the pure state, toward nirvana. The way to Buddhahood can take the practitioner (...) through the process of death and rebirth for many centuries until he attains enlightenment and nirvana. Hence, Pure Land Buddhism is good news to those forced by karma to live mundane lives keeping house, working a trade, raising children. In other words, Pure Land Buddhism is good news for the common person. Pure Land Buddhism, especially in the thought of Shinran and Tanabe, seeks to provide a straight and easy way for the "small, foolish beings," for the greatest of sinners and those who are most evil. Even the most evil person possessed by blind passions is grasped by the great compassion of Amida Buddha. This great compassion, as revealed in Amida's Vow, knows no limits. Even a person's karmic evil, deep and heavy as it is, is not oppressive for the one who is embraced by the love of Amida Buddha—love that never tires, blessing that constantly protects, compassion that never abandons. The love and compassion of Amida Buddha are realized through his Vow of Great Compassion. Shinran states that "the joy of knowing the wonder and benevolence of the Vow of great compassion that Amida established for us, beings of karmic evil, is boundless and can never be fully expressed, for it surpasses all thought and all words."1 The Vow of Great Compassion The Vow of Great Compassion does not take into consideration whether or not one is good or evil, young or old; only faith matters. Indeed, through faith, the Vow saves all sentient beings, especially those burdened with powerful sins and those torn by great evils. Believing in the Vow, therefore, does not depend upon any other good—no matter how hard he tries, no human being can ever be good enough for salvation without belief in the Vow of Great Compassion.2In an attempt to discover a salvation by faith not generated by an act of human will, Shinran is drawn to the three spiritual attitudes described in the Eighteenth Vow, which states: "If, when I attain Buddhahood, the sentient beings of the ten [End Page 49] quarters with sincere mind entrusting themselves, aspiring to be born in my land, and saying my Name even ten times, should not be born there, may I not attain the supreme enlightenment. Excluded are those who commit the five grave offenses and those who slander the right dharma."3 This is the Vow upon which true shinjin4 is based—the Vow of sincere mind and trust. Those who practice the Vow include all the good, the evil, and the foolish, who, after realizing shinjin, are certain of attaining salvation—that is, enlightenment in the Pure Land. Shinran states that "this shinjin is the very cause for the attainment of the supreme enlightenment."5 Birth in the Pure Land, along with supreme enlightenment, is assured for those who have been given true shinjin. Amida and the countless Buddhas in the ten quarters watch over believers and protect them so that they cannot be led astray into strange teachings or tormented by demonic forces. In fact, "Shinran might have said in the modern situation that just as assuredly as the sun rises in the morning, our enlightenment is guaranteed by the Vow."6It is important to note that faith in the Vow of Great Compassion is brought about only by the power and compassion of Amida Buddha. By using various compassionate means, Amida Buddha (and even Sakyamuni) awakens the supreme shinjin in people. Amida and Sakyamuni grasp the person in whom they have awakened shinjin and they never abandon him. There is no calculation on the part of the person whatsoever; there is only... (shrink)

New technologies coupled with high energy prices, a desire for energy independence, and cleaner energy, have led to many energy companies investing large amounts of capital into rural places. In the last decade, along with solar and wind, unconventional shale oil and gas production has risen steeply throughout the United States boosting economic growth and stimulating wealth creation in many communities. Because farmers own or operate over half of rural lands in the lower 48 states, the possibility is high for (...) shale development to contribute to the financial well-being of farmers with land in shale regions. However, by focusing on the large royalties of some landowners, environmental and social risks that farmers encounter may be overlooked. To address the gap of farmer impacts, I examine the experiences and perceptions of crop farm owners who reside in two established shale plays: the Bakken region in North Dakota and the Marcellus region in Pennsylvania and in one emerging shale play: the New Albany region in Southern Illinois. I survey farm owners of both large and small crop farms, who farm a variety of crops both by conventional and organic methods. By having such a diverse sample of farm owners in both established shale plays and emerging shale plays, I explore how farmers’ experiences differ with respect to their finances and investments, environmental degradation as well as how their perceptions of trust in oil and gas companies and community rifts differ. (shrink)

