Rabbits are a major vertebrate pest in New Zealand. An application has been made recently to import and release in New Zealand the biological control agent Rabbit Calicivirus Disease. In this paper we discuss the findings from a qualitative study and a national survey of New Zealanders' perceptions of rabbits, rabbit control, and RCD. New Zealanders' position on the introduction of RCD is complex, and includes concern for the rabbit as a sentient individual that deserves a humane death if it (...) is to be killed, appreciation of the environmental and agricultural damage it causes, and skepticism about the information on RCD currently being provided. Because perceptions of biological control include risk perceptions, we draw upon the literature on public perceptions of risk to interpret the results. We also discuss some ethical and practical issues arising from our study. We contend that the complexity of the issues, and the nature of their presentation, requires a public decision-making process involving two-way communication. (shrink)

This book assesses how Vatican II opened up the Catholic Church to encounter, dialogue, and engagement with other world religions. Opening with a contribution from the President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, it next explores the impact, relevance, and promise of the Declaration Nostra Aetate before turning to consider how Vatican II in general has influenced interfaith dialogue and the intellectual and comparative study of world religions in the postconciliar decades, as well as the contribution (...) of particular past and present thinkers to the formation of current interreligious and comparative theological methods. Additionally, chapters consider interreligious dialogue vis-à-vis theological anthropology in conciliar documents; openness to the spiritual practices of other faith traditions as a way of encouraging positive interreligious encounter; the role of lay and new ecclesial movements in interreligious dialogue; and the development of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue. Finally, it includes a range of perspectives on the fruits and future of Vatican’s II’s opening to particular faiths such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. (shrink)

This article is an account of the dynamics of interaction across the social sciences and neurosciences. Against an arid rhetoric of ‘interdisciplinarity’, it calls for a more expansive imaginary of what experiment – as practice and ethos – might offer in this space. Arguing that opportunities for collaboration between social scientists and neuroscientists need to be taken seriously, the article situates itself against existing conceptualizations of these dynamics, grouping them under three rubrics: ‘critique’, ‘ebullience’ and ‘interaction’. Despite their differences, each (...) insists on a distinction between sociocultural and neurobiological knowledge, or does not show how a more entangled field might be realized. The article links this absence to the ‘regime of the inter-’, an ethic of interdisciplinarity that guides interaction between disciplines on the understanding of their pre-existing separateness. The argument of the paper is thus twofold: (1) that, contra the ‘regime of the inter-’, it is no longer practicable to maintain a hygienic separation between sociocultural webs and neurobiological architecture; (2) that the cognitive neuroscientific experiment, as a space of epistemological and ontological excess, offers an opportunity to researchers, from all disciplines, to explore and register this realization. (shrink)

In recent years scholars have begun to question the usefulness of the category of ''religion'' to describe a distinctive form of human experience and behavior. In his last book, The Ideology of Religious Studies (OUP 2000), Timothy Fitzgerald argued that ''religion'' was not a private area of human existence that could be separated from the public realm and that the study of religion as such was thus impossibility. In this new book he examines a wide range of English-language texts (...) to show how religion became transformed from a very specific category indigenous to Christian culture into a universalist claim about human nature and society. These claims, he shows, are implied by and frequently explicit in theories and methods of comparative religion. But they are also tacitly reproduced throughout the humanities in the relatively indiscriminate use of ''religion'' as an a priori valid cross-cultural analytical concept, for example in historiography, sociology, and social anthropology. Fitzgerald seeks to link the argument about religion to the parallel formation of the ''non-religious'' and such dichotomies as church-state, sacred-profane, ecclesiastical-civil, spiritual-temporal, supernatural-natural, and irrational-rational. Part of his argument is that the category ''religion'' has a different logic compared to the category ''sacred,'' but the two have been consistently confused by major writers, including Durkheim and Eliade. Fitzgerald contends that ''religion'' imagined as a private belief in the supernatural was a necessary conceptual space for the simultaneous imagining of ''secular'' practices and institutions such as politics, economics, and the Nation State. The invention of ''religion'' as a universal type of experience, practice, and institution was partly the result of sacralizing new concepts of exchange, ownership, and labor practices, applying ''scientific'' rationality to human behavior, administering the colonies and classifying native institutions. In contrast, shows Fitzgerald, the sacred-profane dichotomy has a different logic of use. (shrink)

