The rôle of mathematical models in growth studies is discussed and a distinction made between the structural and descriptive aspects of a mathematical formulation. A simple scheme is set up to represent in broad outline the simultaneous growth and interaction of larval and adult systems inMyrmica rubra and is matched against observed results.

"Language shapes and reflects how we think about the world. It engages and intrigues us. Our everyday use of language is quite effortless--we are all experts on our native tongues. Despite this, issues of language and meaning have long flummoxed the judges on whom we depend for the interpretation of our most fundamental legal texts. Should a judge feel confident in defining common words in the texts without the aid of a linguist? How is the meaning communicated by the text (...) determined? Should the communicative meaning of texts be decisive, or at least influential?... [Contributors] argue that the meaning of language is crucial to the interpretation of legal texts, such as statutes, constitutions, and contracts. Accordingly... analysis of language from linguists, philosophers, and legal scholars should influence how courts interpret legal texts."--. (shrink)

Macroeconomic traditions disagree on the policies needed for the economy to properly function and how to assess them. In this paper, we contend that these disagreements originate from the social ontological commitments of a theory. The ontology of money underlines these disagreements between Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and mainstream economics. First, we assess MMT’s ontology of money. Next, we identify MMT’s normative commitments and classify MMT’s ontology as a taxonomic definition with thick concepts. Finally, we offer reasons why MMT's ontology (...) of money leads to rivalries with other economic traditions. We argue disagreements on policy are expected, given the ontological differences elaborated. (shrink)

It has been said that new discoveries and developments in the human, social, and natural sciences hang “in the air” (Bowler, 1983; 2008) prior to their consummation. While neo-Darwinist biology has been powerfully served by its mechanistic metaphysic and a reductionist methodology in which living organisms are considered machines, many of the chapters in this volume place this paradigm into question. Pairing scientists and philosophers together, this volume explores what might be termed “the New Frontiers” of biology, namely contemporary areas (...) of research that appear to call an updating, a supplementation, or a relaxation of some of the main tenets of the Modern Synthesis. Such areas of investigation include: Emergence Theory, Systems Biology, Biosemiotics, Homeostasis, Symbiogenesis, Niche Construction, the Theory of Organic Selection (also known as “the Baldwin Effect”), Self-Organization and Teleodynamics, as well as Epigenetics. Most of the chapters in this book offer critical reflections on the neo-Darwinist outlook and work to promote a novel synthesis that is open to a greater degree of inclusivity as well as to a more holistic orientation in the biological sciences. (shrink)

A central concern of nearly every environmental ethic is its desire to extend the scope of direct moral concern beyond human beings to plants, nonhuman animals, and the systems of which they are a part. Although nearly all environmental philosophies have long since rejected modernity’s conception of individuals as isolated and independent substances, few have replaced this worldview with an alternative that is adequate to the organic, processive world in which we find ourselves. In this context, Brian G. Henning (...) argues that the often overlooked work of Alfred North Whitehead has the potential to make a significant contribution to environmental ethics. Additionally inspired by classical American philosophers such as William James, John Dewey and Charles Sanders Pierce and environmental philosophers such as Aldo Leopold, Peter Singer, Albert Schweitzer, and Arne Naess, Henning develops an ethical theory of which the seminal insight is called “The Ethics of Creativity.” By systematically examining and developing a conception of individuality that is equally at home with the microscopic world of subatomic events and the macroscopic world of ecosystems, _The Ethics of Creativity_ correctly emphasizes the well-being of wholes, while not losing sight of the importance of the unique centers of value that constitute these wholes. In this way, _The Ethics of Creativity_ has the potential to be a unique voice in contemporary moral philosophy. (shrink)

`For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand. For I believe this also, that unless I believe, I shall not understand.' Does God exist? Can we know anything about God's nature? Have we any reason to think that the Christian religion is true? What is truth, anyway? Do human beings have freedom of choice? Can they have such freedom in a world created by God? These questions, and others, (...) were ones which Anselm of Canterbury took very seriously. He was utterly convinced of the truth of the Christian religion, but he was also determined to try to make sense of his Christian faith. Recognizing that the Christian God is incomprehensible, he also believed that Christianity is not simply something to be swallowed with mouth open and eyes shut. For Anselm, the doctrines of Christianity are an invitation to question, to think, and to learn. Anselm is studied today because his rigour of thought and clarity of writing place him among the greatest of theologians and philosophers. This translation provides readers with their first opportunity to read all of his most important works within the covers of a single volume. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

Argues that, to make progress within environmental ethics, philosophers must explicitly engage in environmental metaphysics.

