Ronald Sandler's ‘Climate change and ecosystem management’ provides a fine summary of reasons to modify our approach to ecosystem management given ‘rapid and uncertain ecological change’. We...

Some species face extinction if they are unable to keep pace with climate change. Yet proposals to assist threatened species’ poleward or uphill migration (‘assisted migration’) have caused significant controversy among conservationists, not least because assisted migration seems to threaten some values, even as it protects others. To date, however, analysis of ethical and value questions about assisted migration has largely remained abstract, removed from the ultimately pragmatic decision about whether or not to move a particular species. This paper uses (...) the case study of the whitebark pine, a keystone species of sub-alpine habitats in western North America, to consider how particular cases of assisted migration may be ethically approached. After taking into account the value of species, wildness, place, ecosystems, culture and sentient animals, we conclude that, on balance, there appear to be good reasons to move the whitebark pine. (shrink)

Our language and metaphors about environmental issues reflect and affect how we perceive and manage them. Discourse on invasive species is dominated by aggressive language of aliens and invasion, which contributes to the use of war-like metaphors to promote combative control. This language has been criticised for undermining scientific objectivity, misleading discourse, and restricting how invasive species are perceived and managed. Calls have been made for alternative metaphors that open up new management possibilities and reconnect with a deeper conservation ethic. (...) Here, we turn to Indigenous perspectives because they are increasingly recognised as offering important and novel voices in invasive species discourse. We examine how Australian Aboriginal elders and land managers (rangers) speak about 'environmental weeds' (the term used to describe invasive plants in Australia) and weed management. Based on qualitative research with five Aboriginal groups in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, our findings indicate that Aboriginal elders speak about weeds through passive, neutral language and prefer metaphors for weed management that focus on health, care and creation. We outline the influence that this language has for how rangers practice weed work and discuss its implications for the mainstream paradigm. (shrink)

1. Insect sampling for the purpose of measuring biodiversity – as well as entomological research more generally – largely assumes that insects lack consciousness. Here, we briefly present some arguments that insects are conscious and encourage entomologists to revisit their ethical codes in light of them. 2. Specifically, we adapt the Three Rs, guidelines proposed in 1959 by WMS Russell and RL Burch that have become the dominant way of thinking about the ethics of using animals in research. 3. The (...) Three Rs specify the need to replace, reduce, and refine the use of animals in research, yet have received little attention in entomological circles, which is perhaps unsurprising given that Russell and Burch explicitly excluded invertebrates from their purview. 4. As a specific case, we consider issues of suffering and bycatch in the use of Malaise traps for insect sampling. 5. While we do not claim that entomologists have an obligation to adopt the Three Rs framework wholesale, we do suggest that there is reason to adopt it in a modified form to mitigate moral risk especially in the context of conservation. (shrink)

Culture, livelihoods and political-economic status all influence people's perception of introduced and invasive species, shaping perspectives on what sort of management of them, if any, is warranted. Indigenous voices and values are under-represented in scholarly discourse about introduced and invasive species. This paper examines the relationship between the Xeni Gwet'in First Nation (one of six Tsilhqot'in communities) and wild or free-roaming horses in British Columbia, Canada. We outline how Xeni Gwet'in people value horses and experience management actions, contextualising the controversy (...) over wild horses amidst power imbalances in the expression of environmental values. We suggest that Indigenous voices are vital to include when evaluating impacts of controversial species and developing management strategies. (shrink)

Some metaphysics are provided showing that what is commonly called ‘the physical world’ can be deconstructed into three ‘levels’: a single, unified ‘noumenal world’ on which everything supervenes; a ‘phenomenal world’ that we each privately experience through direct perception of phenomena; and a ‘collective world’ that people in any given ‘language using group’ experience through learning, using and adapting that group’s language. This deconstruction is shown to enable a clear account of qualia and of how people can hold some things (...) to be physically real even when it is clear no one can ever directly experience those things as phenomena. It is further shown to enable a single, internally consistent, largely empirically supported conceptual framework – a ‘metacosmology’ – able to encompass not only the physical world as people conceive of it for everyday purposes, and as scientists conceive of it for scientific purposes, but also people’s first person phenomenal experience of a physical world and, prospectively, the mechanisms by which such first person, conscious experiences can be generated. (shrink)

This is Appendix A to the note: Deconstructing the Physical World (DPW). It shows how the conceptual framework developed in DPW relates to Russellian Monism (RM) and that it can accrue RM’s benefits while defeating the combination problem that challenges many RMs.