A perennial debate in the field of global ethics revolves around the possibility of a universalist ethics as well as arguments over the nature, and significance, of difference for moral deliberation. Decolonial literature, in particular, increasingly signifies a pluriverse – one with radical ontological and epistemological differences. This book examines the concept of the pluriverse alongside global ethics and the ethics of care in order to contemplate new ethical horizons for engaging across difference. Offering a challenge to the current state (...) of the field, this book argues for a rethinking of global ethics as it has been conceived thus far. (shrink)

This article is about the future of sociology, as transformations in the digital and biological sciences lay claim to the discipline’s jurisdictional hold over ‘the social’. Rather than analyse the specifics of these transformations, however, the focus of the article is on how a narrative of methodological crisis is sustained in sociology, and on how such a narrative conjures very particular disciplinary futures. Through a close reading of key texts, the article makes two claims: (1) that a surprisingly conventional urge (...) towards disciplinary reproduction often animates accounts of sociology’s crisis; (2) that, even more surprisingly, these same accounts are often haunted by a hidden metaphorical architecture centred on biology, vitality, vigour and life. The central gambit of the article is that, perhaps in spite of itself, this subterranean image of life actually hints at less reproductively conventional ways of understanding – and intervening in – sociology’s methodological ‘crisis’. Drawing, empirically, on the author’s recent work on urban stress and, theoretically, on Stefan Helmreich’s (2011, 2016) account of ‘limit biologies’, the articles ends with a call for a ‘limit sociology’ – a form of attention that could, similarly, expand rather than contract the present moment of transformation. At the heart of the article is a hope that thinking with such a limit may help sociologists to imagine a less deadening future than that on offer from a canonised discipline cathected by endless crisis-talk. (shrink)

Albert of Saxony was one of the great logicians of the Middle Ages, on a par with William Ockham and John Buridan. The Twenty-Five Disputed Questions on Logic treat of central issues in logic, both then and now, such as the nature of meaning, of universals, of truth, and of tense and modality; and the quality and quantity of propositions, the role of negation, and the relations of contradiction and equivalence between them. Dr. Fitzgerald has studied Albert's work extensively, (...) and previously edited the Twenty-Five Disputed Questions from the original manuscripts. This translation makes available for the first time in English this careful and exemplary examination of logical notions by an outstanding medieval thinker.-Stephen Read, University of St. Andrews. (shrink)

Ayant depuis son premier livre exploré son hypothèse d'une naissance de notre langage articulé, humain, à partir de l'expérience de la mort d'autrui comme autre soi-même, Gérard Bucher expose dans un dernier ouvrage les raisons des travaux d'une vie entière. La poésie, pour Bucher, c'est ce qui reste (et qui, ainsi, nous est légué, génération après génération), d'une scène (ou archiscène) au cours de laquelle rien de moins que les clés de notre humanité nous sont données. Dans Homo divinans, complété (...) et relu avant sa disparition fin 2018, le philosophe nous propose les raisons pour lesquelles la poésie demeure notre avenir, dans et malgré nos temps difficultueux."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Digital technology has transformed the way that we visualise the natural world, the art we create and the stories we tell about our environments. Exploring contemporary digital art and literature through an ecocritical lens, Digital Vision and the Ecological Aesthetic (1968-2018) demonstrates the many ways in which critical ideas of the sublime, the pastoral and the picturesque have been renewed and shaped in (...) digital media, from electronic literature to music and the visual arts. The book goes on to explore the ecological implications of these new forms of cultural representation in the digital age and in so doing makes a profound contribution to our understanding of digital art practice in the 21st century. (shrink)

It is now integral to much of cultural, political and social analysis. This is the first comprehensive survey in one volume of the interdisciplinary field of cosmopolitan studies.

This book provides international perspectives on the law of copyright in relation to three core themes - copyright and developing countries; the government and copyright; and technology and the future of copyright. The third theme includes an examination of the extent to which technology will dictate the development of the law, and a re-examination of the role of copyright in fostering innovation and creativity. As a critique, one chapter discusses how certain rights can create or reinforce social inequality under copyright (...) royalty systems. Underlying these themes is the role the law of copyright has in encouraging or impeding human flourishing. (shrink)

Quick reference guide includes illustrated explanations of the most common terms used in general math classes. Discusses how students can use manipulatives and basic math tools to improve their understanding. With measurement conversion tables, guides to geometric shapes, and more.

