Jurgen Habermas's critical communications theory of society has excited widespread interest in recent years. The essays in this book explore the research implications of Habermas's theory for the analysis of modern problems of public life.

Cet essai a été présenté à l’atelier sur La démocratie de l’espace et l’espace de la démocratie, qui a eu lieu à Newcastle, en Angleterre, le 11 janvier 2008. Une version antérieure a été présentée à l’Université de Tokyo le 13 novembre 2007. Il sera publié en néerlandais, traduit par Freek Jansens, sous le titre “het plannen van ruimtes van (on)mogelijkheid” dans une collection éditée par Maarten Hajer et Jantine Grijzen sur les questions de politique contemporaine. Il a été traduit (...) de l’anglais par Martin Blanchard et révisé par Daniel Weinstock. (shrink)

Multilevel research strategies characterize contemporary molecular inquiry into biological systems. We outline conceptual, methodological, and explanatory dimensions of these multilevel strategies in microbial ecology, systems biology, protein research, and developmental biology. This review of emerging lines of inquiry in these fields suggests that multilevel research in molecular life sciences has significant implications for philosophical understandings of explanation, modeling, and representation.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In MemoriamForest HansenKingsley Blake Price, Professor of Philosophy at The Johns Hopkins University for more than three decades, died in Baltimore on October 27, 2009, at the age of 92. He had long served as an editorial consultant for PMER and participated in numerous PME international symposia. His personal and academic life drew admiration from his colleagues, students, and friends (overlapping classes).Kingsley was born in Salem, Indiana, where his (...) father was a Baptist minister. The family moved from there to California, and Kingsley grew up in Berkeley. He earned his B.A. with highest honors from University of California, Berkeley (1938) and went on there for his M.A. (1942) and Ph.D. (1946). His dissertation was on Locke’s theory of knowledge. Kingsley taught first at the University of Washington, then at the University of Nevada and Sarah Lawrence College (where he became a good friend of Susanne Langer) before becoming an assistant professor of philosophy and education at Hopkins in 1953. He retired from Hopkins in 1986. In the meantime he published books and articles, presented invited papers, and traveled extensively, especially to England, France, Italy, and Greece. In 1973–74 he was president of the Philosophy of Education Society.What is especially remarkable about this is that Kingsley became blind at the age of four, as a result of undiagnosed scarlet fever. For the rest of his life he was dependent upon others to read to him (he was never keen on taped readings, and was a consultant to the Library of Congress concerning recordings for the blind). He also needed others to help him with daily practical tasks. Yet he remained fiercely independent and lived alone until his death. He did not use a seeing-eye dog and only rarely a white cane.Besides his two books, Education and Philosophical Thought (1962) and On [End Page 194] Criticizing Music (1982), Kingsley published numerous articles and reviews in the Journal of Philosophy, the Review of Metaphysics, the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Educational Theory, the British Journal of Aesthetics, the Philosophy of Music Education Review, and others. His publications were mostly on topics of art (especially music) and education. He had long been working on a manuscript of reflections upon the alleged emotional qualities of music. Kingsley criticized other theories as having inconsistent of otherwise insupportable claims. Some of his former students hope to bring this work to fruition as a book.Kingsley took piano lessons as a youngster and, typically, excelled. As a teenager he placed second in a Major Bowes Amateur Hour radio competition and considered a career as a concert pianist. When one former student asked why he had not pursued that, Kingsley replied that philosophy was more in need of an excellent philosopher than music was of an only good pianist.A February memorial for Kingsley was postponed because of a blizzard in the Baltimore area. On April 25, 2010, former graduate students, readers, colleagues, and friends—some from as far away as California, Wyoming, Hawaii, and Florida—gathered in Baltimore to honor Kingsley and share their remembrances. Besides their expressions of admiration for his philosophical acumen and his rigorous teaching, people noted Kingsley’s high moral principles, his wide range of interests in the humanities, his commitment to efforts promoting world peace, and his connoisseurship in gardening and antique furniture. Many graduate students rode with him on his tandem bicycle, and later invited him to give papers at their colleges. He was a meticulous dresser and was proud of his bow ties, his four-in-hands, and his beret. Besides such personal testimonies by those present, letters by family members, friends abroad, former graduate students, and other friends were read. Photographs were on display, and recordings of some of Kingsley’s favorites by Bach, Schubert, and Vaughan Williams were played.Above all, Kingsley was that rare professor who maintained friendship with many of his students. He is survived by an older brother, two sisters, and numerous nephews, nieces, and their offspring. And by his many friends for whom his life has made a lasting impact. [End Page 195]Forest HansenEaston, Maryland Professor Emeritus, Lake Forest College forestval2... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Memoriam: Bennett ReimerForest HansenIn late afternoon on January 9, 2014, family members, colleagues, former students, and other friends met at Northwestern University to reflect upon and honor the life of Bennett Reimer, who had died from cancer on November 18, 2013 at the age of 81. The printed program fittingly called it a “Memorial Celebration,” because that is what it was. Fine wine and savory hors d’oeuvres were (...) served, a woodwind quartet of Bienen School of Music graduate students played Reimer favorites, and Beth Hebert, Bennett’s life partner of 27 years, greeted every person as they entered the hall. Reimer would have approved of the exuberant tastefulness of the event. He would probably have blushed and demurred, however, when in the formal part of the program his colleagues, daughters, and former students praised him in recalling specific occasions of his mentoring, inspiring, modeling, guiding, collaborating, and originating. (In his writing Reimer loved such extensive discriminatory lists.) Included among the expressions of respect and affection were these words by Estelle Jorgensen, who could not be present, read by Randall Allsup: [End Page 101]We have lost a wonderful person who lived life richly and made an outstanding contribution to the field of music education and beyond. In honor of his work as a philosopher of music education, among the many facets of his professional life, the Philosophy of Music Education Review will have a special issue devoted to the ideas that he left us, contributed by prominent music educational leaders and writers. Such moments of professional loss leave a rent in our midst that can never quite be patched. Along with our sorrow is our memory of the joy, idealism, and hope that characterized his lived life. We cling collectively to the memories of the blessings he brought us in simply being Bennett.Reimer was born on June 19, 1932 in Brooklyn, where he grew up. He earned a B.S. in music education in 1954 at SUNY at Fredonia and an M.S. (1955) and Ed.D. (1963) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His teaching career started at the Richmond Professional Institute of the College of William and Mary (1955–57) and continued at Madison College (Harrisburg VA) (1958–1960) and the University of Illinois (1960–65). At Case Western Reserve University (1965–1978), he became chair of the Music Education Department and holder of the Kulas Endowed Chair in Music. Then at Northwestern University he held the John W. Beattie Chair in Music from 1978 until his retirement in 1997. He chaired the Music Education Department there, directed the doctoral program in music education, and founded and directed the Center for the Study of Education and the Musical Experience—a weekly research forum for graduate students and faculty. Although Reimer had started out as an instructor in clarinet and oboe, musical theory, conducting, and music appreciation, he became a scholar, teacher, and lecturer in the new field of philosophy of music education with a worldwide following and reputation.Reimer was most noted for his seminal A Philosophy of Music Education (1970), which can fittingly be described as the founding document of the discipline. Typically he made revisions for the second edition in 1989 and more radical ones for the third edition in 2003, retitled as A Philosophy of Music Education: Advancing the Vision. This work has been translated into French, Japanese, and Chinese, and, forthcoming, Greek. He was associated with PMER and the International Society for Philosophy of Music Education (ISPME) from their beginnings in 1990.Besides his seminal works, Reimer wrote or co-wrote another twenty books and more than 150 articles, reviews, and book chapters. A few of his book titles indicate the range of his thought, from his early and widely used textbooks The Experience of Music (1971) for college students and Silver Burdett Music for grades 1–8 to his more recent Performing with Understanding: The Challenge of the National Standards for Musical Education (2000), World Musics and Music [End Page 102] Education: Facing the Issues (2002), and Seeking the Significance of Music Education (2009). He was an active participant and leader in a host of other music... (shrink)

