The evolution of human diet is the product of both biological and cultural adaptations to various plants and animals in the environment. This paper develops a new theory for the evolution of cuisine practices which attempts to account for how food processing provided a critical link in enhancing the nutrient balance of major domesticated plants.

The human community faces today the most serious challenges ever to have confronted the planet in the areas of health, environment, and security. Science and technology are essential for responding to these challenges. More is needed, however, because science is not equipped to deal adequately with the values dimensions and the political issues that accompany the challenges. For an adequate response, there must be cooperative effort by scientists and statespersons, informed for moral leadership by the religious wisdom that is available. (...) The religious communities can provide this spiritual dimension, thereby fulfilling their traditional role, but it will require their coming to terms with the character of the scientific and technological base of contemporary culture. The paper lays the conceptual groundwork for understanding these issues. (shrink)

This essay addresses a series of eight questions about what religion can do for science. It explores the secular role of religion in contemporary science and the need for greater synthesis between science and religion. It concludes that, for survival in the twenty‐first century, religion cannot exist without acknowledging and using the enormous information pool of science, and science can no longer shun or ignore religion. Humankind will always need the large, synthetic explanations that religion provides of why we are (...) here and what we ought to do and believe. The world needs to mark this new millennium with a sense of respect, cooperation, and even synthesis between science and religion. (shrink)

A more complete understanding of the biocultural evolutionary origins of the concept of ought as developed by David Hume and G. E. Moore may lower the philosophical barrier between is and ought and provide new insights about the separations between the domains of religion and science. If this conjecture is correct, the resulting wisdom will help transcend a major source of irony that Philip Hefner has so aptly identified in his essay.

Buddhist teachings and modern science are analogous both in their approach to the search for truth and in some of the discoveries of contemporary physics, biology, and psychology. However, despite these congruencies and the recognized benefits of science, Buddhism reminds us of the dangers of a tendency toward scientific reductionism and imperialism and of the sciences’ inability to deal with human moral and spiritual values and needs. Buddhism and science have human concerns and final goals that are different, but as (...) long as the boundaries between them are not trespassed, they can be mutually corrective and allied to benefit humankind. Buddhism must be open to the discoveries of science about the physical world as must all religions today, but no matter how much it may have to modify some of its ancient beliefs, its basic truths—the truths about human suffering and its release—will remain untouched. (shrink)

The flowering of creative and speculative philosophy that emerged in modern Europe--particularly in Germany--is a thrilling adventure story as well as an essential chapter in the history of philosophy. In this integrative narrative, Solomon provides an accessible introduction to the major authors and movements of modern European philosophy, including the Enlightenment and Romanticism, Rousseau, German Idealism, Kant, Fichte, Schelling and the Romantics, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Feuerbach, Max Brentano, Meinong, Frege, Dilthey, Bergson, Nietzsche, Husserl, Freud, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, hermeneutics, Sartre, Postmodernism, (...) Structuralism, Foucault, and Derrida. (shrink)

The Phenomenology of Spirit was Hegel's grandest experiement, changing our vision of the world and the very nature of philosophical enterprise. In this book, Solomon captures the bold and exhilarating spirit, presenting the Phenomenology as a thoroughly personal as well as philosophical work. He begins with a historical introduction, which lays the groundwork for a section-by-section analysis of the Phenomenology. Both the initiated as well as readers unacquainted with the intricacies of German idealism will find this to be an (...) accessible and exciting introduction to this great philosopher's monumental work. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION: REASON AND THE PASSIONS i. Philosophy? This same philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey. ...

