This article addresses the question of how, if at all, citizens can sustain an effective sense of political belonging without sacrificing other sources of ethical identity. We begin with a critical analysis of Rousseau's classic considerations of politics and religion, which concludes that membership of a sub-political ethical community is incompatible with an effective sense of political belonging. This critique leads us to a consideration of the basic character of contemporary constitutional-democratic polities (drawing on the work of James Tully) and (...) of Waldron's account of the circumstances of politics. These considerations are developed into the claim that we can identify two sources of political belonging: recognition and acknowledgement - which correspond to two aspects of democratic citizenship: as status and as mode of being. On the basis of this claim, we argue that an effective sense of political belonging can be compatible with membership of sub-political ethical communities iff members of the political community are characterised by the majoritarian virtue of civic responsiveness and the minoritarian virtue of civic endurance. We sketch the character of these virtues and the relationship to one another in arguing that only the widespread presence of both kinds of virtue is sufficient to secure citizens' confidence in the polity and hence its stability. (shrink)

This translation of Carlo Michelstaedter’s _Persuasion and Rhetoric_ brings the powerful and original work of a seminal cultural figure to English-language readers for the first time. Ostensibly a commentary on Plato’s and Aristotle’s relation to the pre-Socratic philosophers, Michelstaedter’s deeply personal book is an extraordinary rhetorical feat that reflects the author’s struggle to make sense of modern life. This edition includes an introduction discussing his life and work, an extensive bibliography, notes to introduce each chapter, and critical notes illuminating the (...) text. Within hours of completing _Persuasion and Rhetoric, _his doctoral thesis, 23-year-old Michelstaedter shot himself to death. The text he left behind has proved to be one of the most trenchant and influential studies in modern rhetoric, a work that develops Nietzschean themes and anticipates the conclusions of, among others, Martin Heidegger. Publication of the book in English is an event of great magnitude for students of Italian philosophy, rhetoric, and literature as well as the culture of Mitteleuropa. (shrink)

Since 1991 the Franciscan Francis of Marchia, master of theology at the University of Paris (fl. 1320), has begun receiving his due attention as an exciting and innovative thinker. This volume examines his doctrines in cosmology, physics, metaphysics, ethics, and politics.

Debates in animal cognition are frequently polarized between the romantic view that some species have human-like causal understanding and the killjoy view that human causal reasoning is unique. These apparently endless debates are often characterized by conceptual confusions and accusations of straw-men positions. What is needed is an account of causal understanding that enables researchers to investigate both similarities and differences in cognitive abilities in an incremental evolutionary framework. Here we outline the ways in which a three-dimensional model of causal (...) understanding fulfills these criteria. We describe how this approach clarifies what is at stake, illuminates recent experiments on both physical and social cognition, and plots a path for productive future research that avoids the romantic/killjoy dichotomy. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer reasons to justify the explanatory credentials of dynamical modeling in the context of the metaplasticity thesis, located within a larger grouping of views known as 4E Cognition. Our focus is on showing that dynamicism is consistent with interventionism, and therefore with a difference-making account at the scale of system topologies that makes sui generis explanatory differences to the overall behavior of a cognitive system. In so doing, we provide a general overview of the interventionist approach. (...) We then argue that recent mechanistic attempts at reducing dynamical modeling to a merely descriptive enterprise fail given that the explanatory standard in dynamical modeling can be shown to rest on interventionism. We conclude that dynamical modeling captures features of nested and developmentally plastic cognitive systems that cannot be explained by appeal to underlying mechanisms alone. (shrink)

Our passion for this work arose in very different histories of living, but these histories converged some years ago around the writings of Humberto Maturana1. There were other reasons for us getting together, but it was the ideas of Maturana which inspired us both to take another look at the way we were doing things in our research and education, respectively. One of us (Lloyd) was grappling with basic biological questions which arose from research on the physiology of stress. Maturana's (...) ideas provided a new way of thinking about the relationship between living things and their environment. David, in psychology and education, sought from Maturana a more solid scientific grounding for the extraordinary richness of the experiential learning environment in which he worked. (shrink)

