I am grateful to all the respondents to ‘How harmful are the average American's greenhouse gas emissions?’. Their comments were individually and collectively very rich. Since there is...

Environmental ethicists often hold that organisms, species, ecosystems, and the like have goods of their own. But, even given that such goods exist, whether we ought to value them is controversial. Hence an environmental philosophy needs, in addition to an account of what sorts of values there are, an explanation what, how and why we morally ought to value—that is, an account of moral valuing. This paper presents one such an account. Specifically, I aim to show that unless there are (...) eternal goods (and maybe even if there are), we have a duty of self-transcendence toward nature—that is, a duty to value nature's goods as ends. This duty is owed, however, not to nature, but to ourselves. It is grounded in what I call an imperative of hope. The argument, in a nutshell, is that we have a duty to ourselves to (in a certain sense) optimize hope. This optimization requires self-transcendence toward entities whose goods are more diverse and enduring than any human goods. But unless there are eternal goods, such goods occur only in nature. (shrink)

Nietzsche's embrace of the idea of eternal recurrence has long puzzled readers, both because the idea is inherently implausible and because it seems inconsistent with other aspects of his philosophy. This paper offers a novel account of Nietzsche's motives for that embrace—namely that Nietzsche found in eternal recurrence the only possible way to reconcile three potent and apparently conflicting convictions: (1) there are no Hinterwelten (“worlds-beyond”), (2) the great love (take joy in) all things just as they are (amor fati), (...) and (3) all joy wills eternity. The case for this account has two parts. I show first that Nietzsche was deeply committed to each of these principles at or before the time the idea of eternal recurrence “came to” him in 1881 and second that these principles, though in apparent conflict, can, as Nietzsche understood them, be reconciled by, and only by, the idea of eternal recurrence. It follows, I argue, that the idea of eternal recurrence was originally independent of Nietzsche's conceptions of the will to power and the Übermensch. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Psychodramatic Psychotherapy for Schizophrenic IndividualsJohn Nolte, MD, PhD (bio)As a long-time student, practitioner, trainer, author and advocate of J. L. Moreno, MD,’s works and specifically the psychodramatic method, I am always appreciative of efforts, like Chapy’s, to commend and advocate for psychodrama. This is especially so because for a time, Moreno and psychodrama were heavily criticized, even maligned in the mental health professions. At the same time, considering (...) how poorly Moreno and his methods have been understood as well as the difficulty of accessing his original material, I feel an obligation to set the record straight when confronted with incomplete, inadequate, or sometimes incompetent expositions of Moreno’s psychodrama.Chapy’s article recommends psychodrama as a treatment method for schizophrenic people by calling upon existentialist and phenomenological concepts. Psychodrama, he proposes, opens up existence by allowing “schizophrenic patients to incorporate the experience of an ‘absolutely other.’”There are major flaws in Chapy’s presentation. His “clinical illustration,” the presentation of a psychodrama with a schizophrenic patient, while it may be considered psychodrama under the broadest definition of the term, hardly fulfills the requirements of a psychotherapeutic psychodrama. We must question the competence of the psychodramatist in Chapy’s example. Chapy’s description of the drama itself falls short of being an adequate account of a psychodrama, failing to convey the emotional intensity and realness which a well directed and reported psychodrama achieves. We do not learn, for example, if Damien’s perception of his father is introduced through role reversal with the father, a standard psychodramatic technique which is done in order to give the auxiliary ego taking that role an understanding how Damien experiences his father. We do not know if role reversals are made throughout the drama so that Damien can experience how he is perceived by father, can feel the force of his confrontation in the role of father, and is required to reply as his father to his confrontation. We are given little information about the psychodramatic techniques employed by the director other than the scene setting of the studio in which the psychodramatic [End Page 227] encounter takes place, and the soliloquy in which Damien expresses his worry and hopes for the outcome of the confrontation. It should be clear in the description of the drama whether the father’s statements in the drama were produced by Damien in role reversal, or by the auxiliary ego playing the role. There is a difference and it is significant. Although we are told that Damien “evokes a systematic relationship between him and his father” during the psychodrama, we do not see how this happens. Every psychodrama is an existential experience and its description should fully communicate its meaning and emotion.A more serious problem, however, is that this drama does not deal with Damien’s psychosis. Although Damien may be diagnosed as schizophrenic, his disorder is obviously in remission or controlled by psychotropic drugs. The drama reveals none of the hallucinations, delusions, or disorder characteristic of schizophrenic disorders. It could be psychodrama of any young man with a complaint about his father.The notion that people with schizophrenia can be successfully treated by psychodrama is not new. Moreno began developing psychodramatic psychotherapy at his Beacon Hill Sanitarium, established in 1936. He and psychodrama gained some fame because of his success in treating schizophrenic patients at a time when schizophrenic individuals were considered incapable of benefitting from psychotherapy. Moreno’s approach to the treatment of schizophrenic patients was much more robust than the psychodrama described by Chapy. During a psychotic attack, the individual’s perception of the world and self are distorted in ways that made action and interaction in the world of conventional reality impossible. Additionally, the psychotic episode makes the psychotic person incapable of being comprehended by anyone else, including the psychiatrist. Moreno’s solution was to make the chaotic, bewildering, sometimes violent and always terrifying inner world visible and tangible in the surplus reality of the psychodramatic stage. In moments of lucidity following the psychotic episode, he asked his schizophrenic patients to reenact their psychotic experiences. The result was that, “In this imaginary reality on the psychodramatic stage, the... (shrink)

