When it comes to the public debate about the challenge of global climate change, moral questions are inextricably intertwined with epistemological ones. This manifests itself in at least two distinct ways. First, for a fixed set of epistemic standards, it may be irresponsible to delay policy-making until everyone agrees that such standards have been met. This has been extensively discussed in the literature on the precautionary principle. Second, key actors in the public debate may – for strategic reasons, or (...) out of simple carelessness – engage in the selective variation of epistemic standards in response to evidence that would threaten to undermine their core beliefs, effectively leading to epistemic double standards that make rational agreement impossible. The latter scenario is aptly described as an instance of what Stephen Gardiner calls ‘epistemic corruption’. In the present paper, I aim to give an explanation of the cognitive basis of epistemic corruption and discuss its place within the moral landscape of the debate. In particular, I argue that epistemic corruption often reflects an agent’s attempt to reduce dissonance between incoming scientific evidence and the agent’s ideological core commitments. By selectively discounting the former, agents may attempt to preserve the coherence of the latter, yet in doing so they threaten to damage the integrity of evidence-based deliberation. (shrink)

Climate change poses a significant danger that requires intervention today; climate denial poses a key challenge to meaningful timely intervention. In this paper, we argue that current free speech jurisprudence in the US inadequately addresses the risk of climate change because it is overly permissive of ‘professional’ climate denial and underappreciates the need to address the future harm of climate change today. We begin by clarifying the risk posed by the Supreme Court's current approach to (...) speech with respect to climate change and, relatedly, reviewing the philosophical foundations of the marketplace of ideas found in the work of John Stuart Mill. Following this, we examine three potential ways in which Supreme Court jurisprudence could be used to limit what we term ‘professional climate change denial’ while permitting a degree of ‘private’ scepticism. Largely setting aside the return to earlier free speech jurisprudence and the extension of libel law, we offer a novel solution to the problem that suggests that ‘professional’ climate denial could be treated as a categorical exception under free speech jurisprudence and thus afforded a lower level of constitutional protection than other expression. (shrink)

Some moral theorists argue that being an innocent beneficiary of significant harms inflicted by others may be sufficient to ground special duties to address the hardships suffered by the victims, at least when it is impossible to extract compensation from those who perpetrated the harm. This idea has been applied to climate change in the form of the beneficiary-pays principle. Other philosophers, however, are quite sceptical about beneficiary pays. Our aim in this article is to examine their critiques. We (...) conclude that, while they have made important points, the principle remains worthy of further development and exploration. Our purpose in engaging with these critiques is constructive — we aim to formulate beneficiary pays in ways that would give it a plausible role in allocating the cost of addressing human-induced climate change, while acknowledging that some understandings of the principle would make it unsuitable for this purpose. (shrink)

A central question in debates about climate justice concerns how the global emissions sink should be shared among the global population over time. This paper considers how global egalitarians should answer that question. In particular, it defends emissions egalitarianism from a view known as ‘integrationism’, according to which shares of the emissions sink should follow from a more general egalitarian theory of distributive justice. First, I show that emissions egalitarianism can draw on a source of functional support not adequately (...) acknowledged in the integrationist critique: it can express an underlying account of the structure of historical responsibility for climate change I call the Fair Share View. Second, I claim that integrationism is also in tension with other principles of responsibility for climate change, and that its scepticism about historical responsibility has not been appreciated. Finally, I provide an alternative to integrationism. My central claim is that integrationism posits too direct a relation between a theory of equality of wellbeing and practical questions about claims to the emissions sink. Egalitarians should appeal to a species of derivative principle I call ‘applied principles of global justice’, and emissions egalitarianism could plausibly be endorsed on these grounds. (shrink)

Speakers of the “green backlash” movement frequently advertise their approach as one of rigorous scepticism, and themselves as defenders of scientific method. In reality, their use of scepticism is often highly flawed and inconsistent; this is clearly seen in case examples focusing on Philip Stott's arguments on climate change, and Julian Simon's arguments on physical limits to growth. What this discourse illustrates is that sceptical language is often used as a rhetorical tool for advancing an underlying political (...) philosophy that is based on an ideal of modern science as bestower of unlimited material power. In order to understand, and to criticise this discourse effectively, one needs to recall the criticisms made by the likes of Hayek and Arendt of “scientism”—the misuse of the language of science, and its aura of predictive certainty, to portray certain political visions as being inevitably true and triumphant. (shrink)

This article examines the centrality of Brazil within the future of climate policy and politics. The state of the carbon sink of the Amazon rainforest has long been an iconic marker of the condition of the Earth. Brazil has been innovative in developing many non-carbon forms of energy generation and use and it has played a major role in international debates on global warming since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. We examine various ways in which climate change (...) has come to be centrally important in Brazilian public opinion. Survey evidence shows that Brazilians are the most concerned about issues of climate change – with less climate change scepticism as compared with more ‘advanced’ societies. Through using techniques of corpus linguistics we examine how Brazilian media has engendered and stabilized such a high and striking level of climate change concern. We show that the media helped to fix a ‘climate change framing’ of recent often strange weather. The article analyses the newly constructed Brazilian Corpus on Climate Change, presenting data on a scale and reach that is unique in this area of research. (shrink)

