The first new translation of this work to appear in more than twenty-five years, the Columbia I Ching presents the classic book of changes for the world of today.

In this paper, I consider the import of the metaphysics of statues to the decolonizing statues debate. On the one hand, this may seem an odd starting point: after all, the issues surrounding decolonizing statues are political, moral and, perhaps, aesthetic. I agree; however, presuppositions about the nature of statues may well be shaping the political imaginary about decolonizing statues. Indeed, when expressing political and moral claims such as ‘decolonizing statues erases history’, or that ‘decolonizing statues destroys objects that help (...) us to remember a (bygone) past’, I suggest that, from a metaphysical point of view, this relies on a notion of statues as singular objects. Drawing upon material constitution debates in metaphysics, I suggest that thinking about statues as multiple, co-locating objects, might deepen our theoretical understanding of decolonial activism because it allows us to think about the relationship of statues to history and culture in a much more critical way. As such, my analysis is intended to extend our metaphysical understanding of decolonial activism. Furthermore, it stands as a challenge to anyone who thinks that certain effects to history and culture follow, metaphysically speaking, from decolonial activism. (shrink)

From The Birth of Tragedy on, Nietzsche worked to comprehend the nature of the individual. Richard White shows how Nietzsche was inspired and guided by the question of personal "sovereignty" and how through his writings sought to provoke the very sovereignty he described. White argues that Nietzsche is a philosopher our contemporary age must therefore come to understand if we are ever to secure a genuinely meaningful direction for the future. Profoundly relevant to our era, Nietzsche's philosophy addresses a (...) version of individuality that allows us to move beyond the self-dispossession of mass society and the alternative of selfish individualism - to fully understand how one becomes what one is. (shrink)

The use of lateralised cues by predators and fellows may not strongly affect lateralisation. Conservatism of development is a possible source of consistency across vertebrates. Individuals with partial reversal, affecting only one ability, or with varying degree of control of response by one hemisphere do exist. Their incidence may depend on varying selection of behavioural phenotypes such as risk taking.

Science; Ethics; Politics; Beyond recombinant dna.

Bioethicists commenting on conscientious objection and abortion should consider the empirical data on abortion providers. Abortion providers do not fall neatly into groups of providers and objectors, and ambivalence is a key theme in their experience. Practical details of abortion services further upset the dichotomy. These empirical facts are important because they demonstrate that the way the issue is described in analytical bioethics does not reflect reality. Addressing conscientious objection as a barrier to patient access requires engaging with those who (...) provide the service and those who are able to but do not. The experiences of doctors facing these decisions potentially challenge and expand our understanding of the issue as an ethical concern. (shrink)

What motivates manufacturing companies to make costly investments in producing in an environmentally clean manner? The traditional argument is that such behaviour is value reducing, and that therefore, firms must be forced by regulation to invest in "green" production processes. A counter-argument is that firms have an incentive to make environmental investments in an attempt to attract "green" consumers and investors, hence gaining competitive advantage over their rivals. In this paper, we employ a game-theoretic approach that demonstrates that competing firms' (...) incentives to make voluntary investments in environmental "clean-up" are affected by the size of the investment costs and the extent of consumer and investor "green" awareness. We argue that an increase in green behaviour can be induced by a combination of governmental subsidies for firms that invest in environmentally clean production processes, together with an education program that promotes "green" awareness amongst consumers, investors and the managers themselves. (shrink)

