Over the past 25 years, UK government policy exhortations to promote and increase exercise and physical activity levels in the population have increased in volume. In recent years, too, there has been growing sociological interest in exercise and physical activity embodiment issues, including within phenomenologically-inspired research into lived-body experiences. This article contributes original insights to a developing body of phenomenological-sociological empirical work in this domain, in addressing the lived experience of organised exercise in outdoor environments, and specifically in theorising (...) the role of ‘lived weather’ in contouring these experiences. It thus addresses the call by Vannini et al. (2012) to remedy the notable ‘absent-presence’ of weather in much social science research. Drawing upon data from a two-year multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional ethnographic study of a nationwide exercise programme in Wales, UK, this article examines participants’ (n = 146) lived experience of weather, and theorises their ‘weather learning’, and ‘weather work’, both of which emerged as highly salient in the findings. (shrink)

Weather experiences are currently surprisingly under-explored and under-theorised in sociology and sport sociology, despite the importance of weather in both routine, everyday life and in recreational sporting and physical–cultural contexts. To address this lacuna, we examine here the lived experience of weather, including ‘weather work’ and ‘weather learning’, in our specific physical–cultural worlds of distance-running, triathlon and jogging in the United Kingdom. Drawing on a theoretical framework of phenomenological sociology, and the findings from five (...) separate auto/ethnographic projects, we explore the ‘weather-worlds’ and weather work involved in our physical–cultural engagement. In so doing, we address ongoing sport sociological concerns about embodiment and somatic, sensory learning and ways of knowing. We highlight how weather work provides a key example of the phenomenological conceptualisation of the mind–body–world nexus in action, with key findings delineating weather learning across the meteorological seasons that contour our British weather-related training. (shrink)

This article explores the potential utility of the theory of Holism as developed by South African philosopher, British Commonwealth statesman and military leader, Jan Smuts, for philosophical counselling or practice. Central to the philosophical counseling process is philosophical counsellors or practitioners applying the work of philosophers to inspire, educate and guide their counselees in dealing with life problems. For example, Logic-Based Therapy, a method of philosophical counselling developed by Elliot Cohen, provides a rational framework for confronting problems of living, (...) where the counselor helps the counselee find an uplifting philosophy that promotes a guiding virtue that acts as an antidote to unrealistic and often self-defeating conclusions derived from irrational premises. We present the argument that Holism is one such uplifting philosophy which can be of utility to philosophical counselors or practitioners to help their counselees with confronting problems of living. Furthermore, we argue that Smuts’ articulation of freedom can act as a guiding virtue within this uplifting philosophy of Holism in accordance with the methodology of LBT. Smuts’ contribution to philosophy and psychology is arguably inadequately credited, and for this reason, and to the best of our knowledge, Smuts’ theory of Holism has yet to be discussed in the context of philosophical counseling or practice. Given these omissions, we begin this article with a discussion of his influence on 20th Century Anglo-American psychology. We then provide a brief historical context, and an introduction to the central argument of Smuts’ Holism, as well as a brief overview of the origins of Smut’s Holism and an introduction to his book Holism and Evolution. In the remainder of the article, we discuss several foundational concepts that underlie Smuts’ theory of Holism, as articulated and developed in his book Holism and Evolution, to substantiate our arguments. We conclude by highlighting the limitations of our article, limitations to Smuts’ model, and the challenges inherent in the use of a now largely antiquated theory, even by Smuts’ own admission nineteen years after its publication, for the purposes of contextualizing and substantiating the arguments and recommendations presented herein. (shrink)

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) was the first publicly funded body created to investigate claims of wrongful conviction, with the power to refer cases to the Court of Appeal. In other countries, such as Australia, Canada and the United States, many regard the CCRC as the optimal solution to wrongful conviction and, for years, Innocence Projects in these countries have called for the establishment of a CCRC-style body in their own jurisdictions. However, it is now Innocence Projects which are (...) being introduced in England and Wales to try to assist applicants who are innocent but convicted. This article reviews why the CCRC was created, discusses the role of factual innocence within this body and within the criminal justice system generally and explores why Innocence Projects are being created in England and Wales, despite the presence of the CCRC. It explains how these different organizations may work together to assist factually innocent people who have been wrongly convicted, and the role Innocence Projects may play generally in criminal justice reform and legal education. (shrink)

Social studies of interdisciplinary science investigate how scientific collaborations approach complex challenges that require multiple disciplinary perspectives. In order for collaborators to meet these complex challenges, interdisciplinary collaborations must develop and maintain integrative capacity, understood as the ability to anticipate and weigh tradeoffs in the employment of different disciplinary approaches. Here we provide an account of how one group of interdisciplinary fog scientists intentionally catalyzed integrative capacity. Through conversation, collaborators negotiated their commitments regarding the ontology of fog systems and the (...) methodologies appropriate to studying fog systems, thereby enhancing capabilities which we take to constitute integrative capacity. On the ontological front, collaborators negotiated their commitments by setting boundaries to and within the system, layering different subsystems, focusing on key intersections of these subsystems, and agreeing on goals that would direct further investigation. On the methodological front, collaborators sequenced various methods, anchored methods at different scales, validated one method with another, standardized the outputs of related methods, and coordinated methods to fit a common model. By observing the process and form of collaborator conversations, this case study demonstrates that social studies of science can bring into critical focus how interdisciplinary collaborators work toward an integrated conceptualization of study systems. (shrink)

In order to address sociological concerns with embodiment and learning, in this article we explore the ‘weathering’ body in a currently under-researched physical-cultural domain. Weather experiences, too, are under-explored in sociology, and here we examine in depth the lived experience of weather and, more specifically, ‘weather work’ and ‘weather learning’ in one of the most extreme and corporeally challenging environments on earth: high-altitude mountains. Drawing on a theoretical framework of phenomenological sociology, and an interview-based research (...) project with 19 international, high-altitude mountaineers, we investigate weather as lived and experienced both corporeally and cognitively. We are particularly interested in conceptualizing and theorizing the ways in which embodied beings relate to the environment through different aspects of their being. The novel concepts of ‘weather work’ and ‘weather learning’, we argue, provide salient examples of the mind-body-world nexus at work, as an embodied practice and mode of thinking, strongly contoured by the physical culture of high-altitude mountaineering. (shrink)

The following article aims to answer the question: “How do we experience weather and qi?” Answering this question addresses two problems: Both the phenomena of weather and qi elude classic phenomenological paradigms such as thing-perception and Dasein, brought forth by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, respectively. If phenomenology is concerned with giving an account of experience starting with the “things themselves,” weather and qi necessitate a different phenomenological paradigm, which comprehensively accounts for the experience of both. This (...) article demonstrates that inconspicuousness, as it has been recently phenomenologically accounted for by Günter Figal, is such a new paradigm. Philosophy done across different languages and cultures is often faced with the problem of untranslatability. This article further demonstrates, following Hisayama Yuho’s work, how phenomenology can present a ground for such philosophy: Instead of discussing qi through its mistranslations into English, I approach the phenomenon by discussing the similarity of phenomenological accounts of qi from Japanese philosophy with my own account of the phenomenology of weather. Both phenomenological accounts mutually elucidate each other. A phenomenological analysis of weather and qi thus both illustrates a largely unthematized facet of human experience in phenomenology, namely, the immersion in media of perception and experience, and demonstrates the philosophical productivity of intercultural philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter explores the practice of Body Weather (BW), a postmodern dance methodology, addressing how BW performers experience and enact agency in this context of practice. Adopting a cognitive ecological, ethnographic, and phenomenological approach, this work focuses on the creation of AURA NOX ANIMA (2016) – a short dance film directed by Sydney-based visual artist Lux Eterna and filmed on the sandy dunes in Anna Bay, New South Wales, Australia – to underscore the role played by the physical (...) and cultural environment in shaping BW performers’ sense of agency. Through the analysis of salient features of BW methodology, that include the practice of bisoku, slow movement, and the cultivation of an attention to the changing ‘weather’ of the performance ecology, this chapter suggests an ecological notion of agency as a key concept in the study of embodied cognition in performance. The chapter emphasises the relevance of addressing the environment-culture-context situatedness in the study of performance practices. (shrink)