Seasonal and historical transformations of ice and permafrost suggest that the Mackenzie Delta in Arctic Canada can be understood as a solid fluid. The concerns and practices of delta inhabitants show that fluidity and solidity remain important attributes in a solid fluid delta. They are significant not as exclusive properties, but as relational qualities, in the context of particular human projects and activities. Indigenous philosophies of ‘the land’ and Henri Lefebvre’s notion of ‘tempo’ in Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday (...) Life (2004) may help to illustrate the predicament of living in a world that is solid and fluid rhythmically, and in relation to particular practices. Economic, political, sociocultural and physical transformations can all be experienced as both solid and fluid, depending on the degree to which they resonate with people’s purposes. In a world where everything seems to be changed and changing, solidity and fluidity may best be seen as indications of relative differences in tempo. (shrink)

In Born to Wonder, Alister McGrath, a prolific Oxford scholar, scientist, and theologian, explores the deepest mystery at the heart of life itself. Life is a gift. We never asked to be born. Yet here we are, living in this strange world of space and time, trying to work out what it's all about before the darkness closes in and extinguishes us. We are adrift on a misty, grey sea of ignorance, seeking a sun-kissed island of certainty, on which we (...) might hope to find clear answers to our deepest and most poignant questions. What is the point of life? Why are we here? And what is it about us that makes us want to ask these questions? As far as we know, we're the only species on earth that asks these questions, and dares to hope that we might find an answer. It seems that we are born to wonder, not merely to exist. From time to time, all of us find ourselves overwhelmed by a sense of awe or mystery, often when confronted with the beauty of nature, whether it is a mountain stream or the vast expanse of ocean waters. That is when we see a flicker of a grander vision of reality, perhaps lying beyond the horizons of our experience. It is as if, for only a moment, a veil is removed, and we catch a half-glimpsed sight of a promised land, waiting to be mapped and explored. This sense of wonder fuels much of humanity's creativity and its search for understanding. (shrink)

Water mattered in medieval Pisa. As it was not a natural port, Pisa had to protect, manage, and maintain its maritime landings and riverine passages to neutralize its Mediterranean competitors and ensure its prosperity. This paper addresses the three bodies of water and waterways most important to the Pisa - the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Auser and Arno rivers - and how architecture interfaced with hydrotopography. Architectural structures defined a unique visual culture in Pisa in practical, topographical, and symbolic ways. (...) The organization of the city, its key monuments, and their ornamentation all demonstrated the significance of the city’s complex relationship with water that was key to Pisa’s success in the Middle Ages. (shrink)

In Virtue, Piety and the Law Katharina Ivanyi examines Birgivī Meḥmed Efendī's (d. 981/1573) al-Ṭarīqa al-muḥammadiyya, a major work of pietist exhortation and advice, composed by the sixteenth-century Ottoman jurist, Ḥadīth scholar and grammarian, who would articulate a style of religiosity that had considerable reformist appeal into modern times. Linking the cultivation of individual virtue to questions of wider political, social and economic concern, Birgivīplayed a significant role in the negotiation and articulation of early modern Ottoman Ḥanafīpiety. Birgivī's deep mistrust (...) of the passions of the human soul led him to prescribe a regime of self-surveillance and control that was only matched in rigor by his likewise exacting interpretation of the law in matters of everyday life, as much as in state practices, such as the cash waqf, Ottoman land tenure and taxation. (shrink)

The land of truth, 'ein reizender Name', is according to Kant 'umgeben von einem weiten und stürmischen Ozeane, dem eigentlichen Sitze des Scheins, wo manche Nebelbank, und manches bald wegschmelzendes Eis neue Länder lügt, und indem es den auf Entdeckungen herumschwärmenden Seefahrer unaufhörlich mit leeren Hoffungen täuscht, ihn in Abenteuer verflechtet, von denen er niemals ablassen, und sie doch auch niemals zu Ende bringen kann'. The geographer of human reason has made it his task to set bounds to this (...) island of the truth. Just as in rational psychology and theology veils and illusions are likewise raised up in rational cosmology, so that those who seek after sound ground in the question of the origin of duration of the world are only hurled to and from between pseudo-solutions. The question of this article concerns the following problem: How strong is the position of the so-called first antinomy for Kant's thesis, that reason tangles itself up in unsoluble discrepancies when it is occupied with questions that exceed experience? Kant holds the view that regarding the ancient question on the eternity of the world are always taken up two positions that are mutually exclusive, because each for itself claims apodictic argumentation. But from discussions that Thomas Aquinas made with Aristotle and Bonaventure on time and the infinite appears that the argumentation in the first antinomy is not so apodictic as Kant imagined. So it seems that there are reasons to doubt if reason gets entangled when it is engaged in matters that exceed experience. (shrink)

