Wind turbine noise is annoying and has been linked to increased levels of psychological distress, stress, difficulty falling asleep, and sleep interruption. For these reasons, there is a need for competently designed noise standards to safeguard community health and well-being. The authors identify key considerations for the development of wind turbine noise standards, which emphasize a more social and humanistic approach to the assessment of new energy technologies in society.

Ray Billington explores the spirituality of Eastern thought and its differences from and relationships with the Western religious tradition by presenting the main principles of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism and Confucianism. Billington discusses the central themes of religious philosophy, comparing Eastern and Western views of belief of God, the soul, moral decision-making, nature, faith and authority. He then challenges theism, particularly Christianity, with its belief in a personal God bestowing a certain version of "truth". He concludes that the (...) universal mysticism characteristic of Eastern thought provides a more realistic and rewarding path. (shrink)

Nietzsche's influence upon European philosophy has been, and continues to be, profound. Indeed, recent years have seen Nietzsche scholarship become the battleground for debates over philosophical method between the analytic and continental traditions. This fresh introduction to Nietzsche's philosophical work provides students new to Nietzsche with an excellent framework for understanding the central concerns of his philosophical and cultural writings and why Nietzsche's ideas continue to spark controversy in philosophy and in allied disciplines. The book is divided into three parts. (...) In the first section "Nietzsche Against the Tradition", the author shows why Nietzsche rejects wholesale certain components of the Western philosophical and religious traditions and examines the implications of rejecting them. Those components are considered under the headings of morality, religion and nihilism. In the second part "Nietzsche and the Tradition", the author explores Nietzsche's ambivalent and sophisticated reflections on some of the central topics in the Western philosophical tradition. These include Nietzsche's criticisms of metaphysics, his analysis of truth and knowledge, and his reflections on the self and consciousness. In the final section "Nietzsche Beyond the Tradition", Welshon discusses some of the ways in which Nietzsche does, or is thought to, transcend the Western philosophical tradition with chapters on the will to power, politics and education, artistry and the flourishing life. The book provides readers with balanced, clear analysis and is ideally suited as a companion resource for students tackling Nietzsche's challenging prose style. (shrink)

To what extent should states accommodate religious liberty claims? Can the pluralist state be neutral between religions and secularism? This book explores contemporary legal controversies regarding the protection of religious liberty from a theoretical and comparative perspective, looking at issues such as family and parenting, medical treatment, education, employment, religious group autonomy, and freedom of expression.

This article argues that secularism is not neutral. Secularization is a process, the secular state is a structure, whereas secularism is a political philosophy. Secularism takes two main forms: first, a “benevolent” secularism that endeavours to treat all religious and nonreligious belief systems even-handedly, and, second, a “hostile” kind that privileges unbelief and excludes religion from the public sphere. I analyze the European Court of Human Rights decision in Lautsi v Italy, which illustrates these types. The article concludes that secularism (...) as a political philosophy cannot be neutral, and the secular state is not neutral in its effects, standpoint, governing assumptions or treatment of religious truth claims. (shrink)

`The first and only book to explore, at once, the field of my work and its limits, with both the intimacy and distance required: doubling and shadowing. It gives me great pleasure to find something that, beyond commentary, sees what I see and at the same time what I am unable to see' - Jean Baudrillard Baudrillard is a controversial figure. His work tends to fascinate and infuriate readers in equal numbers. Yet there is no doubting his importance to the (...) key debates in culture and theory of the last ten years. A prolific author, readers sometimes find it difficult to tease out the consistencies in Baudrillard's arguments. This book seeks to redress the balance. It aims to go beyond his writings on consumer objects, the Gulf War and America, to identify the fundamental logic that underpins his writings. It does this through a series of close readings of his main texts, paying particular attention to the form and internal coherence of his arguments. The book contends that, just as Baudrillard himself grapples with the problems of how to criticize self-defining systems, so we cannot simply hold Baudrillard up against external standards but must seek to judge him on his own terms. Jean Baudrillard: A Defence of the Real will be an indispensable text for all those interested in social theory who want a general introduction to Baudrillard's work. (shrink)