Modern medicine has produced many wonderful technological breakthroughs that have extended the limits of the frail human body. However, much of the focus of this medical research has been on the physical, often reducing the human being to a biological machine to be examined, understood, and controlled. This book begins by asking whether the modern medical milieu has overly objectified the body, unwittingly or not, and whether current studies in bioethics are up to the task of restoring a fuller understanding (...) of the human person. In response, various authors here suggest that a more theological/religious approach would be helpful, or perhaps even necessary. Presenting specific perspectives from Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the book is divided into three parts: "Understanding the Body," "Respecting the Body," and "The Body at the End of Life." A panel of expert contributors—including philosophers, physicians, and theologians and scholars of religion— answer key questions such as: What is the relationship between body and soul? What are our obligations toward human bodies? How should medicine respond to suffering and death? The resulting text is an interdisciplinary treatise on how medicine can best function in our societies. Offering a new way to approach the medical humanities, this book will be of keen interest to any scholars with an interest in contemporary religious perspectives on medicine and the body. (shrink)

One effect of information technology is the increasing need to present information visually. The trend raises intriguing questions. What is the logical status of reasoning that employs visualization? What are the cognitive advantages and pitfalls of this reasoning? What kinds of tools can be developed to aid in the use of visual representation? This newest volume on the Studies in Logic and Computation series addresses the logical aspects of the visualization of information. The authors of these specially commissioned papers explore (...) the properties of diagrams, charts, and maps, and their use in problem solving and teaching basic reasoning skills. As computers make visual representations more commonplace, it is important for professionals, researchers and students in computer science, philosophy, and logic to develop an understanding of these tools; this book can clarify the relationship between visuals and information. (shrink)

Written by one of the most important founding figures of Western philosophy, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics represents a critical point in the study of ethics which has influenced the direction of modern philosophy. The Routledge Guidebook to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics introduces the major themes in Aristotle’s great book and acts as a companion for reading this key work, examining: The context of Aristotle’s work and the background to his writing Each separate part of the text in relation to its goals, meanings (...) and impact The reception the book received when first seen by the world The relevance of Aristotle’s work to modern philosophy, its legacy and influence. With further reading included throughout, this text is essential reading for all students of philosophy, and all those wishing to get to grips with this classic work. (shrink)

To most, myths are merely fantastic stories. But for Luc Brisson, one of the great living Plato scholars, myth is a key factor in what it means to be human – a condition of life for all. Essential and inescapable, myth offers a guide for living, forming the core of belonging and group identity. In 1999 Quebec classicist Louis-André Dorion published a series of French conversations with Brisson on the idea of myth. In Making Sense of Myth Gerard Naddaf (...) offers an extended and updated English translation of these conversations, as well as a new set of discussions between himself and Brisson. Beginning with Brisson's childhood in the village of Saint-Esprit, Quebec, through his education as a gifted child in minor seminaries starting at age eleven, and continuing with his years in Paris, first as a graduate student and later at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Brisson tells the story of his escape from an all-encompassing myth – the one promulgated by the Roman Catholic Church. The philosopher situates Quebec society as inseparable from the history of the Catholic Church in Quebec, and argues that this correlation offers a perfect paradigm of myth and mythmaking. Naddaf’s introduction and afterword contextualize the conversations by discussing Brisson’s and Plato’s understanding of the origin and meaning of myth, elaborating on the role of myth in anthropogeny, in the creation of selfhood, and in multiculturalism. Making Sense of Myth promises both a philosophy of myth and a philosophy of life, one inspired by Brisson’s lifelong engagement with the great Western philosopher Plato. (shrink)

An overview of the philosophical and bioethics literature on conscientious refusals by health care professionals to provide abortion and contraceptive services.