During the 1930s the fascist government launched a programme for the reclamation of the Pontine Marshes, one of the largest forested wetlands in Italy. In less than a few years the muddy and uneven ground of the forest was transformed into flat land to be cultivated and into solid surface where three new towns were built. Hegemonic narratives describe the fascist reclamation as a process that imposed a solid form upon the raw materials of nature, thereby establishing an unbridgeable (...) divide between nature and culture, natural and built environment. The article challenges this dualism, drawing on ethnographic and historical materials to explore spatial and temporal zones in-between fluidity and solidity. It suggests an approach in which fluidity and solidity are understood as patterns of social and ecological relations rather than mutually exclusive properties of matter, thus exposing the continuity between them. (shrink)

In matters such as affirmative action or home schooling, rights of ethnic and other minority groups often come into conflict with those of society in a culturally diverse population such as ours. But before considering the dilemmas posed by these issues, we must first ask such basic but important questions as what group rights are and how they intersect with the principles of democracy. This new collection brings together some of today's leading thinkers from the cutting edge of these (...) debates, taking in a broad range of issues confronting philosophers, sociologists, and political scientists. Contributors such as Carl Wellman, Carol Gould, and Rex Martin examine the nature of groups and the conflict between group rights and democracy and also consider case studies depicting current issues in cultural, ethnic, and religious rights. The first section, on the nature of groups, examines some of the perplexing alternatives in the formulation of a theory of group rights. These articles investigate the kinds of rights minorities might claim and ask when groups can be held responsible for the acts of some of their members. The second section addresses the treatment of groups in a democracy and the precarious balance between indifference toward minorities and capitulation to their demands. Here the contributors examine five principles for the sensitive treatment of minority and disadvantaged groups in a democratic society. A final section explores specific conflicts between subgroup and societal claims through case studies dealing with affirmative action, religious practice and the education of children, and the land rights of indigenous peoples. By drawing on the legal and political dilemmas related to these cases, the authors confront issues of core versus peripheral interests, of individual member versus subgroup rights, and of the possibilities for social openness raised in the preceding sections Written from varied perspectives, Groups and Group Rights offers stimulating reading for both students and professionals as it takes on some of the most pressing dilemmas confronting our society. (shrink)

In this article I distill a trio of lessons for Christian environmental ethics from the stewardship model’s detractors and rivals. I begin by delineating stewardship and explaining the model’s initial prevalence as Christians’ primary response to widespread recognition of environmental crisis and their faith’s alleged culpability for it. I then distinguish two waves of criticism that, by denouncing stewardship’s substance and method, thoroughly discredited the model among Christian ethicists. Yet, as stewardship was being rejected for its susceptibility to anthropocentrism, one (...) of its chief competitors—the land ethic—was being repudiated for its liability to misanthropy. I argue that these developments give Christians cause to (1) affirm a hierarchical non-anthropocentrism that prioritizes human interests; (2) premise such priority in part on human embrace of non-anthropocentrism; and (3) interpret environmental ethics as more than a matter of models like stewardship. (shrink)

Food production, water management, land use, and animal and public health are all topics of extensive public debate. These themes are linked to the core activities of the agricultural sector, and more specifically to the work of farmers. Nonetheless, the ethical discussions are mostly initiated by interest groups in society rather than by farmers. At least in Europe, consumer organizations and animal welfare and environmental organizations are more present in the public debate than farmers. This is not how it (...) should be. First, because consumers often cannot but rely on agriculture. Second, because recent research shows that farmers have moral beliefs and convictions that appear to be broader than economic considerations and that are—to a certain extent—specific to their profession. This raises the question how to make input from farmers operational in the public debates on the future of farming. We discuss one option: entrusting farmers with professional autonomy concerning moral matters related to farming. We sketch the historical background of the current situation in which farmers are relatively silent on moral matters and we present some clear indications that farmers have values and moral beliefs that are relevant for the public debate. Next the concepts of professionalism and professional autonomy are discussed and applied to the practice of farming. Finally, we discuss the relevance and limits of professional moral autonomy for the agricultural profession. We close with an overview of what this moral autonomy implies for and requires from farmers in practice. We conclude that if some preconditions are met by farmers, then this type of moral autonomy can be relevant for farmers and for society, and contributes to the quality of the public debate on the future of farming. (shrink)