Philosophers since Aristotle have explored emotion, and the study of emotion has always been essential to the love of wisdom. In recent years Anglo-American philosophers have rediscovered and placed new emphasis on this very old discipline. The view that emotions are ripe for philosophical analysis has been supported by a considerable number of excellent publications. In this volume, Robert Solomon brings together some of the best Anglo-American philosophers now writing on the philosophy of emotion, with chapters from philosophers who (...) have distinguished themselves in the field of emotion research and have interdisciplinary interests, particularly in the social and biological sciences. The reader will find a lively variety of positions on topics such as the nature of emotion, the category of "emotion," the rationality of emotions, the relationship between an emotion and its expression, the relationship between emotion, motivation, and action, the biological nature versus social construction of emotion, the role of the body in emotion, the extent of freedom and our control of emotions, the relationship between emotion and value, and the very nature and warrant of theories of emotion. In addition, this book acknowledges that it is impossible to study the emotions today without engaging with contemporary psychology and the neurosciences, and moreover engages them with zeal. Thus the essays included here should appeal to a broad spectrum of emotion researchers in the various theoretical, experimental, and clinical branches of psychology, in addition to theorists in philosophy, philosophical psychology, moral psychology, and cognitive science, the social sciences, and literary theory. (shrink)

In light of the sharp linguistic turn philosophy has taken in this century, this collection provides a much-needed and long-overdue reference for philosophical discussion. The first collection of its kind, it explores questions of the nature and existence of linguistic objects--including sentences and meanings--and considers the concept of truth in linguistics. The status of linguistics and the nature of language now take a central place in discussions of the nature of philosophy; the essays in this volume both inform these discussions (...) and lay the groundwork for further examination. (shrink)

Reviews the book, Upheavals of thought: The intelligence of emotions by Martha C. Nussbaum . Drawing from an astounding array of sources, Nussbaum argues against the common understanding of emotions as irrational and animalistic impulses disconnected from our thoughts and reason. Rather, she argues that emotions are highly discriminating responses to what is of value and importance that are, therefore, suffused with intelligence and discernment. Nussbaum explores the structure of a wide range of emotions, in particular, compassion and love, in (...) order to show that there can be no adequate ethical theory without an adequate theory of emotional experience and meaning. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This discussion focuses on two important trends in American childbirth that have emerged in the past 30 years, the demand for a perfect baby and the desire for a perfect birth. These two trends are particularly important in the subgroup of middle-class women who have decided on delayed childbearing. Tremendous technological innovations, such as ultra-sound, prenatal genetic analysis, and fetal monitoring, have promoted the perception that physicians can control the prenatal environment and predict the pregnancy outcome. This expectation may lead (...) to bitterness and anger in the event of an adverse pregnancy outcome. In contrast, women and their families have also come to desire more control over the birth experience. If the parents’ birth plan is not achieved and their expectations not fulfilled, many parents feel they have not performed well. When the physician acts as a guide in the birth process, parents and physicians together may transcend the conflict to achieve a more satisfactory birth experience. (shrink)

Katz offers such a grammatical account, in which makes it possible for the first time to explain the illocutionary potential of sentences within grammar.

We develop an evidence-based theoretical account of how widely shared cultural beliefs about gender, race, and class intersect in interpersonal and other social relational contexts in the United States to create characteristic cultural “binds” and freedoms for actors in those contexts. We treat gender, race, and class as systems of inequality that are culturally constructed as distinct but implicitly overlap through their defining beliefs, which reflect the perspectives of dominant groups in society. We cite evidence for the contextually contingent interactional (...) “binds” and freedoms this creates for people such as Asian men, Black women, and poor whites who are not prototypical of images embedded in cultural gender, race, and class beliefs. All forms of unprototypicality create “binds,” but freedoms result from being unprototypical of disadvantaging rather than advantaging statuses. (shrink)

