_Explores the evolution of Heidegger’s thinking about nature and its relevance for environmental ethics._.

There has been relatively little debate about Nietzsche’s place in environmental ethics, but the lines of the debate are well marked. He has been viewed as an anthropocentrist by Michael E. Zimmerman, a humanist by Ralph Acampora, a biocentrist and deep ecolo­gist by Max Hallman, a constructivist by Martin Drenthen, and an ecocentrist by Graham Parkes. Nietzsche does provide a theory of intrinsic value and his philosophy of nature is germane to an environmerntal ethic. His philosophical biology grounds his value (...) theory. The secondary literature contains three main claims plaguing the debate about his views. First, commentators tend to ignore or downplay Nietzsche’s biology. Second, his value theory is not adequatey addressed. Third, does Nietzsche’s emphasis on hierarchy enable him to maintain that human life is more valuable than that of other life forms, but that the lower life forms have a different kind of value insofar as they enable and support higher life forms? This view is roughly parallel in many respects to the views of Paul Taylor, David Ray Griffin, and Michael E. Zimmerman. (shrink)

It seems strange, on first thought, that anyone might look to Nietzsche to found an environmental ethic. In GS, he claims that “Whatever has value in the current world, has it not in itself, from nature—nature is always valueless”, and he generally lauds the natural strength and nobility manifested in the will to power’s domination and exploitation of resources. Yet in Naturalizing Heidegger, David E. Storey crafts an educative and compelling argument geared toward environmental philosophers who have yet (...) to consider the relevance of Nietzsche’s and Heidegger’s philosophies of life for environmental ethics. In particular, Storey argues that a non-mechanistic and... (shrink)

This excellent collection contains 13 essays from Gadamer's _Kleine Schriften, _dealing with hermeneutical reflection, phenomenology, existential philosophy, and philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer applies hermeneutical analysis to Heidegger and Husserl's phenomenology, an approach that proves critical and instructive.

This commentary argues against the indictment of current experimental practices such as piecemeal testing, and the proposed integrated experiment design (IED) approach, which we see as yet another attempt at automating scientific thinking. We identify a number of undesirable features of IED that lead us to believe that its broad application will hinder scientific progress.

This paper reviews the actual and potential use of social media in emergency, disaster and crisis situations. This is a field that has generated intense interest. It is characterised by a burgeoning but small and very recent literature. In the emergencies field, social media (blogs, messaging, sites such as Facebook, wikis and so on) are used in seven different ways: listening to public debate, monitoring situations, extending emergency response and management, crowd-sourcing and collaborative development, creating social cohesion, furthering causes (including (...) charitable donation) and enhancing research. Appreciation of the positive side of social media is balanced by their potential for negative developments, such as disseminating rumours, undermining authority and promoting terrorist acts. This leads to an examination of the ethics of social media usage in crisis situations. Despite some clearly identifiable risks, for example regarding the violation of privacy, it appears that public consensus on ethics will tend to override unscrupulous attempts to subvert the media. Moreover, social media are a robust means of exposing corruption and malpractice. In synthesis, the widespread adoption and use of social media by members of the public throughout the world heralds a new age in which it is imperative that emergency managers adapt their working practices to the challenge and potential of this development. At the same time, they must heed the ethical warnings and ensure that social media are not abused or misused when crises and emergencies occur. (shrink)

Between 1873 and 1876, Felix Klein published a series of papers that he later placed under the rubric anschauliche Geometrie in the second volume of his collected works (1922). The present study attempts not only to follow the course of this work, but also to place it in a larger historical context. Methodologically, Klein’s approach had roots in Poncelet’s principle of continuity, though the more immediate influences on him came from his teachers, Plücker and Clebsch. In the 1860s, Clebsch reworked (...) some of the central ideas in Riemann’s theory of Abelian functions to obtain complicated results for systems of algebraic curves, most published earlier by Hesse and Steiner. These findings played a major role in enumerative geometry, whereas Plücker’s work had a strongly qualitative character that imbued Klein’s early studies. A leitmotif in these works can be seen in the interplay between real curves and surfaces as reflected by their transformational properties. During the early 1870s, Klein and Zeuthen began to explore the possibility of deriving all possible forms for real cubic surfaces as well as quartic curves. They did so using continuity methods reminiscent of Poncelet’s earlier approach. Both authors also relied on visual arguments, which Klein would later advance under the banner of intuitive geometry (anschauliche Geometrie). (shrink)