This text and commentary is the first to take account of all the manuscripts and to place the work in its historical and scientific context, as well as the first to describe its manuscript tradition.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Photo-credit to Chicago Sun-Times and James Mescall. 4 "The town is beastly and the weather was vile": Bertrand Russell in Chicago, 1938-1939 Visiting Chicago in 1867, Lord Amberley offered his wife an appreciation of the city: "The country around Chicago is flat and ugly; the town itself has good buildings but has a rough unfinished appearance which does not contribute to its attractions."l While Bertrand Russell is known (...) to have accepted and developed particular aspects of his father's thought, it is more likely that his own visits to Chicago, rather than this nineteenth -century appraisal, brought him to the opinion that "the town is beastly and the weather was vile."z One might suppose Russell's longest stay reaffirmed his image of the city suggested in a 1922 article expressing fear of "a slow destruction of the civilization of China" through which "the big towns will become like Chicago."3 Here, Russell appears to have envisioned this city as an amorphous collection of streets and structures manifesting the least desirable values of American capitalism. In his Autobiography a single paragraph is devoted to his 1938-1939 experience of "the bleak hideousness of Chicago" (II, p. 332). Yet there was far more to Russell's six-month sojourn than the little he chose to recall in print. One-half year is a significant period in anyone's life, even for a man who lived ninety-seven (and a half) years. This article, then, presents an account of Russell's coming to and departure from Chicago and his diverse activities while a professor at the University of Chicago. The need to secure some permanent academic position was strongly felt by Russell in the mid-1930s. His ~aertrand and Patricia Russell, The Amberley Papers (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966), p. 57. zThe Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1968), II, p. 332. 3"How Washington Can Help China", New Republic, 4 Jan. 1922, p. 154. / 5 second marriage had ended and a third was beginn~ng; ~ar­ ticipation in the Beacon Hill experimen~ w~s behlnd hlmj and journalistic writing, though ~ contlnulng so~rce of income, was ceasing to be attractlve: No~ a d~slre to return to philosophical work, recurrlng fl~anclal troubles, and the fear of another, far m~r~ destr~ctlve.European~ar all contributed toward his declslon to lnvestlgate Amerlcan possibilities. My feelings are threefold: (a) I' have a lot of ideas in,my head that I long to work at and believe important (b) I am faced with such poverty that I may be unable to give a proper education to the child that is coming (c) That Europe is no place for children with the imminent risk of war--particularly England, which is ' 4 likely to suffer most in the next war. At first, with the help of his American publisher, Warder Norton, Russell approached Princeton University hoping for a research post "on the foundations of mathematics and philosophy" (letter to Norton, 13 Jan. 1937). But no prospect materialized, and he requested Norton to inquire at universities such as Columbia and Harvard. Finally in the spring of 1937 Russell received a letter from Professor Scott Buchanan who then represented the University of Chicago's Committee on the Liberal Arts (COTLA). Buchanan offered a place on COTLA with only minor teaching duties. Writing to Norton that this "seems a very agreeable job", Russell nevertheless suggested the post "may be reactionary and the sort of thing my radical friends would think I ought not to be connected with. '" it is a committee concerned with a conservative reform of education." But the invitation promised adequate time for independent research, and Russell, quite characteristically, concluded "my wish is to accept, but not if doing so would be wicked" (letter of 30 Apr. 1937). However, Buchanan, having soon thereafter left the University of Chicago for a Maryland college, corresponded no further with Russell. The COTLA job offer was officially withdrawn. Only in January 1938 did Russell again hear from a University of Chicago spokesman. Aware that Russell had been somewhat brusquely treated, Professor Richard P. McKeon of the Department of Philosophy now wrote "in the... (shrink)

Criticism on the work of John Kinsella is made particularly lively by the fact that Kinsella himself practices so much criticism, and self-criticism, in his poetry, fiction, and essays. This can ma...

As I have listened to incarcerated women over many years, I have learned about the ways they work to construct moral and meaningful lives against all odds. Trying to find forms of Christian ethical reflection to engage their (and my) experiences has helped me to explore ways of “doing” Christian ethics that attend carefully to “ordinary” life. I describe how women inside understand ethics as judgment and contrast this form of ethics to the moral work they do in (...) relation to themselves and each other. I conclude by suggesting some guideposts for a Christian ordinary ethics that attends critically to the particular practices of building meaningful lives in context, especially those locations requiring persons to “make a way out of no way.”. (shrink)

The foundation of a building connects the main body superstructure to the ground. Every form of foundation and footing have a unique application in a given location for a certain weather condition. Understanding the foundation work is crucial for carrying out building activities. Due to the variety of structures they support, foundations are frequently built in different subsoil conditions and are exposed to static loads. The proper evaluation of soil-bearing capacity is fundamental to the construction of various buildings. (...) One of the quick, easy, and affordable ways to determine soil carrying capacity is the plate load test. The effect of subsoil conditions on the test results is assessed and analyzed in thorough parametric investigations. An overview of axial static and dynamic plate load testing will be given in this study. This article presents detailed processes and schematics. In an effort to highlight the differences and shared characteristics of the results, computational test results of the static load plate test and the dynamic load plate test are contrasted. A load cell, a steel plate, a hydraulic actuator mounted on a big truck to apply a load, a load cell to measure the load, and one or more linear variable displacement transformers to measure the vertical displacements make up the test setup. The maximum thrust load that should be applied to a fixed or stationary actuator when it is not moving is known as a "static load depending on the actuator's static load capacity, we can determine what a safe load is. The maximum thrust load that should be applied to the actuator while it is moving is known as a dynamic load. Dynamic load capacity refers to how much force an actuator can exert when driven and extending or retracting. With each method's benefits and drawbacks considered, it can be determined that using them in various situations and agreeing to the confrontation of these tests for the purpose of comparing results is the best course of action in order to have a base that satisfies the construction standards. (shrink)

Girolamo Cardano was an Italian doctor, natural philosopher, and mathematician who became a best-selling author in Renaissance Europe. He was also a leading astrologer of his day, whose predictions won him access to some of the most powerful people in sixteenth-century Europe. In Cardano's Cosmos, Anthony Grafton invites readers to follow this astrologer's extraordinary career and explore the art and discipline of astrology in the hands of a brilliant practitioner.Renaissance astrologers predicted everything from the course of the future of humankind (...) to the risks of a single investment, or even the weather. They analyzed the bodies and characters of countless clients, from rulers to criminals, and enjoyed widespread respect and patronage. This book traces Cardano's contentious career from his first astrological pamphlet through his rise to high-level consulting and his remarkable autobiographical works. Delving into astrological principles and practices, Grafton shows how Cardano and his contemporaries adapted the ancient art for publication and marketing in a new era of print media and changing science. He maps the context of market and human forces that shaped Cardano's practicesâe"and the maneuvering that kept him at the top of a world rife with patronage, politics, and vengeful rivals.Cardano's astrology, argues Grafton, was a profoundly empirical and highly influential art, one that was integral to the attempts of sixteenth-century scholars to understand their universe and themselves. (shrink)

On 14 July 2021, the western states of Germany, Rheinland Palatinate and North-Rhein-Westphalia experienced major flash floods and about two hundred people died. This article explores how those affected and journalists they spoke to created meaning from the mayhem of an unprecedented disaster and how social representations of flooding emerged in which language, politics and values were intimately intertwined. Combining thematic analysis with elements of social representations theory, and analysing a sample of articles from a national news magazine, we show (...) how social representations of the floods were shaped by the objectification of the floods through metonymy (mud and debris) and the anchoring of the floods through personification and metaphors (natural and mechanical forces), thus adding a new dimension to the existing body of work on flood and metaphors. We claim that the immediate focus on the extreme force of the 2021 floods, on the one hand, and the weakness of political response, on the other, may entrench feelings of helplessness and divert attention away from more systematic and long-term engagement with flood dangers in the context of climate change, including extreme weather events. (shrink)

We expose some representations and practices related to the natural environment among Nahua peasants in a village located at the western boundary of Puebla and Guerrero states, in Mexico. Information was obtained by individual interviews and focal groups' work, following an open guide with ecological items considered as rooted in Mesoamerican cultures. The use of some local, vegetal resources, and the local perception of changes, mainly in the water availability, is documented. Survival strategies involve ancestral representations and material products, (...) and entail a high grade of pragmatism. “Natural environment” is framed in a local culture that involves relational and sacred dimensions, usually omitted in other approaches. Hence, for the Temalac peasants, there is no dissection, at an operative level, between “natural facts” and personal or social ones, being these often considered as determinant for the quality and accessibility of resources and weather conditions. We discuss the challenge for these elements posed by a growing migration rate and an increasing external influence. (shrink)

Working from Adorno’s notion of negative dialectics, this essay charts a dialectical course of resistance toward a horizon of universal freedom. Rather than propose relations between ideal types of resistance, it emphasizes the ineliminable historical dimensions of not only real-world resistance movements but also the philosophical and political theorizing that attempts to make sense of them. In doing so it brings out certain conceptual relations that emerge or recede as the context of resistance shifts. The first moment considers the dichotomy (...) between reform and revolution, the second moment delves into modes of reform, and the third looks to modes of revolution. Along the way the essay discusses the work of such varied figures and organizations as Rosa Luxemburg, John Rawls, Martin Luther King, Jr., Candice Delmas, Robin Celikates, Kimberlee Brownlee, Emma Goldman, Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground, and the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. In the end, the essay is written in the service of understanding the stakes and presuppositions of resistance, in theory and practice. (shrink)