In _Realistic Rationalism_, Jerrold J. Katz develops a new philosophical position integrating realism and rationalism. Realism here means that the objects of study in mathematics and other formal sciences are abstract; rationalism means that our knowledge of them is not empirical. Katz uses this position to meet the principal challenges to realism. In exposing the flaws in criticisms of the antirealists, he shows that realists can explain knowledge of abstract objects without supposing we have causal contact with them, (...) that numbers are determinate objects, and that the standard counterexamples to the abstract/concrete distinction have no force. Generalizing the account of knowledge used to meet the challenges to realism, he develops a rationalist and non-naturalist account of philosophical knowledge and argues that it is preferable to contemporary naturalist and empiricist accounts. The book illuminates a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of necessity, the distinction between the formal and natural sciences, empiricist holism, the structure of ontology, and philosophical skepticism. Philosophers will use this fresh treatment of realism and rationalism as a starting point for new directions in their own research. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: Preface; Introduction; Part I. Global Health, Definitions and Descriptions: 1. What is global health? Solly Benatar and Ross Upshur; 2. The state of global health in a radically unequal world: patterns and prospects Ron Labonte and Ted Schrecker; 3. Addressing the societal determinants of health: the key global health ethics imperative of our times Anne-Emmanuelle Birn; 4. Gender and global health: inequality and differences Lesley Doyal and Sarah Payne; 5. Heath systems and health Martin McKee; Part (...) II. Global Health Ethics, Responsibilities and Justice: Some Central Issues: 6. Is there a need for global health ethics? For and against David Hunter and Angus Dawson; 7. Justice, infectious disease and globalisation Michael Selgelid; 8. International health inequalities and global justice: toward a middle ground Norman Daniels; 9. The human right to health Jonathan Wolff; 10. Responsibility for global health? Allen Buchanan and Matt DeCamp; 11. Global health ethics: the rationale for mutual caring Solly Benatar, Abdallah Daar and Peter Singer; Part III. Analyzing Some Reasons for Poor Health: 12. Trade and health: the ethics of global rights, regulation and redistribution Meri Koivusalo; 13. Debt, structural adjustment and health Jeff Rudin and David Sanders; 14. The international arms trade and global health Salahaddin Mahmudi-Azer; 15. Allocating resources in humanitarian medicine Samia Hurst, Nathalie Mezger and Alex Mauron; 16. International aid and global health Anthony Zwi; 17. Climate change and health: risks and inequities Sharon Friel, Colin Butler and Anthony McMichael; 18. Animals, the environment and global health David Benatar; 19. The global crisis and global health Stephen Gill and Isabella Bakker; Part IV. Shaping the Future: 20. Health impact fund: how to make new medicines accessible to all Thomas Pogge; 21. Biotechnology and global health Hassan Masun, Justin Chakma and Abdallah Daar; 22. Food security and global health Lynn McIntyre and Krista Rondeau; 23. International taxation Gillian Brock; 24. Global health research: changing the agenda Tikki Pang; 25. Justice and research in developing countries Alex John London; 26. Values in global health governance Kearsley Stewart, Gerald T. Keusch and Arthur Kleinman; 27. Poverty, distance and two dimensions of ethics Jonathan Glover; 28. Teaching global health ethics James Dwyer; 29. Towards a new common sense: the need for new paradigms of global health Isabella Bakker and Stephen Gill; Index. (shrink)

DO WE CHOOSE OUR EMOTIONS? Can we be held responsible for our anger? for feeling jealousy? for falling in love or succumbing to resentment or hatred? The suggestion sounds odd because emotions are typically considered occurrences that happen to us: emotions are taken to be the hallmark of the irrational and the disruptive. Controlling one’s emotion is supposed to be like the caging and taming of a wild beast, the suppression and sublimation of a Freudian "it.".

Jerrold Katz develops a new philosophical position integrating realism and rationalism.