Are OCypersonsOCO physical things, members of the species homo sapiens which exist solely in materialist form, continuous in structure with other living things? Or is the issue a more complex one: are there more dimensions to being a person than mere physical, biological existence? These are matters of interest and discussion in many fields of study in this age of individuality. In this wide-ranging essay, the author addresses various aspects of the issue, including the history of self and identity. The (...) ancient tradition of dualism is rejected in favour of a straightforward holistic and naturalistic account of selfhood; it is argued that the mind arises in an emergent sense from the body and personal identity is best expressed in terms of a self-reflective and meaningful narrative. The approach is principally from an analytic philosophy point of view but also takes onOCoboard psychological and sociological aspects of self and identity. (shrink)

Autobiografisch getint relaas van de protestantse predikant over hoe zijn visie op God en het geloof is veranderd.

We have seen important work on questions such as: whether there is a uniquely female approach to ethics, whether ethics should be par.

At the start of the 21st century, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) seems to have great potential for innovating business practices with a positive impact on People, Planet and Profit. In this article the differences between the management systems approach of the nineties, and Corporate Social Responsibility are analysed.An analysis is structured around three business principles that are relevant for CSR and management systems: (1) doing things right the first time, (2) doing the right things, and (3) continuous improvement and innovation. (...) Basically CSR is focussing on the second principle, and management systems focus on the first. However, CSR is very likely to build on the management systems as well.From a CSR point of view, the existing generation of management systems with their focus on rational control (= doing things right) can only be of limited use in the development of CSR. However, the preventive rationalities of management systems are important. Values and the principle doing the right things is extremely relevant for CSR. This goes far beyond the present generation of ISO type management systems; opportunities stem from building on TQM approaches like the EFQM Business Excellence model. Continuous improvement and innovation is a permanent challenge underlying the two other business principles, and requires both individual and organisational learning processes. In the present generation of management systems, continuous improvement mainly addresses rational prevention, barely the value aspects of business.For the further development and implementation of CSR, each of the three business management principles are vital. There is a need for a new generation of management systems that addresses the values at stake in strategic decision-making, both at company level and in the behaviour of individuals, while the rationalities of prevention and anticipation are still relevant. In both directions more emphasis for continuous learning and innovation will be needed.CSR is likely to trigger the development of management systems in the directions mentioned. This will support companies to be credible and transparent in improving the performance with respect to people, planet and profit. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that there has been a ‘paradigm shift’ in the field of assessment over the last two or three decades: a new preoccupation with what learners can do, what they know or what they have achieved. It is suggested in this article that this change has precipitated a need to distinguish two conceptually and logically distinct methodological approaches to assessment that have hitherto gone unacknowledged. The upshot, it is argued, is that there appears to be a fundamental (...) confusion at the heart of current policy, a confusion occasioned by the demand to know what learners know and compounded by a failure to recognise what this properly entails for assessment methodology. (shrink)

In recent years, the relationships between systems of symbolic representations and cities have given rise to an often rich and stimulating consideration among various specialists in human sciences, namely, historians, anthropologists, semiologists and sociologists, among others. Urban conglomerates can no longer be conceived as simple assemblages of more or less functional constructions. The city is as much a mental concept as it is a physical reality. It is made up of images that give it a meaning. It does not exist (...) independently of the sum of subjective interpretations that are continually made by its inhabitants. Our Western perception of the city may be influenced by romanesque literature or the memory of a painting, in other words, by imaginary worlds. It varies according to individual memory: each of us is attached to the different urban spaces of his souvenirs, emotions arising from family history or the duration of a lifetime. These personal projections are all the more important because they command a certain number of daily actions and furnish a framework of orientation to every citizen. They contribute to giving a moral quality to urban space and transform physical objects into concepts, into more or less determined signs. (shrink)

The last decade or so has seen a resurgence of interest in Ryle's knowing‐how / knowing‐that (KH/KT) distinction, prompted by Stanley and Williamson's provocative intellectualist reading of the distinction. This chapter argues that even by Ryle's own account the distinction cannot properly be regarded as an epistemological distinction, that is, as demarcating two different kinds of knowledge. It talks about being clear about where our use of the KH/KT distinction does make sense and where it doesn't. More specifically, it leaves (...) us incapable of explaining how we are able to distinguish cases perhaps identical in terms of overt behaviour yet seemingly very different in terms of what is known. Although the KH/KT distinction has some limited viability in the context of knowledge attribution it is simply not viable as an epistemological distinction. (shrink)