We are often faced with choices that involve the weighing of people's lives against each other, or the weighing of lives against other good things. These are choices both for individuals and for societies. A person who is terminally ill may have to choose between palliative care and more aggressive treatment, which will give her a longer life but at some cost in suffering. We have to choose between the convenience to ourselves of road and air travel, and the lives (...) of the future people who will be killed by the global warming we cause, through violent weather, tropical disease, and heat waves. We also make choices that affect how many lives there will be in the future: as individuals we choose how many children to have, and societies choose tax policies that influence people's choices about having children. These are all problems of weighing lives. How should we weigh lives? Weighing Lives develops a theoretical basis for answering this practical question. It extends the work and methods of Broome's earlier book Weighing Goods to cover the questions of life and death. Difficult problems come up in the process. In particular, Weighing Lives tackles the well-recognized, awkward problems of the ethics of population. It carefully examines the common intuition that adding people to the population is ethically neutral - neither a good nor a bad thing - but eventually concludes this intuition cannot be fitted into a coherent theory of value. In the course of its argument, Weighing Lives examines many of the issues of contemporary moral theory: the nature of consequentialism and teleology; the transitivity, continuity, and vagueness of betterness; the quantitative conception of wellbeing; the notion of a life worth living; the badness of death; and others. This is a work of philosophy, but one of its distinctive features is that it adopts some of the precise methods of economic theory (without introducing complex mathematics). Not only philosophers, but also economists and political theorists concerned with the practical question of valuing life, should find the book's conclusions highly significant to their work. (shrink)

Anthropology is a disciplined inquiry into the conditions and potentials of human life. Generations of theorists, however, have expunged life from their accounts, treating it as the mere output of patterns, codes, structures or systems variously defined as genetic or cultural, natural or social. Building on his classic work The Perception of the Environment, Tim Ingold sets out to restore life to where it should belong, at the heart of anthropological concern. Being Alive ranges over such themes as the (...) vitality of materials, what it means to make things, the perception and formation of the ground, the mingling of earth and sky in the weather-world, the experiences of light, sound and feeling, the role of storytelling in the integration of knowledge, and the potential of drawing to unite observation and description. Our humanity, Ingold argues, does not come ready-made but is continually fashioned in our movements along ways of life. Starting from the idea of life as a process of wayfaring, Ingold presents a radically new understanding of movement, knowledge and description as dimensions not just of being in the world, but of being alive to what is going on there. (shrink)

1. The Shmagency Challenge to Constitutivism In metaethics – and indeed, meta-normativity – constitutivism is a family of views that hope to ground normativity in norms, or standards, or motives, or aims that are constitutive of action and agency. And mostly because of the influential work of Christine Korsgaard and David Velleman, constitutivism seems to be gaining grounds in the current literature. The promises of constitutivism are significant. Perhaps chief among them are the hope to provide with some kind (...) of answer to the skeptic about morality or perhaps practical reason, and the hope to secure for practical reason a kind of objectivity that is consistent with its practical, motivationally engaged nature. The former philosophical motivation for constitutivism – most clearly present in much of Korsgaard’s relevant work[1] – relies on the fact that constitutive norms seem to be less mysterious than not-clearly-constitutive norms. There arguably is nothing mysterious about, say, the norms of certain reasonably-well-defined activities, like building a house, or playing chess. And challenges by the relevant skeptic – the one asking "Why should I make sure the house I’m building can shelter people from the weather?" or "Why should I not castle when my king is checked?" – seem very rare, barely intelligible, and anyway remarkably easy to cope with. We should explain to the misguided skeptic that if he doesn’t even try to build something that can protect people from the weather, he’s not in the business of building a house at all; that if she doesn’t even try to play by the rules of chess, she’s not in the business of playing chess at all; and so on. It would be nice, the constitutivist hope seems to go, if we had something equally powerful by way of a response to the skeptic asking "Why be moral?". The other main motivation for constitutivism – most clearly present in David Velleman’s relevant work[2] – starts from a commitment to some rather strong kind of existence-internalism about reasons: An agent has a reason to?, according to such views ), only if she can come to?, or at least to be motivated to?, by sound deliberation starting from her actual motivational set. (shrink)

Climate change appears to be a classic aggregation problem, in which billions of individuals perform actions none of which seem to be morally wrong taken in isolation, and yet which combine to drive the global concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) ever higher toward environmental (and humanitarian) catastrophe. When an individual can choose between actions that will emit differing amounts of GHGs―such as to choose a vegan rather than carnivorous meal, to ride a bike to work rather than drive a (...) car, or to take a reusable bag to the supermarket rather than send another plastic bag to landfill―does she have any reason to choose the lower-emitting actions? In this chapter I'll reject the claim that individuals don't make a difference when it comes to climate change. I first discuss making a difference with every action, as a way of getting clearer about how individuals' actions impact causally on the harms resulting from climate change, making a distinction so far overlooked in the climate ethics discussion between 'macro' thresholds like ice-cap melt, and 'micro' thresholds like severe weather events. I set aside making a difference with every action as implausible, and then move on to discuss both low probability of major difference, and high probability of minor difference. I argue that both of these are plausible characterizations of individuals' causal contributions to climate change. I conclude by noting some policy implications of having (probabilistic) individual difference-making back in play. (shrink)

Psychotherapy holds out the promise of help for people who are hurting and in need. It can save lives and change lives. In therapy, clients can find their strengths and sense of hope. They can change course toward a more meaningful and healthy life. They can confront loss, tragedy, hopelessness, and the end of life in ways that do not leave them numb or paralyzed. They can discover what brings them joy and what sustains them through hard times. They can (...) begin to trust, or to trust more wisely. They can learn new behaviors in therapy and how to teach themselves new behaviors after therapy ends. They can question what they always believed was a given. They can find out what matters most to them, and how to stop wasting time. They can become happier, or at least less miserable. They can become better able, as Freud noted, to love and to work. They can learn how to accept and love themselves just as they are and accept others who are different from them. Our ethics acknowledge and affirm our profession's responsibilities. This book was written to help strengthen, deepen, and inform ethical awareness and the sense of personal ethical responsibility. Its job is to help you hold onto the ideals-including ethical ideals-that called you into the profession to begin with, to help you develop and fulfill those ideals. There will be so much-trust us on this-that tends to dull ethical awareness, to make ethics drift out of focus, to create barriers between you and your ideals, to replace ethics with pseudo-ethics and ethics placebos. Fatigue, endless paperwork, unrealistic expectations, illness, family crises, not being able to make ends meet, burn out, threats of job loss, insurance coverage that doesn't come close to meeting the needs of our clients, biases that have not been addressed, and so many other forces can pressure us into cutting ethical corners. This book is intended to help you develop a strong and healthy resistance to such forces, to help you weather them without losing your ethical awareness and ideals. (shrink)

Heidegger's later thought is a thinking of things, so argues Andrew J. Mitchell in The Fourfold. Heidegger understands these things in terms of what he names "the fourfold"--a convergence of relationships bringing together the earth, the sky, divinities, and mortals--and Mitchell's book is the first detailed exegesis of this neglected aspect of Heidegger's later thought. As such it provides entré to the full landscape of Heidegger's postwar thinking, offering striking new interpretations of the atomic bomb, technology, plants, animals, weather, (...) time, language, the holy, mortality, dwelling, and more. What results is a conception of things as ecstatic, relational, singular, and, most provocatively, as intrinsically tied to their own technological commodification. A major new work that resonates beyond the confines of Heidegger scholarship, The Fourfold proposes nothing less than a new phenomenological thinking of relationality and mediation for understanding the things around us. (shrink)

Social justice demands that we attend carefully to the epistemic terrains we inhabit as well as to the epistemic resources we summon to make our lived experiences tangible to one another. Not all epistemic terrains are hospitable—colonial projects landscaped a good portion of our epistemic terrain long before present generations moved across it. There is no shared epistemicterra firma,no level epistemic common ground where knowers share credibility and where a diversity of hermeneutical resources play together happily. Knowers engage one another (...) on a politically saturated,unlevel knowing fieldwhere members of dominant groups work to forcibly maintain their epistemic home-terrain advantage. I use the metaphor of the unlevel knowing field to capture these oppressive epistemic structures. The unlevel knowing field is a hungry place where all knowledge that fails to nurture and sustain dominant ways knowing risks being dragged onto the dominator's epistemic home turf to be mined, coopted, consumed, or destroyed. Knowledge and willful ignorance circulate with equal vigor in this hungry world. From the standpoint of oppressed/resisting peoples, the unlevel knowing field is a minefield, an epistemic twilight zone, which must be traversed with considerable care and endless attention. The harms epistemic injustice produces are not disembodied harms. Repeated acts of injustice weather our bodies, dull our minds, weaken our hearts, and traumatize the spirit of our communities. They create public-health precarities and invite mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual illness into our being. Epistemic oppression is a cruel thief. It is disorienting, exhausting, and deadly. It triggers anger, anxiety, depression, and resistance. It steals our time, energy, and attention away from more beautiful things. (shrink)