We live our lives through our emotions, writes Robert Solomon, and it is our emotions that give our lives meaning. What interests or fascinates us, who we love, what angers us, what moves us, what bores us--all of this defines us, gives us character, constitutes who we are. In True to Our Feelings, Solomon illuminates the rich life of the emotions--why we don't really understand them, what they really are, and how they make us human and give meaning (...) to life. Emotions have recently become a highly fashionable area of research in the sciences, with brain imaging uncovering valuable clues as to how we experience our feelings. But while Solomon provides a guide to this cutting-edge research, as well as to what others--philosophers and psychologists--have said on the subject, he also emphasizes the personal and ethical character of our emotions. He shows that emotions are not something that happen to us, nor are they irrational in the literal sense--rather, they are judgements we make about the world, and they are strategies for living in it. Fear, anger, love, guilt, jealousy, compassion--they are all essential to our values, to living happily, healthily, and well. Solomon highlights some of the dramatic ways that emotions fit into our ethics and our sense of the good life, how we can make our emotional lives more coherent with our values and be more "true to our feelings" and cultivate emotional integrity. The story of our lives is the story of our passions. We fall in love, we are gripped by scientific curiosity and religious fervor, we fear death and grieve for others, we humble ourselves in envy, jealousy, and resentment. In this remarkable book, Robert Solomon shares his fascination with the emotions and illuminates our passions in an exciting new way. (shrink)

Our understanding of the nature and processing of figurative language is central to several important issues in cognitive science, including the relationship of language and thought, how we process language, and how we comprehend abstract meaning. Over the past fifteen years, traditional approaches to these issues have been challenged by experimental psychologists, linguists, and other cognitive scientists interested in the structures of the mind and the processes that operate on them. In Figurative Language and Thought, internationally recognized experts in the (...) field of figurative language, Albert Katz, Mark Turner, Raymond W. Gibbs Jr., and Cristina Cacciari, provide a coherent and focused debate on the subject. The book's authors discuss a variety of fundamental questions, including: What can figures of speech tell us about the structure of the conceptual system? If and how should we distinguish the literal from the nonliteral in our theories of language and thought? Are we primarily figurative thinkers and consequently figurative language users or the other way around? Why do we prefer to speak metaphorically in everyday conversation, when literal options may be available for use? Is metaphor the only vehicle through which we can understand abstract concepts? What role do cultural and social factors play in our comprehension of figurative language? These and related questions are raised and argued in an integrative look at the role of nonliteral language in cognition. This volume, a part of Counterpoints series, will be thought-provoking reading for a wide range of cognitive psychologists, linguists, and philosophers. (shrink)

In _Realistic Rationalism_, Jerrold J. Katz develops a new philosophical position integrating realism and rationalism. Realism here means that the objects of study in mathematics and other formal sciences are abstract; rationalism means that our knowledge of them is not empirical. Katz uses this position to meet the principal challenges to realism. In exposing the flaws in criticisms of the antirealists, he shows that realists can explain knowledge of abstract objects without supposing we have causal contact with them, (...) that numbers are determinate objects, and that the standard counterexamples to the abstract/concrete distinction have no force. Generalizing the account of knowledge used to meet the challenges to realism, he develops a rationalist and non-naturalist account of philosophical knowledge and argues that it is preferable to contemporary naturalist and empiricist accounts. The book illuminates a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of necessity, the distinction between the formal and natural sciences, empiricist holism, the structure of ontology, and philosophical skepticism. Philosophers will use this fresh treatment of realism and rationalism as a starting point for new directions in their own research. (shrink)

A collection of articles, some of which appeared previously. Partial contents:.

The story of our lives is the story of our passions. We fall in love, we are gripped by scientific curiosity and religious fervor, we fear death and grieve for others, we humble ourselves in envy, jealousy, and resentment. In this remarkable book, Robert Solomon shares his fascination with the emotions and illuminates our passions in an exciting new way.

This book brings together several directions of work in model theory between the late 1950s and early 1980s.

This volume collects thirty years worth of articles on the emotions written by the distinguished philosopher Robert Solomon. Solomon's thesis is that we are significantly responsible for our emotions, which are evaluative judgments that in effect we choose. This is the first of several volumes that document work in the emotions.