The landscape of the Sundarbans today is a product of two countervailing forces: conversion of wetland forests to cropland vs. sequestration of the forests in reserves to be managed for long-term sustained yield of wood products. For two centures, land-hungry peasants strove to transform the native tidal forest vegetation into an agroecosystem dominated by paddy rice and fish culture. During the colonial period, their reclamation efforts were encouraged by landlords and speculators, who were themselves encouraged by increasingly favorable state policies (...) (land grants, tax incentives, cadastral surveys, and eventually colonization projects and subsidized irrigation) designed by revenue officials to maximize the rate of transformation of wetland forest to taxable agricultural land.In the late nineteenth century, as the rate of agricultural conversion increased, the colonial Forest Department succcessfully sought to preserve large areas of the remaining Sundarbans tidal forest by giving them legal status as Reserved or Protected Forests. These forests were intensively managed to provide a sustainable supply of timber and firewood for the increasing population of southern Bengal. Institutionalization of conflicting policies by the Revenue and Forest Departments reflected the escalating needs for both food and forest products as the colony grew. Today, supplies of some economically valuable trees have been depleted, and some mammals are locally extinct (although the Bengal tiger remains), but government policy in both Bangladesh and India now favors use of the Sundarbans as forest rather than its transformation to agricultural land. Further expansion of cropland to meet the grain demands of the burgeoning Bengali population in both nations has largely taken place outside the boundaries of the Sundarbans. Overexploitation of these forests for wood products remains a possibility, but large-scale clearing for rice paddies is unlikely under present policies. (shrink)

Richard White explores how moral virtues affect and support social movements such as pacifism, environmentalism, multiculturalism, and animal rights. White's philosophical treatment of virtue ethics is extended through historical and cross-cultural analysis to help the reader understand and acquire moral wisdom.

Love comes in many forms. From friendship to parenthood, from the lover to the altruist, it touches all our lives. As time passes by this remains constant in the human experience. Love's Philosophy explores the basic expressions of love. In this book, White takes into account classical and historical perspecitives. His reflections explain the historical and contemporary formations of love, and offer alternative models to that most encompassing sensation, love.

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. What is cultural ‘appropriation’? What is cultural ‘appreciation’? Whatever the complex answer to this question, cultural appropriation is commonly defined as ‘the taking of something produced by members of one culture by members of another’, whilst appreciation is typically understood as mere ‘exploration’: ‘Appreciation explores whatever is there’. These provisional definitions suggest that there is an in-principle distinction between the two concepts that presupposes the following: what is appreciated is already available; what is (...) appropriated was, prior to its being taken, not already there or available. Moreover, perhaps appreciation, when contrasted to appropriation, is unproblematic precisely due to this basic difference. In this paper, we argue that the exclusive disjunction – appropriation or appreciation – rests on a false distinction between the two. We also show that this distinction presupposes a false normative principle that to the extent that x is appreciation rather than appropriation, then x is not – relevant to this issue – a wrong. Against these presuppositions, we defend the view that appropriation is already built into appreciation. This does not mean that we cannot ask questions of appreciation, but that questions of appreciation do not preclude the problematics of appropriation. (shrink)

In The Heart of Wisdom, White examines spiritual concepts like generosity, suffering, and joy, incorporating the various perspectives of great philosophers, including Nietzsche, Aristotle, and Derrida, as well as Eastern wisdom traditions, including Buddhism and Vedanta philosophy.

Logical psychologism is the position that logic is a special branch of psychology, that logical laws are descriptíons of experience to be arrived at through observation, and are a posteriori.The accepted arguments against logical psychologism are effective only when directed against this extreme version. However, the clauses in the above characterization are independent and ambiguous, and may be considered separately. This separation permits a reconsideration of less extreme attempts to tie logic to psychology, such as those defended by Mill and (...) Boole. It also provides the basis for a reexamination of the relationship between logic and psychology, and raises the possibility of a deeper investigation into the nature of logic itself. (shrink)

This is a history of intellectual and religious developments in Japan during the Tokugawa period, covering the years 1582-1860. It begins with an explanation of the fate of Christianity, and proceeds to cover the changing nature of the relationship between Buddhism and secular authority, new developments in Shinto, and the growth of 'Japanese studies'. The main emphasis, however, is on the process by which Neo-Confucianism captured the imagination of the intellectual class and informed debate throughout the period. This process was (...) expressed in terms of a never-ending search for the Way, a mode and pattern of existence that could provide not only order for society at large, but self-fulfilment for the individual. The narrative traces how ideas and attitudes changed through time, and is based on the premise that the Tokugawa period is important in and of itself, not merely as a backdrop to the Meiji Restoration of 1868. (shrink)