Here we review 37 modern neuroimaging studies in an attempt to address this question posed by Halstead (1947) as he and other icons of the last century endeavored to understand how brain and behavior are linked through the expression of intelligence and reason. Reviewing studies from functional (i.e., functional magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography) and structural (i.e., magnetic resonance spectroscopy, diffusion tensor imaging, voxel-based morphometry) neuroimaging paradigms, we report a striking consensus suggesting that variations in a distributed network predict (...) individual differences found on intelligence and reasoning tasks. We describe this network as the Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory (P-FIT). The P-FIT model includes, by Brodmann areas (BAs): the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (BAs 6, 9, 10, 45, 46, 47), the inferior (BAs 39, 40) and superior (BA 7) parietal lobule, the anterior cingulate (BA 32), and regions within the temporal (BAs 21, 37) and occipital (BAs 18, 19) lobes. White matter regions (i.e., arcuate fasciculus) are also implicated. The P-FIT is examined in light of findings from human lesion studies, including missile wounds, frontal lobotomy/leukotomy, temporal lobectomy, and lesions resulting in damage to the language network (e.g., aphasia), as well as findings from imaging research identifying brain regions under significant genetic control. Overall, we conclude that modern neuroimaging techniques are beginning to articulate a biology of intelligence. We propose that the P-FIT provides a parsimonious account for many of the empirical observations, to date, which relate individual differences in intelligence test scores to variations in brain structure and function. Moreover, the model provides a framework for testing new hypotheses in future experimental designs. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to stress the significance of ethics for engineering education and to illustrate how it can be brought into the mainstream of higher education in a natural way that is integrated with the teaching objectives of enriching the core meaning of engineering. Everyone will agree that the practicing engineer should be virtuous, should be a good colleague, and should use professional understanding for the common good. But these injunctions to virtue do not reach closely enough (...) the ethic of the engineer as engineer, as someone acting in a uniquely engineering situation, and it is to such conditions that I wish to speak through a set of specific examples from recent history. I shall briefly refer to four controversies between engineers. Then, in some detail I shall narrate three historical cases that directly involve the actions of one engineer, and finally I would like to address some common contemporary issues. The first section, “Engineering Ethics and the History of Innovation” includes four cases involving professional controversy. Each controversy sets two people against each other in disputes over who invented the telegraph, the radio, the automobile, and the airplane. In each dispute, it is possible to identify ethical and unethical behavior or ambiguous ethical behavior that serves as a basis for educational discussion. The first two historical cases described in “Crises and the Engineer” involve the primary closure dam systems in the Netherlands, each one the result of the actions of one engineer. The third tells of an American engineer who took his political boss, a big city mayor, to court over the illegal use of a watershed. The challenges these engineers faced required, in the deepest sense, a commitment to ethical behavior that is unique to engineering and instructive to our students. Finally, the cases in “Professors and Comparative Critical Analysis” illuminate the behavior of engineers in the design of structures and also how professors can make public criticisms of designs that seem wasteful. (shrink)