It is raining but you don’t believe that it is raining. Imagine accepting this claim. Then you are committed to saying ‘It is raining but I don’t believe that it is raining’. This would be an ‘absurd’ thing to claim or assert, yet what you say might be true. It might be raining, while at the same time, you are completely ignorant of the state of the weather. But how can it be absurd of you to assert something about (...) yourself that might be true of you? This is Moore’s paradox as it occurs in speech. What is the source of the absurdity? And why does it strike us that a contradiction is somehow at work when there is no contradiction in the content of what is asserted? In Section 2, I describe Moore’s formulation of the paradox and evaluate his own solutions. In Section 3, I discuss Wittgenstein’s inf luence in solving the paradox. In Section 4, I discuss Shoemaker’s priority thesis that once the absurdity in belief has been explained, then this will translate into an explanation of the absurdity in assertion. In Section 5, I discuss work on omissive and commissive Moore-paradoxical assertions, i.e. those of the forms p & I don’t believe that p and p & I believe that not-p. In Section 6, I discuss work on assertions of the form p & I don’t know that p. (shrink)

Climate change is reshaping patterns of displacement around the world. Extreme weather events destroy homes, environmental degradation threatens the viability of livelihoods, sea level rise and coastal erosion force communities to relocate, and risks to food and resource security magnify the sources of political instability. Climate displacement—the displacement of people driven at least in part by the impacts of climate change—is a pressing moral challenge that is incumbent upon us to address. -/- This book develops a political theory of (...) climate displacement. Most work on climate displacement has tended to take an idealized ‘climate refugee’ as its focus. But focusing on the figure of the climate refugee obscures the complexity and heterogeneity of climate displacement. Instead, this book takes the empirical dynamics of climate displacement as its starting point. It examines the moral and political problems raised by the interaction of climate change and displacement in five domains: community relocation, territorial sovereignty, labour migration, refugee movement, and internal displacement. In each context, climate displacement raises distinct questions, which this book explores on their own terms. At the same time, this book treats climate displacement as a unified phenomenon by examining the overarching questions of responsibility and fairness that it raises. The result is an empirically grounded political theory that both maps the conceptual terrain of climate displacement and charts a course for meeting the moral challenge that it raises. (shrink)

The aesthetics of everyday life, originally developed by Henri Lefebvre and other modernist theorists, is an extension of traditional aesthetics, usually confined to works of art. It is not limited to the study of humble objects but is rather concerned with all of the undeniably aesthetic experiences that arise when one contemplates objects or performs acts that are outside the traditional realm of aesthetics. It is concerned with the nature of the relationship between subject and object. One significant aspect of (...) everyday aesthetics is environmental aesthetics, whether constructed, as a building, or manipulated, as a landscape. Others, also discussed in the book, include sport, weather, smell and taste, and food. (shrink)

Every day, in many situations, we use expressions which seem only vaguely to provide us with information. The weather forecaster tells us that "some showers are likely in Northern regions during the night", a statement which is vague with respect to number of showers, location, and time. Yet such messages are informative, and often it is not possible for the producer of the message to be more precise. A tutor tells his students that "only a few students fail their (...) exams outright". This does not give a precise incidence. Yet it might be equally misleading to do so. For example, to say that 12% failed outright last year says nothing about other years, while to say an average of 8% over the last five years says nothing about variability. We argue that a precise, numerical statement can be sometimes more misleading in reality than a vague statement. Many researchers in psychology have attempted to capture the meaning of quantities by relating them to scales of quantity. The book explores this idea in detail and shows with original studies how these expressions also serve to control attention and to convey information about the expectations held by those involved in the communication. The book works towards a psychological theory of the meaning of quantifiers and similarly vague terms. New links are drawn between formal theories of quantification and psychological experimentation. (shrink)

Ranchers and pastoralists worldwide manage and depend upon resources from rangelands across Earth’s terrestrial surface. In the Great Plains of North America rangeland ecology has increasingly recognized the importance of managing rangeland vegetation heterogeneity to address conservation and production goals. This paradigm, however, has limited application for ranchers as they manage extensive beef production operations under high levels of social-ecological complexity and uncertainty. We draw on the ethics of care theoretical framework to explore how ranchers choose management actions. We used (...) modified grounded theory analysis of repeated interviews with ranchers to compare rancher decision-making under relatively certain and uncertain conditions and describe a typology of practices used to prioritize and choose management actions that maintain effective stewardship of these often multi-generational ranches. We contrast traditional decision-making frameworks with those described by interviewees when high levels of environmental and market uncertainty or ecological complexity led ranchers toward use of care-based, flexible and relational frameworks for decision-making. Ranchers facing complexity and uncertainty often sought “middle-ground” strategies to balance multiple, conflicting responsibilities in rangeland social-ecological systems. For example, ranchers’ care-based decision-making leads to conservative stocking approaches to “manage for the middle,” e.g. to limit risk under uncertain weather and forage availability conditions. Efforts to promote heterogeneity-based rangeland management for biodiversity conservation through the restoration of patch burn grazing and prairie dog conservation will require increased valuation of ranchers’ care work. (shrink)

The figure of today’s threat is the suddenly irrupting, locally self-organizing, systemically self-amplifying threat of large-scale disruption. This form of threat, fed by instability and metastability, is not only indiscriminate, it is also indiscrimin able; it is indistinguishable from the general environment. The figure of the environment shifts: from the harmony of a natural balance to the normality of a generalized crisis environment so encompassing in its endemic threat-form as to connect, across the spectrum, the polar extremes of war and (...) the weather. Michel Foucault characterizes the dominant contemporary regime of power, coincident with the rise of neoliberalism, as ‘environmental’: a governmentality which will act on the environment and systematically modify its variables. Its actions, he emphasizes, are not standardizing since the shift in the figure of the environment has moved it out of reach of normalization. Given the indiscriminateness of the environment’s autonomous activity, environmentality must work through the ‘regulation of effects’ rather than of causes. It must remain operationally ‘open to unknowns’ and catch nonlinear, transversal phenomena before they amplify the stirrings to actual crisis proportions. What systematicity is this? And: does power’s becoming-environmental mean that, politically, we are dealing with natural subjects? Where Foucault’s question ends is where, today, we must begin, in light of how the recomposition of power whose dawning he glimpsed in 1979 has since played out. In the context of Foucault’s theories of power, the question amounts to asking: is this still ‘biopolitics’? (shrink)

The relation between humans and nature is at the core of the great existential threats of our time, from climate change, extreme weather, and environmental destruction to devastating pandemics. We are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that, unless we change our behavior radically and quickly, the most likely outcome will be the destruction of countless species and forms of life, including our own. But we also need to change the way we think about nature, and think about the (...) relation between humans and nature – this is a key intellectual task. In this important book, Richard J. Bernstein argues that an adequate conception of humans and nature, capable of facing up to the existential threats of our time, requires taking full account of the major projects dealing with nature in the past. Focusing on key figures of modernity – Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud – Bernstein reconstructs their conceptions of nature and uncovers the reasons that led them to their distinctive views. Working through the contradictions and incompatibilities among these diverse thinkers, Bernstein identifies common themes that have shaped their struggles in dealing with the relation of humans to nature. He offers a critical overview of the challenges illuminated by each perspective that must be confronted in our thinking of nature today. As a prolegomenon to rethinking humanity and nature, this book uncovers the rich conceptual resources available within the modern tradition that can help us to develop an adequate understanding of nature for our time. (shrink)

In the United States, low-income or minority populations tend toward earlier births than the more advantaged. In disadvantaged populations, one factor that may exert pressure toward early births is “weathering,” or pervasive health uncertainty. Are subjective perceptions of health related to fertility timing? Drawing on a small sample of intensive interviews with teenage mothers-to-be, I suggest that low-income African American teenagers may expect uncertain health and short lifespans. Where family economies and caretaking systems are based on kin networks, such perceptions (...) may influence the decision to become a young mother. Heuristic typologies of ways socially situated knowledge may contribute to the reproduction of fertility timing practices contrast the experiences of poor African American interviewees, working class white interviewees, and middle-class teens who typically postpone childbearing. (shrink)

This article explores the practice of simulation modeling by investigating how parameterizations are constructed and integrated into existing frameworks. Parameterizations are simplified process descriptions adapted for simulation models. On the basis of a study of meteorological research, the article presents predictive and representative construction as two different ways of developing parameterizations and the trade-offs involved in this work. Because the overall aim in predictive construction is to improve weather forecasts, the most practical solutions are chosen over the best (...) theoretical solutions. In representative construction, the situation is reversed, but while discourse focuses on theory and models, the everyday work is often tied to computer programs. These different ways of construction work are closely related to the role of the simulation models as epistemic or technical objects, and this characterization is also used to compare the results with previous research. (shrink)

