Radical ecology typically brings to mind media images of ecological activists standing before loggers' saws, staging anti-nuclear marches, and confronting polluters on the high seas. Yet for more than twenty years, the activities of organizations such as the Greens and Earth First! have been influenced by a diverse, less-publicized group of radical ecological philosophers. It is their work—the philosophical underpinnings of the radical ecological movement—that is the subject of _Contesting Earth's Future_. The book offers a much-needed, balanced appraisal of radical (...) ecology's principles, goals, and limitations. Michael Zimmerman critically examines the movement's three major branches—deep ecology, social ecology, and ecofeminism. He also situates radical ecology within the complex cultural and political terrain of the late twentieth century, showing its relation to Martin Heidegger's anti-technological thought, 1960s counterculturalism, and contemporary theories of poststructuralism and postmodernity. An early and influential ecological thinker, Zimmerman is uniquely qualified to provide a broad overview of radical environmentalism and delineate its various schools of thought. He clearly describes their defining arguments and internecine disputes, among them the charge that deep ecology is an anti-modern, proto-fascist ideology. Reflecting both the movement's promise and its dangers, this book is essential reading for all those concerned with the worldwide ecological crisis. (shrink)

Drawing upon selected literature from the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Canada we examine how Foucault's concepts of ‘episteme’, ‘rupture’ ‘parrhesia’ ‘care of the self’, and ‘problemitization’ have been applied to particular contexts of leadership development, pedagogy, nursing knowledge, and the relationship between caring and politics. Our aims are threefold: to give examples of how selected Foucauldian concepts have been taken up in practice; to clarify how we are positioned today as nurses; and to invite more nurses to engage critically with (...) historical inquiry and to engage in deep philosophical reflection about their relationship with nursing. We begin by examining the conditions and circumstances of Foucault's life, and conclude by posing the question in our subtitle to stimulate debate about the philosophical relevance of Foucauldian scholarship to nursing. (shrink)

In a series of essays David Gauthier develops a two-tier pragmatic theory of practical rationality and argues, within that theory, for a distinctive account of the rationality of following through with prior assurances or threats. His discussion suggests that certain kinds of temporally extended agency play a special role in one’s temporally extended life going well. I argue that a related idea about diachronic self-governance puts us in a position to explain a sense in which an accepted deliberative standard can (...) be self-reinforcing. And this gives us resources to adjust Gauthier’s theory in response to a basic challenge. (shrink)

Daniel, Michael E Review(s) of: Australians and the Christian god: An historical study, by Hugh Jackson, (Preston: Mosaic Press, 2013), pp.209, $37.95.

Daniel, Michael E Review of: Saints, sacrilege and sedition: Religion and conflict in the Tudor reformations, by Eamon Duffy, pp. 253, paperback, $27.99.

Controversy and activism have long been linked to the subject of primate research. Even in the midst of raging ethical debates surrounding fertility treatments, genetically modified foods and stem-cell research, there has been no reduction in the campaigns of activists worldwide. Plying their trade of intimidation aimed at ending biomedical experimentation in all animals, they have succeeded in creating an environment where research institutions, often painted as guilty until proven innocent, have avoided addressing the issue for fear of becoming targets. (...) One area of intense debate is the use of primates in stroke research. Despite the fact that stroke kills more people each year than AIDS and malaria, and less than 5% of patients are candidates for current therapies, there is significant opposition to primate stroke research. A balanced examination of the ethics of primate stroke research is thus of broad interest to all areas of biomedical research. (shrink)

This is a reply to discussions by David Copp, Tamar Schapiro, and Sergio Tenenbaum of Michael E. Bratman, Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together.

Daniel, Michael E Review of: Martin Griver unearthed, by Odhran O'Brien, Strathfield, NSW: St Pauls, 2014, pp. 261, hardback, $39.95; paperback, $35.95.