The following progress report views language acquisition as primarily the attempt to create processes that connect together in a fruitful way linguistic input and other activity. The representations made of linguistic input are thus those that are optimally effective in mediating such interconnections. An effective Language Acquisition Device should contain mechanisms specific to the task of creating the desired interconnection processes in the linguistic environment in which the language learner finds himself or herself. Analysis of this requirement gives clear indications (...) as to what these mechanisms may be. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 10, October 2020, Page 1-4.

This book examines from different perspectives the moral significance of non-human members of the biotic community and their omission from climate ethics literature. The complexity of life in an age of rapid climate change demands the development of moral frameworks that recognize and respect the dignity and agency of both human and non-human organisms. Despite decades of careful work in non-anthropocentric approaches to environmental ethics, recent anthologies on climate ethics have largely omitted non-anthropocentric approaches. This multidisciplinary volume of international scholars (...) tackles this lacuna by presenting novel work on non-anthropocentric approaches to climate ethics. Written in an accessible style, the text incorporates sentiocentric, biocentric, and ecocentric perspectives on climate change. With diverse perspectives from both leading and emerging scholars of environmental ethics, geography, religious studies, conservation ecology, and environmental studies, this book will offer a valuable reading for students and scholars of these fields. (shrink)

A primary contribution of this essay is to provide a survey of the human and environmental impacts of livestock production. We will find that the mass consumption of animals is a primary reason why humans are hungry, fat, or sick and is a leading cause behind the depletion and pollution of waterways, the degradation and deforestation of the land, the extinction of species, and the warming of the planet. Recognizing these harms, this essay will consider various solutions being proposed to (...) “shrink” livestock’s long shadow, including proposed “technical” or “market” solutions, a transition to “new agrarian” methods, and a vegetarian or vegan diet. Though important and morally relevant qualitative differences exist between industrial and non-industrial methods, this essay will conclude that, given the present and projected size of the human population, the morality and sustainability of one’s diet are inversely related to the proportion of animals and animal products one consumes. (shrink)

ABSTRACT My aim in this article is twofold. First, I hope to show that, despite its seeming rehabilitation, metaphysics as systematic, speculative philosophy is no less threatened. Second, I will argue that metaphysics as systematic, speculative philosophy is ultimately revisable. That is, metaphysics is not the aim at a closed system of apodictic truths but, rather, an open-ended, fallibilistic pursuit of ever-more-adequate accounts of reality. Specifically, building on the work of Charles Sanders Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead, I will argue (...) that we should conceive of metaphysics not as the quest for absolute certainty but as “working hypothesis.” Thus, the first part will be largely historical and critical, and the second part will be positive and exploratory. (shrink)

Although debates over carbon taxes and trading schemes, over carbon offsets and compact fluorescents are important, our efforts to address the environmental challenges that we face will fall short unless and until we also set about the difficult work of reconceiving who we are and how we are related to our processive cosmos. What is needed, I argue, are new ways of thinking and acting grounded in new ways of understanding ourselves and our relationship to the world, ways of understanding (...) that recognize our fundamental interdependence and interconnection with everyone and everything in the cosmos, ways of understanding that recognize the intrinsic beauty and value of every form of existence. What is needed, I suggest, is a moral philosophy grounded in Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of organism. It is the primary aim of this essay to defend the value of a moral philosophy inspired by Whitehead's organic, beauty-centered conception of reality. (shrink)

In “The Impossibility of Pure Libertarianism” Braham and van Hees prove that four conditions on rights—completeness, conclusiveness, non-imposition, and symmetry—cannot be satisfied simultaneously. If Braham and van Hees’s proof is to have any relevance, at least some prominent libertarians must endorse their four conditions, and libertarianism as a philosophical position must in some way be committed to all the axioms. In this paper we demonstrate the irrelevance of Braham and van Hees’s proof by showing that some of the most prominent (...) libertarians do not endorse the completeness and conclusive conditions, and that there is nothing about libertarianism as a philosophical position that commits the libertarian to these two axioms. Indeed, we show that, more generally, there are strong reasons for libertarians to reject both conditions. As such, libertarians should not lose any sleep over Braham and van Hees’s proof. (shrink)