This chapter shows how al-Kindī interweaves ideas from Greek cosmology to give a theory that can explain the efficacy of astrology and how God’s providence is dispersed by means of heavenly influence. A concrete example is found in al-Kindī’s works on meteorology, since he thinks that weather is produced by celestial causation. The mechanics of this causation are explained differently in different works, which leads to a consideration of the authenticity of On Rays, which is ascribed to al-Kindī, and (...) its place in his corpus. Finally, the chapter considers whether al-Kindī’s account commits him to determinism, and whether he thinks universal causal determinism is compatible with human freedom. (shrink)

This paper is based on ethnographic research of data practices in a public health project called Weather Health and Air Pollution. I examine two different kinds of practices that make air pollution data, focusing on how they relate to particular modes of sensing and articulating air pollution. I begin by describing the interstitial spaces involved in making measurements of air pollution at monitoring sites and in the running of a computer simulation. Specifically, I attend to a shared dimension of (...) these practices, the checking of a numerical reading for error. Checking a measurement for error is routine practice and a fundamental component of making data, yet these are also moments of interpretation, where the form and meaning of numbers are ambiguous. Through two case studies of modelling and monitoring data practices, I show that making a ‘good’ measurement requires developing a feeling for the instrument–air pollution interaction in terms of the intended functionality of the measurements made. These affective dimensions of practice are useful analytically, making explicit the interaction of standardised ways of knowing and embodied skill in stabilising data. I suggest that environmental data practices can be studied through researchers’ materialisation of error, which complicate normative accounts of Big Data and highlight the non-linear and entangled relations that are at work in the making of stable, accurate data. (shrink)

'Methinks I am like a man, who having narrowly escap'd shipwreck', David Hume writes in A Treatise of Human Nature, 'has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe'. With these words, Hume begins a memorable depiction of the crisis of philosophy and his turn to moral and political philosophy as the path forward. In this groundbreaking work, Thomas (...) W. Merrill shows how Hume's turn is the core of his thought, linking Hume's metaphysical and philosophical crisis to the moral-political inquiries of his mature thought. Merrill shows how Hume's comparison of himself to Socrates in the introduction to the Treatise illuminates the dramatic structure and argument of the book as a whole, and he traces Hume's underappreciated argument about the political role of philosophy in the Essays. (shrink)

Kant's correspondence includes a short letter from a well-wisher named Bertram. The content of the letter is as harmless as it is uninteresting: Bertram invites Kant to visit his brother's estate. ‘Do come,’ he says, ‘because the weather is so beautiful and such travel so beneficial’ . The interest of the letter is entirely exhausted by the date: 20 May 1775. For Kant used the letter to scribble down ideas, some suggestive of themes later to emerge in the first (...) Critique. Similarity of handwriting and train of thought suggests that these scribbles are part of a whole bundle of papers collectively known as the Duisburg Nachlaβ . It was supposedly Kant's practice to use letters as scrap paper shortly after receiving them. If this is true, we can date the Bertram scribbles - and, in all likelihood, the bundle as a whole - to some time in 1775. That would make the Duisburg Nachlaβ one of the few pieces of philosophical writing in Kant's own hand to come down to us from the 1770s, and the only extended piece in his hand from the middle of the decade. It offers a rare glimpse of Kant at work on immediate ancestors of central ideas in the first Critique and might therefore be expected to shed light on an important chapter in Kant's philosophical development. (shrink)

Metal roof enclosure system is an important part of steel structure construction. In recent years, it has been widely used in large-scale public or industrial buildings such as stadiums, airport terminals, and convention centers. Affected by bad weather, various types of accidents on metal roofs frequently occurred, causing huge property losses and adverse effects. Because of wide span, long service life and hidden fault of metal roof, the manual inspection of metal roof has low efficiency, poor real-time performance, and (...) it is difficult to find hidden faults. On the basis of summarizing the working principle of metal roof and cause of accidents, this paper classifies the fault types of metal roofs in detail and establishes a metal roof monitoring and fault diagnosis system using distributed multisource heterogeneous sensors and Zigbee wireless sensor networks. Monitoring data from strain gauge, laser ranging sensor, and ultrasonic ranging sensor is utilized comprehensively. By extracting time domain feature, the data trend characteristics and correlation characteristics are analyzed and fused to eliminate erroneous data and find superficial faults such as sensor drift and network interruption. Aiming to the hidden faults including plastic deformation and bolt looseness, an SVM fault diagnosis algorithm based on RBF kernel function is designed and applied to diagnose metal roof faults. The experimental results show that the RBF-SVM algorithm can achieve high classification accuracy. (shrink)

The clinical relationship has been underexplored in dementia care. This is in part due to the way that the clinical relationship has been articulated and understood in bioethics. Robert Veatch’s social contract model is representative of a standard view of the clinical relationship in bioethics. But dementia presents formidable challenges to the standard clinical relationship, including ambiguity about when the clinical relationship begins, how it weathers changes in narrative identity of patients with dementia, and how the intimate involvement of family (...) fits alongside a paradigmatically dyadic relationship. Drawing on work in recent feminist theory, a critique is offered of the standard clinical relationship in bioethics as underwritten by an individualistic conception of autonomy. An alternative view of the clinical relationship in dementia, one that embraces a relational account of autonomy, is put forward. (shrink)

The Movimiento Autonomo de Mujeres in Nicaragua - birthed in part from the Sandinista Revolution of the 1980s - represents one of the largest, most diverse, and most autonomous women's movements in all of Latin America. While it's true that scholars across a wide range of disciplines have written invariably about this social movement what remains missing from this body of work is scholarship aimed at understanding, specifically, the psychology of resistance; in other words, what are the psychological mechanisms (...) and methodologies that emerge from the margins that determine the kind of social action that revolutionizes societies? Investigating the psychosocial processes behind resistance is critical to understanding a commitment to justice and the development of subjectivity necessary for enacting the political activity required for social transformation. Psychology, in particular, as author Shelly Grabe argues, is positioned to engage in a systematic exploration of the links between social and political conditions that determine how, why, and under what circumstances resistance emerges. Narrating a Psychology of Resistance documents the first-hand accounts of the Nicaraguan women's Movimiento: a coordinated mobilization of women that has weathered unremitting power differentials characterized by patriarchy and capitalism. In this collection of testimonios, Grabe gives voice to these extraordinary women and closely examines how psychological processes that emerge in response to sociopolitical oppression can lead to gendered justice and the revolutionizing of societies at large. ". (shrink)

Let me regale you with yet another variant of the story of Sleeping Beauty. In this one, the experiment takes place in a room with a skylight, so that Beauty can see what the weather is like outside as soon as she wakes up. The weather can be in any one of n different states on any given day. Beauty regards each of these states as equiprobable; moreover, she takes there to be no correlation between the weather (...) on Monday and the weather on Tuesday, or between the weather on either day and the coin-toss. The rest of the story works as usual: Beauty will be awoken on Monday, after which a coin will be tossed; if it lands Tails, she will be woken again on Tuesday having had her memories of the Monday awakening erased; otherwise, she will stay asleep until Wednesday.1 The weather is the only source of variation in her wakings, so if it should happen that the weather is the same on Monday and Tuesday, her total evidence will be exactly the same on both wakings. (shrink)

ArgumentThe administration of mountain expeditions from the ground created special managerial problems. The Harvard College Observatory's Boyden Expeditions of 1887–1890 sent men and materiel to three sites: Pike's Peak, Colorado; Mount Wilson, California; and Chosica, Peru. Their goal was to test sites in order to find a suitable site for a permanent Boyden station to conduct astrophysical work in service of Harvard's preexisting projects. The logistical difficulties of living on the mountainside combined with the organizational difficulties of administrating a (...) station at a distance. The men who lived on the mountain were professionally vulnerable, and often cut off from their home observatory both by the weather conditions at their own altitude and local politics on the ground below them. Only when an unbroken line of communication could be established between the mountain station and the Harvard Observatory could the astronomers on both ends work together to create a successful expedition. (shrink)

This article traces an emergent tension in an interdisciplinary public health project called Weather Health and Air Pollution. The tension centered on two different kinds of data of air pollution: monitored and modeled data. Starting out with monitoring and modeling practices, the different ways in which they enacted air pollution are detailed. This multiplicity was problematic for the WHAP scientists, who were intent on working across disciplines, an initiative driven primarily by the epidemiologists who imbued the project with meaning (...) and value as the protagonists of “health.” To work collaboratively implies a stable, singular, and shared research object, however: one kind of data, one version of air pollution. In detailing two attempts by researchers to address the inadequacies of modeled and monitored data, this article explores the ways in which difference and multiplicity were negotiated and transformed. In doing so, this article suggests that it is the mobility and instability of data that are particularly fruitful for exploring the facilitation and enactment of new realities, while also making explicit the emergent problematics and partialities which inevitably result. (shrink)