Human beings differ in ways of understanding, interpreting, describing or sharing experience. On the basis of experience we construct our own conceptual systems (beliefs and values) that are neither consistent nor monolithic. "Alternative conceptual systems exist, whether one likes it or not. They are not likely to go away, since they arise from a fundamental human capacity to conceptualise experience...A refusal to recognise conceptual relativism where it exists does have ethical consequences. It leads directly to conceptual elitism and imperialism - (...) to the assumption that our behaviour is rational and that of other people is not, and to attempts to impose our way of thinking on others" (Lakoff, 1987; p.337). (shrink)

The Australian Aborigines' environmental culture and the "double bind" approach used in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous are considered as a source for the generation of a new strategy for dealing with the ecological problems of our day. The strategy aims at achieving a negotiated outcome in issues of high societal risk related to waste management in the Hawkesbury region of Sydney, Australia.

The diverse papers which make up this book are variations on a theme which is based in biological science - yet none of the contributors is really a biologist. Our metaphor for describing what we are doing here is that we have gathered together in a room because that particular room provides us with a certain view of our individual areas of interest - a view that may have been previously obscured. We are visiting the house of biology in the (...) hope that we may see more clearly things that we each find baffling about our particular field of work in education, research, or daily living. (shrink)

This paper is in the form of a narrative exploration of trees and woods. It embraces both the rational and the non-rational dimensions of experience, and mingles science with a little fancy. It begins by questioning some contemporary attitudes towards woods, then proceeds to consider how they function, it continues with some reflections on the cultural significance of trees and woods, and concludes with some ideas on the implications for woodland management.

The genius of modern science is its technological embodiment. In saying this I want to stress that modern technology has its own momentum and is only rarely "applied" science or a derivative from science. There is a slogan that sums it up pretty well: science owes more to the steam engine that the steam engine owes to science.".

The question which is never entirely resolved is: what is life? Biology, claims to stand for the study of life and living things, yet we would say that it cannot make a thoroughly clear distinction between living and non living, except in some very obvious cases. There are textbook definitions, of course, based on certain notable properties such as the ability to metabolize or reproduce, but these are arbitrary. If we are familiar with the characteristics of a particular animal or (...) plant, we know enough to be able to pronounce that it is dead when certain internal and external behaviours are no longer evident. Even this has difficulties - such as revealed in the arguments about whether to switch off a human life support system or not. When you find a squishy object on the seashore, can you be sure if it is alive or dead - or never living? The same dilemma confronts medical scientists and microbiologists trying to decide, for example, whether viruses are living, or quasi living, or intermittently living, or what. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show how the incorporation of metaphoric and poetic ways of thinking into the evaluation of a leadership development programme both captured the imagination of the employees and benefited the core business of a manufacturing production plant. Qualitative data evaluating the effectiveness of a substantial leadership programme were presented back to all members of a manufacturing plant (executive and non-executive) in the form of composite narratives over an eighteen-month period. Recommendations were derived from the (...) text of the narrative and were progressively implemented. Such was the positive response to the written narratives that senior management asked the researchers to present the narratives in the form of a ‘live’ performance. Evaluation through qualitative methodology lends itself to an imaginative interpretation and presentation. Although qualitative and quantitative data tend to be regarded as complementary in applied research, it was management’s decision to employ only a qualitative process in this instance. The decision was fortuitous, given that the leadership development programme was initially judged to be a failure, as it triggered a subsequent imaginative engagement that turned a failure into a success. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 7, Edition 1 May 2007. (shrink)

Uncertainty about funding; difficulty in determining research priorities ; and concern about technology transfer (the lack of application of research results): these words stand out in the language of scientific/industrial research and development, today. So called technology transfer seems to be the central issue because the criteria for determining research priorities and funding decisions are mostly based on the expected "pay off", i.e. the economic benefits which will result from the research findings being put into use within the industry. This (...) applies, not only in situations where the industry is providing a proportion of the funding, as in most agricultural research, but to scientific research generally which is intended for the "public good.". (shrink)

