Refrigeration has become so well established over the last 125 years that today a crude ice maker becomes a boon for primitive people in the jungle or desert. Only a total dislocation in energy sources will quickly loosen the connections between people and cooling. A few centuries ago, Hippocrates observed: ‘most men would rather run the hazards of their lives or health than be deprived of the pleasure of drinking out of ice’ … In the U.S.A. [today], 750 million frozen (...) Eskimo Pies are sold annually and seven ice cream plants are said to be operating in Moscow … Like the men of Hippocrates, a lot of people will resist any curtailment in food and freezing operations. They have come to expect these for survival in our present social and industrial orders.These remarks, asserting the extent to which the people of the United States of America regarded refrigeration not as an optional luxury but as a necessity for survival even at the height of the energy crisis of the late 1970s, formed part of a contribution to a massive 11-volume international compendium, Alternative Energy Sources, produced in 1978 in response to Western concerns about rising oil prices and falling reserves. An enthusiastic advocate for geothermal energy, the contributor's perception provides a vivid contextual starting point for our study of Paul Theroux's novel The Mosquito Coast . In this novel the central narrative focuses upon a New England family's rejection of post-war American consumer society with its imperative to ‘build automobiles that would fail within five years and refrigerators that would fail in ten’. The novel indeed explores some of those very kinds of alternative energy sources which had been exciting scientists and inventors since the early 1970s when journals such as The Ecologist had begun to prophesy an end to energy-driven economic growth in the western world. (shrink)

In 1972 a public choice model predicted that the incipient environmental movement in the United States would grow but encounter overwhelming industrial opposition. Twenty years later we find the model overstated this opposition. Environmental pressure groups were able to pass substantial legislation, resist counter forces, and reduce most targeted pollutants. A revised public choice model predicts that the success of the present global environmental movement depends on (1) information flows between scientists and the public on the potential costs of deterioration, (...) and (2) means for reducing the costs of regulation such as relying more on market incentives. (shrink)

The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers may be the most popular children's program since the inception of television. While the program is a commercial success, it also generates much controversy. For example, with an average of 211 acts of violence per hour, is Power Rangers too violent for children to watch? The show's U.S. producers rebut by claiming that Power Rangers is perhaps the most multicultural children's program available in the United States and should be encouraged. How is this so-called multiculturalism (...) presented to millions of children across America 6 days a week? Can such expression be so valuable that it outweighs the controversy surrounding the program? Through textual analysis this paper concludes that the multiculturalism in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is, at most, a mirage. The ethical implications of such mirage multicultualism are examined. (shrink)

In order to show how what Michel Foucault described as Chicago School neoliberalism in The Birth of Biopolitics devalues human life while masking that devaluation, I examine the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, and the following civil unrest. Through an exploration of the concept of human capital, I argue that this concept, while seeming to answer a question regarding labor in economics, exacerbates the devaluation of human life in the U.S. generally and in the case of Freddie (...) Gray more specifically. Foucault’s Birth of Biopolitics lectures illustrates why the devaluation of life has gone largely unrecognized. As the concept of human capital, along with other ‘market values,’ proliferated beyond the realm of economics into daily life, human beings have come to be characterized as ‘enterprise units.’ I will argue that the prosecution of the War on Drugs provides a paradigmatic case of characterizing human beings as enterprise units, some useful and others surplus, looking to Baltimore to provide concrete examples. (shrink)