China's political environment offers limited space for critical debates on domestic politics. In such a constrained environment, people tend to represent and articulate climate change issues without explicitly addressing their political aspects. The aim of this paper is to examine this political ambiguity in climate change discourses. Q methodology was employed to elicit the subjective positions of forty-five young and educated Chinese individuals. Three discourses were extracted: namely, prosaic environmentalism, co-operative economic optimism and actor scepticism. These discourses (...) do not indicate critical intent and deep engagement in the political arguments regarding climate change. This raises concern about the growth of climate citizenship within the country. (shrink)

As critical research has revealed, climate change scepticism and inaction are not about science but ideas, and specifically the ideas that conform our worldview. Drawing on key theoretical approaches to climate change denial from the social sciences and humanities, this paper discusses the ideological dimension and, more especially, the anthropocentric denial underlying our failure to respond to climate change. We argue that the speciesist anthropocentrism inherent in the current dominant ethics is what prevents humanity from reacting (...) to the main human-induced drivers of global warming. Encouraged to do so by current mainstream ethics, humans overpopulate the planet, grow at the expense of other species, and indulge in cruel, unhealthy and unsustainable practices. We counterpose this ethics against the egalitarian, non-speciesist approach of the animal ethics movement, positing that it represents the next radical reflexive movement and could be used to break the climate deadlock. Animal ethics allows links with inegalitarianism and privilege that may help address climate contrarianism and climate inaction much more effectively. (shrink)

The widespread conviction that we are living in a post-truth era rests on two claims: that a large number of people believe things that are clearly false, and that their believing these things reflects a lack of respect for truth. In reality, however, fewer people believe clearly false things than surveys or social media suggest. In particular, relatively few people believe things that are widely held to be bizarre. Moreover, accepting false beliefs does not reflect a lack of respect for (...) truth. Almost everyone’s beliefs are explained by rationally warranted trust in some sources rather than others. This allows us to explain why people have false beliefs. (shrink)

This article takes stock of the project of ecological democracy, a project that has been central to debates in Environmental Values since the late 1990s. Whilst we can identify quite distinct articulations of eco-democratic thinking emerging out of the fields of green political theory, postcolonial/feminist political ecology and science studies/radical geography, it is argued that these discussions have reached something of an impasse of late following the rise of climate scepticism, authoritarian populisms and technocratic eco-modernisms. Resurgent eco-authoritarian impulses (...) and the hankering for a ‘green leviathan’, a climate Lenin or a ‘dictatorship of the sustainment’ to resolve our climate crisis make it more important than ever to affirm the need for just, rapid and democratic post-carbon transitions. The article goes on to outline how emerging discussions in radical design studies focused on redirective practice in conjunction with a revived eco-socialist focus on labour-focused political ecologies might open up different possibilities for a materialist re-grounding of ecodemocratic discussions. It is suggested that a political ecology of design embedded in public institutions, the workplace and civil society could possibleyreground a more substantive vision of ecological democracy but also allow us to think about the forms of creative labour that could drive the just transition. (shrink)

Recent work in psychology on ‘cultural cognition’ suggests that our cultural background drives our attitudes towards a range of politically contentious issues in science such as global warming. This work is part of a more general attempt to investigate the ways in which our wants, wishes and desires impact on our assessments of information, events and theories. Put crudely, the idea is that we conform our assessments of the evidence for and against scientific theories with clear political relevance to our (...) pre-existing political beliefs and convictions. In this paper I explore the epistemological consequences of cultural cognition. What does it mean for the rationality of our beliefs about issues such as global warming? I argue for an unsettling conclusion. Not only are those on the ‘political right’ who reject the scientific consensus on issues like global warming unjustified in doing so, some of those on the ‘political left’ who accept the consensus are also unjustified in doing so. I finish by addressing the practical implications of my conclusions. (shrink)

Faced with current urgent calls for more trust in experts, especially in high impact and politically sensitive domains, such as climate science and COVID-19, the complex and problematic nature of public trust in experts and the need for a more critical approach to the topic are easy to overlook. Scepticism – at least in its Humean mitigated form that encourages independent, questioning attitudes – can prove valuable to democratic governance, but stands in opposition to the cognitive dependency entailed (...) by epistemic trust. In this paper, we investigate the tension between the value of mitigated scepticism – understood as the exercise of reason-based doubt in a particular domain – and the need for trust in experts. We offer four arguments in favour of mitigated scepticism: the argument from loss of intellectual autonomy; the argument from democratic deficit; the argument from the normative failures of science; and the argument from past and current injustices. These arguments highlight the tension between the requirements for trust and justified scepticism about the role of experts. One solution, which we reject, is the idea that reliance, rather than trust, is sufficient for the purposes of accommodating experts in policy matters. The solution we endorse is to create a ‘climate of trust’, where questioning experts and expertise is welcomed, but the epistemic trust necessary for action upon information which the public cannot obtain first-hand is enabled and encouraged through structural, institutional, and justice-based measures. (shrink)

