Virtue ethics is now widely recognized as an alternative to Kantian and consequentialist ethical theories. However, moral philosophers have been slow to bring virtue ethics to bear on topics in applied ethics. Moreover, environmental virtue ethics is an underdeveloped area of environmental ethics. Although environmental ethicists often employ virtue-oriented evaluation (such as respect, care, and love for nature) and appeal to role models (such as Henry Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, and Rachel Carson) for guidance, environmental ethics has not been well informed (...) by contemporary work on virtue ethics. With _Character and Environment_, Ronald Sandler remedies each of these deficiencies by bringing together contemporary work on virtue ethics with contemporary work on environmental ethics. He demonstrates the many ways that any ethic of character can and should be informed by environmental considerations. He also develops a pluralistic virtue-oriented environmental ethic that accommodates the richness and complexity of our relationship with the natural environment and provides effective and nuanced guidance on environmental issues. These projects have implications not only for environmental ethics and virtue ethics but also for moral philosophy more broadly. Ethical theories must be assessed on their theoretical and practical adequacy with respect to all aspects of the human ethical situation: personal, interpersonal, and environmental. To the extent that virtue-oriented ethical theory in general, and Sandler's version of it in particular, provides a superior environmental ethic to other ethical theories, it is to be preferred not just as an environmental ethic but also as an ethical theory. _Character and Environment_ will engage any reader with an interest in environmental ethics, virtue ethics, or moral philosophy. (shrink)

We are causing species to go extinct at extraordinary rates, altering existing species in unprecedented ways and creating entirely new species. More than ever before, we require an ethic of species to guide our interactions with them. In this book, Ronald L. Sandler examines the value of species and the ethical significance of species boundaries and discusses what these mean for species preservation in the light of global climate change, species engineering and human enhancement. He argues that species possess (...) several varieties of value, but they are not sacred. It is sometimes permissible to alter species, let them go extinct and invent new ones. Philosophically rigorous, accessible and illustrated with examples drawn from contemporary science, this book will be of interest to students of philosophy, bioethics, environmental ethics and conservation biology. (shrink)

Some have suggested that there is no fact to the matter as to whether or not a particular physical system relaizes a particular computational description. This suggestion has been taken to imply that computational states are not real, and cannot, for example, provide a foundation for the cognitive sciences. In particular, Putnam has argued that every ordinary open physical system realizes every abstract finite automaton, implying that the fact that a particular computational characterization applies to a physical system does not (...) tell oneanything about the nature of that system. Putnam''s argument is scrutinized, and found inadequate because, among other things, it employs a notion of causation that is too weak. I argue that if one''s view of computation involves embeddedness (inputs and outputs) and full causality, one can avoid the universal realizability results. Therefore, the fact that a particular system realizes a particular automaton is not a vacuous one, and is often explanatory. Furthermore, I claim that computation would not necessarily be an explanatorily vacuous notion even if it were universally realizable. (shrink)

This article addresses the implications of rapid and uncertain ecological change, and global climate change in particular, for reserve oriented and restoration oriented ecosystem management. I argue for the following conclusions: (1) rapid and uncertain ecological change undermines traditional justifications for reserve oriented and restoration oriented ecosystem management strategies; (2) it requires rethinking ecosystem management goals, not just developing novel strategies (such as assisted colonization) to accomplish traditional goals; (3) species preservation ought to be deemphasized as an ecosystem management goal; (...) (4) reserve oriented ecosystem management remains well justified, but the goals for it must be revised. (shrink)

