This paper discusses the economic and philosophical inadequacies that have characterised the Project Tiger scheme in India. Launched in the 1970s to protect the habitats of the Royal Bengal Tiger, Project Tiger has over time evolved into a management system that has abstracted the tiger from its habitat by highlighting its charismatic functions. However the abstraction has also caused the tiger to be valued for its narrow consumptive uses. By comparison the habitats that (...) have nurtured the tiger have received less attention. The paper critiques partial equilibrium frameworks that have attempted to value a tiger in terms of demand and supply functions rather than as an integral element of an ecosystem. While considering the superiority of the Total Economic Value concept as a value-determining method, the paper also points to the limitation of the concept in not addressing the conflicts between use and non-use values of a tiger. In the light of these facts, the paper advances the theory of complementarity as a valuation approach that considers the tiger and its habitat as a joint resource that needs to be protected and conserved in the larger interests of biodiversity conservation in India. (shrink)

When our smartphones distract us, much more is at stake than a momentary lapse of attention. Our use of smartphones can interfere with the building-blocks of meaningfulness and the actions that shape our self-identity. -/- By analyzing social interactions and evolving experiences, Roholt reveals the mechanisms of smartphone-distraction that impact our meaningful projects and activities. Roholt’s conception of meaning in life draws from a disparate group of philosophers—Susan Wolf, John Dewey, Hubert Dreyfus, Martin Heidegger, and Albert Borgmann. Central to Roholt’s (...) argument are what Borgmann calls focal practices: dinners with friends, running, a college seminar, attending sporting events. As a recurring example, Roholt develops the classification of musical instruments as focal things, contending that musical performance can be fruitfully understood as a focal practice. -/- Through this exploration of what generates meaning in life, Roholt makes us rethink the place we allow smartphones to occupy in the everyday. But he remains cautiously optimistic. This thoughtful, needed interrogation of smartphones shows how we can establish a positive role for technologies within our lives. (shrink)

Combining the conceptual approach of racial formation and racial projects with the Foucauldian concept of governmentality, Jeong-eun Rhee theorizes the “neoliberal racial project” (NRP) and examines contemporary meanings and operations of race and racism in relation to neoliberalism. She analyzes Amy Chua's popular parenting memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, as a specific case of the NRP, and demonstrates how in this text race is pressed to work in new — neoliberal — ways, re/generating different kinds of (...) categories and meanings, yet also continuously drawing upon old categories and meanings, to effect and rationalize social arrangements of power and exploitation, violence and expropriation. What is noteworthy is the way in which racial neoliberalism builds silently on the structural conditions of racism while disabling the very categories of their recognizability. Consequently, Rhee argues for new, historically bounded theories that can articulate how the meanings, categories, and concepts of races are constantly being reconfigured. (shrink)

The implementation of Project Tiger in India, 1973-1974, was justly hailed as a triumph of international environmental advocacy. It occurred as a growing number of conservation-oriented biologists were beginning to argue forcefully for scientifically managed conservation of species and ecosystems -- the same scientists who would, by the mid-1980s, call themselves conservation biologists. Although India accepted international funds to implement Project Tiger, it strictly limited research posts to Government of India Foresters, against the protests of Indian (...) and US biologists who hoped to conduct the scientific studies that would lead to better management and thus more effective conservation of the tiger. The foresters were not trained to conduct research, and in fact did not produce any of significance for the first 15 years of Project Tiger's existence. The failure of biologists to gain access to India's tigers in the 1970s was caused by many factors, but not least among them was a history of disdain among conservation-oriented biologists for government officials managing reserves, and the local politics of conservation. Project Tiger, then, serves as a case study for the discussion of the intersection of conservation biology with non-scientific concerns, including nationalism and the desire of the Indian government to more completely control its land. (shrink)

This article describes a policy-driven project Marketing of unhealthy food directed to children, which represents the first extensive study of food and beverage advertising and marketing to children in Sweden. The project mapped out food and beverage advertisements directed to Swedish children to provide policymakers with current data about marketing trends to inform the debate concerning the regulation of food advertising in response to childhood obesity. The nature, number and placement of advertisements on television and in the internet (...) that encourage children to buy food and beverages were surveyed during one week in 2005 and 2007. The article summarizes the TV and Internet study results, stakeholder views and public opinion, and discusses the policy implications of digital media and the marketing of unhealthy food and beverages to Swedish children. (shrink)