Despite the occasional upsurge of climate change scepticism amongst conservative politicians and journalists, there is a near-consensus amongst scientists that current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas are sufficient to alter global weather patterns to possibly disastrous effect. Like the hole in the ozone layer as described by Bruno Latour, global warming is a ‘hybrid’ natural-social-discursive phenomenon. And science fiction (SF) seems to occupy a critical location within this nature/culture nexus. This paper takes as its subject matter what Daniel (...) Bloom dubs ‘cli-fi’. It seeks to describe how a genre defined in relation to science finds itself obliged to produce fictional responses to problems actually thrown up by contemporary scientific research. It argues against the view that ‘catastrophic’ SF is best understood as a variant of the kind of ‘apocalyptic’ fiction inspired by the Christian Book of Revelation, or Apokalypsis, on the grounds that this tends to downplay the historical novelty of SF as a genre defined primarily in relation to modern science and technology. And it examines the narrative strategies pursued in both print and audio-visual SF texts that deal with anthropogenic climate change. (shrink)

Compelling research in international relations and international political economy on global warming suggests that one part of any meaningful effort to radically reverse current trends of increasing green house gas (GHG) emissions is shared policies among states that generate costs for such emissions in many if not most of the world’s regions. Effectively employing such policies involves gaining much more extensive global commitments and developing much stronger compliance mechanism than those currently found in the Kyoto Protocol. In other words, global (...) warming raises the prospect that we need a global form of political authority that could coordinate the actions of states in order to address this environmental threat. This in turn suggests that any serious effort to mitigate climate change will entail new limits on the sovereignty of states. In this book I focus on the normative question of whether or not we have clear moral reasons to bind ourselves together in such a supranational form of political association. I argue that one can employ familiar liberal arguments for the moral legitimacy of political order at the state level to show that we do have a duty to support such a global political project. Even if one adopts the premises employed by the most influential forms of liberal scepticism to the ideas of global political and distributive justice, such as those advanced by John Rawls and Thomas Nagel, it is clear that the threat of global warming has expanded the scope of justice. We now have a global and demanding duty of justice to create the political conditions that would allow us to collectively address our impact on the Earth’s atmosphere. (shrink)

Are extreme beliefs constitutive of echo chambers, or only typically caused by them? Or are many echo chambers unproblematic, amplifying relatively benign beliefs? This paper details the conceptual relations between echo chambers and extreme beliefs, showing how different conceptual choice-points in how we understand both echo chambers and extreme beliefs affects how we should evaluate, study, and engage with echo chambering groups. We also explore how our theories of extreme beliefs and echo chambers shape social scientific research and contribute in (...) a practical way when treating these phenomena, focusing on examples of climate change scepticism. (shrink)

The religious scepticism and materialism which characterized the thinking of the "Philosophes", whose pre-revolutionary luminaries included Voltaire and Rousseau, helped bring about the intellectual climate conducive to revolution. This book examines how the events after 1789 affected the school.

Given the link between over-population and climate change, and the high levels of consumption in affluent societies, several scholars have recently raised scepticism that there is a human right to decide the spacing and number of one’s children, or even that there is a human right to procreate at all. In this chapter, I depart from this philosophical trend and explain why there is a human right to choose to procreate and to have multiple children. I argue that (...) philosophical accounts advocating for limited procreation tend to rely on at least one of three problematic assumptions. These are assumptions about children’s moral status, parental entitlements, and the actual value of the parent-child relationship as compared to other environmentally unfriendly activities. (shrink)

In his seminal book Against Method Paul Feyerabend demanded that “science should be taught as one view among many and not as the one and only road to truth and reality”. Given the recent backlash against scientific authority, which includes persisting denial of climate science, vaccine scepticism and the wider debate about the dawning of a postfactual era, it seems that Feyerabend had his will. However, scientific authority was never unchallenged and in particular contemporary discussions about an alleged (...) coming of post-factual times create the chimera of an enlightened era in which reason and facts dominated. In my paper I will reengage with the history of facts (Poovey) and address some of the problems that occur when scientific and non-scientific facts clash in the public realm. (shrink)

The language of hope is a ubiquitous part of political life, but its value is increasingly contested. While there is an emerging debate about hope in political philosophy, an assessment of the prevalent scepticism about its role in political practice is still outstanding. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of historical and recent treatments of hope in political philosophy and to indicate lines of further research. We argue that even though political philosophy can draw on (...) recent analyses of hope in analytic philosophy, there are distinct challenges for an account of hope in political contexts. Examples such as racial injustice or climate change show the need for a systematic normative account that is sensitive to the unavoidability of hope in politics as much as its characteristic dangers. (shrink)

