"Understanding Phenomenology" provides a guide to one of the most important schools of thought in modern philosophy. The book traces phenomenology's historical development, beginning with its founder, Edmund Husserl and his "pure" or "transcendental" phenomenology, and continuing with the later, "existential" phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The book also assesses later, critical responses to phenomenology - from Derrida to Dennett - as well as the continued significance of phenomenology for philosophy today. Written for anyone coming to (...) phenomenology for the first time, the book guides the reader through the often bewildering array of technical concepts and jargon associated with phenomenology and provides clear explanations and helpful examples to encourage and enhance engagement with the primary texts. (shrink)

Food pantries play a growing role in supporting households facing or at risk of food insecurity in the United States. They also support emergency response and recovery following disasters and extreme weather events. Although food pantries are often placed in close proximity to communities with the highest rates of poverty and risk of food insecurity, access to these facilities can be disrupted during and after extreme events. Decreased access to food pantries following disasters can be particularly problematic as the need (...) for these services is also likely to grow after such events. Despite the vast body of research on food retail access and food environments, relatively little research has utilized spatial analysis to understand food pantry access, particularly after extreme events. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), we characterize changes in access to food pantries following flooding events in Harris County, Texas—a highly populated and flood prone region with high levels of food insecurity and poverty. Specifically, our study models disruptions in road networks due to flooding and assesses the impacts of these disruptions on proximity to food pantries. The results reveal that much of Harris County sees only small increases in travel distance to food pantries due to extreme flooding, but some areas may be unable to access food pantries at all. This research highlights the potential and some of the limits of private food assistance networks to support emergency response efforts. (shrink)

What makes ethical accounts natural law ethical is, I argue, commonly misrepresented in teaching within much of the philosophical academy. Yet those immersed in the field of natural law and ethics rarely give definitions/brief characterisations of what makes ethical accounts natural law ethical. I suggest theoretical reasons for the lack. I argue that bringing natural law into ethics is best understood as leading to theoretically unitary accounts, not simply collections of positions detachable from each other: an overlooked and significant point (...) when defending natural law ethical accounts. My arguments throughout rely on the metaethical/normative ethical distinction, which is relatively little used in the natural law literature. I argue that the distinction helps clarify what is distinctive of natural law ethical accounts in general, especially to the secular contemporary philosophical academy, where appreciation of natural law ethical accounts is commonly appreciably lower than in philosophical contexts with a religious ethos. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle never pursued research under Edmund Husserl. However, Ryle was indeed Husserl’s student in a broader sense, as much of his own work was deeply influenced by his studies of Husserl’s pre-World War I writings. While Ryle is the thinker whose name typically comes to mind in connection with the concern over category mistakes I argue that (1) Husserl deserves to be known for precisely this concern as well, and (2) the similarity between them is no accident. Developing this (...) reading of Ryle’s Husserlian pedigree forces a broader reevaluation of each of their roles in twentieth-century thought. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle never pursued research under Edmund Husserl. However, Ryle was indeed Husserl’s student in a broader sense, as much of his own work was deeply influenced by his studies of Husserl’s pre-World War I writings. While Ryle is the thinker whose name typically comes to mind in connection with the concern over category mistakes I argue that (1) Husserl deserves to be known for precisely this concern as well, and (2) the similarity between them is no accident. Developing this (...) reading of Ryle’s Husserlian pedigree forces a broader reevaluation of each of their roles in twentieth-century thought. (shrink)

New Blackfriars, Volume 102, Issue 1100, Page 439-441, July 2021.