This paper presents an argument for metaphysical realism, understood as the claim that the world has structure that would exist even if our cognitive activities never did. The argument is based on the existence of a structured world at a time when it was still possible that we would never evolve. But the interpretation of its premises introduces subtleties: whether, for example, these premises are to be understood as assertions about the world or about our evidence, internally or externally, via (...) assertibility conditions or truth conditions – and what sorts of beings are included in the `we' upon whose cognitions the antirealist supposes the structure of the world to depend. I argue that antirealism can provide no defensible, fully articulated interpretation of the premises that either shows them not to be true or defeats the reasoning. (shrink)

The experience of psychosis can sweep into a life like a violent storm. In this paper, I first attempt to fully imagine the experience of such a storm by drawing on first person accounts and then consider the clinical encounter between mental health practitioners and those who find themselves amidst this storm. I reflect on ways we can better support meaning-making of, and purposefully living with, these potentially intensely distressing and disturbing experiences. Drawing on narrative and collaborative practices, I consider (...) grounding the embodied experiences related to psychosis, honouring the stories of severe and enduring mental health problems and the life experiences that lead to them, accompanying people in their meaning-making of these experiences and joining in the fight against stigma. In particular, the importance of walking alongside those in the throes of the storm and bearing witness to their suffering is highlighted. Finally, the implications for the training of mental health professionals are considered. (shrink)

I resolve an apparently unresolved dispute about how probable uniform experience makes an extrapolation from it, and draw some general lessons about such enumerative induction. Uniform experience does not necessarily confer a high probability on an extrapolation of or generalization from that experience. Rational extrapolation or generalization typically involves a lot of specific background information, though not necessarily a general assumption that nature is uniform or that the future will resemble the past. And new evidence which is highly likely on (...) one hypothesis but highly unlikely on any of its competitors does not necessarily make the former hypothesis highly probable. (shrink)

John Nolt’s “Hope, Self-Transcendence, and Environmental Ethics” is a unique attempt to defend a partial biocentrism – the view that we should regard a significant portion of non-sentient life (as well as sentient life) as having direct moral standing. After defending a general duty to optimize human hope, Nolt argues that this duty requires us to become self-transcendent toward living things in nature. Self-transcendence refers to an intentional state of valuing the good of some object other than yourself as an (...) end. Thus, though Nolt begins from an anthropocentric starting point, his argument reaches a conclusion that biocentrists should find palatable (though some may feel it does not go far enough, since it does not grant direct moral standing to all life). Although Nolt’s argument is novel and thought-provoking, I contend that it is nevertheless unsuccessful because it cannot overcome three significant difficulties. First, it is not clear that self-transcendence toward living things in nature would actually optimize hope. Second, the general duty to optimize hope does not entail an individual duty to seek self-transcendence toward living things in nature. Third, the value of the hope attained by achieving self-transcendence toward non-sentient life seems astronomically minute compared to the hope attained by achieving self-transcendence toward sentient life and especially toward human life. In light of these difficulties, I conclude the essay by arguing that self-transcendence is best directed only toward sentient living things. (shrink)