In Search of the Way deals with intellectual and religious developments in early-modern Japan. It touches on the fate of Christianity but mainly covers Buddhism, Shinto, and Neo-Confucianism, particularly the latter. Of central concern is the constant debate over how society should be organized and how the individual can achieve self-fulfilment as just one element of a larger whole. It touches on such matters as ritual, pilgrimage, and religion in practice, but the emphasis is on ideological debate, disagreement, and consensus.

_Esotericism, Art, and Imagination_ is a uniquely wide- ranging collection of articles by scholars in the field of Western esotericism, focusing on themes of poetry, drama, film, literature, and art. Included here are articles illuminating such diverse topics as the Gnostic fiction of Philip Pullman, alchemical images, the Tarot, surrealism, esoteric films, and much more. This collection reveals the richness and complexity of the intersections between esotericism, artistic creators, and their works. Authors include Joscelyn Godwin, Cathy Gutierrez, M. E. Warlick, (...) Eric Wilson, and many others. (shrink)

As Laudan and Fine show, and Boyd concedes, the attempt to infer the truth of scientific realism from the fact that it putatively provides the best explanation of the instrumental success of science is circular, since what is to be shown is precisely the legitimacy of such abductive inferences. Hacking's "experimental argument for scientific realism about entities" is one of the few arguments for scientific realism that purports to avoid this circularity. We argue that Hacking's argument is as dependent on (...) inference to the best explanation (IBE), and therefore as weak, as the other realist arguments. (shrink)

One of America's foremost philosophers challenges the lost generation of the American Left to understand the role it might play in the great tradition of democratic intellectual labor that started with writers such as Walt Whitman and John Dewey.

Ame Naess, John Rodman, George Sessions, and others, designated herein as ecosophers, propose an egalitarian anti-anthropocentric biocentrism as a basis for a new environmental ethic. I outline their “hands-off-nature” position and show it to be based on setting man apart. The ecosophic position is thus neither egalitarian nor fully biocentric. A fully egalitarian biocentric ethic would place no more restrictions on the behavior of human beings than on the behavior of any other animals. Uncontrolled human behavior might lead to (...) the destruction ofthe environment and thus to the extinction of human beings. I thus conclude that human interest in survival is the best ground on which to argue for an ecological balance which is good both for human beings and for the whole biological community. (shrink)

This volume contains 17 articles on various aspects of Islamic thought in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia. The first 9 articles concentrate especially on the Qur’ān and its exegesis, Kalām and Sufism; the second 8 articles deal with Javanese Islam, and with Islam and modernity in Southeast Asia.

We offer a reconstruction of Richard Price’s intuition-based epistemology of normative essences, highlighting its key elements and showing how it differs from the approaches taken by other intuitionists such as Thomas Reid and G. E. Moore, as well as sentimentalists such as Francis Hutcheson and David Hume. While our analysis aims to shed light on Price’s moral epistemology, it also seeks to contribute to contemporary debates about the epistemology of essence, advancing a general intuition-based theory. These two goals are (...) related, for the former operates in the service of the latter. In this way, our discussion illustrates the role that historical research might play in contemporary inquiries into intuition. (shrink)

Richard Swinburne presents a new edition of the final volume of his acclaimed trilogy on philosophical theology. Faith and Reason is a self-standing examination of the implications for religious faith of Swinburne's famous arguments about the coherence of theism and the existence of God.By practising a particular religion, a person seeks to achieve some or all of three goals - that he worships and obeys God, gains salvation for himself, and helps others to attain their salvation. But not all (...) religions commend worship, and different religions have different conceptions of salvation. Faced with these differences, Richard Swinburne argues that we should practice that religion which has the best goals and is more probably true than the creeds of other religions. He proposes criteria by which to determine the probabilities of different religious creeds, and he argues that, while requiring total commitment, faith does not demand fully convinced belief. While maintaining the same structure and conclusions as the original classic, this second edition has been substantially rewritten, both in order to relate its ideas more closely to those of classical theologians and philosophers and to respond to more recent views. In particular he discusses, and ultimately rejects, the view of Alvin Plantinga that the 'warrant' of a belief depends on the process which produced it, and John Hick's contention that all religions offer valid paths to salvation. (shrink)