John Stuart Mill examine dans le dernier des Trois Essais sur la religion l’argument du Dessein. Ce faisant, il l’évalue selon les normes épistémiques définies dans le Système de logique en dressant un parallèle avec l’hypothèse présentée par Darwin dans L’Origine des espèces. Pour comprendre le verdict nuancé rendu par Mill, il faut faire intervenir trois niveaux d’analyse : la relation entre méthode inductive et méthode hypothétique (théorie de la connaissance), le choix du phénoménalisme qui limite l’engagement naturaliste (métaphysique), (...) la question de l’espoir raisonnable (philosophie morale). La philosophie de la religion engage ainsi l’unité de la philosophie de Mill. (shrink)

Fragile kingdoms of innumerable organisms and rich beauty, forests today are both our most plentiful and our most endangered natural resource. Understanding their workings and how to sustain them is imperative to ensuring the future of humanity. John Berger urges us to learn what can be done to preserve these treasures, and he offers here a compelling guide to the complex issues surrounding forest preservation. An expanded and revised version of Berger’s bestselling Understanding Forests, Forests Forever offers a clear (...) and readable survey of forest history and management. Berger draws upon diverse sources in law, ecology, economics, politics, and anthropology to argue that ecology, rather than the marketplace, should be the driving force behind forest management. Historical case studies of forests worldwide support this contention, the book reveals, as does the history of governments’ forest policy. Keeping pace with today’s issues, Berger critically evaluates government policy over the last seven years, including a contrast between the destructive policies of the Bush Administration and model programs instituted by the Canadian Boreal Initiative and others. Ultimately, he offers us the guiding principles of sustainable forestry as an answer to the ever-increasing demand for wood products. Anchoring the account are galleries of breathtaking full-color images of trees, forest, wildlife, and other forestry subjects taken by the world’s leading nature photographers. A concise and wholly readable account, Forests Forever issues a call to arms for all those concerned with preserving and managing the world’s forests today. (shrink)

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

_Forest Family_ highlights the importance of old-growth forests to Australian art, community, culture, history, and politics. The volume will be of interest to general readers of environmental history, as well as scholars in critical plant studies and the environmental humanities.