Legal texts are often given interpretations that deviate from their literal meanings. While legal concerns often motivate these interpretations, others can be traced to linguistic phenomena. This paper argues that systematicities of language usage, captured by certain theories of conversational implicature, can sometimes explain why the meanings given to legal texts by judges differ from the literal meanings of the texts. Paul Grice's account of conversational implicature is controversial, and scholars have offered a variety of ways to conceptualize implicatures and (...) Grice's maxims of conversation. Approaches that emphasize the systematic nature of implicatures can provide explanatory accounts of the gap between literal meaning and the meaning communicated in the text. For example, a theory of scalar implicature, a type of generalized conversational implicature, can account for the application of the interpretive principle known as ejusdem generis, which narrows the scope of “catch-all” clauses located at the end of lists of items. Despite the availability of such theories, some scholars have argued that conversational implicatures are not applicable to legislation. The arguments, based primarily on the uniqueness of the legislative context and its noncooperative nature, though, do not establish the inapplicability of conversational implicatures to legislation. (shrink)

For nearly four centuries Peter of Spain's influential Summaries of Logic was the basis for teaching logic; few university texts were read by more people. This new translation presents the Latin and English on facing pages, and comes with an extensive introduction, chapter-by-chapter analysis, notes, and a full bibliography.

This edition of G. E. Moore's notes taken at Wittgenstein's seminal Cambridge lectures in the early 1930s provides, for the first time, an almost verbatim record of those classes. The presentation of the notes is both accessible and faithful to their original manuscripts, and a comprehensive introduction and synoptic table of contents provide the reader with essential contextual information and summaries of the topics in each lecture. The lectures form an excellent introduction to Wittgenstein's middle-period thought, covering a broad range (...) of philosophical topics, ranging from core questions in the philosophy of language, mind, logic, and mathematics, to illuminating discussions of subjects on which Wittgenstein says very little elsewhere, including ethics, religion, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and anthropology. The volume also includes a 1932 essay by Moore critiquing Wittgenstein's conception of grammar, together with Wittgenstein's response. A companion website offers access to images of the entire set of source manuscripts. (shrink)

As corporate scandals proliferate, organizational researchers and practitioners have made calls for research providing guidance for those wishing to influence positive moral decision-making and behavior in the workplace. This study incorporates social cognitive theory and a vignette-based cognitive measure for moral imagination to examine (a) moral attentiveness and employee creativity as important antecedents of moral imagination and (b) creativity as a moderator of the positive relationship between moral attentiveness and moral imagination. Based on the results from supervisor–subordinate dyadic data (N (...) = 162) obtained from employed students, hypotheses were largely supported as expected. Implications are discussed. (shrink)

Is there an ethics of creativity? Though this question appears innocent enough, it proves surprisingly difficult to answer. A survey of the literature on the topic reveals that process ethics has variously been categorized as or seen as compatible with: moral interest theory, ecological virtue ethics, utilitarianism, Confucian virtue ethics, and even deontology. What can account for such divergent and even contradictory conclusions? On one level we might blame Whitehead, whose sporadic comments on morality may appear to be more suggestive (...) than systematic. While, as I argue elsewhere,3 there is a greater coherence to Whitehead’s statements about morality than is initially apparent, it is undeniable that he never attempted to develop a theory of morality. Yet it is unlikely that the state of the texts should shoulder all of the blame for the lack of consensus on the basic nature of process ethics. It would seem that there is a more fundamental problem lurking beneath the surface. Indeed, I suggest that there are at least five basic confusions — four substantive and one methodological — that have vitiated attempts to understand and develop a process approach to morality. Until these confusions are recognized and resolved, we will have no hope of understanding the promise or realizing the potential of the ethics of creativity. (shrink)

Since its publication in 1965, Brian Barry's seminal work has occupied an important role in the revival of Anglo-American political philosophy. A number of ideas and terms in it have become part of the standard vocabulary, such as the distinction between "ideal-regarding" and "want-regarding" principles and the division of principles into aggregative and distributive. The book provided the first precise analysis of the concept of political values having trade-off relations and its analysis of the notion of the public interest (...) has also been significant. (shrink)

