Philosophical reflections on the environment began with early philosophers' invocation of a cosmology that mixed natural and supernatural phenomena. Today, the central philosophical problem posed by the environment involves not what it can teach us about ourselves and our place in the cosmic order but rather how we can understand its workings in order to make better decisions about our own conduct regarding it. The resulting inquiry spans different areas of contemporary philosophy, many of which are represented by the fifteen (...) original essays in this volume. The contributors first consider conceptual problems generated by rapid advances in biology and ecology, examining such topics as ecological communities, adaptation, and scientific consensus. The contributors then turn to epistemic and axiological issues, first considering philosophical aspects of environmental decision making and then assessing particular environmental policies, including reparations, remediation, and nuclear power, from a normative perspective. (shrink)

We examine the role of the American Psychological Association (APA) in the weaponization of American psychology post-9/11. In 2004, psychologists’ involvement in the detention and interrogation of terrorist suspects generated controversy over psychological ethics in national security (PENS). Two signal events inflamed the controversy. The 2005 APA PENS Report legitimized clinical psychology consultation in support of military/intelligence operations with detained terrorist suspects. An independent review, the 2015 Hoffman Report, found APA collusion with the US Department of Defense in producing the (...) APA PENS Report and subsequent policies. Ongoing activities within APA to weaponize psychology sharpened the controversy. The authors—two psychologists and four former military/intelligence professionals—bring a military/intelligence operational perspective to detail two neglected areas of collateral damage. The first is the toll on psychology as a scientific enterprise. The second is covert influence on professional associations for incompatible security-sector objectives. We establish epistemic, historical, institutional, legal, and operational foundations for evaluation of these damages, as well as implications for APA and related professional associations in the ongoing Global War on Terror. (shrink)

ANALOGY has not just to do with the abstruse details and niceties of metaphysics but rather underlies the structure of all metaphysical thought. It is the heart of metaphysics. No system of metaphysics can discard it, without prejudice to the richness and variety of being. Without analogy there is elimination and over-simplification. Metaphysics is far from being a straightforward science; it is highly complex and its method and style of argument are not easy to master. Its field of inquiry is (...) wide. It is the task of the metaphysician to reduce the world of things to an intelligible unity. (shrink)

The behavioral sciences have flourished by studying how traditional and/or rational behavior has been governed throughout most of human history by relatively well-informed individual and social learning. In the online age, however, social phenomena can occur with unprecedented scale and unpredictability, and individuals have access to social connections never before possible. Similarly, behavioral scientists now have access to “big data” sets – those from Twitter and Facebook, for example – that did not exist a few years ago. Studies of human (...) dynamics based on these data sets are novel and exciting but, if not placed in context, can foster the misconception that mass-scale online behavior is all we need to understand, for example, how humans make decisions. To overcome that misconception, we draw on the field of discrete-choice theory to create a multiscale comparative “map” that, like a principal-components representation, captures the essence of decision making along two axes: aneast–westdimension that represents the degree to which an agent makes a decision independently versus one that is socially influenced, and anorth–south dimensionthat represents the degree to which there is transparency in the payoffs and risks associated with the decisions agents make. We divide the map into quadrants, each of which features a signature behavioral pattern. When taken together, the map and its signatures provide an easily understood empirical framework for evaluating how modern collective behavior may be changing in the digital age, including whether behavior is becoming more individualistic, as people seek out exactly what they want, or more social, as people become more inextricably linked, even “herdlike,” in their decision making. We believe the map will lead to many new testable hypotheses concerning human behavior as well as to similar applications throughout the social sciences. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Having Children: Philosophical and Legal Reflections on Parenthood. Edited by Onora O'Neill and William Ruddick.

The behavioral sciences have flourished by studying how traditional and/or rational behavior has been governed throughout most of human history by relatively well-informed individual and social learning. In the online age, however, social phenomena can occur with unprecedented scale and unpredictability, and individuals have access to social connections never before possible. Similarly, behavioral scientists now have access to “big data” sets – those from Twitter and Facebook, for example – that did not exist a few years ago. Studies of human (...) dynamics based on these data sets are novel and exciting but, if not placed in context, can foster the misconception that mass-scale online behavior is all we need to understand, for example, how humans make decisions. To overcome that misconception, we draw on the field of discrete-choice theory to create a multiscale comparative “map” that, like a principal-components representation, captures the essence of decision making along two axes: aneast–westdimension that represents the degree to which an agent makes a decision independently versus one that is socially influenced, and anorth–south dimensionthat represents the degree to which there is transparency in the payoffs and risks associated with the decisions agents make. We divide the map into quadrants, each of which features a signature behavioral pattern. When taken together, the map and its signatures provide an easily understood empirical framework for evaluating how modern collective behavior may be changing in the digital age, including whether behavior is becoming more individualistic, as people seek out exactly what they want, or more social, as people become more inextricably linked, even “herdlike,” in their decision making. We believe the map will lead to many new testable hypotheses concerning human behavior as well as to similar applications throughout the social sciences. (shrink)