Setting the scene -- Sentience and the sentient mind -- Special senses and their interpretation Survival strategies -- Social strategies -- Animals of the waters -- Animals of the air -- Animals of the savannah and plains -- Animals of the forests -- Close neighbours -- Our duty of care.

What is the effect of light as it measures the seasons? How does light leave different traces on the terrain—on a Pacific Island, in the Aegean Sea, high in the Alps, or in the forest? John Sallis considers the expansiveness of nature and the range of human vision in essays about the effect of light and luminosity on place. Sallis writes movingly of nature and the elements, employing an enormous range of philosophical, geographical, and historical knowledge. Paintings and drawings (...) by Alejandro A. Vallega illuminate the text, accentuating the interaction between light and environment. (shrink)

As the author of these columns describing cutting edge physics and astronomy, I get quite a few letters and E-mail from readers who are more interested in “over-the-edge physics and astronomy”. One recurring theme is various alternatives to the standard model of Big Bang cosmology. Perhaps the universe is not expanding; it’s just that light “gets tired” on its path from far away and loses some of its energy. Perhaps quasars are closer than we think, particularly since some of them (...) appear to be linked to closer galaxies. Perhaps relativity is wrong, and it’s the speed of light that is different in different parts of the universe or changing with time. Perhaps quasars are the tailpipes of nearby alien spaceships, and they have such large red shifts because we only see them when they are moving away from us. And so on…. (shrink)

n 1902, 70 million years after it tripped lightly through the Mesozoic forests in search of meat, the skeleton of a 20-foothightyrannosaurus was dynamited out of a sandstone bluff near Hell Creek, Mont. Wrapped in burlap and plaster and shipped back to New York, the bones were painstakingly reassembled by fossil curator Barnum Brown of the American Museum of Natural History. It was there, one day in 1947, that they happened to scare the bejesus out of 5-year-old Stephen Jay Gould. (...) With a mouthful of teeth as big as bananas, the great reptile gaped down at the little mammal who had usurped its place at the head of the food chain and set him scurrying for the safety of his daddy's pant leg. It was a sublime epiphany. Long after Gould could stare with equanimity at the skull of tyrannosaurus, he was left with the essential mystery that still motivates him as perhaps America's foremost writer and thinker on evolution: why should dinosaurs have ended up in human museums instead of—as one among an infinite number of evolutionary possibilities—the other way around? (shrink)

Reminiscences of the James legacy -- Political context and philosophical locus -- James on understanding and reason : Kant, Hegel, and German idealism -- Hegel's idealism : Marxist materialist -- Reading and inversion -- James's locus as Marxist philosopher : the humanist/anti-humanist debate -- Comparing notes : James and Lenin on Hegel and dialectical materialism -- Lenin's theory of the Vanguard party : contra James's self-activity of the proletariat -- Postscript : beyond the boundary of the Johnson-Forest tendency.

This chapter contains sections titled: References and Further Reading.