Daniel, Michael E Review(s) of: Benedict XVI: A guide for the perplexed, by Tracey Rowland, London: T and T Clark International, 2010, pp.160, $29.95.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:78 Discussion c:\users\kenneth\documents\type3401\rj 3401 193 red.docx 2014-05-14 8:54 PM MORE WIT IN PM Michael E. Berumen 37155 Dickerson Run Windsor, co 80550, usa [email protected] eldom does one find a piece by Bertrand Russell without a morsel of humour or wryness. Sometimes the Russellian wit is obvious. Other times it is more subtle, maybe even requiring a second look just to be sure. Headlong into some of his most (...) technical and difficult works, a delightful bon mot might suddenly punctuate the philosophical solemnity. One doesn’t ordinarily think of Principia Mathematica as a sourcebook for Russellian waggishness, but it is there, to be sure—albeit one will negotiate many pages of symbols and scant prose before finding a specimen. Perhaps the best-known witticism amongst cognoscenti is, after having proved 1 + 1 = 2 (PM ∗110.643, 2: 83), the authors observe, “The above proposition is occasionally useful.” The most complete directory for these jewels that I know is by Kenneth Blackwell.1 I thought it unlikely another would be found, so imagine my surprise when, after having dusted off my seldom-used Volume 3 to look something up, I came across a droll nugget that (to the best of my knowledge) has not been highlighted before. Something tells me Russell was biting down on his pipe stem and had a twinkle in his eye when he (I assume Russell, but they, anyway) wrote in the summary of Section A of Part vi, “Quantity”: Great difficulties are caused, in this section, by the existence-theorems and the question of types. These difficulties disappear if the axiom of infinity is assumed, but it seems improper to make the theory of (say) 2/3 depend upon the assumption that the number of objects in the universe is not finite. (PM 3: 234; italics mine) “Improper” indeed, the erstwhile Victorian says! By way of explanation, he goes on to say, We have, accordingly, taken pains not to make this assumption, except where, as in the theory of real numbers, it is really essential, and not merely convenient. Even that has a bit of Russellian sarcasm. So, accept the challenge and find another. In the meantime, take comfort in the knowledge that the sometimes controversial Axiom of Infinity is an unnecessary assumption in mixing one part soda and two parts Red Hackle. 1 “The Wit and Humour of Principia Mathematica”, Russell 31 (2011): 151–60. S... (shrink)

Physical theories often characterize their observables with real number precision. Many non-fundamental theories do so needlessly: they are more precise than they need to be to capture the physical matters of fact about their observables. A natural expectation is that a truly fundamental theory will require its full precision in order to exhaustively capture all of the fundamental physical matters of fact. I argue against this expectation and I show that we do not have good reason to expect that the (...) standard of precision set by successful theories, or even by a truly fundamental theory, will match the granularity of the physical facts. (shrink)

Radical ecology typically brings to mind media images of ecological activists standing before loggers' saws, staging anti-nuclear marches, and confronting polluters on the high seas. Yet for more than twenty years, the activities of organizations such as the Greens and Earth First! have been influenced by a diverse, less-publicized group of radical ecological philosophers. It is their work—the philosophical underpinnings of the radical ecological movement—that is the subject of _Contesting Earth's Future_. The book offers a much-needed, balanced appraisal of radical (...) ecology's principles, goals, and limitations. Michael Zimmerman critically examines the movement's three major branches—deep ecology, social ecology, and ecofeminism. He also situates radical ecology within the complex cultural and political terrain of the late twentieth century, showing its relation to Martin Heidegger's anti-technological thought, 1960s counterculturalism, and contemporary theories of poststructuralism and postmodernity. An early and influential ecological thinker, Zimmerman is uniquely qualified to provide a broad overview of radical environmentalism and delineate its various schools of thought. He clearly describes their defining arguments and internecine disputes, among them the charge that deep ecology is an anti-modern, proto-fascist ideology. Reflecting both the movement's promise and its dangers, this book is essential reading for all those concerned with the worldwide ecological crisis. (shrink)

A study of Chrisoula Andreou’s Choosing Well. Andreou defends “a revisionary way of understanding instrumental rationality,” one that contrasts with “standard conceptions of instrumental rationality” that are characteristic of orthodox decision theory. I applaud Andreou’s revisionary efforts but explore whether they lead to a yet further revision that appeals to norms of plan rationality.