What is philosophically interesting about how soil is managed and categorized? This paper begins by investigating how different soil ontologies develop and change as they are used within different social communities. Analyzing empirical evidence from soil science, ethnopedology, sociology, and agricultural extension reveals that efforts to categorize soil are not limited to current scientific soil classifications but also include those based in social ontologies of soil. I examine three of these soil social ontologies: (1) local and Indigenous classifications farmers and (...) farming communities use to conceptualize their relationships with soil in their fields; (2) categorizations ascribed to farmers in virtue of their agricultural goals and economic priorities relied upon in sociological research; and (3) federal agency classifications of land capability employed by agricultural scientists. Studying the interplay of these social ontologies shows how assessing soil properties and capabilities are the result of previous agricultural strategies informed by culture, agroecological history, weather, soil biodiversity, crop rotation, and the goals held by decision-makers. The paper then identifies the soil relationships and interactions that constitute ontology-making activities. Building on recent work, I outline a novel interactive account of perspectival realism grounded in agricultural extension research and ethnopedological data that captures the haptic nature of farmers’ soil strategies. This interactive account explains how ontologies are chosen, why they are chosen, and how they interact and inform soil management decision-making. The paper concludes by examining the values laden in these ontologies and those which are causally implicated in the choice of soil management strategies. (shrink)

Greco-Roman meteorology will be described in four overlapping developments. In the archaic period, astro-meteorological calendars were written down, and one appears in Hesiod’s Works and Days; such calendars or almanacs originated thousands of years earlier in Mesopotamia. In the second development, also in the archaic period, the pioneers of prose writing began writing speculative naturalistic explanations of meteorological phenomena: Anaximander, followed by Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, and others. When Aristotle in the fourth century BCE mentions the ‘inquiry that all our predecessors have (...) been calling meteorology’ (338a26), he is referring to these writers. In the third development, the first two enterprises were combined: empirical data collection about meteorological phenomena began to be married to naturalistic theoretical explanation. This innovation was prompted by Democritus and synthesised in its most influential form by Aristotle. At this point more sophisticated techniques of both short-term weather forecasting and long-term speculation about global climate change were also developed. In the fourth development, the wider implications of the naturalistic explanation of meteorological phenomena were contested. The views of ‘meteorologists’ had been controversial since the archaic period because they were perceived, and sometimes intended, to displace the divine prerogatives and undermine traditional religion. These controversies intensified throughout the classical and Hellenistic periods. (shrink)

A specific form of research question, for instance, “What is the probability of a certain class of weather events, given global climate change, relative to a world without?” could be answered with the use of FAR or RR (Fraction of Attributable Risk or Risk Ratio) as the most common approaches to discover and ascribe extreme weather events. Kevin Trenberth et al. (2015) and Theodore Shepherd (2016) have expressed doubts in their latest works whether it is the most appropriate (...) explanatory tool or the way of public outreach concerning climate events and extremes. As an alternative, these researchers focus on complementary questions, for example, “How much did climate change affect the severity of a given storm?” advocating a “storyline” approach. New methods and new research questions are neither foreign, nor controversial from the standpoint of history and philosophy of science, especially those, related to public interest. Nevertheless, the new proposal has got a tepid reception from the majority of professionals of the given field. They argued that this approach can cause weakening of standards and neglecting of scientific method. The following paper attempts to find the roots of the supposed controversy. We claim inefficiency of uncompromising approach to D&A in absolute sense and assert that errors of a particular type may have a different level of concern in society, depending on the variety of contexts. Therefore, context defines the risk of over-estimation vs. under-estimation of harm. (shrink)

The development of the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing system has generated new possibilities for the use of gene drive constructs to reduce or suppress mosquito populations to levels that do not support disease transmission. Despite this prospect, social resistance to genetically modified organisms remains high. Gene drive open field research thus raises important questions regarding what is owed to those who may not consent to such research, or those could be affected by the proposed research, but whose consent is not solicited. (...) The precise circumstances under which informed consent must be obtained, and from whom, requires careful consideration. Furthermore, appropriate engagement processes should be central to any introduction of genetically modified mosquitos in proposed target settings. In this work, international guidance documents on informed consent and engagement are reviewed and applied to the genetically modified mosquito research context. Five analogous research endeavours that involve area-wide / open field experiments are reviewed. The approach of each in respect to the solicitation of individual informed consent and community engagement are highlighted. While the solicitation of individual informed consent in host settings of gene drive field trials may not be possible or feasible in some instances, local community and stakeholder engagement will be key to building trust towards the proposed conduct of such research. In this regard, the approaches taken by investigators and sponsors of political science field research and weather modification field research should be avoided. Rather, proponents of gene drive field research should look to the Eliminate Dengue field trials, cluster randomised trials, and pragmatic clinical trials for guidance regarding how the solicitation of individual informed consent of host communities ought to be managed, and how these communities ought to be engaged. (shrink)