Although researchers have paid much attention to the widespread cheating by students during their college careers and the possible sources behind such unethical behaviors, there has been less attention given to the unethical behaviors of faculty. Research on the types of unethical behaviors of faculty has pointed out the unique nature of higher education and the particular pressures placed on faculty as potential drivers of such behavior. In this paper, we examine the factors and underlying cognitive processes that may drive (...) faculty to engage in such behaviors. Specifically, we identify potential drivers of faculty unethical behavior, the cognitive processes activated by these drivers, and the types of behaviors that are considered most ethically questionable among faculty as they carry out their professional roles. We conclude with research considerations and implications of faculty misconduct on the profession. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 45, Issue 3, pp 386 - 411 “As If, As Such” reads Derrida’s understanding of the institution of literature as both the most interesting thing in the world and “perhaps” more interesting than the world in relation to his remark that the noema remains one of the most difficult and problematic concepts in Husserl’s phenomenological toolbox. By focusing on the noema as the objective side of consciousness and thus as what does not properly belong to consciousness, hence (...) as the site of the tension between form and matter, the following essay also explains why Derrida claimed that the “as” was always the target of deconstruction. Ultimately, “As If, As Such” seeks to elaborate what Derrida called the “power of literature” as that which is at work in the possibility of life. (shrink)

Physician concern about regulatory scrutiny as a barrier to appropriate prescribing for pain management has been identified and studied. A 1991 Pain Research Group survey demonstrated a need to provide updated information about opioids and pain management to state medical board members. Indeed, a national survey even showed a need to provide more education about pain management to oncology Physicians. Two approaches for responding to these concerns have been undertaken in several states by the state medical boards and the pain (...) management community: the development and adoption of administrative policies designed to bring disciplinary standards in line with clinical practice; and the creation of education programs for state medical board members and staffs. Each can have a substantial impact on removing real and perceived regulatory barriers to effective pain relief. (shrink)

In this volume, leading scholars in ethics, theology, and health care address conscience and how it relates to Catholic health care. Topics addressed include end-of-life care, abortion, and sterilization. The book is particularly useful for ethics boards and chaplains in Catholic hospitals, especially those merging with non-Catholic chains.

In this volume leading ethicists and theologians address conscience, a term with loaded meaning and controversy in the Catholic Church in recent decades around issues like political participation, human sexuality, war and institutional violence, and theological dissent. Many essays in this challenging and far-ranging volume focus on the tension between the primacy of conscience (codified at Vatican II) and the processes and cultures of Catholic institutions, including schools, hospitals, and medical research facilities.

Drug effects on consciousness are powerful probes of how physical processes in the body are connected to conscious experience. Drugs that alter consciousness – producing arousal, sedation, sleep, anesthesia, analgesia, euphoria, amnesia, hallucinations, or psychedelic‐like intensification of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings – have been identified as interacting in various ways with cellular and molecular processes within the nervous system. While the focus has thus far been on synaptic connections between neurons, there is likely to be much more going on in (...) the interaction of drugs with living systems that has not yet been identified. Psychedelic drugs, plants, and fungi are associated with perhaps the most interesting and profound of the drug‐induced alterations of consciousness. Contemporary investigations of psychedelics include renewed interest in the transformational therapeutic potential of these substances, and may also lead to new insights into the nature of consciousness. (shrink)

Over 40 years of research have shown that traumatic brain injury affects brain volume. However, technical and practical limitations made it difficult to detect brain volume abnormalities in patients suffering from chronic effects of mild or moderate traumatic brain injury. This situation improved in 2006 with the FDA clearance of NeuroQuant®, a commercially available, computer-automated software program for measuring MRI brain volume in human subjects. More recent strides were made with the introduction of NeuroGage®, commercially available software that is based (...) on NeuroQuant® and extends its utility in several ways. Studies using these and similar methods have found that most patients with chronic mild or moderate traumatic brain injury have brain volume abnormalities, and several of these studies found—surprisingly—more abnormal enlargement than atrophy. More generally, 102 peer-reviewed studies have supported the reliability and validity of NeuroQuant® and NeuroGage®. Furthermore, this updated version of a previous review addresses whether NeuroQuant® and NeuroGage® meet the Daubert standard for admissibility in court. It concludes that NeuroQuant® and NeuroGage® meet the Daubert standard based on their reliability, validity, and objectivity. Due to the improvements in technology over the years, these brain volumetric techniques are practical and readily available for clinical or forensic use, and thus they are important tools for detecting signs of brain injury. (shrink)