An accessible yet rigorous introduction to the field, Environmental Ethics: Theory in Practice helps students develop the analytical skills to effectively identify and evaluate the social and ethical dimensions of environmental issues. Covering a wide variety of theories and critical perspectives, author Ronald Sandler considers their strengths and weaknesses, emphasizes their practical importance, and grounds the discussions in a multitude of both classic and contemporary cases and examples. FEATURES * Discusses a wide range of theories of environmental ethics, representing (...) their strengths and weaknesses as charitably as possible without advocating for any particular theory, thereby encouraging students to think critically about which views are well justified and which are not * Extensive use of cases and examples links theoretical and practical issues and shows how environmental issues have both social and ecological components; issues covered include climate change, species conservation, ecological economics, consumption, environmental justice, intergenerational justice, genetically modified crops, animal agriculture, population, environmental rights, and food security, among many others * Incorporates both classic and cutting-edge cases and examples; iconic cases include the spotted owl, Bhopal chemical link, and Hetch Hetchy controversies, while contemporary cases include lead contamination of Flint, Michigan's water supply and innovations is conservation genetics, including conservation cloning, deextinction, and gene drives * Covers food ethics--addressing such topics as genetic engineering, food systems, food waste, and eating animals--and technology ethics, reflecting on technological power and the role of technology in creating and responding to environmental issues * Emphasizes the social justice dimensions of environmental problems with chapters on environmental justice, food security, ecofeminism, and more * Includes text boxes that provide extended discussions of cases; thought experiments; additional coverage of theoretical issues discussed in the main text; and exercises that ask students to apply theories or reflect on how theoretical issues intersect with practical problems * Provides numerous pedagogical aids including review questions, discussion questions, key terms and additional reading lists at the end of each chapter, extensive internal cross-referencing, a glossary of key terms and concepts, and more than thirty images, illustrations, tables, and graphs. (shrink)

Food Ethics: The Basics is a concise yet comprehensive introduction to the ethical dimensions of the production and consumption of food. It offers an impartial exploration of the most prominent ethical questions relating to food and agriculture including: • Should we eat animals? • Are locally produced foods ethically superior to globally sourced foods? • Do people in affluent nations have a responsibility to help reduce global hunger? • Should we embrace bioengineered foods? • What should be the role of (...) government in promoting food safety and public health? Using extensive data and real world examples, as well as providing suggestions for further reading, Food Ethics: The Basics is an ideal introduction for anyone interested in the ethics of food. (shrink)

As the crusade to outlaw the teaching of evolution changed to a battle for equal time for creationism, the ideological defenses of that doctrine also shifted from primarily biblical to more scientific grounds. This essay describes the historical development of “scientific creationism” from a variety of late–nineteenth– and early–twentieth–century creationist reactions to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, through the Scopes trial and the 1960s revival of creationism, to the current spread of strict creationism around the world.

Belief in the divine origin of the universe began to wane most markedly in the nineteenth century, when scientific accounts of creation by natural law arose to challenge traditional religious doctrines. Most of the credit - or blame - for the victory of naturalism has generally gone to Charles Darwin and the biologists who formulated theories of organic evolution. Darwinism undoubtedly played the major role, but the supporting parts played by naturalistic cosmogonies should also be acknowledged. Chief among these was (...) the nebular hypothesis proposed by Pierre Simon Laplace in 1796, which explained the origin of the solar system as a natural development over extended periods of time. Ronald Numbers focuses on Laplace's theory as it affected American scientific thought. he first traces the history of Laplace's cosmogony chronologically, from its European inception to its demise about 1900. the last three chapters explore some of the theological and scientific consequences resulting from the acceptance of this cosmogony. Most significant was the change in the status of supernatural doctrine. When the nebular hypothesis lost credence at the end of the nineteenth century, those who had before tried to accommodate natural theory with supernatural doctrine no longer felt compelled to do so when faced with succeeding theories. The nebular hypothesis, it seems, had established natural law in the heavens. (shrink)

We describe some of the ways that the field of content analysis is being transformed in an Era of Big Data. We argue that content analysis, from its beginning, has been concerned with extracting the main meanings of a text and mapping those meanings onto the space of a textual corpus. In contrast, we suggest that the emergence of new styles of text mining tools is creating an opportunity to develop a different kind of content analysis that we describe as (...) a computational hermeneutics. Here the goal is to go beyond a mapping of the main meaning of a text to mimic the kinds of questions and concerns that have traditionally been the focus of a hermeneutically grounded close reading, a reading that focuses on what Kenneth Burke described as the poetic meanings of a text. We illustrate this approach by referring to our own work concerning the rhetorical character of US National Security Strategy documents. (shrink)