In any attempt to present an overview of the conceptions of reality and divinity in classical Indian (Hindu) civilization, it is helpful, first of all, to highlight some of the basic cultural and intellectual presuppositions that appear to be operative in classical Indian thought (which, for the purposes of this article, will be taken as consisting of the so‐called six classical schools of Sāṃkhya, Yoga, Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Mīmāṃsā, and Advaita Vedānta during the classical period, from the first centuries of the (...) Common Era up to the coming of Islamic traditions in the eleventh century). This can be accomplished in various ways, but perhaps the simplest way is to articulate some basic questions to which classical Indian thought provides some interesting, albeit unusual, answers. The questions can be framed as follows: (1) What truly is? (2) How does one know what truly is? (3) Who knows what truly is? (4) With whom does one know what truly is? And, finally: (5) What does God have to do with what truly is? The questions have to do, respectively, with (1) ontology, (2) epistemology, (3) psychology, (4) social anthropology, and (5) theology. Classical Indian thought, of course, provides a variety of answers to all of these questions, and there was much vigorous debate and polemic through the centuries about precisely how to form satisfactory answers. Generally speaking, however, it appears to be the case that the classical Indian philosophical schools tended to deal with these basic questions in a manner quite different from the way these questions have been dealt with in traditional or modern Western thought, and it is important to understand some of these differences if one wishes to appreciate the unique conceptual frameworks in classical Indian thought. (shrink)

In States of Knowledge, Sheila Jasanoff argues that we gain explanatory power by thinking of natural and social orders as being produced together, but she and her volume contributors do not yet offer a theory of the coproduction of scientific knowledge and social order. This article uses Mary Douglas’s cultural theory to identify four recurring states of knowledge and to specify political–cultural conditions for the coproduction of scientific knowledge, social order, and scientific, cultural, and policy change. The plausibility of this (...) theory is illustrated by using it to explain the coproduction and transformation of forest and wildlife science and management in the Pacific Northwest. (shrink)

Throughout history, scientific discovery has clashed with religious dogma, creating conflict, controversy, and sometimes violent dispute. In this enlightening and accessible volume, distinguished historian and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Edward Larson and Michael Ruse, philosopher of science and Gifford Lecturer, offer their distinctive viewpoints on the sometimes contentious relationship between science and religion. The authors explore how scientists, philosophers, and theologians through time and today approach vitally important topics, including cosmology, geology, evolution, genetics, neurobiology, gender, and the environment. Broaching their (...) subjects from both historical and philosophical perspectives, Larson and Ruse avoid rancor and polemic as they address many of the core issues currently under debate by the adherents of science and the advocates of faith, shedding light on the richly diverse field of ideas at the crossroads where science meets spiritual belief. (shrink)

This article investigates the interplay of agriculture and writing in the elder Cato's aristocratic self-fashioning . I argue that the De Agricultura represents Cato and his contemporaries as individual, small-plot farmers by making explicit the agricultural inflection of a more general masterly extensibility, i.e., that slaves were prosthetic tools with which owners accomplished various tasks, a move that in turn reveals the ubiquitous, assiduous “labor” of the individual owner. The preface's valorization of small-plot farmers, past and present, contextualizes the owner's (...) “labor” both culturally and historically , and thereby seeks to bridge the agricultural and temporal divide that separates Cato and his contemporaries from their esteemed predecessors. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of emergent examples of macroscopic quantum phenomena. While quantum theory asserts that such quantum behaviors as superposition, entanglement, and coherence are possible for all objects, assumptions that quantum processes operate exclusively within the quantum realm have contributed to on-going bias toward presumed primacy of classical physics in the macroscopic realm. Non-trivial quantum macroscopic effects are now recognized in the fields of biology, quantum physics, quantum computing, quantum astronomy, and neuroscience, with (...) implications for medicine, psychology and sociology. Robust examples of macroscopic quantum coherence and entanglement contain unmistakable biological advantages, such as are observed in the green sulphur bacteria photosynthesis transfer mechanism, and in the navigational system of the European Robin. Macroscopic quantum processes in the form of an olfactory electron tunneling mechanism best account for the otherwise inexplicable difference observed in the odor of identically-shaped molecules. Evidence of reverse-direction causality is apparent in experiments with large numbers of photons and human subjects. Entanglement, retrocausality, and superposition of states are suggested as causal factors to account for increases in efficacy of the placebo effect. Alternate histories of "flashbulb memories" and embodied cognition are considered as possible examples of superposition of states in a holographic multiverse in which the many worlds of the multiverse and the many worlds of quantum mechanics might just be one and the same thing. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}. (shrink)