Equality and identity. Bulletin of Symbolic Logic. 19 (2013) 255-6. (Coauthor: Anthony Ramnauth) Also see https://www.academia.edu/s/a6bf02aaab This article uses ‘equals’ [‘is equal to’] and ‘is’ [‘is identical to’, ‘is one and the same as’] as they are used in ordinary exact English. In a logically perfect language the oxymoron ‘the numbers 3 and 2+1 are the same number’ could not be said. Likewise, ‘the number 3 and the number 2+1 are one number’ is just as bad from a logical point (...) of view. In normal English these two sentences are idiomatically taken to express the true proposition that ‘the number 3 is the number 2+1’. Another idiomatic convention that interferes with clarity about equality and identity occurs in discussion of numbers: it is usual to write ‘3 equals 2+1’ when “3 is 2+1” is meant. When ‘3 equals 2+1’ is written there is a suggestion that 3 is not exactly the same number as 2+1 but that they merely have the same value. This becomes clear when we say that two of the sides of a triangle are equal if the two angles they subtend are equal or have the same measure. -/- Acknowledgements: Robert Barnes, Mark Brown, Jack Foran, Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Forest Hansen, David Hitchcock, Spaulding Hoffman, Calvin Jongsma, Justin Legault, Joaquin Miller, Tania Miller, and Wyman Park. -/- ► JOHN CORCORAN AND ANTHONY RAMNAUTH, Equality and identity. Philosophy, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260-4150, USA E-mail: [email protected] The two halves of one line are equal but not identical [one and the same]. Otherwise the line would have only one half! Every line equals infinitely many other lines, but no line is [identical to] any other line—taking ‘identical’ strictly here and below. Knowing that two lines equaling a third are equal is useful; the condition “two lines equaling a third” often holds. In fact any two sides of an equilateral triangle is equal to the remaining side! But could knowing that two lines being [identical to] a third are identical be useful? The antecedent condition “two things identical to a third” never holds, nor does the consequent condition “two things being identical”. If two things were identical to a third, they would be the third and thus not be two things but only one. The plural predicate ‘are equal’ as in ‘All diameters of a given circle are equal’ is useful and natural. ‘Are identical’ as in ‘All centers of a given circle are identical’ is awkward or worse; it suggests that a circle has multiple centers. Substituting equals for equals [replacing one of two equals by the other] makes sense. Substituting identicals for identicals is empty—a thing is identical only to itself; substituting one thing for itself leaves that thing alone, does nothing. There are as many types of equality as magnitudes: angles, lines, planes, solids, times, etc. Each admits unit magnitudes. And each such equality analyzes as identity of magnitude: two lines are equal [in length] if the one’s length is identical to the other’s. Tarski [1] hardly mentioned equality-identity distinctions (pp. 54-63). His discussion begins: -/- Among the logical concepts […], the concept of IDENTITY or EQUALITY […] has the greatest importance. -/- Not until page 62 is there an equality-identity distinction. His only “notion of equality”, if such it is, is geometrical congruence—having the same size and shape—an equivalence relation not admitting any unit. Does anyone but Tarski ever say ‘this triangle is equal to that’ to mean that the first is congruent to that? What would motivate him to say such a thing? This lecture treats the history and philosophy of equality-identity distinctions. [1] ALFRED TARSKI, Introduction to Logic, Dover, New York, 1995. [This is expanded from the printed abstract.] . (shrink)

A key philosophical feature of Peter Jackson’s film interpretation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is its use of fantasy to inspire a “recovery” of the actual or, in other words, a reawakening to the beauty of nature and the many possible ways of living in healthier ecological relation to the world. Though none of these ways is perfectly achieved, this pluralistic view is demonstrated in the various lifeways of Hobbits, Elves, Men, and Ents. All of the positive (...) relationships embodied in the films—to trees, mountains, horses, and vegetable gardens—involve loving care and attention, receiving nourishment and livelihood without instrumentalization, or reducing nature to mere resource. The films also vividly display a variety of ugly and destructive ways of using the land to accrue power and wealth. These noxious ways, specifically because they actively destroy the lands that they use, always need more. They will thus eventually annihilate the beautiful ways of being if they are not actively resisted. Some of those who would rather be tending their own trees, gardens, or horses or even wandering in the wild forests must therefore turn their attention to struggle and resistance instead. This is a struggle full of grief, and at times even verging on despair, but it is marked by the refusal to give up hope. Indeed, what Jackson and Tolkien have to say about hope is as important in responding to the ecological crisis as anything they have to say about nature, inasmuch as they help to remind us that even in our own times, “there is still hope.”. (shrink)

On December 22, 1988, Chico Mendes, the leader of the struggle to preserve the Amazonian rainforest, stepped out of the back door of his house and was assassinated. Chico was a seringueiro, a rubber tapper who collects latex from the trees of the forest. He had a vision of the people of the rainforest living in balance with the natural world, supporting their communities through harvesting the natural, renewable forest products in a sustainable manner. It was for this vision that (...) he was murdered by the powerful ranchers of the region, who wish to burn the forests and expand their vast estates. And it is also for this vision that he has become for many throughout the world a hero of the earth, a saint of ecology. (shrink)

Under the sumptuous immensity of the sky, the snow covered the endless forests, the frozen rivers, the plains of an immense country, obliterating the landmarks, the accidents of the ground, levelling everything under its uniform whiteness, like a monstrous blank page awaiting the record of an inconceivable history.Increased interest in the experience of space in literature in recent decades has resulted in numerous commentaries on such topics as colonial space, geographical space, gendered space, liminal space, psychic space, and signifying space. (...) In fact, Con Coroneos suggests that Homi Bhabha’s “DissemiNation”1 considers as many as forty different types of space.2Conrad studies have not been silent during this... (shrink)

The 2016 Republican Party platform is unabashed in its rejection of environmental principles and its embrace of extractive labor. Its ‘Natural Resources’ section reads: ‘[w]e are the party of America's growers, producers, farmers, ranchers, foresters, miners, commercial fishermen, and all those who bring from the earth the crops, minerals, energy, and the bounties of our seas.’ What is interesting about this statement is its selective view of productive labor. Not all who bring from the earth are equally valued within the (...) American conservative worldview. What accounts for the outsized role of white male workers in the discourses of American conservatives? (shrink)

Reminiscences of the James legacy -- Political context and philosophical locus -- James on understanding and reason : Kant, Hegel, and German idealism -- Hegel's idealism : Marxist materialist -- Reading and inversion -- James's locus as Marxist philosopher : the humanist/anti-humanist debate -- Comparing notes : James and Lenin on Hegel and dialectical materialism -- Lenin's theory of the Vanguard party : contra James's self-activity of the proletariat -- Postscript : beyond the boundary of the Johnson-Forest tendency.