The landscape of the Sundarbans today is a product of two countervailing forces: conversion of wetland forests to cropland vs. sequestration of the forests in reserves to be managed for long-term sustained yield of wood products. For two centures, land-hungry peasants strove to transform the native tidal forest vegetation into an agroecosystem dominated by paddy rice and fish culture. During the colonial period, their reclamation efforts were encouraged by landlords and speculators, who were themselves encouraged by increasingly favorable state policies (...) (land grants, tax incentives, cadastral surveys, and eventually colonization projects and subsidized irrigation) designed by revenue officials to maximize the rate of transformation of wetland forest to taxable agricultural land.In the late nineteenth century, as the rate of agricultural conversion increased, the colonial Forest Department succcessfully sought to preserve large areas of the remaining Sundarbans tidal forest by giving them legal status as Reserved or Protected Forests. These forests were intensively managed to provide a sustainable supply of timber and firewood for the increasing population of southern Bengal. Institutionalization of conflicting policies by the Revenue and Forest Departments reflected the escalating needs for both food and forest products as the colony grew. Today, supplies of some economically valuable trees have been depleted, and some mammals are locally extinct (although the Bengal tiger remains), but government policy in both Bangladesh and India now favors use of the Sundarbans as forest rather than its transformation to agricultural land. Further expansion of cropland to meet the grain demands of the burgeoning Bengali population in both nations has largely taken place outside the boundaries of the Sundarbans. Overexploitation of these forests for wood products remains a possibility, but large-scale clearing for rice paddies is unlikely under present policies. (shrink)

The Homeobox (Hox) genes essentially define body regions in all animals including humans – responsible for determining two arms, two legs, one nose and so on. This gene is shared by all living beings – from the snail to the elephant to humans – and it can now be manipulated into transforming certain parts of the body into others. We have observed such transformations, such as that of an amputated antenna into a limb, as far back as 1901, termed neomorphosis (...) (Morgan 1901), and it has only recently re-emerged as an area of scientific study. Spontaneous transformations and induced regenerations are fascinating research topics that are fast becoming a reality; some scientists are postulating that it may be possible that the hox gene could be central to limb regeneration in the future. This article will present the Hox Zodiac project, which attempts to introduce this subject and push the ideas further into speculation of mutation (i.e. humans and animals) into creatures that may resemble the mythical beings we know as fiction. The starting point of this wheel of life is the Chinese zodiac, consisting of twelve animals that are associated with humans. In the process of development, it became interesting to note that half of the animals on the wheel are those used in the lab – rat, pig, monkey, dog, sheep and rabbit. The ox, tiger, horse, snake and rooster are considered mythical and the dragon could easily fall into the category of a genetically modified creature that is to re-emerge in the future. Since medical and scientific testing on humans is strictly forbidden, scientists have virtually shifted to animals for all such studies. Thus, everything that is used on our bodies and minds is directly related to the animal kingdom. The pig heart and rat mind are symbols for the paradox of science that uses animals in ways that are at once disconnected while subconsciously connecting us more than ever by using research results in medical and food products we consume. Although the controversy of using animals in labs is widely known and often violently opposed, the artist in the lab questions how this research impacts our collective consciousness, especially with the growing trend of brain-computer interfaces and particularly synthetic telepathy. This relationship of the human to the metaphorical meaning of the animal kingdom brought to mind Jung’s research on metaphors, symbolism and archetypes, which became central to the Hox Zodiac. (shrink)

In Sri Lanka’s armed conflict, gender, sexuality, and sex work are intermeshed with militarized nationalism. Militarization entrenches gender performances and heteronormative schemes while enabling women to transgress these—whether as combatants or as sex workers. Familiarly, in this nationalist encounter, women are expected to safeguard culture, notably through proper dress and sexual conduct. Sexualactivity that challenges containment arouses anxiety because loyalty to military groupor communal boundary can be compromised. Drawing on three examples—adress codecall by a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam women’s (...) wing, consequences for a woman alleged to be a sex worker, and the public stripping of an alleged suicide bomber at a military checkpoint—this article explores how gendered behaviors and sexualities marked as culture are constructed and controlled in the interests of militarized, nationalist projects; how women can be both agents and objects of these controls; and the implications for women who refuse to comply. (shrink)

On offer here is a tradition-neutral way of understanding the distinction between analytic and continental philosophy of music. The distinction is drawn in terms of methodology, rather than content, by identifying contrasting methodological tendencies of each tradition—initial maneuvers that frame an investigation, which are related to one another insofar as they involve, or do not involve, two kinds of methodological detachment. These maneuvers are extracted through a consideration of contrasting pairs of examples. The pairs consist of an analytic and a (...) continental account of a core issue in the philosophy of music. The issues considered are musical experience, musical ontology, and the relationship between music and the emotions. The philosophers considered are Roger Scruton and Pierre Bourdieu, Jerrold Levinson and Lydia Goehr, Peter Kivy, and Andrew Bowie. (shrink)