Contemporary socio-political issues often seen as socially controversial and highly politicised topics, such as anthropogenic climate change, public scepticism over preventive public health measures during pandemics such as COVID-19, and Indigenous sovereignty, lands rights, and ways of knowing, being and doing, highlight the need for education to address such issues more effectively. Controversial issues do not exist in isolation. They are connected to questions of order, interpretation, meaning-making, ethics, and why and how we live, i.e., to philosophical questions. (...) We argue that philosophical inquiry is essential for dealing with controversial topics in the classroom. However, we point to the need for teachers to understand the role of the community of inquiry in addressing such topics. This has implications for teacher preparation. We, therefore, examine John Dewey’s use of experiential education to argue for rethinking teacher preparation, especially when dealing with controversial topics which point to the need for greater emphasis on how best to engage with them philosophically. To this end, we will argue in favour of a reconstruction of educational philosophy, specifically the community of inquiry, by integrating a Deweyan inspired place-based education that emphasises environment, experience, and social reconstruction learning. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Strange Death of British IdealismEdward SkidelskyIIn 1958, the Oxford philosopher G. J. Warnock opened his survey of twentieth-century English philosophy with some disparaging comments on British Idealism. It was, he writes, "an exotic in the English scene, the product of a quite recent revolution in ways of thought due primarily to German influences." Analytic philosophy, by contrast, represents a return to the venerable lineage of British empiricism, as (...) Bertrand Russell "symbolically joins hands" with his godfather John Stuart Mill. "Hume and Berkley would have been sadly puzzled by the pages of Bradley, to say nothing of Hegel's. But either might have conversed quite naturally with Moore, and with Russell too, at least in his less technical moments."1All this is rhetoric rather than history. Russell can be called the inheritor of Mill only with respect to his political and social attitudes; his main philosophical endeavour—the establishment of mathematics on a priori foundations—ran diametrically opposed to Mill. And Hume and Berkley would have been just as sadly puzzled by Moore's analysis of language—an activity they both regarded as the defining vice of scholasticism—as by anything in Bradley.Warnock's error has proved remarkably persistent. Only recently, thanks largely to the work of Peter Hylton, has the anti-empiricist, Platonist character of Russell's early thought been properly appreciated.2 I do not intend, in what follows, to retrace these philosophical arguments. My question is historical. It concerns the role of national feeling, first in the demise of Idealism after the First World War, and later in the interpretation of that demise after the Second. With regard to first question, I argue that the rejection of Idealism in Britain was in no sense [End Page 41] a reassertion of national tradition. The opposite is closer to the truth; the change in philosophical fashion was primarily a consequence of a widespread revulsion against nationalism following World War I. That this was later misinterpreted owes largely—and this is my second claim—to the very different climate prevailing in Britain after World War II. If in the twenties the British reserved their scorn for "Prussian militarism," in the fifties everything associated with Germany, its philosophy included, was viewed as irredeemably tainted. Analytic philosophy tried to present itself as a home-grown product, with deep roots in the English empiricist tradition. This partly accounts for the change in style from the highly technical scientism of Russell and the logical positivists to the concern with "ordinary language" characteristic of post-war Oxford philosophy. The fact that most of analytic philosophy's continental exponents were forced by Hitler into British or American exile assisted in the process of its naturalisation. Within a decade, it was possible to regard "analytic" and "Anglo-Saxon" philosophy as synonyms.Warnock's mistake now becomes easier to understand. He has interpreted the early twentieth century in the light of the post-war period, coming to the conclusion that Moore and Russell's rejection of Idealism was a reassertion of English national tradition. He has condensed fifty years of history into a single moment. I intend in what follows to pull apart the stages that Warnock has concertinaed together, demonstrating that national feeling played a far more complex and contradictory role in the history of British philosophy.IIOn one point Warnock is correct: Idealism did not perish of refutation. "Metaphysical systems do not yield...," he writes, "to frontal attack. Their odd property of being demonstrable only, so to speak, from within confers on them also a high resistance to attack from outside.... Such systems are much more vulnerable to ennui than to disproof" (Warnock, pp. 10–11). The claim of Russell and Moore to have "refuted" Bradley is regarded with scepticism by most recent commentators. Idealism, they point out, rested on something more substantial than a mere failure of logic or common-sense, and was therefore not vulnerable to the kind of simple knock-down arguments advanced by Russell and Moore. The causes of its decline must be sought elsewhere, in the broader cultural and political tendencies of the age.Had Russell and Moore's arguments been truly knock-down... (shrink)