This essay critically examines the emerging view among some ethnologists that replicable models of sustainable management of tropical forests may be found within the knowledge systems of contemporary indigenous peoples. As idealized epistemological types, several characteristics distinguishing “indigenous” from “modern” knowledge systems are described. Two culturally distinctive land use systems in Latin America are compared, one developed by an indigenous group, the Huastec Maya, and the other characteristic of colonist farms in Rondonia, Brazil. While each of these systems reflects a (...) different cultural-historical tradition, I argue that the process of knowledge formation and cultural adaptation is coevolutionary and continuous in both cases. The very concept of “indigenous” as a discrete analytic category is questioned; indigenicity alone cannot explain local adaptation of farming systems. Rather than dichotomize indigenous and colonist knowledge as inherently different categories, differences in land use patterns between such social groups may be more accurately viewed as reflecting different points on a single epistemological continuum. (shrink)

A key philosophical feature of Peter Jackson’s film interpretation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s _The Lord of the Rings_ is its use of fantasy to inspire a “recovery” of the actual or, in other words, a reawakening to the beauty of nature and the many possible ways of living in healthier ecological relation to the world. Though none of these ways is perfectly achieved, this pluralistic view is demonstrated in the various lifeways of Hobbits, Elves, Men, and Ents. All of the positive (...) relationships embodied in the films—to trees, mountains, horses, and vegetable gardens—involve loving care and attention, receiving nourishment and livelihood without instrumentalization, or reducing nature to mere resource. The films also vividly display a variety of ugly and destructive ways of using the land to accrue power and wealth. These noxious ways, specifically because they actively destroy the lands that they use, always need more. They will thus eventually annihilate the beautiful ways of being if they are not actively resisted. Some of those who would rather be tending their own trees, gardens, or horses or even wandering in the wild forests must therefore turn their attention to struggle and resistance instead. This is a struggle full of grief, and at times even verging on despair, but it is marked by the refusal to give up hope. Indeed, what Jackson and Tolkien have to say about hope is as important in responding to the ecological crisis as anything they have to say about nature, inasmuch as they help to remind us that even in our own times, “there is still hope.”. (shrink)

In Japan, yaen kōen or "wild monkey parks" are popular visitor attractions that show free-ranging monkey troops to the paying public. Unlike zoos, which display nonhuman animals through confinement, monkey parks control the movements of the monkeys through provisioning. The parks project an image of themselves as "natural zoos," claiming to practice a more authentic form of displaying animals-in-the-wild than that practiced by the zoo. This article critically evaluates the monkey park's claim by examining park management of the monkeys. The (...) article shows the monkey park's claim to display wild monkeys to be questionable because of the way that provisioning changes monkey behavior. Against the background of human encroachment onto the forest habitat of the monkey, the long-term effect of provisioning is to sedentarize nomadic monkey animals and to turn the wild monkey park into a megazoo. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Importance of What Psychiatrists Care AboutJohn M. Talmadge (bio)Keywordspost-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), psychotherapy, Frankfurt, veteransChristopher Bailey's account of his conversation with Colin, an unhappy man who feels regret about the absence of heroism in his own life, is both poignant and evocative. The emptiness that Colin feels illustrates aspects of the human condition central to definitions of psychotherapy for the past century or so. In this brief commentary, (...) I have three observations. First, the life of the therapist intertwines, however briefly, with the life of the patient. The light brought by the therapist may be like a candle, beacon, or flashbulb. Regardless of the therapist's strategic decisions and elected action, the patient may still end up in the dark. Second, I believe that this vignette illustrates the value of Professor Harry Frankfurt's ideas as expressed in his essay, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of the Person.” And third, the tortuous journeys of psychotherapy may frighten and excite even the most temperate, contemplative clinician. In this third realm, where therapists create strategies for conversations about life, I also want to mention the work of Otto Rank.We have only a glimpse of Colin's life, but Dr. Bailey raises an issue of universal importance in helping others. The concept of moral heroism dates from the stoics, but the twentieth century merged psychology, theology, and philosophy in addressing the importance of significance, self-affirmation, and anxiety.Colin feels as though he has missed an opportunity for heroism, and Dr. Bailey is trying to help him feel better. Setting aside the technical problems imposed by a clinical setting, let us stipulate that there are two distinct aspects of psychiatric care: one is medical, formal, and biological; and the other is interactive, personal, and philosophical. With regard to the former, the psychiatrist is uniquely qualified to assist with medication, refinement of diagnosis, and remediation of illness. Regarding the latter, the psychotherapist may see the patient as an object, treated behaviorally, which is not necessarily bad or wrong, and solutions may be fairly procedural and simple. Dr. Bailey, however, sees Colin's problem as somewhat deeper than that, and I agree.Having a theory of human nature is one thing, but being in a relationship with another person requires action as well as contemplation. Like the parable of the two monks meeting in the forest, one turns to the other and says, “I’m lost.” The other monk replies, “I am also lost!” After a moment, the first says, “I don’t know the way out, but I know some ways that don’t lead out.” The second monk thinks for a moment and adds, “Me too. Perhaps we can find the way out together.” [End Page 241]When Harry Frankfurt (1988) first wrote about the importance of what we care about, he observed that conscious beings (as opposed to young children, who have not fully developed the capacity for self-reflection) exhibit conflicts of will. The concept of the person, he says, includes more than the nature of our knowing (epistemology) and the matter of our behavior (ethics). Those who are uniquely human have the capacity to consider and understand what they really care about, what matters most. In an elegant lecture series he sums this up as “taking ourselves seriously, and getting it right.” His work is valuable, not only for his keen insights and observations, but also because his thought is so accessible to those of us who are not trained philosophers.Frankfurt rightly points out that philosophy has largely neglected the study of personality, leaving that to the psychologists and social scientists. He never ventures into the world of diagnosis and treatment, and rightly so; he defines his interests narrowly and effectively, assuming for the sake of his arguments that he is describing someone not burdened by mental disease or defect. At the same time, he engages head-on the complexity of life and personal will. He offers a way to think about human will, but he does not say what we should necessarily do, nor for that matter when we should intervene, when it comes to the will of... (shrink)