Oaksford & Chater (O&C) have rejected logic in favor of probability theory for reasons that are irrelevant to mental-logic theory, because mental-logic theory differs from standard logic in significant ways. Similar to O&C, mental-logic theory rejects the use of the material conditional and deals with the completeness problem by limiting the scope of its procedures to local sets of propositions.

Proponents of ecological restoration view the practice as a means of both repairing damage done to ecosystems by humans and creating an avenue to re-establish respectful and cooperative human-environment relationships. One debate affecting ecological restoration focuses on the place of 'exotic' species in restored ecosystems. Though popular, campaigns against exotics have been criticized for their troubling rhetorical parallels with nativism aimed at human immigrants. I point to some of the reasons why this critique of nativism persists, despite protests that no (...) xenophobic intent is evident, emphasizing the intimacy between social metaphors and claims about exotic nature. Language is but one facet of an entanglement of nature and society that ecological restoration strives to take seriously; however, restoration practice remains ambivalent toward this dichotomy permitting a longing for lost community purity that is embraced in nativism. Regarding defenses of nativism, I point out limitations of attempts to reframe the issue from a reactionary rejection of the foreign Other toward an argument for protecting communities from a process akin to 'cultural imperialism'. (shrink)

All scientific knowledge is in some way unified; the scheme of the speculative sciences is not just a method of arrangement that is casual and artificial. There is a true hierarchy of the sciences. In popular thought to-day the empirical sciences have gained the ascendancy; there are those who are confident that science will not only unlock the mysteries of nature but will solve eventually all our problems. There is no mistake about its success, for its practical benefit to mankind (...) is immense. The modern mind is so impressed by utility that it refuses to be concerned with anything else. (shrink)

This work has already become well-known, since it was available in English. It is not the conventional textbook nor a work of stodgy and staccato scholasticism designed as a course for students and to provide those teaching philosophy with useful material, but rather an attempt to frame a systematic and authentic philosophy of being. To do this successfully is a task of tremendous difficulty, for being does not admit of easy classification or analysis. And when there is a variety of (...) topics, as is the case here, it is hard not merely to note the necessary connections between them but to choose that to which primary emphasis must be given as throwing light on all the rest. This task has no terror for Monsignor De Raeymaeker, as he is a lucid and profound thinker. (shrink)

"The main and original contribution of this volume is to offer a discussion of teleology through the prism of religion, philosophy and history. The goal is to incorporate teleology within discussions across these three disciplines rather than restrict it to one as is customarily the case. The chapters cover a wide range of topics, from individual teleologies to collective ones; ideas put forward by the French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau and the Scottish philosopher David Hume, by the Anglican theologian and (...) founder of Methodism, John Wesley, and the English naturalist Charles Darwin; it criss-crosses intellectually and conceptually from a discussion of morality to that of the sacralisation of politics"--. (shrink)

Robert Denis Collison Black was internationally recognized as the authority on Jevons, and in particular on the centrally important elements of Benthamite Utilitarianism in Jevons' thought. Jevons' Theory Political Economy was, Black argued, a Benthamite exercise, not a systematic treatise on value and distribution. This in turn explained why Jevons' theory of production was essentially classical, and why he had no theory of aggregate distribution. Black's work on Jevons also threw light on the professionalization of economics. Black was the well-merited (...) recipient of many honours. In 1974 he was elected both a Fellow of the British Academy and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. He became an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin in 1982; President of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland over the years 1983 to 1986; acted as President of Section F of the British Association in 1984–5; was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the History of Economics Society in 1987; and in 1988, Queen's University bestowed upon him an Hon. D.Sc. Econ. (shrink)