???Everyone agrees that the moral features of things supervene on their natural features??? , 22). Everyone is wrong, or so I will argue. In the first section, I explain the version of moral supervenience that Smith and others argue everyone should accept. In the second section, I argue that the mere conceptual possibility of a divine command theory of morality is sufficient to refute the version of moral supervenience under consideration. Lastly, I consider and respond to two objections, showing, among (...) other things, that while DCT is sufficient to refute this version of moral supervenience it is not necessary. (shrink)

In this essay, David Meens examines the viability of John Dewey's democratic educational project, as presented in Democracy and Education, under present economic and political conditions. He begins by considering Democracy and Education's central themes in historical context, arguing that Dewey's proposal for democratic education grew out of his recognition of a conflict between how political institutions had traditionally been understood and organized on the one hand, and, on the other, emerging requirements for personal and social development in the (...) increasingly interconnected world of the early twentieth century. Meens next considers Dewey's ideas in our contemporary context, which is dominated by a neoliberal ideology that extends the economic logic of Smithian efficiency to all domains of modern social and political life. He argues that the prevalence of neoliberalism poses two challenges to Deweyan democratic education: first, Dewey's emphasis on general education and a resistance to specialization is economically inefficient; and second, Dewey's strong, democratic conception of the “the public” is anathema to the neoliberal vision of the public as a conglomeration of individual agents. These challenges, he concludes, significantly stack the deck against Deweyan education by ensuring that the latter will be neither economically practicable nor widely understood. (shrink)

'Everyone agrees that the moral features of things supervene on their natural features' (Smith (1994), 22). Everyone is wrong, or so I will argue. In the first section, I explain the version of moral supervenience that Smith and others argue everyone should accept. In the second section, I argue that the mere conceptual possibility of a divine command theory of morality (DCT) is sufficient to refute the version of moral supervenience under consideration. Lastly, I consider and respond to two objections, (...) showing, among other things, that while DCT is sufficient to refute this version of moral supervenience it is not necessary. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Published in German during the last 15 years, the 13 essays in this volume provide readers with valuable knowledge of the much discussed theme of hermeneutics today. Gadamer was an early student of Martin Heidegger and has been a lifelong friend and interpreter. These essays are an outgrowth of Gadamer's Truth and Method. They can be understood, however, independently of it. Gadamer's standpoint is a blend of Hegel's and Heidegger's, with his own independent development in part. The book contains a (...) long and highly competent introduction by the editor, David E. Linge, who has translated most of the essays. - Choice, on back cover. (shrink)

Discussions of “indeterminacy” customarily distinguish two putative types: semantic indeterminacy (SI)—indeterminacy that’s somehow the product of the semantics of our words/concepts—and metaphysical indeterminacy (MI)—indeterminacy that exists as a mind/language-independent feature of reality itself. A popular and influential thought among philosophers is that all indeterminacy must be SI. In this paper we challenge this thought. Our challenge is guided by the question: What, exactly, does it take for a case of indeterminacy to count as SI? We argue that the only satisfactory (...) answer to this question must take SI to be grounded in a more basic type of MI. We conclude that SI cannot be made sense of without implicating MI. If there’s any indeterminacy, there must be indeterminacy in the world itself. (shrink)

A shrewd and compelling examination of how political figures throughout history have used scientific findings to achieve their objectives--just as scientists have often put political forces to work to achieve their own goals.

In both Western and East Asian traditions, large claims have been made about the power of aesthetic experience, whether of art (especially music) or of nature, to foster a sense of transcendence. There are, however, important differences between the traditions and, in consequence, between the characters of these claims. After illustrating these claims, I identify and elaborate on some of their salient aspects. I then argue that East Asian traditions possess greater resources than Western ones for explaining or accommodating these (...) aspects, and hence for substantiating the claims about experience and transcendence. (shrink)