Summary. A distinction is made between two senses of the claim “cognition is computation”. One sense, the opaque reading, takes computation to be whatever is described by our current computational theory and claims that cognition is best understood in terms of that theory. The transparent reading, which has its primary allegiance to the phenomenon of computation, rather than to any particular theory of it, is the claim that the best account of cognition will be given by whatever theory turns out (...) to be the best account of the phenomenon of computation. The distinction is clarified and defended against charges of circularity and changing the subject. Several well-known objections to computationalism are then reviewed, and for each the question of whether the transparent reading of the computationalist claim can provide a response is considered. (shrink)

Starting from Søren Kierkegaard's insight that fully accepting the human condition requires one to live with the persistent temptation to escape from it, Ronald Hall finds similar concerns reflected in the work of two modern-day philosophers, Stanley Cavell and Martha Nussbaum, who equally find in a philosophy of love and marriage the key to understanding how humans may achieve happiness in the acceptance of their humanity. All three thinkers follow a "logic of paradox" in showing how success in the (...) human quest to be human depends crucially on the struggle humans experience with the ever-present opportunities to pursue alternative paths. What Kierkegaard called "living existentially" can be achieved only after confronting and refusing the possibilities of living in "aesthetic," "ethical," or even "religious" denial of one's true humanity. By creating this dialogue between the nineteenth-century Danish thinker and two eminent twentieth-century philosophers, Hall reveals the continuing relevance of Kierkegaard's thought to our own age and its cogency as an interpretation of the human predicament. (shrink)

Editorial preface vol. 70.2 Content Type Journal Article Category Editorial Pages 1-2 DOI 10.1007/s11153-011-9321-6 Authors Ronald L. Hall, Department of Philosophy, Stetson University, DeLand, FL, USA Journal International Journal for Philosophy of Religion Online ISSN 1572-8684 Print ISSN 0020-7047.

By means of a Kierkegaardian critique of postmodernism, Ronald L. Hall argues that the postmodernist flirtation with Kierkegaard ignores the existential import of his thought. Word and Spirit offers a novel interpretation of Kierkegaard's conception of the self, according to which spirit is essentially linked to the speech act. In an extended interpretation of Kierkegaard's Either/Or, Hall uses insights from Austin, Wittgenstein, Polanyi, and Poteat to fill out and explicate Kierkegaard's views in the context of modern language philosophy. The (...) enriched concept of the speech act represented by the Hebrew idea of dabhar frames Hall's critique of irony, romanticism, Don Giovanni, Faust, the demonic, music, and ultimately, postmodernisim in a Kierkegaardian mode. The result of the modern suspicion of speech, Hall concludes, is a demonic, musical spiritlessness. (shrink)

The development and deployment of the notion of pre-objective or nonconceptual content for the purposes of intentional explanation of requires assistance from a practical and theoretical understanding of computational/robotic systems acting in real-time and real-space. In particular, the usual "that"-clause specification of content will not work for non-conceptual contents; some other means of specification is required, means that make use of the fact that contents are aspects of embodied and embedded systems. That is, the specification of non-conceptual content should use (...) concepts and insights gained from android design and android epistemology. (shrink)

Le but de cette contribution est d’identifier la place du langage dans l’architectonique du système fichtéen. Il est apparu (1) que la déduction du langage appartient de droit à la partie principielle du système ; (2) que l’intégration de cette déduction dans la partie principielle s’est faite, comme pour la doctrine de l’intersubjectivité, par la prise en compte de considérations initalement développées dans un écrit ne relevant pas directement de la Doctrine de la Science ; (3) qu’en tant que support (...) de la sollicitation, le langage joue un rôle crucial dans la genèse de la conscience, dont il constitue la condition suprême et (4) qu’il est directement lié à la solution proposée par Fichte pour remédier à l’« inachèvement du système kantien ». (shrink)

Cette contribution vise à répertorier les traces d’une influence de la mystique dans le corpus fichtéen et à définir un cadre interprétatif pour expliquer le recours par Fichte à un langage mystique dans L’Initiation à la vie bienheureuse. Un examen attentif des diverses sources laisse apparaître que la tradition mystique et Jacob Böhme en particulier, portés par un puissant souffle poétique, peuvent remplir à l’égard de la philosophie un rôle propédeutique par leur capacité à élever le public au suprasensible, mais (...) doivent également y borner leurs prétentions. Fichte dénonce en effet sur un plan philosophique leur caractère dogmatique et ne leur accorde de valeur qu’éclairés par la critique. (shrink)