Great philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Sartre have clearly been preoccupied by the possibility of authenticity. In this study, Jacob Golomb looks closely at the literature and writings of these philosophers in his analysis of their ethics. Golomb's writings shows his passionate commitment to the quest for the authenticity - particularly in our climate of post-modern scepticism. He argues that existentialism is all the more pertinent and relevant today when set against the general disillusionment which characterises the (...) late twentieth century. This book is invaluable reading for those who have been fascinated by figures like Camus's Meursault, Sartre's Matthieu and Nietzsche's Zarathustra. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Heirs of Plato: A Study of the Old Academy (347–274 BC)Carlos SteelJohn M. Dillon. The Heirs of Plato: A Study of the Old Academy (347–274 BC). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. Pp. x + 252. Cloth, $65.00.When Plato died, in 347 BC, he left behind not only the collection of philosophical dialogues we still read with admiration, but also a remarkable organization, the "Academy," wherein his students continued (...) the discussion he had initiated. Dillon's latest book is an attempt to recreate the intellectual climate in the Academy during the first generations after Plato's death, the "Old Academy," called thus to distinguish it from the "New Academy," which started with Arcesilaus in the mid 270's, who abandoned doctrinal speculations for a sceptical stance. Given the elusive nature of the dialogues, the interpretation of Plato's philosophy has been controversial from the beginning. Therefore, scholars always have been eager to know in which direction Plato's first successors—Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemo—took the Academy; thus they hoped to find some justification for their own interpretation of Plato. Unfortunately, our information on the doctrines of Plato's first successors is scarce. Browsing through the fragments collected by scholars, one may be tempted to conclude that it is not such a great disaster that most texts of the Old Academy have been lost. For it seems that the Academy after Plato was leaning towards a rather esoteric metaphysical speculation about the first principles, which makes us lament on what has become of the philosophical heritage of Plato, a genius fallen into the hands of epigones. One gets the impression that the original and refreshing philosophical contributions came from outside the Academy, from the Lyceum founded by Aristotle and continued by Theophrastus, and later from Epicurus and Zeno and their new schools, which will dominate the Hellenistic period. This, however, is not the view of Dillon: "It will be the thesis of this book that Speusippus and Xenocrates set the agenda for what was to become, over the succeeding centuries, the intellectual tradition which we call Platonism" (v). Even early Stoicism is, in Dillon's view, a "development and formalization of contemporary Platonism" (235).In an introductory chapter Dillon discusses the location and juridical structure of the Academy and gives a general survey of the main doctrines of the school. The following three chapters present the lives, work and thought of the first heads of the Academy; a final chapter is devoted to some minor members of the early Academy. The book concludes with a short epilogue on Arcesilaus and the reasons for his turn to scepticism. Dillon is an [End Page 204] excellent writer who knows how to tease out and expound the most abstruse philosophical doctrines in a captivating way, mixing, as he does here, biographical anecdotes and witty comments with a sharp analysis of arguments and a speculative reconstruction of lost doctrines. I doubt, however, whether this book will become such a classic as his celebrated The Middle Platonists (Ithaca, 1977).My first worry is anticipated by Dillon himself: "This is perforce a rather speculative book, and no doubt it will be criticized for that" (vii). Dillon defends himself against this critique: I have tried, he says, "to put the most favourable construction on the evidence available to us," his assumption being that the figures he is dealing with "were not philosophical imbeciles"(vii). My reservations are not about Dillon's attempt to construct a coherent doctrine using all relevant information on an author, but about his method of reconstruction, in particular his speculation and his preference for often questionable later material to fill the gaps in our information. "With a good deal of speculation, our exiguous information on Polemo's philosophical position can be fleshed out somewhat" (176). Thus, in his exposition of Speusippus's doctrine of the first principles, Dillon does not start from Aristotle, considering him too biased, but from chapter 4 of Iamblichus's treatise De communi mathematica scientia. In this Neo-Pythagorean treatise, Speusippus is not even mentioned. Even if there are arguments, as Dillon believes, to attribute the doctrine of Chapter 4 to Speusippus, one should... (shrink)

Adding to A.O. Aldridge’s 1951 list, this list of British eighteenth-century references to Shaftesbury provides further evidence that the philosophy of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson is an important rival to Lockean empiricism during the early and middle decades of the century. The peak of Shaftesbury’s influence occurs during the 1740’s and 1750’s when the deist controversy was at its height. A more conservative political and religious climate of opinion after 1759 is one reason for the decline of Shaftesbury’s reputation as (...) a philosopher. Another is Shaftesbury’s displacement by Hume as an important enemy of orthodox Christianity. During the 1760’s and later, Hume is attacked by the Scottish “common sense” philosophers, who find anticipations of Humean scepticism in Locke and Berkeley (but not in Shaftesbury), thereby unwittingly helping to provide the foundation for the eventual establishment of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume as the “big three” of eighteenth-century philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"General Rules" in Hume's Treatise THOMAS K. HEARN, JR. IT COULDBE CONFIDENTLYASSERTED in 1925 that Hume was "no longer a living figure." x Stuart Hampshire records that when he began his philosophy studies in 1933, Hume's conclusions were regarded at Oxford as "extravagances of scepticism which no one could seriously accept." 2 That virtually no Anglo-American philosopher would now share such opinions about Hume testifies not only to (...) the general change in the philosophical climate but, in addition, it reflects a transformation which has occurred in the interpretation of Hume's philosophy. In eitecting this transformation.much credit is due to the work of Norman Kemp Smith. Kemp Smith argued that preoccupation with Hume's empiricist heritage and his scepticism had blinded scholars to the fundamentally constructive intent of his philosophy, and, indeed, that only from the perspective of his positive achievement was it possible to grasp the nature and significance of Humean scepticism. This paper, in keeping with the basic orientation of Kemp Smith, sets out a central feature in the attempt to describe and assess Hume's constructive, nonsceptical point of view: Hume attributes to general rules "a mighty influence on our actions and understanding..." (374).4 This paper examines the Treatise to show that this was not just a casual comment. To discuss the "influence" of general rules requires an examination of their character and the various aspects of "action and understanding " in which such rules function. The thesis to be developed can be stated briefly. In Book I Hume introduces two sorts of general rules which must be distinguished carefully. One type of rule describes a propensity of the imagination to extend the scope This research was supported by a grant from the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities. x Charles W. Hendcl, Studies in the Philosophy of David Hume (New York, 1963), p. 20. (First published in 1925.) For Professor Hendel's later comments on this statement, see pp. xxi ft. "Hume's Place in Philosophy" in David Hume, ed. D. F. Pears (London, 1963), p. 3. a Proper stress is due here to the phrase "basic orientation." There is much about Kemp Smith's understanding of Hume which is mistaken in my view. 9 The page references in parentheses refer to the Svlby-Bigge edition of A Treatise o/ Human Nature (Oxford, 1888). [4o5] 406 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY of judgments formed in one set of circumstances to other resembling but non-identical circumstances. The other type of general rule, the discussion of which largely occupies this paper, functions to correct certain natural propensities which result in erroneous belief or action if permitted to operate unchecked. The same pattern, a natural tendency requiring correction by general rules, is exhibited in all three books of the Treatise, and can be said to represent one of the basic ingredients in Hume's account of human nature and experience. It is somewhat surprising that in a book which patiently discusses almost evcxy theme in the Treatise, Kemp Smith's study contains no discussion at all of rules. This is the more puzzling as Kemp Smith clearly recognized that by reflection the understanding supplies principles which are normative for the interpretation of experience.5 Our aim in this study is to discuss what for Hume these principles are, and, as far as possible, how they fit into the Humean account of human nature. A fuller understanding of the nature and function of such reflective principles is required to spare Kemp Smith's interpretation from a seeming inconsistency. This apparent inconsistency arises because Kemp Smith takes the slavery of reason to the passions as the "key" to his understanding of Hume, but then develops the view that for Hume reason/s a passion, in Hume's words, "a wonderful and unintelligible instinct." (179)6 The inconsistency disappears when it is recognized that Kemp Smith's account of Hume requires a more subtle and complex understanding of the role of reason than that suggested by the emphasis on the "slavery of reason" especially in the early parts of the book. This study represents a way of supplying the broader and more const,ructive understanding of reason which... (shrink)