June 2022 A Revolutionary New Metaphysics, Based on Consciousness, and a Call to All Philosophers We are in a unique moment of our history unlike any previous moment ever. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. As I write, the planet is in deep trouble, heat, fires, great storms, and record flooding, (...) weather patterns drastic everywhere. Capitalism has been so successful in supplying us with an endless array of consumer items, that we have never noticed there is a cost. But there is a cost, the cost is the very life of the Earth herself, and now the day of reckoning is here. Days of reckoning are most often days of rath. But I am hoping that this is a day of major Awakening over the entire planet. We have caused a crisis so great for the Earth we can hardly get our minds around it. But I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis are ideas, about who and what the Earth is, Ourselves, and what we are here for. I am proposing that this is a call to all philosophy and philosophers to rethink ourselves from the ground up. The human race has never gotten the Earth right and now we must, for the Earth is the true foundation for civilization. We are in deep trouble with the Earth, and it owes to the fact that the great male thinkers never got the Earth right, they could never make the connection between the life of mind and the life of the Earth. I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis we are in are ideas. And that in fact the planet is in the grip of a false metaphysics, and scientific image of nature that really comes most recently from Descartes. His conviction that matter, and with it the Earth, are simply the weighable, the measurable the extended in space and time, utterly devoid of any inner life of mind thoughts or Consciousness. This view of matter and the Earth goes back to the very dawn of thought, Descartes is just its most recent and comprehensive version of things. This view of matter is really a false metaphysics that dominates most of the modern world and underpins the whole scientific image of nature itself. I am proposing this is a false metaphysics and offering a new version of things based on Consciousness. If there is a single idea fueling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something without Consciousness. When you intend to ravage and savage the planet, turn it into consumer items to be converted into money in the bank, first pretend that all of the bright beings in the natural world are devoid of Consciousness, just “things” you do not have to have any conscious about destroying them. I am proposing that this term Consciousness, that has appeared as term and a problem for modern science, is the key to getting ourselves right with the Earth. I propose this new theory for science will ramify into every other disciplines as well, and the ways we think just about everything. This old paradigm based on a false theory of matter, has run its course, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction. We need new ideas, and we need them now. You will find my recent work in the Scientific God Journal under the title: Consciousness as the Organizing Principle, and a very complete version of my arguments for this term Consciousness, along with radical reinterpretation of modern science itself, on the Galileo Commission site. It is a radical moment for all of the thinkers among us, take this as my small contribution to rethinking ourselves in new terms, based on my understanding that the true basis for the whole of Being, the Universe, the Cosmos, and with them Ourselves, is this term Consciousness. And unpack it. And I predict that with this term Consciousness every intractable human problem in both science and the modern world will go down like a line of dominos before it. And so, here are a few new ideas I would offer you. These are the times of the Reappearance of the Feminine, a great Awakening as of Springtime after a long dark and lonely Winter. We are leaving behind us an old civilization based on male dominance, fear lies and control, now in decay, disease, and death disintegrating all around us. We are moving into a whole new civilization based on Love and Truth. A new civilization requires new basic terms values and first principles. And so, I return to Descartes. 1. Just over 300 years ago a young man travelling with the army found himself stranded in a foreign town in a bare room lit by a candle with nothing to do but think. And in a couple of nights Descartes laid the entire thought foundations for modern science and most of the modern world. It isn’t clear that modern philosophers with their funding sources of grants, their graduate students, their reputation and all the perks and privileges of academia can do any better. Descartes claimed there are just two principles in the Universe, Matter and Mind. God was pure mind; human beings were mind and matter. And we are the only ones on the planet with mind. Everything else all of the bright array of beings who share the planet with us are simply matter. And matter? The weighable the measurable the extended in space and time utterly devoid of any inner life of thoughts, feelings, or Consciousness This classification was a boon for developing science. Scientists did not have to worry about any inner life in nature, ideas or Consciousness, they could just set about weighing and measuring, as they have until the present day. But it was a disaster for the Earth. Earth was once worshiped as a Goddess. With Descartes she became almost overnight “things.” Simply commodities and resources, an endless of supply of consumer items, to be turned into money in the bank. And now Descartes concept of matter is up for us. If there is a single idea that is enabling and driving the destruction of the Earth, it is the conviction that Earth is something without Consciousness. This whole scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is driving the destruction of the Earth, and driving us all insane, and it needs to change. Ever since Descartes formulated Dualism, scientists and philosophers have been trying to get rid of it. They have done this by attempting to make matter the fundamental term of reality, and to explain mind or Consciousness in terms of matter. And now, Consciousness has emerged as term and a problem for modern science. 2. The prevailing Universe picture has been mainly based on the belief that Consciousness appears only at the end of evolution in ourselves and some of the higher animals when matter attains “a certain state of complexity” and it is produced by neurons in the brain. But Consciousness is nothing real in itself, the neurons are doing the work, Consciousness is simply a byproduct of neural activity. As William James summed up this position, not his: Consciousness is to the brain as a shadow to the runner, it runs beside him but never influences his stride. And so, the great problem of neuroscience: How do neurons produce Consciousness? So far, no one has been able to say how. All we have is parallelism. Two processes are running in parallel a train of neural events and a train of Consciousness events. And so, which one is primary? The face of neuroscience and much of the modern world is that the neural events are what is really real, Consciousness is secondary. The conviction that Consciousness is something produced by neurons is so deeply held and has been so for so long, that it seems like an obvious fact. It is in fact an assumption and a theory, and it could all well be the other way around. The scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is now up for us. It has enabled the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a unique place in our own evolution where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, there are the best reasons for rethinking Descartes concepts of matter. Scientists and philosophers have been trying to escape dualism by making matter the fundamental term. And now, this has not worked. In a nutshell: The mind body problem, the “hard problem of Consciousness” ---how do neurons in the brain, atoms and molecules give rise to ideas thoughts and feelings and who what and where is the “I” who sees them? And then, the near-death experience. I remind you of the truth of the near-death experience. The body in the bed is brain dead eeg flat, but the patient, pure Consciousness is hovering at the ceiling watching the doctors work over the body below, able to read dials he could not have seen from the bed, sometimes able to events in the corridor beyond the room, all subsequently confirmed by the doctors. Evidence as good as it gets that the patient really was out of his body. And so, the patient is able to see without eyes, hear without ears and to think and remember without a brain. There is not a single scientific principle that can account for this. And I am proposing that the near-death experience is a threshold and a key for a much deeper understanding of the Universe. These three problems are so hard they cannot be solved by present scientific principles and therefore call all present principles and ways of thought into question. When your axioms cannot account for the data, it is time to drop them and find better fundamental terms. We have not been able to solve the problems of Consciousness with the assumption that matter is the most basic and fundamental term. And so, if Cartesian dualism is to be overcome at all, we need to try it the other way around. 3. We are in the position of Copernicus. Remember Copernicus? He was making his calculations on the assumption that the Earth was the center of the Universe until they became so unwieldy that he decided to try it all the other way around. To make the sun the center, the Earth revolving around it. And lo, all of his data fell neatly into place. I am proposing a whole new Universe picture. Evolution makes us continuous with every other being, Consciousness would not be in us if it were not in them also, and then, in the atoms and molecules and cells that make up living beings. I propose to make Consciousness the most basic term and see what follows. I am in fact, proposing a new Copernican Revolution, that Consciousness is the true basis for the Universe and the right fundamental term, for science itself all other disciplines as well, and the whole of the modern world. And I predict that every intractable problem in science or the modern world, will go down like a line of dominos before it. In a nutshell: Consciousness and not matter is “first and fundamental” in the Universe, it is there from the very “Beginning” everything has it and all of the true causalities, the explanatory principles belong to it. Not to matter. What then is matter? All matter is an Appearance of something much more real, Consciousness. All matter is an expression of Consciousness, even the least little bit of matter contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. And so, we revise the scientific image of nature. Science at present is two termed, matter/energy. It needs to become three termed: Matter/energy/Consciousness, with the recognition that all of the basic principles, the true causalities of events, and of the Universe belong to Consciousness. And now physics. To accommodate this new Universe picture physics needs to alter just one term, energy. All energy contains Consciousness, that idea alone will change our world forever. The animals the trees the plants are just as conscious as we are, as is the Earth herself, a continuum of many forms of Consciousness of which our own is one. The Earth consists of interacting and intersecting forms of Consciousness, Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness. A remarkable work has just appeared entitled “Beyond Words What Animals Feel and Think.” Describing in detail how like ourselves all of the animals are. And the more we can see how like us everything else really is, the harder it will be for us to do them all in, in the interest of turning them into consumer items. And so, here is a new principle of understanding, that entails completely new forms of explanation, and a whole new Universe picture to be spelled out in terms of Consciousness and its various properties. This is a Universe that is aware awake and Enspirited throughout. And so, there is only one principle, not two. And so, how does Consciousness work? There is “no mind/body problem.” My Consciousness is aligning the Consciousness of neurons in the brain, that aligns the Consciousness of all other cells in the body, that aligns the Consciousness of molecules and atoms themselves. Mainly from the top down, but also interactive, and not reduction to the purely physical forces. 4. And so, here is a radical new Universe picture, and with it a new way to think about the Universe itself, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. It requires a complete revision of both of the terms of modern science itself. The problem of the modern world owes in deep measure to Descartes concept of matter as something devoid of interior life. But he is only the most powerful and simple expression of a whole tradition of thought that predates him, that goes back to the very dawn of thought itself. It owes to the conviction of both Plato and Aristotle that the Earth was something devoid of reason, or mind, and therefore something to be held in complete contempt. We are emerging from a civilization based on contempt for the Earth, and down the road, it will become contempt for the body, sex, women, the Native people, and people of color everywhere. And so, this entire tradition is now up for us, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction, and we need to get beyond it. I am proposing that this term Consciousness is the way out. The missing piece of the puzzle and the idea whose time has come. And it will enable us to move into a completely new civilization based on respect for the Earth, women, sex, people of color, that honors everyone and has a place for all. Revolutions in science occur when new data show up that cannot be accounted for by existing paradigms (Thomas Kuhns: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Consciousness, and all the properties and problems of Consciousness are just such data, and they compel a new scientific revolution. But we are a scientific age. A new Copernican revolution in science is such as revolution everywhere. And Consciousness is the key to getting every other reality at all levels and depths right as well. It will enable us finally to get the Earth right, get ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. Archimedes: Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world. I am proposing a new synthesis among our fundamental terms in which this term Consciousness is the new lynchpin. And so, I return once more to Descartes. Descartes in the Mediations was a dualist, they were two realities interacting in the pineal gland mind and body. But Descartes age was high on “Cartesianisms,” on Descartes concept of matter. Animals were simply cleverly wired machines (Hobbes called them automata). Rumor had it that Descartes followers went about kicking dogs reasoning that their howls were not due to any feelings of pain, but simply the wiring of the machine. We have been doing this to the Earth ever since, and now the Earth is not going to stand for it any longer. It is time we all woke up. There is no matter in Descartes sense of it, or in Plato and Aristotle’s sense of it. This old concept of matter is embedded in all of the crisis and catastrophes---fires, drought, pandemics, over population, the disintegrating economies, our ways of life, capitalism and consumerism themselves. All matter is Enspirited, contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. Now I tell you something about Descartes you may not know. In the Mediations was a dualist, there are minds and bodies. But by the end of his life, he knew the truth. Descartes guided his whole life by these vivid dreams, and toward the end of his life he had this dream: He saw the Universe as a giant machine and in the heart of the machine propelling the whole, was Consciousness. And so, out of the shades and shadows and into the light of day. Here is a renewed and a new science, a new cosmology. And with it, a revolutionary new metaphysics. The whole of the modern world is in the grip of a false metaphysics, based on Descartes theory of matter. Here is a new, and finally true metaphysics based on the single term, Consciousness. 