The concept ‘nature’ and the role it has played in conservation philosophy have been criticized on theoretical and ethical grounds. Theoretical critiques include that it is ambiguous and implies a false human-nature dichotomy and/or human exceptionalism. Ethical critiques include that it has been used to justify unjust conservation practices, such as colonial erasure and displacing Indigenous and local peoples from their lands. More recently, the concept has been criticized on the grounds that under conditions of high rate and high magnitude (...) anthropogenic change it is not reliable for guiding effective conservation decision-making. Do these critiques imply theorists and practitioners ought to develop a conservation philosophy without ‘nature’? Drawing from work by Steve Vogel and Sally Haslanger, I advocate taking an ameliorative approach to ‘nature,’ rather than abandoning the concept altogether. ‘Nature’ is not an ontologically privileged category that has special moral or value properties, but sufficiently ameliorated, it nevertheless has a crucial role to play in the future of conservation philosophy. (shrink)

2.4 The Example: Infants and object-(im)permanence : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 17 2.4.1 Why a contentful account is warranted: Perspectival sensitivity : : : 17 2.4.2 The \searching under a cloth" and \AB" data : : : : : : : : : : : : 24 2.4.3 Two constraints on objectuality : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : (...) : 25.. (shrink)

Ronald Weed's book offers a fresh investigation of political conflict in Aristotle's Politics. While there have been a number of studies on stasis or factional conflict, few provide a thorough analysis of its intractable character dimensions. Weed presents a highly original and provocative analysis of the moral psychology of factional conflict in the middle books of the Politics, arguing that the character deficiencies of a citizenry are the central causes of stasis and indispensable for understanding both the nature of (...) these conflicts and their remedies. In Weed's view, Aristotle contends that stasis can be greatly limited without greatly reducing bad character, so long as the vices that breed it most are limited. Weed presents a novel and detailed explanation of how Aristotle's institutional remedies, such as the selective distribution of honor and wealth, may bypass circumstances that provoke stasis, if they account for what vices are triggered under those circumstances. Weed advances an understanding of Aristotle's practical thought that captures Aristotle's penetrating realism about political breakdown and pathology, while also preserving the robust and irreducible essence of his theory of character and rational choice. (shrink)

Exact solutions of the Einstein field equations are found for the exterior and interior gravitational field of an infinitely long circulating cylinder of light. The exterior metric is shown to contain closed timelike lines.

On his deathbed, Wittgenstein is reported to have said, upon hearing that his friends were coming for a visit, “Tell them I've had a wonderful life.” Malcolm found this puzzling, given that Wittgenstein seemed to be fiercely unhappy. I find my way into these words against the backdrop of the Hollywood film It's a Wonderful Life and Wittgenstein's famous remark, to wit, “Man has to awaken to wonder . . . Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.” (...) Along the way I discuss Plato's praise of wonder, Nietzsche's attack on science, and Kierkegaard's remark about finding the sublime in the pedestrian. I conclude that Wittgenstein did have a wonderful life insofar as he was fully awake to wonder, what I call the wonder of our words. (shrink)

It is by now commonly agreed that the proper study of consciousness requires a multidisciplinary approach which focuses on the varieties and dimensions of conscious experience from different angles. This book, which is based on a workshop held at the University of Skövde, Sweden, provides a microcosm of the emerging discipline of consciousness studies and focuses on some important but neglected aspects of consciousness. The book brings together philosophy, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, linguistics, cognitive and computer science, biology, physics, art and (...) the new media. It contains critical studies of subjectivity vs objectivity, nonconceptuality vs conceptuality, language, evolutionary aspects, neural correlates, microphysical level, creativity, visual arts and dreams. It is suitable as a text-book for a third-year undergraduate or a graduate seminar on consciousness studies. (shrink)