Blaise Pascal began as a mathematical prodigy, developed into a physicist and inventor, and had become by the end of his life in 1662 a profound religious thinker. As a philosopher, he was most convinced by the long tradition of scepticism, and so refused – like Kierkegaard – to build a philosophical or theological system. Instead, he argued that the human heart required other forms of discourse to come to terms with the basic existential questions – our nature, purpose (...) and relationship with God. This introduction to the life and philosophical thought of Pascal is intended for the general reader. Strikingly illustrated, it traces the antithetical tensions in Pascal’s life from his infancy, when he was said to have been placed under the spell of a sorceress, to his final years of extreme asceticism. Pascal stressed both the misery and greatness of humanity, our finitude and our comprehension of the infinite. The book shows how his life, philosophical thought and literary style can best be understood in the light of the paradoxical view of human nature. It covers the methods of argument and the central issues of the Provincial Letters and of the Pensées ; the Introduction places Pascal’s thought in the religious and political climate of seventeenth-century France, and a ‘Chronology of the Life of Pascal’ is also included. (shrink)

Within the literature in green political theory on global environmental threats one can often find dissatisfaction with liberal theories of justice. This is true even though liberal cosmopolitans regularly point to global environmental problems as one reason for expanding the scope of justice beyond the territorial limits of the state. One of the causes for scepticism towards liberal approaches is that many of the most notable anti-cosmopolitan theories are also advanced by liberals. In this paper, I first explain why (...) one of the strongest expressions of liberal anti-cosmopolitanism cannot simply be dismissed because it may fail to support desired environmental ends. The political conception of justice represents one of the most important challenges to cosmopolitanism generally and is thus a serious challenge to viewing global environmental problems in terms of cosmopolitan justice. Second, I will show through the case of anthropogenic global warming that the political conception of justice under current conditions does have clear cosmopolitan implications despite its proponents' claims. (shrink)

Environmental activism is crucial in increasing awareness of environmental degradation and preventing actions that harm the environment. A radical environmentalist movement has emerged within the community of activists. They advocate using illegal measures to attain their goals. This paper discusses these radical environmentalist groups’ motivations, their actions and their consequences. Activities that many consider unacceptable, such as art vandalism and road blockades, may result in adverse outcomes and diminish public support for environmental endeavors. We propose an alternative solidarity approach whereby (...) activists focus their efforts on disseminating information to the general public on climate change and other environmental issues, advocating for the adoption of eco-surplus culture, and fostering cooperation among governments, businesses, and individuals to develop effective solutions. (shrink)

This book confronts the threats of epistemic relativism and Pyrrhonian scepticism to analytic philosophy. Epistemic relativists reject absolute notions of knowledge and justification, while sceptics claim that knowledge and justification of any kind are unattainable. If either of these views is correct, then there can be no objective basis for thinking that one set of methods does a better job of delivering accurate information than any other set of methods. Philosophers have generally sought to resist these threats by responding (...) to the argument that seems to motivate both positions: the Agrippan trilemma. Steven Bland argues that this is a mistaken strategy. He surveys the most influential responses to the Agrippan trilemma, and shows that none of them succeeds in undermining epistemic relativism. Bland also offers a new, dialectical strategy of challenging epistemic relativism by uncovering how epistemic methods depend on one another for their applications. By means of this novel analysis, the book concludes that there are principled reasons to prefer naturalistic to non-naturalistic methods, even if these reasons do little to ease the threat of scepticism. (shrink)