This article takes up the “Furet/nolte debate” over the meaning of fascism and communism for our time. It does so in order to sketch out the dilemmas that confound the construction of meaningful narratives of the twentieth century, where persistent obstacles attend the enclosure of twentieth‐century events within an integrated and coherent whole. For at least two reasons, I suggest, the correspondence of Ernst Nolte and the late François Furet is instructive in identifying the nature of these obstacles (...) more precisely. First, Furet himself is the author of what is currently construed as being one of the most ambitious attempts to narrate the twentieth century, by taking the “illusions” engendered by faith in the Marxist–Leninist project as its organising principle. Second, the positions adopted by Nolte have been contested in the public sphere as being acutely emblematic of problems latent in the attempt to enclose communism and fascism together in a narrative of mutual complicity. The correspondence between Furet and Nolte therefore provides a fruitful context in which to treat a set of related problems bearing upon the relation between historical truth and reconciliation, between history and memory, and between the contemporary world and the advent of totalitarianism. As I conclude, a key point which has to date been overlooked in discussions of this kind is the coincidence of attempts to establish a historiographic framework for the twentieth century with efforts to undertake a settling of accounts with socialism. (shrink)

A standard view in philosophy is that knowledge entails justification. Yet recent research suggests otherwise. We argue that this admirable and striking research suffers from an important limitation: participants were asked about knowledge but not justification. Thus it is possible that people attributed knowledge partly because they thought the belief was justified. Perhaps though, if given the opportunity, people would deny justification while still attributing knowledge. It is also possible that earlier findings were due to perspective taking. This paper reports (...) further research that directly addresses these questions. Our findings support the hypothesis that knowledge entails justification on the ordinary view. (shrink)

According to a consensus view in philosophy, “deciding” and “intending” are synonymous expressions. Researchers have recently challenged this view with the discovery of a counterexample in which ordinary speakers attribute deciding without intending. The aim of this paper is to investigate the strengths and limits of this discovery. The result of this investigation revealed that the evidence challenging the consensus view is strong. We replicate the initial finding against consensus and extend it by utilizing several new measures, materials, and procedures. (...) Together this evidence strongly suggests that “deciding” is not synonymous with “intending” in ordinary language and that the consensus view should be rejected. (shrink)

This study aimed to explore postgraduate students’ lived experiences of managing research ethics committee processes. Whilst there is a wide range of research that explores ethics principles/guidan...

It has sometimes been claimed (usually without evidence) that the harm caused by an individual's participation in a greenhouse-gas-intensive economy is negligible. Using data from several contemporary sources, this paper attempts to estimate the harm done by an average American. This estimate is crude, and further refinements are surely needed. But the upshot is that the average American is responsible, through his/her greenhouse gas emissions, for the suffering and/or deaths of one or two future people.

This book explores the question of how international law is applied by domestic courts. Through case studies and analysis the contributors consider how traditions and diversity affect the interpretation of international law, from a mixture of doctrinal, practical, and theoretical approaches.

Climate change will cause large numbers of casualties, perhaps extending over thousands of years. Casualties have a clear moral significance that economic and other technical measures of harm tend to mask. They are, moreover, universally understood, whereas other measures of harm are not. Therefore, the harms of climate change should regularly be expressed in terms of casualties by such agencies such as IPCC’s Working Group III, in addition to whatever other measures are used. Casualty estimates should, furthermore, be used to (...) derive estimates of casualties per emission source up to a given date. Such estimates would have wide margins of error, but they would add substantially to humanity’s grasp of the moral costs of particular greenhouse gas emissions. (shrink)

The move from good to ought, a premise form found in many justifications of environmental ethics, is itself in need of justification. Of the potential moves from good to ought surveyed, some have considerable promise and others less or none. Those without much promise include extrapolations of obligations based on human goods to nonsentient natural entities, appeals to educated judgment, precautionary arguments, humanistic consequentialist arguments, and justifications that assert that our obligations to natural entities are neither directly to those entities (...) nor derived from our obligations to humans. Some arguments that extrapolate obligations based on goods involving sentience from humans to sentient animals are promising, but whether they are sufficient is controversial. Gandhian andAristotlian arguments are also promising, provided we can justify their ought premises. (shrink)