We are such stuff / As dreams are made on.Only an American could have seen in a single lifetime the growth of the whole tragedy of civilization from the primitive forest clearing. An Englishman grows up to think that the ugliness of Manchester and the slums of Liverpool have existed since the beginning of the world.LUCA [Last Universal Common Ancestor], the researchers say, was the common point of origin for three great domains of life—bacteria, archaea, which are bacteria-like single-cell prokaryotes, (...) and the eukaryotes, a domain that includes all plants and animals [including Homo sapiens].Our language evolved as a way of gossiping. According to this theory … [s]ocial cooperation is our key for survival and... (shrink)

Although conservation attention has generally focused on large forest tracts, there is increasing evidence that smaller forest patches are important for both conservation and rural development. A study of forest patch conservation in a rural Costa Rican community found that, although forest patch conservation was influenced by landholding size, material factors did not account for all the variation in forest patches conservation behavior or conservation orientations of farmers. A qualitative interpretive approach, using semi-structured interviews, found that environmental values were influenced (...) by at least three factors. First, colonist farmers with direct experience with environmental degradation in other regions of Costa Rica were more likely to be concerned about environmental degradation. Second, childhood exposure to conservation played an important role in influencing conservation orientations. Third, the environment was frequently discussed in relation to the moral and social values present in religious doctrines. The study also found general support for forest conservation laws, and a clear indication that interest in forest conservation has grown in recent years. The study highlights the importance of environmental values, in conjunction with material factors, in influencing forest conservation in rural communities. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The False Cause Fallacy Hasty Generalizations Failure to Take Context into Account Suppressing Relevant Evidence The Gambler's Fallacy Affirming the Consequent/Denying the Antecedent The Fallacies of Composition and Division Missing the Forest for the Trees.