Reliabilist accounts of knowledge are widely seen as having the resources for blocking sceptical arguments, since these arguments appear to rely on assumptions about the nature of knowledge that are rendered illegitimate by reliabilist accounts. The goal of this book is to assess the main arguments against the possibility of knowledge, and its conclusions challenge this consensus. The book articulates and defends a theory of knowledge that belongs firmly in the truth-tracking tradition, and argues that although the theory has the (...) resources for blocking the main standard lines of sceptical reasoning, there is a sceptical argument against which the theory offers no defence, as it doesn’t rely on any assumptions that the theory would render illegitimate. The book ends with the suggestion that the problem might have a metaphysical solution—that although the sceptical argument may make no illegitimate epistemological assumptions, it does rest on a questionable account of the nature of cognition. (shrink)

Using climate policy debates as a case study, I argue that a certain response to the argument from inductive risk, the hedging defense, runs afoul of a reasonable ethical principle: the no-passing-...

Justin Garson introduces the distinction between two views on Madness we encounter again and again throughout history: Madness as dysfunction, and Madness as strategy. On the latter view, Madness serves some purpose for the person experiencing it, even if it’s simultaneously harmful. The strategy view makes intelligible why Madness often holds a certain allure – even when it’s prima facie terrifying. Moreover, if Madness is a strategy in Garson’s metaphorical sense – if it serves a purpose – it makes sense (...) to use consciously chosen strategies for living with Madness that doesn’t necessarily aim to annihilate or repress it as far as possible. In this paper, we use our own respective stories as case studies. We have both struggled to resist the allure of Madness, and both ended up embracing a kind of Pyrrhonian scepticism about reality instead of clinging to sane reality. (shrink)

This intriguing volume provides a thorough examination of the historical roots of global climate change as a field of inquiry, from the Enlightenment to the late twentieth century. Based on primary and archival sources, the book is filled with interesting perspectives on what people have understood, experienced, and feared about the climate and its changes in the past. Chapters explore climate and culture in Enlightenment thought; climate debates in early America; the development of international networks of (...) observation; the scientific transformation of climate discourse; and early contributions to understanding terrestrial temperature changes, infrared radiation, and the carbon dioxide theory of climate. But perhaps most important, this book shows what a study of the past has to offer the interdisciplinary investigation of current environmental problems. (shrink)

Background Ethical climate refers to the shared perception of ethical norms and sets the scope for what is ethical and acceptable behaviour within teams. Aim This paper sought to explore perceptions of ethical climate amongst healthcare workers as measured by the Ethical Climate Questionnaire (ECQ), the Hospital Ethical Climate Survey (HECS) and the Ethics Environment Questionnaire (EEQ). Methods A systematic review and meta-analysis was utilised. PSYCINFO, CINAHL, WEB OF SCIENCE, MEDLINE and EMBASE were searched, and papers (...) were included if they sampled healthcare workers and used the ECQ, HECS or EEQ. Ethical consideration Ethical approval was not required. Results The search returned 1020 results. After screening, 61 papers were included ( n = 43 HECS, n = 15 ECQ, n = 3 EEQ). The overall sample size was over 17,000. The pooled mean score for the HECS was 3.60. Mean scores of individual studies ranged from 2.97 to 4.5. For the HECS studies, meta-regression was carried out. No relationship was found between the country of the studies, the study setting (ICU v non-ICU settings) or the mean years of experience that the sample had. For the ECQ, sub-scales had mean scores ranging from 3.41 (instrumental) to 4.34 (law) and were all observed to have significant and substantial heterogeneity. Three studies utilised the EEQ so further analysis was not carried out. Conclusions The above results provide insight into the variability of scores as measured by the HECS, ECQ and EEQ. To some extent, this variability is not surprising with studies carried out across 21 countries and in a range of healthcare systems. Results also suggest that it may be that more local and context specific factors are more important when it comes to predicting ethical climate. (shrink)

A common objection to Sosa’s epistemology is that it countenances, in an objectionable way, unsafe knowledge. This objection, under closer inspection, turns out to be in far worse shape than Sosa’s critics have realised. Sosa and his defenders have offered two central response types to the idea that allowing unsafe knowledge is problematic: one response type adverts to the animal/reflective knowledge distinction that is characteristic of bi-level virtue epistemology. The other less-discussed response type appeals to the threat of dream (...) class='Hi'>scepticism, and in particular, to the idea that many of our everyday perceptual beliefs are unsafe through the nearness of the dream possibility. The latter dreaming response to the safety objection to Sosa’s virtue epistemology has largely flown under the radar in contemporary discussions of safety and knowledge. We think that, suitably articulated in view of research in the philosophy and science of dreaming, it has much more going for it than has been appreciated. This paper further develops, beyond what Sosa does himself, the dreaming argument in response to those who think safety (as traditionally understood) is a condition on knowledge and who object to Sosa’s account on the grounds that it fails this condition. The payoffs of further developing this argument will be not only a better understanding of the importance of insights about dreaming against safety as a condition on knowledge, but also some reason to think a weaker safety condition, one that is relativised to SSS (i.e., skill/shape/situation) conditions for competence exercise, gets better results all things considered as an anti-luck codicil on knowledge. (shrink)