Suppose, as biocentrists do, that even microorganisms have a good of their own - that is, some objective form of welfare. Still, human welfare is vastly greater and more valuable. If it were infinitely greater, individualistic biocentrism would be pointless. But consideration of the facts of evolutionary history and of the conceptual relations between infinity and incommensurability reveals that there are no infinite welfare differences among living things. It follows, in particular, that there is some very large number of bacteria (...) whose aggregate overall welfare is not less than the welfare of a human being. (shrink)

People tend to rank values of all kinds linearly from good to bad, but there is little reason to think that this is reasonable or correct. This book argues, to the contrary, that values are often partially ordered and hence frequently incomparable. Proceeding logically from a small set of axioms, John Nolt examines the great variety of partially ordered value structures, exposing fallacies that arise from overlooking them. He reveals various ways in which incomparability is obscured: using linear indices to (...) summarize partially ordered data, relying on an inadequately defined concept of parity, or conflating incomparability with vagueness. Incomparability can enrich and clarify a range of topics including the paradoxes of Derek Parfit, rational decision theory, and the infinite values of theology. Finally, Nolt shows how to generalize many of the concepts introduced earlier, explores the intricate depths of certain noteworthy partially ordered value structures, and argues for the finitude of value. Incomparable Values will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in ethics, value theory, rational decision theory, and logic. (shrink)

The move from good to ought, a premise form found in many justifications of environmental ethics, is itself in need of justification. Of the potential moves from good to ought surveyed, some have considerable promise and others less or none. Those without much promise include extrapolations of obligations based on human goods to nonsentient natural entities, appeals to educated judgment, precautionary arguments, humanistic consequentialist arguments, and justifications that assert that our obligations to natural entities are neither directly to those entities (...) nor derived from our obligations to humans. Some arguments that extrapolate obligations based on goods involving sentience from humans to sentient animals are promising, but whether they are sufficient is controversial. Gandhian andAristotlian arguments are also promising, provided we can justify their ought premises. (shrink)

Broad in scope, this introduction to environmental ethics considers both contemporary issues and the extent of humanity’s responsibility for distant future life. John Nolt, a logician and environmental ethicist, interweaves contemporary science, logical analysis, and ethical theory into the story of the expansion of ethics beyond the human species and into the far future. Informed by contemporary environmental science, the book deduces concrete policy recommendations from carefully justified ethical principles and ends with speculations concerning the deepest problems of environmental ethics. (...) Pedagogical features include chapter outlines, annotated suggestions for further readings, the explanations of key terms when first mentioned, and an extensive glossary. (shrink)

Moves from is to good—that is, principles that link fact to value—are fundamental to environmental ethics. The upshot is fourfold: (1) for nonanthropogenic goods, only those moves from is to good are defensible which conceive goodness as goodness for biotic entities; (2) goodness for nonsentient biotic entities is contribution to their autopoietic functioning; (3) biotic entities also function “exopoietically” to benefit related entities, and these exopoietic benefits are on average greater than their own goods; and (4) the most general is-to-good (...) principles that are defensible (and hence the ones of greatest importance for environmental ethics) concern a realm of nonanthropogenic goodness that encompasses both living and nonliving nature. (shrink)

Moves from is to good—that is, principles that link fact to value—are fundamental to environmental ethics. The upshot is fourfold: (1) for nonanthropogenic goods, only those moves from is to good are defensible which conceive goodness as goodness for biotic entities; (2) goodness for nonsentient biotic entities is contribution to their autopoietic functioning; (3) biotic entities also function “exopoietically” to benefit related entities, and these exopoietic benefits are on average greater than their own goods; and (4) the most general is-to-good (...) principles that are defensible (and hence the ones of greatest importance for environmental ethics) concern a realm of nonanthropogenic goodness that encompasses both living and nonliving nature. (shrink)

Several philosophers—including C. S. Peirce, William James, Hilary Putnam and Crispin Wright—have proposed various versions of the notion that truth is an epistemic ideal. More specifically, they have held that a proposition is true if and only if it can be fixedly warranted by human inquirers, given certain ideal epistemic conditions. This paper offers a general critique of that idea, modeling conceptions of ideality and fixed warrant within the semantics that Kripke developed for intuitionistic logic. It is shown that each (...) of the two plausible notions of fixed warrant faces difficulties and that, moreover, “truth” defined in terms of either of them is distressingly dependent upon one’s conception of idealized inquiry and perhaps also upon one’s standards of warrant. (shrink)