The companion volume to Arnold Come's Kierkegaard as Humanist, Kierkegaard as Theologian is an exploration of Søren Kierkegaard's deliberately Christian writings, from Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1846) to For Self-Examination (1851). In his later writings Kierkegaard sought to "get further forward in the direction of discovering the Christianity of the New Testament" to resolve his own spiritual crisis. His struggle to understand how authentic theologizing relates to the spiritual struggles of personal faith led him to a discussion of the (...) three basic foci of his theologizing: the self as gift, that is, a creation "out of nothing" from God; the self as failure, which brings on a state of despair; and the self redeemed by God's love and healing compassion. Come probes some of the problematic aspects of Kierkegaard's theology. He addresses the question of whether God's high intentions and demands for human achievement of selfhood and spirituality justify the unspeakable sufferings entailed in human failures to fulfil those demands. He also explores the puzzling relation between Kierkegaard's seeming assignment of exclusivity to the Christian understanding and experiences of both sin and salvation as well as his assumption of the capacity of humans to recognize the need to turn to the eternal that is immanent in every human consciousness - so-called Religiousness A. (shrink)

This book brings together the ideas of a number of contemporary modernist and liberal Muslim thinkers, exposing an important intellectual current in Islamic thought which will be new to many Western readers. Responding to the challenges brought by colonialism and modernization, the contributors propose new conceptions and interpretations of Islam consonant with the age. Although their specific concerns and emphases vary, they all reconsider the relation between religion and politics and the incorporation of modern Western ideas.

The focus of these remarks is on the impact that Personal Knowledge and Philosophical Investigations had in shaping Bill Poteat’s philosophical voice. Of the two works, I claim that, for good or ill, it was Personal Knowledge that had the more profound influence on Poteat. Of course, both sources had profound influence. What makes Personal Knowledge more profound is that his use of it, at least in those early years, was more indirect than his direct and explicit use of Wittgenstein’s (...) ideas. Following Bill’s lead, there is much that Polanyians can learn from Wittgenstein and vice versa. (shrink)

A distinction is made between superpositional and non-superpositional quantum computers. The notion of quantum learning systems - quantum computers that modify themselves in order to improve their performance - is introduced. A particular non-superpositional quantum learning system, a quantum neurocomputer, is described: a conventional neural network implemented in a system which is a variation on the familiar two-slit apparatus from quantum physics. This is followed by a discussion of the advantages that quantum computers in general, and quantum neurocomputers in particular, (...) might bring, not only to our search for more powerful computational systems, but also to our search for greater understanding of the brain, the mind, and quantum physics itself. (shrink)

Like other English-speaking peoples around the world, New Zealanders began debating Darwinism in the early 1860s, shortly after the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. Despite the opposition of some religious and political leaders – and even the odd scientist – biological evolution made deep inroads in a culture that increasingly identified itself as secular. The introduction of pro-evolution curricula and radio broadcasts provoked occasional antievolution outbursts, but creationism remained more an object of ridicule than a threat until the (...) last decades of the twentieth century, when first American and then Australian creationists began fomenting antievolutionism among New Zealanders. Although Stephen Jay Gould assured them in 1986 that they had little to fear from so-called scientific creationism, because it was a ‘peculiarly American’ phenomenon, scientific creationism by the mid-1990s had captured the allegiance of an estimated five per cent of the country and proved especially attractive to Maori and Pacific Islanders. In 1992 New Zealand creationists formed their own antievolution society, Creation Science. (shrink)

Polanyi’s claim that a wholly tacit knowledge is possible is contested. Polanyi’s praise for the tacit, and his critique of the ideal of total explicitness, harbors a threat of Romanticism, which, in turn, may become a threat to the value of the explicit itself, and ultimately a political threat, something that Heidegger’s anti-Enlightenment philosophy and political life manifested all too dramatically. Polanyians must not lose sight of the primacy of the explicit for personal existence, something that Polanyi’s work need not (...) undermine, and indeed, that has the resources to affirm and support. (shrink)

This book consists of thirteen chapters that address the ethical issues raised by technological intervention and design across a broad range of biological and ecological systems. Among the technologies addressed are geoengineering, human enhancement, sex selection, genetic modification, and synthetic biology.

Computer simulation models of mentality and brain theory each, confront a challenge that they do not account for all the data of psychology: the category of contents of consciousness, as a phenomenologist would call it, seems completely untouched by these physicalistic analyses. In my paper I provide a sketch of a possible approach to explaining conditions for ascription of consciousness which is compatible with computer-theoretic and brain-theoretic models.