Local, national, and international conflicts over the use of forests between logging companies, governments, environmentalists, native peoples, local residents, recreationalists, and others—e.g., the controversy over the spotted owl in the old-growth forests of the Northwestern United States and over the rain forests in South America—have shown the need for philosophical reflection to help clarify the basic issues involved. Joining other philosophers who are addressing this problem, my own response takes the form of a sketch of the rough outlines of a (...) critical environmental hermeneutics. I apply hermeneutics, narrative theory, and critical theory to environmental ethics, and use this hermeneutical theory as a method to illuminate the “deep” underlying issues relating to the perception and use of forests. In applying this method, I first take up the analytical problem of identifying, clarifying, and ordering the different interpretive narratives about forests in terms of the underlying epistemological, ethical, and political issuesinvolved. I then address the critical problem of deciding conflicts between these different interpretations of forests by working out a set of legitimation criteria to which all parties concerned would ideally be able to subscribe. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Exclusivity and ParticularityJohn Dominic CrossanSeveral of the authors spoke of the imperial exclusivity so characteristic of Christianity. For José Ignacio Cabezón, “What Buddhists find objectionable is (a) the Christian characterization of the deity whose manifestation Jesus is said to be, and (b) the claim that Jesus is unique in being such a manifestation” (p. 56). For Bokin Kim, “most Christians hold to an exclusive view of Christ that claims (...) his uniqueness” (p. 76). For Rita Gross, “the exclusive claims made on behalf of Jesus by Christians appalled me even as a teenager, and my repugnance for exclusive truth claims on the part of religions—any religion—has not diminished since. Thus, part of my journey is working out both a theory and a praxis of religious pluralism that is neither relativistic nor universalistic, that encourages both commitment to one tradition and appreciation of other traditions” (p. 64). I myself find such exclusivistic claims for Christianity, or any other religion, insulting in theory and lethal in practice, objectionable in history and obscene in theology. They are implicitly genocidal even if political impotence limits the divine ethnic cleansing they imagine. But how, as Gross repeats, does one establish “a position that is neither relativistic nor exclusivistic”? (p. 65). My own answer is particularity, but I must explain that in terms of my understanding of Trinity, divinity, and particularity.Trinity seems a particularly and peculiarly Christian understanding of God, but my proposal is that the structure of the Holy is Trinitarian in all religions that I know about and even in all those I can imagine. I speak very deliberately about the Holy (not about God) as the infinite mystery that surrounds and supports, fascinates and terrifies us. It is that against which we interact as meaning-seeking beings. Be it absolute open meaninglessness or absolute univocal meaning, our interaction with it does not seem to be an option but a necessity. And my point is that the Holy is Trinitarian in structure. It is not just on the one hand that religion is Trinitarian in structure. But it is not on the other hand that the Holy in itself and apart from us is Trinitarian in structure. It is, I propose, that the Holy in itself as seen by us across the spectrum of world religious experience is Trinitarian in structure. That Trinity [End Page 97] involves, first, ultimate metaphor, that foundational image that imagines the Holy as, for example, power, person, state, or order, as nature, god/goddess, nirvana, or mandate of heaven. It involves, second, material manifestation, some physical object in which that metaphorical vision is peculiarly, specially, or even uniquely incarnated, some person, place, or thing, some individual or collectivity, some cave or shrine or temple, some clearing in the forest or tree in the desert where that ultimate referent is encountered and experienced. It involves, finally, preliminary preparation, for there must be at least one believer to begin with and eventually more to end with. But, as there are always nonbelievers as well, some prior affinity must exist, as it were, between this metaphor rather than that, this manifestation rather than that, and this believer rather than that. For me, therefore, all faith and all religion, not just my own Christianity, is Trinitarian in structure and that structure seems to inhere in the Holy itself, at least insofar as we can see it. For me, therefore, Christianity and Buddhism differ most profoundly on their ultimate metaphor for the Holy: it is person (God) for the former but state (nirvana) for the latter. In Christianity, of course, our ultimate metaphor is rather overinvested: it is person; and that person is parent; and that parent is father. But I leave those specifications aside for the moment.Divinity is the term I use for any material manifestation. By calling such manifestations divine I mean precisely that a religion’s ultimate metaphor is experienced by believers as peculiarly, specially, or even uniquely present in that physical phenomenon. In that sense I understand both Christ and the Buddha to be divine in exactly the same way—that is, as incarnations of the Holy but within different ultimate metaphors. Christ did... (shrink)

Local, national, and international conflicts over the use of forests between logging companies, governments, environmentalists, native peoples, local residents, recreationalists, and others—e.g., the controversy over the spotted owl in the old-growth forests of the Northwestern United States and over the rain forests in South America—have shown the need for philosophical reflection to help clarify the basic issues involved. Joining other philosophers who are addressing this problem, my own response takes the form of a sketch of the rough outlines of a (...) critical environmental hermeneutics. I apply hermeneutics, narrative theory, and critical theory to environmental ethics, and use this hermeneutical theory as a method to illuminate the “deep” underlying issues relating to the perception and use of forests. In applying this method, I first take up the analytical problem of identifying, clarifying, and ordering the different interpretive narratives about forests in terms of the underlying epistemological, ethical, and political issuesinvolved. I then address the critical problem of deciding conflicts between these different interpretations of forests by working out a set of legitimation criteria to which all parties concerned would ideally be able to subscribe. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the intimate significance of trees and woods through research on how people engage with and perform their bodies in different kinds of wooded environments in contemporary Britain. We argue that there are significant, contested and ambivalent affordances provided by woods and forests in contemporary Britain - as providing `live' contact with nature, as a source of tranquillity, and as providing a distinct `social' space in sharp contrast to the pressures of modern living. Second, there is (...) considerable variation in the bodily experiences that people gain from woods and forests, influenced by personal and family life-stage, socio-economic circumstance and geographical location. The values people appear to attach to woods and forests arise from the specific `affordances' that the latter could offer for bodily desires. There are, we might say, different `contested' natures of the forest. (shrink)