An Essay on Metaphysics is one of the finest works of the great Oxford philosopher R. G. Collingwood : in it he considers the nature of philosophy, especially of metaphysics, and puts forward his original and influential theories of absolute presuppositions, causation, and the logic of question and answer. Three fascinating unpublished pieces by Collingwood have been added for this revised edition: they illuminate and amplify the ideas of the Essay, to which they are closely related. The editor Rex Martin (...) contributes a substantial introduction telling the story of the composition of all these works, discussing their major themes, and setting them in the context of Collingwood's philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This article explores the recurrent global claim by indigenous peoples for their spiritual concerns to be taken seriously and given appropriate effect in public policy. The secular liberal state's commitment to ideals of religious neutrality and equal treatment of all faiths and none is clearly tested to the degree it privileges traditional indigenous religion in the name of fostering indigenous culture. This dilemma has been acutely raised in New Zealand where Maori metaphysical concerns—the appeasement of taniwha (spiritual monsters) and the (...) evils of mingling the mauri (life-force) of human and non-human species in genetic engineering—have been subjected to judicial scrutiny. Quite apart from issues of justiciability, the legal acknowledgment of indigenous spirituality raises questions about the continued secularity of the state. This essay traverses the varying responses to indigenous spirituality, especially criticisms that such recognition constitutes government countenancing of primitive superstition, a fostering of paganism or naked religious favouritism. (shrink)

Daniel Herwitz 'The Defence of Extreme Realities' _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 6 no. 45, November 2002.

The coverage of the book is tailored for any introductory course in ethics.

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Dominant theoretical models of autism and resultant research enquiries have long centered upon an assumed autism-specific empathy deficit. Associated empirical research has largely relied upon cognitive tests that lack ecological validity and associate empathic skill with heuristic-based judgments from limited snapshots of social information. This artificial separation of thought and feeling fails to replicate the complexity of real-world empathy, and places socially tentative individuals at a relative disadvantage. The present study aimed to qualitatively explore how serious literary fiction, through its (...) ability to simulate real-world empathic response, could therefore enable more ecologically valid insights into the comparative empathic experiences of autistic and non-autistic individuals. Eight autistic and seven non-autistic participants read Of Mice and Men for six days while completing a semi-structured reflective diary. On finishing the book, participants were asked to engage in three creative writing tasks that encouraged reflective thinking across the novel. Thematic and literary analysis of the diary reflections and writing tasks revealed three main themes Distance from the Novel; Mobility of Response; Re-Creating Literature. Findings demonstrated the usefulness of serious literature as a research tool for comparing the empathic experiences of autistic and non-autistic individuals. Specifically, autistic individuals often showed enhanced socio-empathic understandings of the literature with no empathy deficits when compared to non-autistic participants. (shrink)

Plausible Logic allows defeasible deduction with arbitrary propositions, and yet when sufficiently simplified it is very similar to the Defeasible Logics of Billington and Nute. This paper presents Plausible Logic, explains some of the ideas behind the definitions, applies Plausible Logic to an example, and proves a coherence result which indicates that Plausible Logic is well behaved. We also report the first complete implementation of propositional Plausible Logic. The implementation has a web interface which makes it available to researchers (...) and students everywhere. The implementation is evaluated experimentally, and is shown to be capable of handling tens of thousands of rules and sufficiently many disjunctions for realistic problems. (shrink)

Slavoj Žižek is the most popular and discussed philosopher in the world today. His prolific writings – across philosophy, psychoanalysis, political and social theory, film, music and religion – always engage and provoke. The power of his ideas, the breadth of his references, his capacity for playfulness and confrontation, his willingness to change his mind and his refusal fundamentally to alter his argument – all have worked to build an extraordinary international readership as well as to elicit much critical reaction. (...) _The Žižek Dictionary _brings together leading Žižek commentators from across the world to present a companion and guide to Žižekian thought. Each of the 60 short essays examines a key term and, crucially, explores its development across Žižek’s work and how it fits in with other concepts and concerns. The dictionary will prove invaluable both to readers coming to Žižek for the first time and to those already embarked on the Žižekian journey. (shrink)

Slavoj Žižek is the most popular and discussed philosopher in the world today. His prolific writings – across philosophy, psychoanalysis, political and social theory, film, music and religion – always engage and provoke. The power of his ideas, the breadth of his references, his capacity for playfulness and confrontation, his willingness to change his mind and his refusal fundamentally to alter his argument – all have worked to build an extraordinary international readership as well as to elicit much critical reaction. (...) _The Žižek Dictionary _brings together leading Žižek commentators from across the world to present a companion and guide to Žižekian thought. Each of the 60 short essays examines a key term and, crucially, explores its development across Žižek’s work and how it fits in with other concepts and concerns. The dictionary will prove invaluable both to readers coming to Žižek for the first time and to those already embarked on the Žižekian journey. (shrink)