The ideas of love and justice have received a lot of attention within theology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and neuroscience in recent years. In theology, the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love have become a widely discussed topic again. In philosophy, psychology and neuroscience research into the emotions has led to a renewed interest in the many kinds and forms of love. And in moral philosophy, sociology, and political science questions of justice have been a central issue of debate for (...) decades. But many views are controversial, and important questions remain unanswered. In this volume the authors focus on issues that take the relations between the two topics into account. The contributions move from basic questions about the relationships between love and justice through specific, but central problems of a just practice of love to social and political issues of the practice of justice in today's society. Contributors:Richard Amesbury, Ingolf U. Dalferth, Trisha M. Famisaran, Thomas Jared Farmer, Everett Fullmer, Duncan Gale, Kirsten Gerdes, Deidre Green, Eric E. Hall, W. David Hall, Trevor W. Kimball, Ulrich H. J. Körtner, Richard Livingston, Thaddeus Metz, Anselm K. Min, Rob Overy-Brown, Raymond E. Perrier, Panu-Matti Pöykkö, Stephen J. Pope, T. Raja Rosenhagen, Jonathan Russell, Regina M. Schwarz, Roberto Sirvent, Justina M. Torrance, Nicholas Wolterstorff. (shrink)

Pour résoudre les paradoxes bien connus de la mécanique quantique, on propose une interprétation par ramification (ou univers parallèles) analogue à celle d?Everett, mais avec des différences: (i) on propose une infinité continue de branches, dont les poids (o[ugrave] probabilités) se calculent par intégrale; (ii) les branches sont séparées par des ramifieurs qui se propagent à la vitesse de la lumière. Lorsqu?est négligeable la composante d?énergie négative de la fonction d?onde, le poids de chaque branche en un point donné (...) u est égal au flux du quadrivecteur (courant-densité de présence), soit à travers l'élément d?écran antérieur à u sur lequel l'impact est perçu, soit à travers le cône passé de u si aucun impact n?est perçu. In order to solve well-known paradoxes in quantum mechanics, we propose a reworking of Everett's interpretation with ramified branches (or many worlds), yet somewhat different: (i) branches form an infinity continuum and each weight (probability) is defined by an integral; (ii) branches are separated by ramifiers which propagate themselves with the velocity of light. Assuming we can neglect the negative-energy component in the wave function, then the weight of each branch at a given point u is equal to the flux of the quadrivector (current-presence density), either through the screen element where the impact occurs, or through the past light-cone of u if no impact occurs. (shrink)

Anthony Everett gives a philosophical defence of the common-sense view that there are no such things as fictional people, places, and things. He argues that our talk and thought about such fictional objects takes place within the scope of a pretense, and that we gain little but lose much by accepting fictional realism.

Over the past four decades, Buddhists in Burma, mainly monks, have been brought before Sangha courts charged with heresy, adhamma, and malpractice, avinaya, under the jurisdiction of the State Sanghamahanayaka Committee. This body, established under General Ne Win in 1980, oversees the regulation and conduct of the Sangha. The religious courts that try these cases have the backing of state law enforcement agencies: failure to comply with their judgements is punishable by imprisonment. A guilty verdict has been passed in all (...) seventeen cases to date. There is no opportunity of appeal. The system not only protects Burmese Buddhism against corruption, but also stifles innovation and dissent. These cases, not previously discussed in scholarship outside of Burma, are significant for understanding the power of the State over the Sangha as well as the conservatism and antisecularism of Burmese Buddhism, which have set it at odds with the relativist approaches of modern, global Buddhism. (shrink)

Recent research has begun treating the perennial philosophical question, “what makes a person the same over time?” as an empirical question. A long tradition in philosophy holds that psychological continuity and connectedness of memories are at the heart of personal identity. More recent experimental work, following Strohminger & Nichols (2014), has suggested that persistence of moral character, more than memories, is perceived as essential for personal identity. While there is a growing body of evidence supporting these findings, a critique by (...) Starmans & Bloom (2018) suggests that this research program conflates personal identity with mere similarity. To address this criticism, we explore how loss of someone’s morality or memories influence perceptions of identity change, and perceptions of moral duties towards the target of the change. We present participants with a classic ‘body switch’ thought experiment and after assessing perceptions of identity persistence, we present a moral dilemma, asking participants to imagine that one of the patients must die (Study 1) or be left alone in a care home for the rest of their life (Study 2). Our results highlight the importance of the continuity of moral character, suggesting lay intuitions are tracking (something like) personal identity, not just mere similarity. (shrink)