Roholt explains why grooves, which are forged in music’s rhythmic nuances, remain hidden to some listeners. He argues that grooves are not graspable through the intellect nor through mere listening; rather, grooves are disclosed through our bodily engagement with music. We grasp a groove bodily by moving with music’s pulsations. By invoking the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s notion of “motor intentionality,” Roholt shows that the “feel” of a groove, and the understanding of it, are two sides of a coin: to (...) “get” a groove just is to comprehend it bodily and to feel that embodied comprehension. (shrink)

In a social situation, why is it sometimes off-putting when a person reaches for his smartphone? In small-group contexts such as a college seminar, a business meeting, a family meal, or a small musical performance, when a person begins texting or interacting with social media on a smartphone he may disengage from the group. When we do find this off-putting, we typically consider it to be just impolite or inappropriate. In this essay, I argue that something more profound is at (...) stake. One significant way in which individuals shape their self-identities is through interactions with others in small groups. Much identity-work is interdependent; it requires generating and preserving social contexts. I argue that the smartphone-use of some individuals can fracture a group’s context and thus negatively affect the identity-work of others. In this essay, I examine identity-work, sociality, and personal technology from a perspective of existential phenomenology. (shrink)

A Rousseauist bias towards the study of human aggression has treated it as a regrettable anomaly rather than a volatile reflection of important forces in human evolution. Intrepidly, Nell displays the arc of connection between predation in humans and other animals and the neurophysiological factors that underlie chronic interest in accident, death, and harsh force.

Key Terms in Philosophy of Art offers a clear, concise and accessible introduction to a vital sub-field of philosophy. The book offers a comprehensive overview of the key terms, concepts, thinkers and major works in the history of this key area of philosophical thought. Ideal for first-year students coming to the subject for the first time, Key Terms in Philosophy of Art will serve as the ideal companion to the study of this fascinating subject. -/- Tiger C. Roholt provides (...) detailed summaries of core concepts in the philosophy of art. An introductory chapter provides context and background, while the following chapters offer detailed definitions of key terms and concepts, introductions to the work of key thinkers, summaries of key texts, introductions to philosophy's approach to the major art forms, and advice on further reading. Designed specifically to meet the needs of students and assuming no prior knowledge of the subject, this is the ideal reference tool for those coming to philosophy of art for the first time. (shrink)

When a jazz, rock, or hip-hop drummer strikes certain notes in each measure slightly late, instead of hearing the degree to which those notes are late, we typically hear the effects of those variations; namely, a groove, the "feel" of a rhythm. Slight variations of pitch function similarly. In this essay, I argue that certain analytic theorists go astray due to their preoccupation with the variations themselves. By invoking Maurice Merleau- Ponty's insights into subtle visual perceptions, and his notion of (...) perceptual indeterminacy, I avoid an account of musical subtlety suggested by Daniel Dennett that is too coarse-grained, as well as the bleak conclusion that certain musical subtleties are ineffable, Diana Raffman's view. I conclude that elements of music that are perceived ambiguously can perform a positive function in such aesthetic experiences: they can mediate or foster emergent qualities; moreover, they must be perceived in this way to do so. (shrink)

. The brain evolved not to think but to act, and ideology is an act of social affiliation which can be compared to kin affiliation, both satisfyingly emotional and expressing a perception about the nature of the real world central to the nature of being human. Males may affiliate to macrosocial ideologies more enthusiastically than females because of their relative lack of certainty of kin relationships. Exogamy was the necessary solution to kin‐related strife in prehistory. Perhaps what the world needs (...) is not only a moral equivalent to war but an ideological equivalent to exogamy to resolve social differences on a much larger scale. (shrink)

While it is obviously interesting, it is not necessary as Boehm does to relate the analysis of morality to lives of primates other than humans. Exposition of human prehistory and history offer ample basis for comparative work. Especially, the transition from hunting/gathering/foraging to agriculture/pastoralism appears to have generated urgent moralistic behaviour. In an interesting historical curiosity, Max Weber himself perceived the basis of morality, or legitimacy, in biosocial processes.

Editorial and Introduction to Special Edition on "Annas on Virtue and Skill".