Since its founding in 1950, the Metaphysical Society of America has remained a pluralistic community dedicated to rigorous philosophical inquiry into the most basic metaphysical questions. At each year’s conference, the presidential address offers original insights into metaphysical questions. Both the insights and the questions are as perennial as they are relevant to contemporary philosophers. This volume collects eighteen of the finest representatives from those presidential addresses, including contributions from George Allan, Richard Bernstein, Norris Clarke, Vincent Colapietro, Frederick Ferré, Jorge (...) J. E. Gracia, Joseph Grange, Marjorie Grene, George Klubertanz, Ivor Leclerc, Ralph McInerny, Ernan McMullin, Joseph Owens, John Herman Randall, Jr., Nicholas Rescher, Stanley Rosen, John E. Smith, and Robert Sokolowski. Also included are Paul Weiss’s inaugural address to the Society, an introduction chronicling the history of the Society, and an original Foreword by William Desmond and Epilogue by Robert Neville. (shrink)

Whereas traditional ethical theories limit morality to the relations between human beings, Whitehead seems committed to a fundamentally different model. Yet despite the longstanding consensus among process scholars that Whitehead’s philosophy of organism provides an ideal ground for a rich moral philosophy, particularly one encompassing ecological concerns, there is a relative dearth of scholarship on the topic. What is more, among those who do engage in such scholarship, there seems to be no agreement as to how to classify Whitehead’s ethics, (...) which has at different times been labeled, among other things, a moral interest theory, a totalizing form of utilitarianism, and a virtue ethic.1 Some have even suggested that Whitehead’s metaphysics is consistent with a deontological approach (e.g. Lango 2001). Given the diversity of such conflicting interpretations, one might well wonder whether Whitehead can even be said to have a moral philosophy. In this essay, my primary aim is to bring clarity to the debate over Whitehead’s ethics by systematically examining Whitehead’s own scattered remarks on morality. I will demonstrate that, although he may not have systematically elaborated a complete moral philosophy, he did indeed affirm a model of morality that is every bit as unique, fallible, and speculative as his metaphysics. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is twofold. First, I examine the role of Alfred North Whitehead and process thinkers in bringing about and shaping the field of environmental ethics. As we will see, our job is not so much to develop the connections between Whitehead and environmental thought as to recover them. Second, given this genealogical work, I invite process scholars to reconsider their generally hostile reception of Aldo Leopold and his land ethic. I suggest that a version of the (...) land ethic grounded in a process axiology could make a significant contribution to contemporary environmental thought. (shrink)

My goal in this brief essay is not so much to defend White's controversial thesis, but to use it as a context for appreciating the significance of Pope Francis's new encyclical Laudato Si’. Considering it in the context of White’s thesis, will bring certain salient features into relief.

Considering the role of space and place in Integral Ecology is presented as the concept of Integral Geography. First, an ecological AQAL model is proposed to situate the diverse scientific disciplines used in geography, giving equal consideration for their respective contributions in knowledge and understanding of the world. Second, a model for incorporating perspectives provided in the arts and humanities is proposed in situating scientific understanding in relation to aesthetic and cultural aspects of "being and becoming." Third, a Geographical Information (...) System (GIS) based map model illustrates how biophysical and social realities can be viewed and analyzed from a geographical perspective as "Integral places.". (shrink)

As the collective impact of human activity approaches Earth’s biophysical limits, the ethics of food become increasingly important. Hundreds of millions of people remain undernourished, yet only 60 percent of the global harvest is consumed by humans, while 35 percent is fed to livestock and 5 percent is used for biofuels and other industrial products. This essay considers the ethics of such use of edible nutrition for feedstock and biofuel. How humanity uses Earth’s land is a reflection of its values. (...) The current land-use arrangements, which divert 40 percent of all food to feed animals or create fuels, suggest that dietary and transportation preferences of wealthier individuals are considered more important than feeding undernourished people, or the stability of the wider biotic community. (shrink)