Understanding how people comprehend visual narratives (including picture stories, comics, and film) requires the combination of traditionally separate theories that span the initial sensory and perceptual processing of complex visual scenes, the perception of events over time, and comprehension of narratives. Existing piecemeal approaches fail to capture the interplay between these levels of processing. Here, we propose the Scene Perception & Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT), as applied to visual narratives, which distinguishes between front-end and back-end cognitive processes. Front-end processes occur (...) during single eye fixations and are comprised of attentional selection and information extraction. Back-end processes occur across multiple fixations and support the construction of event models, which reflect understanding of what is happening now in a narrative (stored in working memory) and over the course of the entire narrative (stored in long-term episodic memory). We describe relationships between front- and back-end processes, and medium-specific differences that likely produce variation in front-end and back-end processes across media (e.g., picture stories vs. film). We describe several novel research questions derived from SPECT that we have explored. By addressing these questions, we provide greater insight into how attention, information extraction, and event model processes are dynamically coordinated to perceive and understand complex naturalistic visual events in narratives and the real world. (shrink)

This paper explores the primary causes or factors underlying cultural conflict in all its forms and seeks to answer the questions that follow. Why do people hate and wage wars against each other in the name of culture? Are cultural wars necessary or inherent in the very nature of culture as a phenomenon of human life? Can cultural differences be a justifiable cause of war? In my attempt to explicate and answer these questions, I shall first advance a concept of (...) culture. What do we mean when we speak of culture? What is the essential structure or building blocks of culture as a human phenomenon? The proposition I shall defend is that the tendency of animosity, tension, and conflict among people is not and cannot be inherent in their cultures. Accordingly, any claim that cultural difference is directly or indirectly a cause of cultural violence is not tenable, even though such violence may take place in the name of culture or cultural allegiance. But, if the tendency towards animosity, tension, or conflict is not inherent in the essential structure of culture, what might be the roots of the so-called cultural wars? The thesis I advance and elucidate in detail is that an answer to this question should proceed from an analysis of Socrates’s dictum that ignorance is the source of human evil. A discussion of this dictum and its implications, in the process of examining the roots of cultural wars, will reveal that the real culprits behind cultural conflicts are a cluster of political, intellectual, economic, psychological, and educational factors. (shrink)

Three distinct explanatory models are described which underpin the relationship between the cultural authority of science and public trust. This essay describes how current discourses framed around how the enterprise of science is undertaken; damage these models, diminishing knowledge–attitudes, alienating the public while reducing the cultural meaning of science.

In this essay, I argue that the apparent historical inaccuracies contained within Lewis Nordan’s Wolf Whistle represent a systematic repeal of the controversial history surrounding the murder of Emmett Till in 1955. Nordan reconstitutes the principle characters to function as iconoclasms of the historical record. As iconoclasms, these representations undermine our culture’s accepted model of history, what Hayden White terms the “historical account”.

We propose a revised definition of “argument scheme” that focuses on describing argumentative performances and normative assessments that occur within an argumentative context, the social context in which the scheme arises. Our premise-and-conclusion structure identifies the typical instantiation of an argument in the argumentative context, and our critical framework describes a set of normative assessments available to participants in the context, what we call _practically normative_ assessments. We distinguish this practical normativity from the _rationally or universally normative_ assessment that might (...) be imposed from outside the argumentative context. Thus, the practical norms represented in an argument scheme may still be subject to rational critique, and the scheme avoids the is/ought fallacy. We ground our theoretical discussion and observations in an empirical study of US district court opinions resolving legal questions about copyright fair use and the lawyers’ briefs that led to them, instantiating our definition of argument scheme in the “argument for classification by precedent.” Our definition addresses some criticisms the argument-scheme construct has received. For example, using our data, we show that a minimally well formed instance of this type of argument does not shift any conventional burden from the proponent of the argument to its skeptics. We also argue that these argument schemes need not be seen as dialogical. (shrink)

This essay is an analytical, critical, and evaluative exploration of the roots of the crisis of ethical theory. By crisis, the author means a state of inner separation or alienation. In what sense is ethical theory separated or alienated from itself? What is the self from which it is alienated? The thesis the author defends is that the crisis of ethical theory is embedded in the crisis of philosophy, the crisis of philosophy is embedded in the crisis of culture, and (...) the crisis of culture is embedded in the growth and development of modernity. A theory is in crisis when it is alienated from its function. A theory’s reason for being is its function. Thus, an understanding of this kind of crisis should be attained in the context in which it has taken place, viz., the crisis of philosophy and the crisis of culture. This is based on the assumption that ethical theory is an integral part of philosophy and philosophy is an integral part of culture. (shrink)

The way language as a human faculty has evolved is a question that preoccupies researchers from a wide spread of disciplines. In this book, a team of writers has been brought together to examine the evolution of language from a variety of such standpoints, including language's genetic basis, the anthropological context of its appearance, its formal structure, its relation to systems of cognition and thought, as well as its possible evolutionary antecedents. The book includes Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch's seminal and (...) provocative essay on the subject, 'The Faculty of Language,' and charts the progress of research in this active and highly controversial field since its publication in 2002. This timely volume will be welcomed by researchers and students in a number of disciplines, including linguistics, evolutionary biology, psychology, and cognitive science. (shrink)