Au travers de la multiplicité des usages du field recording, tantôt support d’étude des paysages sonores, tantôt outil de composition musical et environnemental, mais nécessairement dépendant d’un contexte (inter) culturel, David Christoffel et Guillaume Tiger explorent un certain rapport à la nature. Comment parle-t-on de nature via les field recordings? Quel sens donner à la représentation de la nature dans la musique? Comment « justice » est-elle rendue à la nature dans l’élaboration de paysages sonores virtuels? Les réflexions croisées (...) des auteurs sur ces questionnements tournent en sens inverses autour d’un même pot de sons naturels. (shrink)

The systematic measurement of consumers’ sentiments toward business ethical practices is expanded to two emerging economies in Asia (China and India). The Chinese were very optimistic about the future ethical behavior of businesses, while the Indians recorded the lowest BEI scores yet. Chinese consumers were very concerned with product issues, while Indians were concerned equally about low quality products and excessive prices.

The Bentham Project is delighted to announce a call for papers for “Bentham and Australia: Convicts, Utility, and Empire”, a conference to be held at University College London on 11-12 April 2019 to mark the forthcoming publication of Writings on Australia, a volume of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. The conference will explore themes such as the influence and impact of Bentham’s ideas on the theory and practice of punishment in convict Australia, on advocates and opponents of co...

Volume 8 of this landmark edition follows Peirce from May 1890 through July 1892—a period of turmoil as his career unraveled at the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. The loss of his principal source of income meant the beginning of permanent penury and a lifelong struggle to find gainful employment. His key achievement during these years is his celebrated Monist metaphysical project, which consists of five classic articles on evolutionary cosmology. Also included are reviews and essays from The Nation (...) in which Peirce critiques Paul Carus, William James, Auguste Comte, Cesare Lombroso, and Karl Pearson, and takes part in a famous dispute between Francis E. Abbot and Josiah Royce. Peirce's short philosophical essays, studies in non-Euclidean geometry and number theory, and his only known experiment in prose fiction complete his production during these years. Peirce's 1883-1909 contributions to the Century Dictionary form the content of volume 7 which is forthcoming. (shrink)

Praise for Volume 1: "... a first-rate edition, which supersedes all other portable Peirces.... all the Peirce most people will ever need." —Louis Menand, The New York Review of Books Volume 2 of this convenient two-volume chronological reader’s edition provides the first comprehensive anthology of the brilliant American thinker Charles Sanders Peirce’s mature philosophy. A central focus of Volume 2 is Peirce’s evolving theory of signs and its appplication to his pragmatism.

Praise for Volume 1: "... a first-rate edition, which supersedes all other portable Peirces.... all the Peirce most people will ever need." —Louis Menand, The New York Review of Books Volume 2 of this convenient two-volume chronological reader’s edition provides the first comprehensive anthology of the brilliant American thinker Charles Sanders Peirce’s mature philosophy. A central focus of Volume 2 is Peirce’s evolving theory of signs and its appplication to his pragmatism.

Frege begins Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik, the work that introduces the project which was to occupy him for most of his professional career, with the question, 'What is the number one?' It is a question to which even mathematicians, he says, have no satisfactory answer. And given this scandalous situation, he adds, there is small hope that we shall be able to say what number is. Frege intends to rectify the situation by providing definitions of the number one and (...) the concept of number. But what, exactly, is required of a definition? Surely it will not do to stipulate that the number one is Julius Caesar - that would change the subject. It seems reasonable to suppose that an acceptable definition must be a true statement containing a description that picks out the object to which the numeral '1' already refers. And, similarly, that an acceptable definition of the concept of number must contain a description that picks out precisely those objects that are numbers - those objects to which our numerals refer. Yet, while Frege writes a great deal about what criteria his definitions must satisfy, the above criteria are not among those he mentions. Nor does he attempt to convince us that his definitions of '1' and the other numerals are correct by arguing that these definitions pick out objects to which these numerals have always referred. Yet, while Frege writes a great deal about what criteria his definitions must satisfy, the above criteria are not among those he mentions. Nor does he attempt to convince us that his definitions of ‘1’ and the other numerals are correct by arguing that these definitions pick out objects to which these numerals have always referred. There is, as we shall see shortly, a great deal of evidence that Frege’s definitions are not intended to pick out objects to which our numerals already refer. But if this is so, how can these definitions teach us anything about our science of arithmetic? And what criteria must these definitions satisfy? To answer these questions, we need to understand what it is that Frege thinks we need to learn about the science of arithmetic. (shrink)

Supporters of conceptual engineering often use Haslanger’s ameliorative project as a key example of their methodology. However, at face value, Haslanger’s project is no cause for optimism about conceptual engineering. If we interpret Haslanger as seeking to revise how people in general use and understand words such as ‘woman’, ‘man’, etc., then her project has been unsuccessful. And if we interpret her as seeking to reveal the meaning of those words, then her project does not involve (...) conceptual engineering. I develop and defend an alternative interpretation of Haslanger’s project and argue that, so interpreted, it is a successful conceptual engineering project after all. In so doing, I develop what I call a particularist account of the success conditions for conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Michael Peters, Sonja Arndt & Marek TesarThis is a collective writing experiment of PESA members, including its Executive Committee, asking questions of the Philosophy of Education in a New Key. Co...