5. And in all my works, I spell out this new metaphysics based on Consciousness, and what it means for how we think about virtually everything: The Universe, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. Of who, what and where Spirit is, that we may connect with Spirit everywhere. There is only one term for the Universe, and not two, this single term Consciousness, that manifests itself in two modes: Consciousness in Form, Consciousness Formless. And so, here is a sketch of what this new term Consciousness really means. For four great aspects of the real, four new cornerstones for a whole new civilization on Earth, based on Love and Truth. A. For the Universe: New causalities, all matter is an expression of Consciousness, awake and aware, Enspirited throughout, which has a place for the causalities of love ideas intent plan and purpose, what Aristotle called final causality, that for the sake of which. And it has a place for subjectivity, the greatest mystery in the whole of the Universe, knowable only in ourselves, but there in everything else as well, bedrock in the chain of causalities. The buck stops here. Here are two very different Universe pictures. The Cartesian Universe consists of things, pushed, and pulled around by the physical forces that function blind. The true Universe consists of selves and not things. Selves at least in ourselves, are organized and focused about an I, an I am, or a sense of self in everything, ever other being dear to itself. Just one aspect of subjectivity. And so, it is Consciousness all the way down, and subjectivity all the way down. Science proceeds on the basis of the negligible of what it can leave out as unimportant. Subjectivity is the ultimate animating principle of the Universe. What Descartes really did was to strip from nature what is most essential about it, its animating principle Consciousness. And so, we come out of a long history of “clunk.” The great male thinkers have killed creation. First in concepts and now in the lived life. And so, after centuries of fruitless search, not all of it in vain, finally, and just in time the true basic principle for the Universe has shown up in virtually all disciplines, this term Consciousness. B. And so, the Earth: What does this term Consciousness really mean for the Earth? It means that all of the bright array of beings around us have Consciousness. And the more we can realize how like us they are, the harder it will be to do them all in. Is this what it really means to be “made in the image of Spirit?” To destroy ever other living being? The god of Genesis is a creator god who has created billions and billions of living forms. Man, taking himself to be made in the image of Spirit has destroyed virtually all of it. The Earth is not things, not commodities and resources, not an endless array of consumer goods. The Earth consists of conscious living spiritual beings like ourselves, who need to be honored and respected, nurtured and cared for, to be Loved. And if the human race can finally pull it off and bring Love here and start helping the Earth rather than destroying her, even our vast numbers now at 8 billion, may not matter. Deeply embedded in the modern world is a false cosmology based on the hitherto useful but ultimately false metaphysics of Descartes. In particular it owes to Descartes concepts of matter, and of the Earth, as something devoid of Consciousness. And now this concept is up for us. If there is a single idea enabling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something devoid of Consciousness. And we all have a vested interest in keeping this false concept in place. When you intend to ravage and savage the Earth, to turn it into consumer items, and money in the bank, first pretend she has no Consciousness that way we need not have any conscious about it. We are in deep trouble with the planet. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, here are a few new guiding principles for the planet, based on Consciousness. Consciousness has field properties. The Earth is Consciousness throughout, connected and interconnected throughout, intersecting and interacting fields of Consciousness of which our own is one. To harm one is to harm all. Only this understanding of the Earth can set our destructive technologies, and capitalism, their goals, and their limits. The real problem with capitalism, and with civilization itself is it has no true understanding of the Earth, all the exquisite networks and webworks that connect all beings with one another. Nor it is about to admit that the Earth is our “life support system,” reason gone insane in the modern world. We are destroying our life support system, capitalism is the full expression of the human death wish in the modern world, and it needs to change. And now, let the barriers between ourselves and all other beings go down. C. And so, Ourselves. This new Universe picture based on Consciousness opens into and has a place for new concepts of human identity. In particular, it has a place for reincarnation, a process whereby one Consciousness dons’ bodies again and again and lays them down. This is a process wholly impossible on materialistic theories. This new view of things puts a higher perspective on Freudian determinism, which is a partial knowing in a greater account. We are something more than the victims of genes drives and childhood. We are immortally eternal evolving spiritual beings who take on a cycle of earthly lives in order to achieve certain goals and abilities, and then, our earthly cycle complete, we depart the Earth plane for other areas of the Universe physical or purely spiritual, to continue our evolution elsewhere. The scientific evidence for reincarnation is increasing on all sides, see for example the work of Michael Newton, a mainstream scientist forced to confront the fact of reincarnation. A completely new reincarnational picture is now emerging everywhere. We choose our parents for abilities we could acquire through them. We all come here with reasons for being here, and we all have free will, an original property of Consciousness, and we work out our issues accordingly. We all come here with the same reason for being here. It is to experience the Earth plane and human society at all levels and depths, in every social role, every climate, both sexes male and female and in all races. We are all here to acquire a deep understanding of the Earth plane with all its challenges and all of its present problems. We are not here to devour and consume the Earth, but to honor her for the learning experience she makes available for us. And so, reincarnation is the great equalizer, the fundamental basis for any bill of rights. Many of the problems of the modern world owe to the fact that reincarnation has not been taught in the West. Reincarnation was the center piece of Jesus teachings. It was banned by a fourth century council that decided the populous could best be controlled through fear. They edited all mention of reincarnation from the scriptures, and inserted fear terms instead, a judgmental god, and so on. If reincarnation had been taught, there would have been no suppression of women, but the gift of both sexes would have been honored and developed. And there would have been no reason for contempt for people of color because who they are, we have been or will be. There is no reason to look down on anyone when we know that our own identity includes membership in theirs. The truth of reincarnation needs to be the foundation for getting ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. D. And so, Spirit. This new Universe picture, based on Consciousness, has a place for Spirit as simply Infinite Consciousness. All universes all worlds are formed out of this Consciousness, divine and sacred throughout. And Spirit is everywhere in the Earth and can be connected everywhere. And the Native North American people had things right. Everything has its own Spirit, and without contradiction is also an expression of Spirit. And what I am really doing in terms of concepts of modern science is presenting the Native North American version of the Real. And this new Universe picture has a place for the essential insight of all religions almost smothered by church tradition: Love. Not an emotion but a great Oneness, that can be found everywhere, even in a busy city street. But especially in the Earth, that is levels and depths of Oneness everywhere. And so, for the first time in their long and bitter antagonistic history, science and religion now share a common base with this term Spirit, the lynchpin in a new conceptual framework. And I offer an interpretation of where we are in our history, this present moment of historical grace, and these tumultuous times in which we live, the return of the Goddess and the Divine Feminine, the Reappearance of the Feminine in history, the Advent of Women, this great Awakening, as of Springtime after a long dark Winter, the Awakening, the Second Coming. And so, stay tuned! (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toward Resilient DemocracyCognitive Resources and ConstraintsJohn Teehan (bio)I. Introduction: The Cognitive Science of ReligionAmerican Immanence, an important and insightful work, offers an analysis of the existential crisis facing American democracy, and a possible path through this crisis. In developing this path, Michael Hogue asks, "can the feeling and awareness of the precarious value of life …awaken us to the precious depths of immanence, to living as if this, (...) our one and only world, matters ultimately?"1 Such an awakening, he argues, is vital to developing a "resilient democracy." I believe the answer to his question is "yes," and a positive answer to this profound question is sufficient warrant for exploring the path Hogue sets out. However, there is another question, one with broader implications: can this moral vision be adopted on a wide enough scale to attain the critical mass necessary to develop a democracy sufficiently resilient to weather this crisis? I will explore this second question using the insights derived from cognitive science, and particularly from the cognitive science of religion. This approach picks up on Hogue's invitation to interpret religion "within the evolutionary contexts of natural history,"2 and concurs with his claim that in "demystifying religion" an "evolutionary account …opens the way to a religious experience."3The Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) is grounded in an evolutionary understanding of human cognitive and emotional processes, as these processes have developed to enable the species to respond to the challenges of survival and reproduction in dynamic environments, both physical and social. These cognitive tools were not shaped to discern some pre-given reality, but rather to serve the practical goals of natural beings embedded in natural situations. CSR, then, is congruent with the immanental philosophy, grounded in pragmatism, that Hogue develops in his book. Indeed, it can be argued that the methodology of CSR implicitly entails a pragmatist epistemology4. The various [End Page 65] mental tools and resultant religious beliefs and rituals all serve the ultimate goal of successful action within natural situations. CSR, then, can provide an empirical account of at least some of the processes that would be involved in actualizing an immanental political theology, and may identify some of the cognitive obstacles to that project.It is beyond the scope of this essay to set out a detailed account of CSR, but it will suffice to introduce some general tenets that have played a seminal role in the field.5 Those elements of a cultural system that we would deem religious are derived from natural cognitive processes that evolved to allow our earliest ancestors to successfully navigate an uncertain and dangerous environment.6 As an example, let's consider the gods, understanding by the "gods" any of the various beings that might commonly be termed "supernatural" (e.g., gods, spirits, ghosts, demons, fairies, divine ancestors, etc.). Belief in gods is theorized to flow, in part, from natural cognitive mechanisms for the detection of agents (that is, beings that act with intent). The ability to detect such beings—beings that might pose a danger—is essential to surviving in an uncertain and dangerous world. This ability was so vital that natural selection favored the evolution of a cognitive process for detecting agents that is hypersensitive.7 Detecting the presence of an agent when none is actually present is a much safer error than failing to detect an actual predator, and so this cognitive strategy could regularly give rise to false positives.Detecting the presence of an agent is the beginning phase of devising effective action, but to determine how to respond to this perceived agent, we must make sense of its possible intent. Therefore, we do not merely perceive a presence, we ascribe intention and purpose to that agent. In doing so, we engage the mental process termed Theory of Mind (ToM).8 Detecting the [End Page 66] action of agents, and determining intention and purpose, are vital to successful action. In a dangerous and uncertain world—i.e. the world in which humans have lived for millennia—these skills are essential to survival, and it follows that natural selection would favor cognitive processes that erred on the side of... (shrink)