In recent years, the work of organizations in the area of digitization has intensified significantly. This trend is also evident in the field of recruitment where job application tracking systems (ATS) have been developed to allow job advertisements to be published online. However, recent studies have shown that recruiting in most organizations is not inclusive, being subject to human biases and prejudices. Most discrimination activities appear early but subtly in the hiring process, for instance, exclusive phrasing in job advertisement discourages (...) qualified applicants from minority groups from applying. The existing works are limited to analyzing, categorizing and highlighting the occurrence of bias in the recruitment process. In this paper, we go beyond this and develop machine learning models for identifying and classifying biased and discriminatory language in job descriptions. We develop and evaluate a machine learning system for identifying five major categories of biased and discriminatory language in job advertisements, i.e., masculine-coded, feminine-coded, exclusive, LGBTQ-coded, demographic and racial language. We utilized the combination of linguistic features with recent state-of-the-art word embeddings representations as input features for various machine learning classifiers. Our results show that the machine learning classifiers were able to identify all the five categories of biased and discriminatory language with a decent accuracy. The Random Forest classifier with FastText word embeddings achieved the best performance with tenfolds cross-validation. Our system directly addresses the bias in the attraction phase of hiring by identifying and classifying biased and discriminatory language and thus encouraging recruiters to write more inclusive job advertisements. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the intimate significance of trees and woods through research on how people engage with and perform their bodies in different kinds of wooded environments in contemporary Britain. We argue that there are significant, contested and ambivalent affordances provided by woods and forests in contemporary Britain - as providing `live' contact with nature, as a source of tranquillity, and as providing a distinct `social' space in sharp contrast to the pressures of modern living. Second, there is (...) considerable variation in the bodily experiences that people gain from woods and forests, influenced by personal and family life-stage, socio-economic circumstance and geographical location. The values people appear to attach to woods and forests arise from the specific `affordances' that the latter could offer for bodily desires. There are, we might say, different `contested' natures of the forest. (shrink)

An energy efficiency scenario (Joint Institute for a Sustainable Energy and Environmental Future) demonstrates that an energy future built on the use of cost-effective, high-efficiency technologies is clearly within the grasp of South Korea and would justify a nuclear power moratorium with significantly lower carbon dioxide emissions. This is a promising result, especially because applications of other sustainable energy options, such as renewables, decentralized technologies, material recycling/reuse, ecologically based land use planning, forest conservation, sustainable agriculture, and redirection of economic development (...) toward an environment-friendly industrial base, are not included in the analysis. Here lies one of the most fundamental policy choices of the newcentury: Will we build a sustainable energy and environmental future, or will we send forward the burdens and risks of a policy regime that is unwilling to value the future beyond the satisfaction of short-term interests and convenience? It is a critical time for South Korean policy making. (shrink)

Homegardens are traditional food systems that have been adapted over generations to fit local cultural and ecological conditions. They provide a year-round diversity of nutritious foods for smallholder farming communities in many regions of the tropics and subtropics. In southwestern Uganda, homegardens are the primary source of food, providing a diverse diet for rural marginalized poor. However, national agricultural development plans as well as economic and social pressures threaten the functioning of these homegardens. The implications of these threats are difficult (...) to evaluate, because the structure and functions of the homegardens are not well understood. The aim of the study was to identify patterns and influencing factors in the diversity of homegardens by documenting the floristic diversity and its interactions with spatial, environmental and socio-economic factors. A geographically and socially focused assessment of floristic diversity in 102 randomly selected homegardens in three districts of southwest Uganda was conducted along a deforestation gradient following a human ecology conceptual framework and testing multiple quantitative hypotheses regarding the above mentioned factors. A merged mixed-method approach was followed to provide context and feedback regarding quantitative findings. Results show a high total richness of 209 crop species dominated by food species, which constituted 96 percent of individuals and 44 percent of all species. Forest-edge homegardens maintained higher plant diversity compared to homegardens in deforested areas and near degraded wetlands. Multiple linear regression models indicated elevation, location, homegarden size, distance to market, additional land ownership and livestock ownership as significant predictors of crop diversity. Cluster analysis of species densities revealed four garden types: ‘diverse tree gardens’, ‘small forest-edge gardens’, ‘large, old, species-rich gardens’, and ‘large, annual-dominated herb gardens’, with 98% correct classification. Location, elevation, and garden size were also important determinants in the cluster assignment. We conclude that the diversity of the studied homegardens may be changing as part of adaptive traditional practices and in response to external drivers. The identified patterns illustrate the importance of homegardens for rural livelihoods and may offer some ways to support farmers to maintain these systems as relevant mechanisms for development in Uganda. (shrink)

A survey of professional foresters in the northeastern United States was conducted to determine whether professional forest resource managers viewed forest ecosystem management and other "new" forestry language as representing practical constructs, and whether there is a difference between USDA Forest Service foresters and private-sector foresters in the degree to which they have applied "new" forestry. Results suggested that the forest management behaviors of most foresters in the region may be influenced more by traditional forestry concepts and language than by (...) "new" forestry. (shrink)

Marcantonio Raimondis career is here considered as a record of a distinctively Renaissance hunger for imagery, on the part of the literate as well as the illiterate, a taste that did not demand autograph work and yet was very attentive to the decisions made by artists about which subjects to portray and how to present them. Marcantonios contribution is described less in terms of having made Raphaels work known widely, and more as having made engraving into an established art form: (...) collectible, discussable, debatable. His innovative technique yielded, it is argued, images of deliberately impersonal style, an accomplishment obscured by the ensuing emphasis on maniera. (shrink)