The Strange Situation procedure was developed by Ainsworth two decades agoas a means of assessing the security of infant-parent attachment. Users of the procedureclaim that it provides a way of determining whether the infant has developed species-appropriate adaptive behavior as a result of rearing in an evolutionary appropriate context, characterized by a sensitively responsive parent. Only when the parent behaves in the sensitive, species-appropriate fashion is the baby said to behave in the adaptive or secure fashion. Furthermore, when infants are (...) observed repeatedly in the Strange Situation,the pattern of behavior is said to be highly similar, and this pattern is said to predict the infants' future behavior in a diverse array of contexts. After an exhaustive review of the literature, it is shown that these popular claims are empirically unsupported in their strong form, and that the interpretations in terms of biological adaptationare misguided. There is little reliable evidence about the specific dimensions of parental behavior that affect Strange Situation behavior, although there does appear to be some relationship between these constructs. Temporal stability in security of attachment ishigh only when there is stability in family and caretaking circumstances. Likewise, patterns of Strange Situation behavior only have substantial predictive validity in similarly stable families. Implications for future research and theorizing — particularly as they relate to the use of evolutionary biology in psychological theory — are discussed. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that the faculty of introspection, and the subjective states revealed in introspection, present difficulties to materialism. This paper argues that introspection can be construed physicalistically, and that the states introspected need not be imbued with phenomenally self-revealing qualities. The central argument is that introspected states are identified in terms of the external circumstances in which they occur. It is also argued that this broadly behaviorist perspective can be reconciled with the occurrence of ineffable experiences, and that it (...) presents difficulties for the construal of pleasure offered by classical utilitarianism. (shrink)

A précis of Michael E. Bratman, Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together (Oxford University Press, 2014).

Logicians disagree on (1) criteria for the presence of an argument, (2) criteria for adding implicit premises and (3) criteria for linking premises. I attempt to resolve all three problems, and in the process to remove the main obstacles to teaching diagramming. The first problem is resolved by working with real discourse that students find on their own, rather than the artificial examples and problems found in logic texts; it is further reduced by examining the different uses of argument and (...) understanding the extent to which the basic rules of diagramming are the same for the various uses. The other disagreements persist because logicians neglect to clarify the principal type of eakness we remedy by adding implicit premises and linking premises: in real discourse we do so to block substantive counterexamples, an idea correlated with that of substantive deduction, discussed by Govier, Wright and others. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed a burgeoning interest in the study of everyday life within the social sciences and humanities. In Critiques of Everyday Life Michael Gardiner proposes that there exists a counter-tradition within everyday life theorizing.

In her review of my book How we remember: Brain mechanisms of episodic memory, Sarah Robins highlights my example of the problem of interference between memories accessed by content-addressable memory. However, she points out the difficulty of solving this problem with index-addressable representations such as time cells or arc length cells. Namely, the index-addressable memory requires knowing the unique index in advance in order to perform effective retrieval. This is a difficult problem, but should be solvable by forming bi-directional associations (...) between an index-addressable sequence of time cells and an array of content-addressable features in the environment. (shrink)

I consider two inter-related problems in the philosophy of action. One concerns the role of the agent in the determination of action, and I call it the problem of agential authority. The other concerns the relation between motivating desire and the agent's normative deliberation, and I call it the problem of subjective normative authority. In part by way of discussion of work of Harry Frankfurt and Christine Korsgaard, I argue that we make progress with these problems by appeal to certain (...) kinds of higher-order policies and to their role in the cross-temporal organization of the deliberation and action of temporally persisting agents like us. (shrink)

Tomasello explores four interrelated phenomena: joint intentional collaboration; joint commitment; “self-regulative pressure from ‘we’”; and the sense of interpersonal obligation. He argues that the version of that involves is the “source” of and so the source of. I note an issue that arises once we distinguish two versions of.

‘The idea that there are standards of practical reason apart from or independent of good character,’ Kieran Setiya trenchantly argues, ‘is a philosophical mirage’. 1 Setiya's argument in this fine book is a striking blend of philosophy of action and normative philosophy. A central claim is that the intention is a special kind of belief. I want both to challenge that claim and to reflect on a subtle argument in its favour that is in the background.1.Practical thinking, as understood by (...) Setiya, includes the thinking that is involved in ‘the motivation of action done for reasons …, the balancing of reasons …, and the forming and revising of intentions and desires’ . Dispositions of practical thinking are traits of character. So, we can evaluate a given disposition of practical thought by appealing to general standards of good character and asking whether that disposition of practical thought is good as a trait of character. The ‘Virtue Theory’ says that all standards of practical reason are, at bottom, the reflection of standards of good traits of character as those standards of good character are applied to, in particular, dispositions of practical thinking.What Setiya calls ‘rationalism’ is a theoretical alternative to the Virtue Theory. The idea is to find certain features of practical thinking that are essential to intentional agency, and then to show that these essential modes of practical thinking, without further appeal to general standards of good character, support standards of practical reason that apply to all cases of intentional agency.To assess such rationalism, we need a theory of intentional agency and of the practical thinking that is essential to it. According to Setiya, this theory will need to …. (shrink)