THE SUBJECT MATTER of this essay is Locke's well-known discussion of consent in sections 116-122 of the Second Treatise of Government.' I will not be concerned to discuss the place of consent in Locke's political philosophy 2 My concerns are somewhat narrower than this. I will simply be concerned to show that in important respects several recent discussions of Locke's political philosophy have misrepresented Locke's views on the subject of express and tacit consent. At theheart of these misinterpretations lie misunderstandings (...) about the way in which landownership and the inheritance of land are related to express and tacit consent. I will show that these misinterpretations of Locke's views are, to a certain extent, indicative of internal strains that can bediscovered in Locke's arguments. My discussion will fall into four sections. In the first I will try toclarify Locke's views on the nature of express consent. I will show that Locke's views on this matter, when examined in their historical context, are not as obscure as some critics have suggested. In the second section I will examine Locke's views on the nature of tacit consent. I will be especially concerned to examine the relationship between landownership and express and tacit consent. In the third section I will look at Locke's views on the inheritance of land and how it relates to express and tacit consent. I will show that his views on this matter are not entirely consistent. In one passage Locke suggests that inheritance of land requires only tacit consent whereas, in another passage, he suggests that inheritance of land requires full membership of society and express consent. In the fourth and final section I will summarize the salient features of my interpretation of Locke's views on the subject of express and tacit consent. I will also briefly note interpretations of Locke's views that have been rejected in the course of this essay. . -/- . (shrink)

Struggles over precious resources such as oil, water, and land are increasingly evident in the contemporary world. States, indigenous groups, and corporations vie to control access to those resources, and the benefits they provide. These conflicts are rapidly spilling over into new arenas, such as the deep oceans and the Polar regions. How should these precious resources be governed, and how should the benefits and burdens they generate be shared? Justice and Natural Resources provides a systematic theory of natural (...) resource justice. It argues that we should use the benefits and burdens flowing from these resources to promote greater equality across the world, and share governance over many important resources. At the same time, the book takes seriously the ways in which particular resources can matter in peoples lives. It provides invaluable guidance on a series of pressing issues, including the scope of state resource rights, the claims of indigenous communities, rights over ocean resources, the burdens of conservation, and the challenges of climate change and transnational resource governance. It will be required reading for anyone interested in natural resource governance, climate politics, and global justice. (shrink)

Why should sovereign states obey international law? What compels them to owe allegiance to a higher set of rules when each country is its own law of the land? What is the basis of their obligations to each other? Conventional wisdom suggests that countries are too different from one another culturally to follow laws out of mere loyalty to each other or a set of shared moral values. Surely, the prevailing view holds, countries act simply out of self-interest, and (...) they eventually consent to norms of international law to regulate matters of common interest.In this groundbreaking book, Fernando Tesón goes against this prevailing thought by arguing, in the Kantian tradition, that a shared respect for individual human rights underpins not just the obligation countries feel to follow international law but also international laws themselves and even the very legitimacy of nations in the eyes of the international community. Tesón, both a lawyer and a philosopher, proposes that an overlapping respect for human rights has created a moral common ground among the countries of the world; and moreover, that such an outlook is the only one that is rationally defensible. It is this common set of values rather than self-interest that ultimately provides legitimacy to international law. Using the tools of moral philosophy, Tesón analyzes the concepts of sovereignty, intervention, and national interest; the contributions of social contact theory, game theory, and feminist theory; and the puzzles of self-determination and group rights.More than simply outlining his theory, Tesón goes on to give detailed examples of international laws, international institutions, and their human rights foundations, putting his ideas to work and addressing legal reforms called for by the theory. He suggests that treaties, for example, should be considered binding if, and only if, the consent to the treaty was given by a genuinely representative government, one that acts out of interest for the human rights of its citizens. Although the theoretical achievement of this book is to challenge received wisdom on the foundation of international law, the practical ambition is a call to reform the international legal system for the post–Cold War era, to substitute for the old order one that gives primacy to human dignity and freedom over state power. (shrink)