This article explores ways pre-service teachers learn to work upon their positive emotional conduct during an initial teacher education course. The article argues that education practice today promotes the acting out of positive emotions, creating conditions within which pre-service teachers ethically shape their emotional conduct. Utilising Foucault’s four-part ethical framework, the article draws on longitudinal research of pre-service teachers in Western Australia to analyse the crafting of emotional conduct through techniques of the self. The techniques the participants came to employ (...) during their course learning aligned with a telos of the resourceful, positive, and professional teacher. The article argues that this ethical enterprise relies on a certain model of teacher subjectivity which is inseparably linked with normalising governmental power. Such disciplining of emotions, however, is neither one-dimensional nor deterministic; rather, work at the intersection of the government of others and of oneself. We argue this allows pre-service teachers the freedom to care for the self as they seek to foster their own ethical practices as teachers. (shrink)

Terence Wilmot Hutchison, a Fellow of the British Academy, was a historian of economics, methodologist, and acerbic critic of hubris and pretension amongst economists. He was born at Bournemouth and grew up in London. Hutchison's father was the flamboyant and much married Robert Langton Douglas, while his mother was Grace Hutchison. It was as a classicist that he went to the University of Cambridge in 1931. But Hutchison quickly lost interest in a subject that seemed to him to have little (...) relevance to the economic turmoil of the world, and switched to economics, graduating in 1934 with a First. He left Cambridge in 1934 and registered as an occasional student at the London School of Economics. This chapter presents a biography of Hutchison and also narrates his trips to Germany, Iraq, and India, as well as his stints at the University of Hull, LSE, and the University of Birmingham. (shrink)

This paper looks at the languages of empowerment and control as they are expressed by authors writing about “indigenous knowledge.” We performed a content analysis on CIKARD News, a newsletter dealing with the concept of indigenous knowledge. This concept has become increasingly prominent in the discourse of alternative development, addressing issues of ecological sustainability and the empowerment of the rural poor. However, mediated by institutions that perpetuate global and local power asymmetries, the empowering potential of indigenous knowledge may be bypassed. (...) Instead, officials, researchers, and practitioners may utilize this knowledge for their own perceived ends, however good their intentions. In addition, there is already evidence that an indigenous knowledge approach is seen by major agencies as beneficial for integrating poorer populations into the global economy. Our analysis suggests that tensions persist among and within the writings of these authors between the desire to empower and the tendency for development to control rural populations. (shrink)

The volume presents essays on the philosophical explanation of the relationship between body and soul in antiquity from the Presocratics to Galen. The title of the volume alludes to a phrase found in Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, referring to aspects of living behaviour involving both body and soul, and is a commonplace in ancient philosophy, dealt with in very different ways by different authors.

Critics have argued that utilitarians, by the very nature of the system they endorse, cannot maintain their integrity; and that they cannot, in the end, be individuals of the sort human beings want to be. In my dissertation I explore this criticism and argue that utilitarianism need not endanger integrity, that it need not undercut autonomy, and that it need not deny individuality of any sort. ;Bernard Williams is the major proponent of this criticism. Williams argues that a utilitarian cannot (...) maintain the commitment to projects and principles which is necessary for a person to be an individual. He cannot have what Williams calls "ground projects," projects which are so central to him that they are what give point to his life. The reasons Williams gives for this are varied, and the connections between his various criticisms are not always clear. In the thesis I first analyze the arguments Williams uses against utilitarianism. I show that Williams' arguments that a utilitarian cannot have ground projects depends on a false assumption about the emotional attachment required for a person to be committed to his projects in a way that individuates. I argue that Williams demands an emotional attachment that blinds one to rational consideration, in a way that we will find unacceptable. ;Williams offers an account of individuality which claims that utilitarianism does not allow the proper sort of emotional attachment to projects because it is too necessarily rational a system. W. D. Falk, on the contrary, offers a theory which if correct will show utilitarianism to be an insufficiently rational system. Falk argues that any moral system which declares that there are universal moral rules by which all people's behavior should be regulated undercuts the autonomy of the agents to whom it dictates. If one is to be autonomous, one must do only what one has reason to do. An agent has reason to do something only if he would be motivated to do it upon reflection. If utilitarianism does not motivate some particular agent, that agent, in order to preserve rationality and autonomy, ought not to follow utilitarianism. ;In response to these criticisms I suggest a more plausible notion of individuality which requires neither irrational emotional attachment nor Falk's subjective standard of rational choice. I then advocate a modified form of utilitarianism which does not pose the dangers to individuality which traditional forms of utilitarianism may. In this version, we broaden the notion of utility so that our evaluative beliefs are of special importance in our determination of what things have utility. When utility-maximization is construed in this way it does not pose special dangers for individuality. (shrink)