I don't want your agreement! I think I would prefer your understanding. Your agreement would be useful in a workplace to achieve a task. But that is not a social system. We want to live together in mutual respect. Your agreement would take hold of me and threaten to devour my own being - just as my agreement would do to you. For we each bring forth our own world in our every present moment. No matter how convenient it may (...) seem to be, I cannot truly stand still - with you or anyone. (shrink)

My occupation is applied research and - funding arrangements being the force which drives such work - I am working with feedlot cattle at the moment. I have to find out whether they are unduly stressed and, if so, how to relieve it; also how much and what type of shade they require, and what are acceptable criteria of animal welfare. Like most research scientists, I also have a personal hobbyhorse which I can weave into my work. It is that (...) stress affects the competence of an animal's immune system in subtle ways that have to do with its cognition. Alas, the plot thickens! (shrink)

The roots of social ecology are embedded in the fertile soil that was the Hawkesbury Diploma in Rural Extension, first offered in 1970, at what was then known as Hawkesbury Agricultural College and now the University of Western Sydney. The program changed its title to Graduate Diploma in Extension in 1974, and again in 1982, to Graduate Diploma in Social Communication. During this period the key features of the program remained the same: it was always highly experiential; it overtly fostered (...) the learner's growth in self esteem; and it espoused the goal of measuring learning against a yardstick of social relevance. (shrink)

This article asks under what circumstances controversial technologies would be considered seriously for remediation instead of being rejected out of hand. To address this question, the authors developed a conceptual framework called public acceptability of controversial technologies. PACT considers site-specific, decision-oriented dialogues among the individuals and groups involved in selecting or recommending hazardous waste remediation technologies. It distinguishes technology acceptability, that is, a willingness to consider seriously, from technology acceptance, the decision to deploy. The framework integrates four dimensions: an acceptability (...) continuum that underlies decision-oriented dialogues among individuals and constituency groups, the attributes of these individuals and groups, the attributes of the technology at issue, and the community context—social, institutional, and physical. This article describes and explores PACT as a tool for understanding and better predicting the acceptability of controversial technologies. (shrink)

This chapter examines the engagement between seventeenth-century Quaker scholars, twentieth-century Quaker theologian Rufus Jones, and the twelfth-century allegorical text Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān. It argues that HIY was purposely excised from the history of Quaker theological engagement due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the text, which resulted in a complete ignoring of the text by subsequent Quaker theologians, including Rufus Jones. HIY provides an invaluable dialogue partner with Quaker mysticism, which can offer exciting new ways of examining core premises of Quaker (...) mystical theology and practice—human/divine interdependence and the concomitant Quaker balance between contemplative and active mysticism and religious practice—and create opportunities for bringing the different generations of Quaker theology by Robert Barclay and Rufus Jones back into fruitful dialogue. (shrink)

We provide a positive solution for Post’s Problem for ordinal register machines, and also prove that these machines and ordinal Turing machines compute precisely the same partial functions on ordinals. To do so, we construct ordinal register machine programs which compute the necessary functions. In addition, we show that any set of ordinals solving Post’s Problem must be unbounded in the writable ordinals.

The Problems of Philosophy is a 1912 book by Bertrand Russell, in which Russell attempts to create a brief and accessible guide to the problems of philosophy. Focusing on problems he believes will provoke positive and constructive discussion, Russell concentrates on knowledge rather than metaphysics: If it is uncertain that external objects exist, how can we then have knowledge of them but by probability. There is no reason to doubt the existence of external objects simply because of (...) sense data. Russell guides the reader through his famous 1910 distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description and introduces important theories of Plato, Aristotle, René Descartes, David Hume, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and others to lay the foundation for philosophical inquiry by general readers and scholars alike. "In the following pages I have confined myself in the main to those problems of philosophy in regard to which I thought it possible to say something positive and constructive, since merely negative criticism seemed out of place. For this reason, theory of knowledge occupies a larger space than metaphysics in the present volume, and some topics much discussed by philosophers are treated very briefly, if at all. (shrink)