Controversies about optimality models and adaptationist methodologies have animated the discussions of evolutionary theory in recent years. The sociobiologists, following the lead of E. O. Wilson, have argued that if Darwinian natural selection can be reliably expected to produce the best possible type of organism - one that optimizes the value of its genetic contribution to future generations - then evolution becomes a powerfully predictive theory as well as an explanatory one. The enthusiastic claims of the sociobiologists for the predictability (...) and applicability that the optimalist approach engenders have been met with severe criticism by Richard C. Lewontin, Stephen Jay Gould, and other biologists and philosophers of biology. These original essays take up both sides of the controversy over the role of optimality models in evolutionary biology, providing a refreshingly insightful and balanced discussion of optimality issues by an interdisciplinary group of leading philosophers of biology, biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and an economist. They focus on the current state of adaptationist and optimalist methodology in evolutionary theory, and on the possibility of extending such methodology to the human sciences, especially those of psychology and anthropology. Introduction / John Dupre -- Part 1. Methodological questions. Simple models of complex phenomena: the case of cultural evolution / Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd -- Natural selection and the null hypothesis / John Beatty -- Why not the best? / Philip Kitcher -- Part 2. Evolution and optimality. What is adaptationism? / Elliot Sober -- How to model evolution / John Maynard Smith -- Comments on Maynard Smith’s "How to Model Evolution" / Elliot Sober -- Reply to Sober / John Maynard Smith -- The shape of optimality / Richard C. Lewontin -- Part 3. Applications. Evolutionary ecology and the optimality assumption / John M. Emlen -- Optimality theory and behavior / John E.R. Staddon -- Part 4. Applications to human behavior. Optimization theory in anthropology: applications and critiques / Eric Alden Smith -- Evolution of a mesh between principles of the mind and regularities of the world / Roger N. Shepard -- From evolution to behavior: evolutionary psychology as the missing link / Leda Cosmides and John Tooby -- On the emotions as guarantors of threats and promises / Jack Hirschleifer -- Human kinds / John Dupre. (shrink)

What is the best standard of interpersonal comparison for a broadly egalitarian theory of social justice?1 A broadly egalitarian theory is one that holds that justice requires that institutions and individual actions should be arranged to improve, to some degree, the quality of life of those who are worse off than others, or very badly off, or both.2 I shall add the specification that to qualify as broadly egalitarian, the theory must in some circumstances require action to aid the worse (...) off or very badly off even when such action would not maximize the aggregate sum of utility, welfare, or well-being. Any such view needs a standard of interpersonal comparison that allows us to distinguish better off from worse off persons. Recently two types of standard have attracted adherents. One is the resource-oriented approach developed by John Rawls and others, and the other is the capability approach associated with the work of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum.3 Rawls has affirmed that the proper measure is an index of primary social goods, flexible, multi-purpose resources such that any rational person wants more rather than fewer of them. (shrink)

SummaryA kinetic theory of permeability is developed both for the case where the cell membrane is a distinct phase and where it is simply the interface between cell and environment. A general expression for the diffusion current of a substance across the membrane is derived, which depends on two “coefficients of permeability” rather than one. Solubility and adsorption theories of permeability are shown to be special cases of the formulas. The permeability coefficients are expressed in terms of the difference of (...) potential energy of the diffusing substance in the two phases; for a membrane of finite thickness they also involve the thickness, and the diffusion coefficient of the solute in the membrane. (shrink)