Chomsky's criticism of Bloomfieldian structuralism's conception of linguistic reality applies equally to his own conception of linguistic reality. There are too many sentences in a natural language for them to have either concrete acoustic reality or concrete psychological or neural reality. Sentences have to be types, which, by Peirce's generally accepted definition, means that they are abstract objects. Given that sentences are abstract objects, Chomsky's generativism as well as his psychologism have to be given up. Langendoen and Postal's argument in (...) The Vastness of Natural Languages to show that there are more than denumerably many sentences is flawed. But, with the view that sentences are abstract objects, the flaws can be corrected. Once psychologism and generativism are abandoned, the revolution against Bloomfieldian structuralism can be brought to completion and linguistics can be put on a sound philosophical basis. (shrink)

Fossil fuel divestment movements have gained momentum since 2011, aimed at ending fossil fuel use and a move toward a cleaner, affordable, and sustainable energy system, for business and society. The present study investigates the direct impact of fossil fuel divestment announcements on stock prices of firms listed on the United States' stock exchanges. Using an event study and guided by the United Nation's sustainable development goals (SDGs), we test the effects of 116 divestments announcements between 2014 and 2019 on (...) 51 publicly traded fossil fuel companies. Our results suggest that there is a negative effect of these announcements on fossil fuel firm stock prices. Also, we find that the type of fossil fuel firm (coal or oil and gas), the type of divestment (partial, coal only, or full), the timing of the announcement, and the size of the divesting investor have some explanatory power in relation to the (cumulative) abnormal returns following the divestment announcements. While the negative impact on stock prices is not surprising, the reaction from the divested firms after such large divestitures is not consistent with what may be expected, given past reactions to divestitures seeking to achieve different social goals. Given the SDGs, it seems clear why investors are divesting themselves from fossil fuel firms, but why has the reaction to the 116 divestments led to very little change in the way these publicly traded fossil fuel firms do business given their direct and growing impacts on society? We conclude the study with some suggestions for future research. (shrink)