This contribution includes three selected works from an exhibition on _Cyborg Encounters_. These works deal with hybrid connections of human and non-human species that (might) emerge as a result of enhancement technologies and bio-technological developments. They offer not only an artistic exploration of contemporary but also futuristic aspects of the subject. Followed by an introduction by Melike Şahinol, _Critically Endangered Artwork_ (by Ayşe Melis Okay) highlights Turkey’s ongoing problems of food poverty and the amount of decreasing agricultural lands. It displays (...) seeds of a promising endemic plant to mitigate these problems using the seeds of the _Thermopsis Turcica_, a herbaceous perennial endemic plant. _Ecomasculinist Pregnancy_ (by Burak Taşdizen and Charles John McKinnon Bell) follows the design fiction methodology and illustrates a future scenario through a patient’s diary and the medical letters he receives during his pregnancy with an extinct sea-lion. _Polluted Homes_ (by Beyza Dilem Topdal) is a fictional art installation consisting of polychaete species evolved in time under the ecological circumstances prevalent in the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara today. These works show, that manufacturing life has consequences, not only for the human body and its physical appearance, but also, for example, for gender orders, the social structure of society, and even the environment, and thus for (re)shaping (non)living matter and their environments. This Art-Science Collection intends to provide an impetus for debate about the extent to which cyborg encounters should be taken seriously. (shrink)

"There is no scientist today whose books I look forward to reading with greater anticipation of enjoyment and enlightenment than Stephen Jay Gould."—Martin Gardner Among scientists who write, no one illuminates as well as Stephen Jay Gould doesthe wonderful workings of the natural world. Now in a new volume of collected essays—his sixth since Ever Since Darwin—Gould speaks of the importance of unbroken connections within our own lives and to our ancestralgenerations. Along with way, he opens to us the mysteries (...) of fish tails, frog calls, and other matters, and shows once and for all why we must take notice when a seemingly insignificant creature is threatened, like the land snail Partula from Moorea, whose extinction he movingly relates. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dewey, Implementation, and Creating a Democratic Civic UniversityIra HarkavyThinking begins in... a forked-road situation, a situation that is ambiguous, that presents a dilemma, that poses alternatives.—John Dewey (How We Think 122)The social philosopher, dwelling in the region of his concepts, “solves” problems by showing the relationship of ideas, instead of helping men solve problems in the concrete by supplying them hypotheses to be used and tested in projects of (...) reform.—John Dewey (Reconstruction in Philosophy 192)Democracy must begin at home, and its home is the neighborly community.—John Dewey (The Public and Its Problems 213)democracy, as we all know, is seriously threatened throughout the world (Fisher). In the United States, the chasm-like inequities laid bare by COVID-19, the ongoing killing of black Americans, the violent insurrection at the Capitol, and the continuing attempt to subvert the electoral process are powerful indicators of a system under severe strain (Guardian Staff; Rubin). These developments are also a sign of deep and chronic problems, including the following:1. Increasing economic, political, social, educational, and health inequalities2. Increasing racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia3. Increasing attacks on science, knowledge, and democracy itself4. Declining trust in nearly all major institutionsMany things, obviously, contribute to the present situation. Among them is the failure of universities to successfully do what they are supposed to do: educate students to be ethical, empathetic, engaged, democratic citizens, and [End Page 49] advance knowledge for the continuous betterment of the human condition (Benson et al., Knowledge). To use a Marxian framework, but to reject its economic determinism, universities, in my judgment, are not a part of society’s superstructure. They are, to the contrary, a core component of its base (Marx, “Preface”). What they do matters enormously, significantly determining the kind of society we have now and will have in the future.Universities, as former Harvard president Derek Bok and others have emphasized, have become the central societal institutions in the world (Bok, Universities and the Future 3). Research universities, in my judgment, are the most central. They develop new ideas and technologies, incubate businesses, serve as cultural and artistic centers, and are engines of local, national, and global economies. As anchor institutions, they often engage in partnerships with government, the private sector, and community-based organizations to revitalize local neighborhoods and schools (“Anchor Institutions Task Force”). It is the university’s role as an educational institution, however, that is most important.The schooling system increasingly functions as the core subsystem—the strategic subsystem—of modern information societies. Schooling, more than any other subsystem, as John Dewey claimed, influences the functioning of the societal system as a whole. Viewed systemically, it has on balance the greatest “multiplier” effects, direct and indirect, short-term and long-term. Restating these points somewhat differently, I strongly agree with the Chilean sociologist Eugenio Tironi that the answer to the question “What kind of education do we need?” is to be found in the answer to the question “What kind of society do we want?” (Tironi). Education and society are dynamically interactive and interdependent. If human beings hope to maintain and develop a particular type of society, they must develop and maintain the particular type of education system conducive to it. As Dewey in effect argued: No effective democratic schooling system, no democratic society.1For William Rainey Harper, who, as the first president of the University of Chicago, brought Dewey to Chicago, universities are the primary shapers of the American schooling system. In an 1899 speech at the University of California, he perceptively observed that “[t]he school system, the character of which, in spite of itself, the university determines and in a large measure controls.... [T]hrough the school system every family in this entire broad land of ours is brought into touch with the university; for from it proceed the teachers or the teachers’ teachers” (Harper 25). Agreeing with Harper, I contend that higher education institutions powerfully shape the learning, values, and aspirations of students from kindergarten through graduate school. [End Page 50]Given the university’s societal role and influence, creating and sustaining an inclusive, just democratic society requires a... (shrink)