Argues that a pluralistic understanding of truth can foster productive conversations about common concerns involving religion, science, ethics, politics, economics, and ecology without falling into relativism. In this book, Donald A. Crosby defends the idea that all claims to truth are at best partial. Recognizing this, he argues, is a necessary safeguard against arrogance, close-mindedness, and potentially violent reactions to differences of outlook and practice. Crosby demonstrates how “partial truths” are inevitably at work in conversations and debates about (...) religion, science, morality, economics, ecology, and social and political progress. He then focuses on the concept in the discipline of philosophy, looking at a number of distinctions that are taken to be strictly binary—those between fact and value, continuity and novelty, rationalism and empiricism, mind and body, and good and evil—and demonstrates how in all of these cases, each on its own can offer only an incomplete picture. Partial Truths and Our Common Future invites ongoing dialogue with others for the sake of mutual enlargements of understanding rather than mere civility, and provides incentive for continuing open-minded and shared inquiries into the important issues of life. “This is a transdisciplinary philosophical work that moves with grace across traditions, time periods, and thinkers. It is a master class in the existential and public relevance of philosophy and a rare example of a book that is both timely and timeless.” — Michael S. Hogue, author of The Promise of Religious Naturalism. (shrink)

Through an example of the prohibition against dating in a technical school in southwest China in 1978, this article analyzes how three intersecting forces - the ideology of socialist collectivism, the structure of the work unit system and the socialist sovereign ownership of the body - account for sexual repression in the Maoist period in China. Rather than being an ahistorical, essential component of Maoist socialism, sexual repression (psychic and social) was a historically specific and complex phenomenon. The transformation of (...) sexual repression at a historical moment took the form of an assemblage of the return of love discourse and an emergent desire-centered subjectivity in the great transformation from Maoist socialism to the post-Mao reform period. (shrink)

Through an example of the prohibition against dating in a technical school in southwest China in 1978, this article analyzes how three intersecting forces - the ideology of socialist collectivism, the structure of the work unit system and the socialist sovereign ownership of the body - account for sexual repression in the Maoist period in China. Rather than being an ahistorical, essential component of Maoist socialism, sexual repression (psychic and social) was a historically specific and complex phenomenon. The transformation of (...) sexual repression at a historical moment took the form of an assemblage of the return of love discourse and an emergent desire-centered subjectivity in the great transformation from Maoist socialism to the post-Mao reform period. (shrink)

In two recent papers, Michael Della Rocca accuses Descartes of reasoning circularly in the Fourth Meditation. This alleged new circle is distinct from, and more vicious than, the traditional Cartesian Circle arising in the Third Meditation. We explain Della Rocca’s reasons for this accusation, showing that his argument is invalid.

In the late eighteenth century Newton's Principia was studied in the Scottish universities under the influence of the local school of ‘Common Sense’ philosophy. John Robison, holding the key chair of natural philosophy at Edinburgh from 1774 to 1805, provided a new conception of ‘mechanical philosophy’ which proved crucial to the emergence of physics in nineteenth century Britain. At Cambridge the emphasis on ‘mixed mathematics’ was taken to a new level of refinement and application by the introduction of analytical methods (...) in the 1820s. The fusion of these two schools, with emphasis on conceptual unity on the one hand, and mathematisation on the other, came about from the 1830s onwards, and reached full expression in the new framework of a unified mathematical physics based on the energy principle. (shrink)

The claim that the nineteenth century was a period of major transition for the relation between theology and natural science has become a historical truism. With its implications for the design argument and the doctrines of divine providence, Darwin's theory of evolution has rightly attracted the attention of scholars of Victorian science. Yet so much emphasis not only on Darwin himself, but on the life sciences generally, has tended to obscure some important issues concerning the relation of theology to natural (...) science in the first half of the nineteenth century. As John Brooke has argued recently, natural theology in this pre-Darwinian period was far from being an essentially static, autonomous, and monolithic set of presuppositions about the existence of design in nature, but was, for various reasons, in a fragmented and disordered state. The general aim of the present note is to suggest some further dimensions to historical debates about the nature of natural theology, and in particular to emphasize the need for an examination of the physical sciences as well as the life sciences in this period. (shrink)