The belief amongst some Christians that it is God’s plan for everyone to have children, and that barrenness is a punishment from God is apparently derived from the Old Testament. This article attempts a holistic study of the biblical perspectives on childlessness with a view to ascertain whether procreation is a moral responsibility of every individual. The target group includes Nigerian Christian couples suffering from infertility. The article employs the descriptive and exegetical methods. The study revealed that the belief that (...) the OT views barrenness as caused by sin and a punishment from God was erroneous. A critical examination of the relevant texts revealed that infertility is a natural phenomenon, and God gives children as a blessing but not necessarily to every individual. In the New Testament, the attitude towards childlessness is characterised by the concept of ‘alternative family models’, by which some Christians could adopt children whilst others might choose to be celibate, being satisfied with their membership of the community of believers. Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 7 clearly mitigates natural childbearing, and thus negates any attitude of desperation for bearing children. In the Nigerian context, this interpretation necessitates a change of attitude towards infertility. The church has to develop a theological reconstruction with regard to procreation in marriage, in a manner that will assure Christians that a childless marriage is not lacking in any way.Contribution: The article is a contribution in the area of theology of marriage, and thus of high relevance in contemporary Africa, particularly Nigeria, where people, including Christians, still have the traditional belief that it is morally mandatory for everyone to have biological children. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German PhilosophyClaire Elise KatzPeter Eli Gordon. Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xxix + 328. Cloth, $65.00.Peter Gordon's recent book brings together two seemingly disparate authors—Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Heidegger. Gordon intends to demonstrate that although Franz Rosenzweig is most frequently viewed as a Jewish thinker, this perspective obfuscates his German background, which (...) Gordon argues plays an even more prominent role in his thinking. His claim is that Rosenzweig should be situated within his German background and within German thought in order to gain a broader and more accurate perspective of who he was and what his work means.The book is coherently organized with a substantial introduction that lays the groundwork for the rest of the argument. Here, Gordon introduces us to Rosenzweig, Heidegger, and modern German and Jewish thought. Subsequent discussions explore primary philosophical influences on Rosenzweig's thought, for example, the roots of Rosenzweig's "New Thinking" found in Hermann Cohen and the need for a critique of totality found in Hegel. The central chapters, which offer a re-reading of Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption, are clearly written and are alone worth the time of this book.In these two chapters, Gordon outlines the significance of Rosenzweig's thought as situated within the canon of western philosophy by demonstrating that Rosenzweig's work engages central questions and concerns within the history of philosophy. Primarily, Rosenzweig believes that western philosophy has concerned itself too much with death, the death of the individual and a need to transcend completely from this world. Rosenzweig, contra the history of western philosophy, argues for a philosophical position that emphasizes life here and now—the everyday—and, more importantly, that we remain in time and the world (179). And here he draws interesting comparisons to Heidegger, indicating that these philosophers had a similar relationship to the history of philosophy, both of which were influenced by the German milieu in which they wrote and thought.Gordon ends his study of the relationship between Rosenzweig and Heidegger by drawing our attention to Rosenzweig's last writings, which were in the form of newspaper articles. These writings attended to the Davos Disputation, the now infamous debate between Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer. In these articles Rosenzweig indicates his partiality to Heidegger's position, in particular his position on redemption (285 ff.), indicating that Heidegger's philosophical stance represented most clearly Rosenzweig's New Thinking.Regardless of whether one agrees with Gordon's main thesis, this book is an original and significant contribution to philosophy and Jewish thought. Clearly Heidegger does not represent philosophy proper, since we still see grave signs of the split between analytic and "contemporary continental" philosophy; however, he does loom large as a central figure within European philosophy and specifically within German thought. To engage Rosenzweig's views with those of Heidegger brings Rosenzweig into a conversation from which he is normally excluded. And unfortuntately, when Rosenzweig is studied along with other figures such as Emmanuel Levinas, philosophers whose work is outside of Jewish thought will simply claim that Levinas is even more "Jewish" than they thought rather than admit that Rosenzweig is a philosophical thinker worthy of engagement. Although Gordon might hope that Rosenzweig scholars take more notice of the German background of Rosenzweig's thought, instead of circumscribing him within a strictly Jewish context, the engagement with Heidegger might be of more importance for Heidegger scholars and scholars of contemporary European philosophy.My sense is that Rosenzweig scholars in fact do notice the Germanic influence but also see the significance of treating Jewish philosophy as philosophy in its own right. It is "mainstream" philosophy that might need the reminder that Jewish philosophy is also philosophy. As a result, my primary concern is that Gordon's book might have de-emphasized the "Jewish" in order to make room for the "German." At the beginning of the book Gordon tells us that "Levinas was always suspicious of Heidegger." That, actually, is not true. Levinas attended the Davos debate and sided with Heidegger. But the events of the early 1930s led him... (shrink)

We study theorems of ordered groups from the perspective of reverse mathematics. We show that suffices to prove Hölder's Theorem and give equivalences of both (the orderability of torsion free nilpotent groups and direct products, the classical semigroup conditions for orderability) and (the existence of induced partial orders in quotient groups, the existence of the center, and the existence of the strong divisible closure).

Schimmel, a practicing psychologist, maintains that psychologists and psychotherapists must incorporate many of the ethical and spiritual values of religion and moral philosophy if they are effectively to address the emotional problems faced by modern men and women. The book draws on the psychological insights provided by the Hebrew Bible, the Gospels, Aristotle, Maimonides, Aquinas and others to show what we can learn from their teachings about the relationship between virtue and psychological well-being and vice and emotional distress.

: A familiar criticism of bioethics charges it with being more conceptual than practical—having little application to the "real world." In order to answer its critics and keep its feet on the ground, bioethics must utilize the social sciences more effectively. Empirical research can provide the bridge between conceiving a moral vision of a better world, and actually enacting it.