All left-libertarians believe that natural resources should be governed by an egalitarian principle of distribution. In my own case, this belief gains its support from what I take to be the most defensible interpretation of the Lockean principle of justice in acquisition, according to which one may privatize land and other worldly resources in a state of nature so long as one leaves enough and as good for others. Axel Gosseries is right to press the question of the moral (...) status of worldly resources in a state of nature prior to private acquisition. For Locke, that status was one of common ownership, underwritten by God’s gift of the earth to humankind in common. For Léon Walras, to whom Vincent Bourdeau draws our attention, the earth both initially and inalienably belongs to humanity, and such collective ownership is grounded, not in theistic assumptions, but in the “scientific observation” that human beings are by nature social beings. By contrast, I regard the earth as initially unowned. This supposition should not, however, be understood, as it is by some, as the claim that each is equally free at the outset to privatize any bit of the world as he sees fit as a matter of right. Rather, it should be understood as an initial non-presumption of any rights with respect to the world. Rather than asserting the existence of rights that, as a moral default position, we have with respect to pristine wilderness, I am making a claim that is motivated by the methodological impropriety of presuming any rights with respect to the world at the outset. (shrink)

Stone maps the force, vivacity, and stories within our most mundane matter, stone. For too long stone has served as an unexamined metaphor for the "really real": blunt factuality, nature's curt rebuke. Yet, medieval writers knew that stones drop with fire from the sky, emerge through the subterranean lovemaking of the elements, tumble along riverbeds from Eden, partner with the masons who build worlds with them. Such motion suggests an ecological enmeshment and an almost creaturely mineral life.Although geological time can (...) leave us reeling, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen argues that stone's endurance is also an invitation to apprehend the world in other than human terms. Never truly inert, stone poses a profound challenge to modernity's disenchantments. Its agency undermines the human desire to be separate from the environment, a bifurcation that renders nature "out there," a mere resource for recreation, consumption, and exploitation.Written with great verve and elegance, this pioneering work is notable not only for interweaving the medieval and the modern but also as a major contribution to ecotheory. Comprising chapters organized by concept --"Geophilia," "Time," "Force," and "Soul"--Cohen seamlessly brings together a wide range of topics including stone's potential to transport humans into nonanthropocentric scales of place and time, the "petrification" of certain cultures, the messages fossils bear, the architecture of Bordeaux and Montparnasse, Yucca Mountain and nuclear waste disposal, the ability of stone to communicate across millennia in structures like Stonehenge, and debates over whether stones reproduce and have souls.Showing that what is often assumed to be the most lifeless of substances is, in its own time, restless and forever in motion, Stone fittingly concludes by taking us to Iceland--a land that, writes the author, "reminds us that stone like water is alive, that stone like water is transient.". (shrink)