Identifying optimal ways of organizing exploration in particle physics mega-labs is a challenging task that requires a combination of case-based and formal epistemic approaches. Data-driven studies suggest that projects pursued by smaller master-teams are substantially more efficient than larger ones across sciences, including experimental particle physics. Smaller teams also seem to make better project choices than larger, centralized teams. Yet the epistemic requirement of small, decentralized, and diverse teams contradicts the often emphasized and allegedly inescapable logic of discovery that (...) forces physicists pursuing the fundamental levels of the physical world to perform centralized experiments in mega-labs at high energies. We explain, however, that this epistemic requirement could be met, since the nature of theoretical and physical constraints in high energy physics and the technological obstacles stemming from them turn out to be surprisingly open-ended. (shrink)

This paper describes the “Ethics Project”, a semester-long entrepreneurial activity in which students must make real-life decisions and then reflect upon their decisions. The Ethics Project asks students to think of something good to do, something that adds value to the world, and then do it. Along the way, they must navigate problems of opportunity cost or feasibility versus desirability, must anticipate and overcome strategic and ethical obstacles, and must ensure they add value, taking into account their costs. (...) Rather than role-playing through case studies, students live through real-life case studies which result from their own choices. When properly administered, the Ethics Project trains student to be principled leaders who integrate ethical principles into strategic decision-making, and who can discover and overcome their own moral limitations. (shrink)

The Gricean paradigm in pragmatics has recently been attacked for its alleged lack of explanatory import, based on the claim that it does not seek accounts of how utterance interpretation actually works, but merely of how it might work. This article rebuts this line of attack by offering a clear and detailed account of the explanatory project of Gricean pragmatics according to which the latter aims for rationalizing explanations of utterance interpretation. It is shown that, on this view, Gricean (...) pragmatics seeks psychological explanations of utterance interpretation that are “cognitively real” in a perfectly clear and robust sense. (shrink)

Scientific authorship has become a contested terrain in contemporary science. Based on a survey of authors across fields, we measure the likelihood of specialist authors : people who only made specialized contributions, such as data, materials, or funding; and “nonauthor collaborators” : those who did significant work on the project but do not appear as authors, across different research contexts, including field, size of the project team, commercial orientation, impact of publication, and organization of the collaboration. We find (...) that guest and ghost authors are common, with about one-third of publications having at least one specialist author and over half having at least one nonauthor collaborator. We see significant cross-field variations in both overall rates and types of specialist authors and nonauthor collaborators. We find there are generally fewer specialist authors among highly cited papers and more graduate student nonauthor collaborators in single location projects. The results suggest authorship practices vary across fields, and by project characteristics, complicating the use of authorship lists as a basis for evaluation. We discuss implications of these findings for interpreting author lists in the context of science policy. (shrink)

In this paper we assume that ‘theory’ is important for Clinical Ethics Support Services (CESS). We will argue that the underlying implicit theory should be reflected. Moreover, we suggest that the theoretical components on which any clinical ethics support (CES) relies should be explicitly articulated in order to enhance the quality of CES.A theoretical framework appropriate for CES will be necessarily complex and should include ethical (both descriptive and normative), metaethical and organizational components. The various forms of CES that exist (...) in North-America and in Europe show their underlying theory more or less explicitly, with most of them referring to some kind of theoretical components including ‘how-to’ questions (methodology), organizational issues (implementation), problem analysis (phenomenology or typology of problems), and related ethical issues such as end-of-life decisions (major ethical topics).In order to illustrate and explain the theoretical framework that we are suggesting for our own CES project METAP, we will outline this project which has been established in a multi-centre context in several healthcare institutions. We conceptualize three ‘pillars’ as the major components of our theoretical framework: (1) evidence, (2) competence, and (3) discourse. As a whole, the framework is aimed at developing a foundation of our CES project METAP.We conclude that this specific integration of theoretical components is a promising model for the fruitful further development of CES. (shrink)