This paper situates Husserl’s phenomenology and Carnap’s logical empiricism within a common project—the pursuit of structural objectivity. The rise of empirical psychology and physiology in the late nineteenth century contributed to a view of the self that both thinkers find threatening to the possibility of communication and thus knowledge. With subjectivity presenting the danger of incommunicability, objectivity becomes oriented around communicability. To overcome this threat and to secure an understanding of the possibility of knowledge, each thinker appeals to the formal (...) structures of constitution and logical grammar. In doing so, they help to establish a view of objectivity that responds to contemporary science and is consistent with it. This places Husserl much closer to the birth of modern scientific objectivity than he seems to have realized. Even so, whatever credibility he may have lost in the eyes of historiographers of science should be regained in his stature as philosopher of science. (shrink)

There is a lack of clarity in the literature about what constitutes the natural law approach to ethics and what is incompatible with it. The standard, and largely historical, way of understanding the natural law approach risks overlooking theoretical differences of fundamental importance regarding what the natural law approach is usually taken to uphold. Against Craig Paterson, I argue that a necessary condition for an ethical account to uphold fully the natural law approach is that it does not contain any (...) dependence upon the metaethical category of non-naturalism understood in non-supernaturalist terms. Using the ‘new natural law’ theory of John Finnis to illustrate my case, I also argue that an ethical theory can be largely in keeping with the natural law approach but nonetheless contain elements at odds with it: the issue is more complex than a simple binary. This is an under-explored possibility in natural law ethics. (shrink)

Our Fate. Essays on God and Free Will. By Martin Fischer John.

Catholic University Of America, Philosophical Studies, No. 145, Abstract No. 2.

The question I want to discuss is “How can I say ‘No’ to a fund-raising appeal?” Since many people apparently find it easy to say “No,” it is not clear what the problem is. Put briefly, the problem is this: I do not want to think of myself as uncaring, unfeeling, and insensitive to the needs of others. And yet, within the last year I have not responded to appeals for funds from a wide variety of causes: medical research, famine (...) relief, freedom of speech, environmental protection. I have turned down requests for support of scholarly magazines, research institutes, and other good causes. My only moderate-sized contribution during that time has been to the capital campaign of an organization of which I am a member. I have enough to have made small contributions to all of the organizations from which I received appeals, but not enough so that my contributions to any single cause would be of major significance. How can I justify not giving? The problem arises because these appeals apparently put moral claims upon me: they say that people are suffering and have needs, and you can help to meet them. Or they say that the intellectual and cultural life of our society will be enriched if you help. One traditional philosophic view holds that moral claims have a special status. They override political, economic, social, and other claims. The only thing, according to this view, that can free one from a moral claim is another moral claim. (shrink)

Achieving food system sustainability is one of the more pressing challenges of this century. Over the last decades, experts from diverse disciplines and intellectual traditions have worked to document the critical threats to food system sustainability and to define an appropriate agenda for action. Nevertheless, these efforts have tended to focus selectively on only a few components of the food system or have tended to be framed in particular discourses. Depending on the point of departure, what aspects of the food (...) system are considered threatened, and what must be sustained, can differ greatly between perspectives. In this article, we draw from systems-thinking and social-ecological systems concepts to focus on the underlying process-related attributes that could support a more sustainable food system. We then examine the support for specific system attributes in six different knowledge domains addressing sustainable agriculture and food. From this review, we identify five system attributes—diversity, modularity, transparency, innovation and congruence—that are repeatedly featured in the different knowledge domains as critical aspects of food system sustainability. We argue that in the face of considerable complexity and high uncertainty, these attributes can serve as a guide to conceptualizing food system choices adaptively and iteratively. (shrink)

Achieving food system sustainability is one of the more pressing challenges of this century. Over the last decades, experts from diverse disciplines and intellectual traditions have worked to document the critical threats to food system sustainability and to define an appropriate agenda for action. Nevertheless, these efforts have tended to focus selectively on only a few components of the food system or have tended to be framed in particular discourses. Depending on the point of departure, what aspects of the food (...) system are considered threatened, and what must be sustained, can differ greatly between perspectives. In this article, we draw from systems-thinking and social-ecological systems concepts to focus on the underlying process-related attributes that could support a more sustainable food system. We then examine the support for specific system attributes in six different knowledge domains addressing sustainable agriculture and food. From this review, we identify five system attributes—diversity, modularity, transparency, innovation and congruence—that are repeatedly featured in the different knowledge domains as critical aspects of food system sustainability. We argue that in the face of considerable complexity and high uncertainty, these attributes can serve as a guide to conceptualizing food system choices adaptively and iteratively. (shrink)