This paper examines the philosophical basis for the argument that there is a connection between ethical behavior and profitability. Both sides of this argument – that good ethics is good business and that bad ethics is bad business – are explored. The possibility of a moral floor above which ethical behavior is not rewarded is considered, and an economic experiment testing such a proposition is discussed. Johnson & Johnson suffers a potentially devastating blow when some cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules cause several (...) deaths. Johnson & Johnson voluntarily pulls Tylenol off the shelf, to universal acclaim. When Tylenol is returned to the marketplace, its share of the over-the-counter painkiller market becomes greater than it was before the tragedy. Arthur Andersen, the venerable accounting firm, is caught in the web surrounding the downfall of Enron, Inc. As Enron’s various sins are discovered, it is found that Arthur Andersen auditors had signed off on flawed audits and had shredded documents to cover themselves. Andersen is prosecuted for, and convicted of, obstructing justice (although the conviction is later overturned). Today the firm barely exists and has no resemblance to the Big Five accounting giant of 1999. These stories seem to indicate that ethical (or unethical) behavior leads to positive (or negative) financial results. But the philosophical arguments underpinning such statements are seldom subjected to proper analysis. They are perhaps wishful thinking, or perhaps based on examples such as the above without considering other examples that may reinforce a contrary position. This paper will explore the philosophical arguments and empirical evidence regarding these statements and state some research questions for exploration in this area. In particular we will propose the possibility that a moral floor exists above which firms that engage in ethical activities will not reap rewards, but below which firms that engage in unethical activities will be punished by actors in the economic marketplace. We will discuss an economic experiment to determine if such actors indeed form a moral floor. (shrink)

Hierarchical views of nature have for centuries been used to justify the enslaving of peoples perceived as inferior, the often violent and coercive “reeducation” of indigenous peoples, the patriarchal subjugation of women, the cruel use of nonhuman animals for often trivial purposes, and the wanton destruction of the natural world. I join those who condemned the oppressive nature of these forms of hierarchical thinking. Yet, I fear that, in their effort to right past wrongs, too many thinkers are in danger (...) of throwing the axiological baby out with the ontological bathwater. Though the aim at a great ontological leveling is certainly understandable, I fear that, in embracing the opposite extreme and rejecting all hierarchical thinking, some may be in danger of doing violence to the many real and even morally significant differences between individuals. My claim in this paper is that Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism provides a model for how to appreciate the many grades and types of beings in the world, while avoiding an invidious normative hierarchy that inevitably places everything at the whim of human beings. That is, I will argue that it is possible to defend hierarchy without anthroparchy. To provide context, I will begin with a brief analysis of Aristotle’s “Great Chain of Being” and will then contrast it with Whitehead’s process philosophy. Given this context, using the subtle and perceptive work of the ecofeminist Karen J. Warren, I will then present a model for how to recognize a “descriptive hierarchy” while rejecting a simplistic “prescriptive hierarchy.” . (shrink)

Process philosophy has traditionally focused predominantly on ontology and cosmology. However, in the closing decades of the twentieth century, the scope of its application broadened significantly to include areas such as theology, physics, biology, psychology, and even education. But, one area that was not so fortunate is ethics. Process philosophy, nonetheless, has the potential to make a unique contribution to the state of ethical theory, which, having the support of a process ontology, could avoid many of the pitfalls which plague (...) modern ethical theories. Nowhere are these pitfalls more apparent than in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, to whom I am alluding in the title of this paper. For, in keeping with his metaphysics, Kant made the absolute value of the autonomous rational individual the supreme principle of morality and, in so doing, made the human in particular, and ethics in general, discontinuous with the goings-on of the rest of the universe.1 In stark contrast to this longstanding tradition, it is my intention to demonstrate that it is possible to construct an axiological ethical system which makes humans an exemplification of the aim of the universe rather than an exception to it. My argument proceeds in roughly four parts. I begin by outlining the basic contours of Whitehead’s metaphysics and aesthetics and the relation between them. With this as a backdrop, I then proceed to discuss the moral dimension of Whitehead’s thought and the standard objections to it. In the third section, I respond to these objections, first, by contrasting two different interpretations of Whitehead’s metaphysics and, then, by examining the forms of morality that each entails. Finally, I conclude with my own speculations on how one might proceed to develop a systematic moral philosophy based on a Whiteheadian aesthetics of process. (shrink)