Samkhya is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, system of classical Indian philosophy. This book traces its history from the third or fourth century B. C. up through the twentieth century. The Encyclopedia as a whole will present the substance of the various Indian systems of thought to philosophers unable to read the Sanskrit and having difficulty in finding their way about in the translations (where such exist). This volume includes a lengthy introduction by Gerald James Larson, (...) which discusses the history of Samkhya and its philosophical contours overall. The remainder of the book includes summaries in English of all extant Sanskrit texts of the system. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Current textbooks in formal semantics are all versions of, or introductions to, the same paradigm in semantic theory: Montague Grammar. Knowledge of Meaning is based on different assumptions and a different history. It provides the only introduction to truth- theoretic semantics for natural languages, fully integrating semantic theory into the modern Chomskyan program in linguistic theory and connecting linguistic semantics to research elsewhere in cognitive psychology and philosophy. As such, it better fits into a modern graduate or undergraduate program in (...) linguistics, cognitive science, or philosophy. Furthermore, since the technical tools it employs are much simpler to teach and to master, Knowledge of Meaning can be taught by someone who is not primarily a semanticist. Linguistic semantics cannot be studied as a stand-alone subject but only as part of cognitive psychology, the authors assert. It is the study of a particular human cognitive competence governing the meanings of words and phrases. Larson and Segal argue that speakers have unconscious knowledge of the semantic rules of their language, and they present concrete, empirically motivated proposals about a formal theory of this competence based on the work of Alfred Tarski and Donald Davidson. The theory is extended to a wide range of constructions occurring in natural language, including predicates, proper nouns, pronouns and demonstratives, quantifiers, definite descriptions, anaphoric expressions, clausal complements, and adverbs. Knowledge of Meaning gives equal weight to philosophical, empirical, and formal discussions. It addresses not only the empirical issues of linguistic semantics but also its fundamental conceptual questions, including the relation of truth to meaning and the methodology of semantic theorizing. Numerous exercises are included in the book. (shrink)

Throughout history, scientific discovery has clashed with religious dogma, creating conflict, controversy, and sometimes violent dispute. In this enlightening and accessible volume, distinguished historian and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Edward Larson and Michael Ruse, philosopher of science and Gifford Lecturer, offer their distinctive viewpoints on the sometimes contentious relationship between science and religion. The authors explore how scientists, philosophers, and theologians through time and today approach vitally important topics, including cosmology, geology, evolution, genetics, neurobiology, gender, and the environment. Broaching their (...) subjects from both historical and philosophical perspectives, Larson and Ruse avoid rancor and polemic as they address many of the core issues currently under debate by the adherents of science and the advocates of faith, shedding light on the richly diverse field of ideas at the crossroads where science meets spiritual belief. (shrink)

This volume is a “state-of-the-art‘ assessment of comparative philosophy written by some of the leading practitioners of the field. While its primary focus is on gaining methodological clarity regarding the comparative enterprise of “interpreting across boundaries,‘ the book also contains new substantive essays on Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and European thought. The contributors are Roger T. Ames, William Theodore de Bary, Wing-tsit Chan, A. S. Cua, Eliot Deutsch, Charles Hartshorne, Daya Krishna, Gerald James Larson, Sengaku Mayeda, Hajime Nakamura, Raimundo Panikkar, (...) Karl H. Potter, Henry Rosemont, Jr., Ben-Ami Scharfstein, Ninian Smart, Fritz Staal, and Frederick J. Streng. Comparative or cross-cultural philosophy can be seen as a relative newcomer to the field of philosophy. It has its antecedents in the emergence of comparative studies in nineteenth-century European intellectual history, as well as in the sequence of East-West Philosophers’ Conferences at the University of Hawaii, which began in 1939. This book will prove to be of great significance in helping to define a field that is only now becoming fully self-conscious, methodologically and substantively, about its role and function in the larger enterprises of philosophy and comparative studies. (shrink)

This essay examines how disability interacts with gender in public discourse about sexual violence by investigating the ableist implications of two popular labels commonly applied to people who have experienced rape or sexual assault: survivors and liars. Using a rhetorical approach in conjunction with disability theory, I analyze how discourses of compulsory survivorship ask people who experience sexual assault to overcome disability and appear nondisabled, whereas rape‐hoax narratives frame others as mentally ill, mad, or irrational. Taken together, I argue, these (...) frameworks form a discursive paradox for people who experience sexual assault, specifically marking their mental fitness and placing them in a rhetorically impossible situation when attempting to disclose sexual assault. Demonstrating how these frameworks silence articulations of pain and the realities of mental illness that can result from sexual trauma brings debates about mental disability and pain more centrally into disability studies through a feminist lens. (shrink)