This important new introduction to Nietzsche's philosophical work provides readers with an excellent framework for understanding the central concerns of his philosophical and cultural writings. It shows how Nietzsche's ideas have had a profound influence on European philosophy and why, in recent years, Nietzsche scholarship has become the battleground for debates between the analytic and continental traditions over philosophical method. The book is divided into three parts. In the first part, the author discusses morality, religion and nihilism to show why (...) Nietzsche rejects certain components of the Western philosophical and religious traditions as well as the implications of this rejection. In the second part, the author explores Nietzsche's ambivalent and sophisticated reflections on some of philosophy's biggest questions. These include his criticisms of metaphysics, his analysis of truth and knowledge, and his reflections on the self and consciousness. In the final section, Welshon discusses some of the ways in which Nietzsche transcends, or is thought to transcend, the Western philosophical tradition, with chapters on the will to power, politics, and the flourishing life. (shrink)

This paper reports the results of a survey of the teaching of courses in agricultural history in the seventy-four Land Grant institutions in the United States and its territories. It concludes with the expression of concern that the subject matter, agricultural history, is nearly a dying field, and only heroic measures will succeed in rescuing it.

Russia's struggle to find its new identity in the aftermath of Communism's collapse is analogous to America's historical experience of drawing on religious and cultural roots in moving toward democracy.

This essay is an analysis of a series of writings by the Australian intellectual historian Ian Hunter on the subject of 'theory'. It examines the methodological issues raised by attempting to write a history of theory. The essay particularly seeks to analyse the various aporias at stake in Hunter's project: between the empirical and the transcendental, between history and the event, and between theory and 'empirical' history.

This article examines William Rothman’s recent essay on Vertigo , ‘Scottie’s Dream, Judy’s Plan, Madeleine’s Revenge’, and particularly his suggestion that in a crucial scene towards the end of the film the character Judy deliberately puts on jewellery in order that Scottie becomes aware that she was the actress who played Madeleine. We look at why Rothman was previously unable to see this in the film, why Judy is unable directly to tell Scottie and why for Rothman a deep truth (...) of the film is this inability of Judy to tell Scottie. In order to address these issues, this article looks at art historian Michael Fried’s notion of “absorption”, and particularly that interpretation of it offered by Lacanian cultural theorist Joan Copjec in ‘The Invention of Crying and the Antitheatrics of the Act’ in her collection Imagine There’s No Woman: Ethics and Sublimation. (shrink)

Ultraviolet radiation activates the expression of a wide variety of genes, by pathways which differ between the short non‐solar ultraviolet C (UVC) wavelengths, which are strongly absorbed by nucleic acids, and the long solar ultraviolet A (UVA, 320–380 nm) wavelengths, which generate active oxygen intermediates. Intermediate solar ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths in the UVB (290–320 nm) range also contain an oxidative component, but more closely resemble UVC in their gene activating properties. Short wavelength UV, in common with other extracellular stimuli including (...) growth factors, activates signal transduction events that involve both stress‐ and mitogen‐activated protein kinase cascades. The extrapolation of the complex modulation of gene expression that ensues to the consequences of natural UV exposure requires careful attention to the details of doses and wavelength employed in the model experiments. Nevertheless, there is evidence that UVB irrradiation of skin can activate the expression of proteins including immunomodulating cytokines, ornithine decarboxylase and, to a limited extent, nuclear oncogene products, as well as lead to stabilisation of p53. Non‐cytotoxic doses of UVA radiation also lead to the strong activation of several genes which would be expected to have functional relevance in vivo. (shrink)