While most scholars readily recognize that Alfred North Whitehead had deep and penetrating misgivings about the substantial view of individuality, fewer note that these misgivings stem as much from axiological considerations as ontological ones. I contend that, taken in the context of the “classical interpretation” of his metaphysics, Whitehead’s bold affirmation that actuality and value are coextensive introduces a potentially serious problem for the adequacy and applicability of his axiology. For if actuality is coextensive with valuebut actuality is itself limited (...) to subjects of experience, then the objective world can have no intrinsic value. My aim is to demonstrate that, in order to respond to the very serious challenge which the problem of subjectivism represents and save Whitehead’s intendeduniverse of value, we must seek an alternative to the classical interpretation of Whitehead’s metaphysics. I refer to this alternative as the “ecstatic interpretation.”. (shrink)

Environmental factors routinely influence an organism's biology. The inheritance or transmission of such influences to descendant generations would be an efficient mode of information transfer across generations. The developmental stage at which a specific environment is encountered by the ancestral generation, and the number of generations over which information about that environment is registered, determines an inter‐ vs. trans‐generational effect of ancestral influence. This commentary will outline the distinction between these influences. While seductive in principle, inter‐ and trans‐generational inheritance in (...) mammals is a hotly debated area of research inquiry. We present constructive criticism of such inheritance, and suggest potential experimental avenues for reconciliation. Finally, epigenetic mechanisms present an avenue for gene regulation that is dynamic. We briefly discuss how such malleability affords the potential for a reversal of any detrimental environmental influences that might have adversely impacted ancestral or descendant generations. (shrink)

ObjectiveOur objective was to evaluate whether those individuals with previous involvement with formal clinical ethics processes differ in their attitudes towards the resolution of prototypical clinical ethics cases than general health care professionals. We hypothesized that those individuals with previous participation in ethics consultation would have significantly different attitudes on the appropriate role of ethics committees in the assessment and resolution of clinical ethical dilemmas than those who have not.MethodsWe conducted a case-based survey of health care professionals at six US (...) hospitals. We administered the survey to health care professionals in a variety of clinical roles at each center and further sub-categorized these by respondents reporting or not reporting their membership on an ethics committee or participation as an ethics consultant/requestor of ethics consult services. Using the analysis of variance test, we present the variation in attitudes using a 5-point Likert scale with 95% confidence intervals and significance set at p ≤ 0.05.ResultsA total of 240 respondents completed the survey (response rate: 63.6%) from all six surveyed centers (128 respondents with involvement with ethics consultation, 112 respondents without). Health care professionals not previously involved with formal clinical ethics processes were less likely to view the ethics committee as having a role in resolving the presented clinical ethical dilemmas ( p = 0.01 for analysis of variance comparison).ConclusionIn this multi-center survey study, health care providers without previous involvement with formal clinical ethics processes were less likely than those with previous involvement to support a role for ethics committees aiding in ethical case resolution. (shrink)

This project develops and defends a holistic, organic ethical theory grounded firmly in Whitehead's aesthetico-metaphysics of process. The seminal insight of this ethic, which I refer to as the Ethics of Creativity, is the fundamental sense of beauty and value at the base of existence; there is no vacuous, valueless existence. As a result of this starting point, it is this project's contention that it is not enough for an ethical theory merely to prescribe how we ought to interact with (...) other human beings. Rather, insofar as everything is inherently valuable, ethics must be radically reconceived as directing how we ought to comport ourselves with everything to which we relate. Accordingly, rather than having one ethic for our interaction with inter-human relationships and another for the extra-human world, the Ethics of Creativity is at once an inter-human ethic and an environmental ethic; it is, in this sense, holistic. Thus, with William James, I believe that the aim of a truly adequate ethical theory is "to find an account of the moral relations that obtain among things, which will weave them into the unity of a stable system, and make of the world what one may call a genuine universe from the ethical point of view" . ;As there currently is no systematic development of an ethical theory based on a robust conception of Whitehead's metaphysics and aesthetics, this project has the potential to be a substantial contribution to the field of process philosophy. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, I engage established ethical theories with the hope of transforming their basic presuppositions and indicating the need to move toward a process model. Thus, this project is at once critical and constructive. (shrink)