SynopsisThe response to physics and chemistry which characterized mid-nineteenth century physiology took two major directions. One, found most prominently among the German physiologists, developed explanatory models which had as their fundamental assumption the ultimate reducibility of all biological phenomena to the laws of physics and chemistry. The other, characteristic of the French school of physiology, recognized that physics and chemistry provided potent analytical tools for the exploration of physiological activities, but assumed in the construction of explanatory models that the organism (...) involved special levels of organization and that there must, in consequence, be special biological laws.The roots of this argument about concept formation in physiology are explored in the works of Theodor Schwann, Johannes Müller, François Magendie and Claude Bernard among others. (shrink)

Furthermore, it is not easy for most of us to accept a philosophy however well reasoned which refuses exterior reality to all we see, hear and touch about us. It is such philosophy that gives point to Valery's boutade: 'Philosophy pretends not to ...

“?… may we not say in the words of Bacon? — ‘The introduction of new inventions seemeth to be the very chief of all human actions. The benefits of new inventions may extend to all mankind universally, but the good of political achievements can respect but some particular cantons of men; these latter do not endure above a few ages, the former for ever. Inventions make all men happy without either injury or damage to any one single person. Furthermore, new (...) inventions are, as it were, new erections and imitations of God's own works.’”. (shrink)

Background Physicians face competing values of truth-telling and beneficence when deception may be employed in patient care. The purposes of this study were to assess resident physicians' attitudes towards lying, explore lie types and reported reasons for lying. Method After obtaining institutional review board review and receiving exempt status, posts written by Loma Linda University resident physicians in response to forum questions in required online courses were collected from 2002 to 2007. Responses were blinded and manually coded by two investigators (...) using NVivo software. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of the data were performed with links to various attributes. A 95% binomial proportion CI was used to analyse the attribute data. Results The study found that the majority of residents would disclose the truth about medical errors. Similarly, many residents would disclose the truth regarding unanticipated events, especially if the error was serious enough to result in a malpractice suit. However, many residents would not reveal a near miss event because they believe it has no impact on patient health. Some residents would deceive the insurance company for additional patient benefits. Of those willing to lie, only a small group gave self-serving reasons. Conclusions This study demonstrates that the ethical issues related to deception that trouble attending physicians also exist at the resident physician level. Residents primarily lie for altruistic reasons and rarely for egoistic or self-serving purposes that may or may not result in harm to patients, insurance companies and/or physicians themselves. (shrink)

When you and I seriously argue over whether a man of seventy is old enough to count as an "old man", it seems that we are appealing neither to our own separate standards of oldness nor to a common standard that is already fixed in the language. Instead, it seems that both of us implicitly invoke an ideal, shared standard that has yet to be agreed upon: the place where we ought to draw the line. As with other normative standards, (...) it is hard to know whether such borderlines exist prior to our coming to agree on where they are. But epistemicists plausibly argue that they must exist whether we ever agree on them or not, as this provides the only logically acceptable response to the sorites paradox. This paper argues that such boundaries do typically exist as hypothetical ideals, but not as determinate features of the present actual world. There is in fact no general solution to the paradox, but attention to practice in resolving vague disagreements shows that its instances can be dealt with separately, as they arise, in many reasonable ways. (shrink)

This is a slightly revised version of a paper delivered at the General Assembly of Sapporo Cool Seminar in American Studies, Japan 1981. Reprinted with the permission of the author and the publisher of the lectures in Japan.

The explosion of the first atomic bomb at the Alamagordo Bombing Range, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, was the start of a new era, the dawn of the atomic age. The preliminary work on atomic fission was done before the last world war, and as military leaders visioned its great destructive possibilities, several countries entered the race to be the first to harness atomic fission for military purposes. Our own country gambled two billion dollars, and with the aid of (...) certain European scientists and in collaboration with England and Canada, succeeded in developing a fission chain reaction that made possible the atomic bomb. (shrink)