Most studies on climate change response have examined reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Yet these studies do not take into account ecosystem services constraints and biophysical disruptions wrought by climate change that may require broader types of response. By studying a firm in the wine industry and using a research approach not constrained by structured methodologies or biased toward GHG emissions, the findings suggest that both “inside out” and “outside in” actions are taken in response to (...) class='Hi'>climate change. While attempts are made by the firm to curtail and reverse climate change through management of carbon emissions, evidence suggests a clear pattern of actions designed to adjust to the adverse consequences of climate change as well. The results both confirm and extend previous findings and suggest that the level and breadth of response to climate change is shaped by situated attention, structural controls, and industry type. (shrink)

Computer simulation modeling is an important part of contemporary scientific practice but has not yet received much attention from philosophers. The present project helps to fill this lacuna in the philosophical literature by addressing three questions that arise in the context of computer simulation of Earth's climate. Computer simulation experimentation commonly is viewed as a suspect methodology, in contrast to the trusted mainstay of material experimentation. Are the results of computer simulation experiments somehow deeply problematic in ways that the (...) results of material experiments are not? I argue against categorical skepticism toward the results of computer simulation experiments by revealing important parallels in the epistemologies of material and computer simulation experimentation. It has often been remarked that simple computer simulation models---but not complex ones---contribute substantially to our understanding of the atmosphere and climate system. Is this view of the relative contributions of simple and complex models tenable? I show that both simple and complex climate models can promote scientific understanding and argue that the apparent contribution of simple models depends upon whether a causal or deductive account of scientific understanding is adopted. When two incompatible scientific theories are under consideration, they typically are viewed as competitors, and we seek evidence that refutes at least one of the theories. In the study of climate change, however, logically incompatible computer simulation models are accepted as complementary resources for investigating future climate. How can we make sense of this use of incompatible models? I show that a collection of incompatible climate models persists in part because of difficulties faced in evaluating and comparing climate models. I then discuss the rationale for using these incompatible models together and argue that this climate model pluralism has both competitive and integrative components. (shrink)

One of the most important views in the recent discussion of epistemological scepticism is Neo-Mooreanism. It turns a well-known kind of sceptical argument (the dreaming argument and its different versions) on its head by starting with ordinary knowledge claims and concluding that we know that we are not in a sceptical scenario. This paper argues that George Edward Moore was not a Moorean in this sense. Moore replied to other forms of scepticism than those mostly discussed nowadays. His (...) own anti-sceptical position turns out to be very subtle and complex; furthermore it changed over time. This paper follows Moore's views of what the sceptical problem is and how one should respond to it through a series of crucial papers with the main focus being on Moore's 'Proof of an External World'. An appendix deals with the much neglected relation between epistemological scepticism and moral scepticism in Moore. (shrink)

Some opponents of the incommensurability thesis, such as Davidson and Rorty, have argued that the very idea of incommensurability is incoherent and that the existence of alternative and incommensurable conceptual schemes is a conceptual impossibility. If true, this refutes Kuhnian relativism and Kantian scepticism in one fell swoop. For Kuhnian relativism depends on the possibility of alternative, humanly accessible conceptual schemes that are incommensurable with one another, and the Kantian notion of a realm of unknowable things-in-themselves gives rise to (...) the possibility of humanly inaccessible schemes that are incommensurable with even our best current or future science. In what follows we argue that the possibility of incommensurability of either the Kuhnian or the Kantian variety is inescapable and that this conclusion is forced upon us by a simple consideration of what is involved in acquiring a concept. It turns out that the threats from relativism and scepticism are real, and that anyone, including Davidson himself, who has ever defended an account of concept acquisition is committed to one or the other of these two possibilities.1. (shrink)

Christocentric ecotheology is a concept that examines ecological phenomena from Christian theological perspective. This research was therefore required to examine the theological implications of climate change with the aim of bridging the gaps between theological and scientific interpretation of the events. Comparative phenomenological methodology was adopted in view of the fact that theological interpretations of events needed to be compared with scientific ideas so as to ascertain the meeting point. The research noted that the areas of variance between theological (...) beliefs and climate change are as a result of wrong interpretation of theological events. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “On Climate Change Research, the Crisis of Science and Second-order Science” by Philipp Aufenvenne, Heike Egner & Kirsten von Elverfeldt. Upshot: On an epistemological level, Aufenvenne, Egner and von Elverfeldt argue convincingly for an increasing role for second-order science in climate research. However, the authors partially underestimate the already increasing role of reflexive critique in climate discourse, and they do not yet fully take into account the radical changes in our conception (...) of climate change through the deployment of a second-order approach. (shrink)