In recent years official Roman Catholic documents have addressed the ecological crisis from the perspective of Catholic social teaching. This expansion of Catholic social thought addresses the social and ecological question. This paper links environmental and human ecology with the concept of sustainability and proposes an interpretation of the common good and a definition of sustainability within Catholic social teaching. Our treatment of sustainability and Catholic social teaching includes: an analysis of the ecological processes that sustain nature; insights from human (...) ecology, and an examination of models of sustainability as a foundation for re-structuring society to promote the common good. The paper provides a summary of the historical expansion of the common good within modern Catholic social thought, and concludes with an ecological interpretation of the common good and a definition of sustainability within the Catholic understanding of justice. (shrink)

Within the last decade those familiar with environmental ethics have witnessed a resurgence of environmental virtue ethics. According to Louke van Wensveen, ecological virtue language is “rapidly growing” and “represents a distinct moral discourse with an internal unity and logic”—what she calls “an integral discourse.” Does the modern Catholic rights tradition have anything to contribute to this ethical discourse? Grounded historically in neo-Thomistic natural law and virtue ethics, Catholic social teaching originated as a response to late ninteenth- and early twentieth-century (...) social and economic crises. Out of this application emerged the virtue of solidarity. However, an analysis of recent discourse in environmental virtue ethics shows that the treatment of solidarity as an environmental virtue is rather thin in the literature. Nevertheless, with the development of solidarity and the expanding notion of the common good, inclusive of the planetary commons, in recent Catholic documents, solidarity is “translatable” into the realm of ecological virtue ethics. As an environmental virtue, solidarity should be interpreted as “biophilic solidarity” grounded in the genetic homology of evolutionary speciation, and defined as the consistent habit of character expressed in the recognition of our fundamental interrelatedness with the human and nonhuman. As a virtue biophilic solidarity takes explicit shape in determined active engagement to create, promote, and restore the universal common good of creation. In relation to the human-centered Catholic rights tradition, the status of nature is examined drawing on an axiological analysis of nature indicating that the natural world holds a spectrum of values including utilitarian and intrinsic value. The concluding reflection points to the shortfall of environmental virtue ethics without an accompanying social ethic in the interest of an ecological vision for a sustainable society. (shrink)

With the release of Laudato Si (2015) Pope Francis has introduced new conceptual language into Catholic social teaching (CST), what he has called "integral ecology." His intent appears to be grounded in the realization that "It is essential to seek comprehensive solutions which consider the interactions with natural systems themselves and with social systems" (LS, no. CXXXVIII). Pope Francis goes on to make the case that ''We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but (...) rather with one complex crisis with isboth social and environmental" (LS, no. CXXXVIII). Consequently, in order to solve this crisis we need to utilize "an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time pro­ tecting nature" (LS, no. CXXXVlll). This perspective represents a major development in CST whereby the encyclical connects the dots between ecology/environment, economics and society, three essential aspects of what many in the environmental community and elsewhere see as in­ dispensable for humanity to achieve a sustainable relationship with the Earth. While this is extremely important for articulating a Catholic vision of sustainability, that is not the direction we take in this article. Rather our intent is to use the concept of integral ecology to do three things:(1) examine a current case in the U.S. that has received signif­ icant media attention as well as notoriety-the water crisis in Flint, Michigan; (2) describe how our recent understanding of the epigenetic impacts of environmental toxins casts a new and ominous light on this crisis and on other instances of environmental toxin exposure, and (3) propose some ideas on how epigenetic research might enlarge our in­ terpretation of basic aspects of CST highlighted in Laudato Si such as human dignity, justice and the common good. (shrink)

Hardin demonstrates that many of these structural issues can and should be distinguished from the thornier problems of utilitarian value theory, and he is able ...

Originally published in 1967, this book aims to develop an ethical theory which remedies the defects of Utilitarianism while recognising the truths upon which Utilitarians have insisted. Its thesis is offered as a challenge to all schools of moral philosophy which have flourished in the twentieth century. Dr Grice argues that there are two kinds of Judgement of moral obligation. Social Contract theory, in a form which avoids the classical objections, is employed in setting out the ground of basic obligations; (...) and the ultra obligations of individual men are found to be grounded in their own characters. He then demonstrates that the theory offered, unlike Utilitarianism, throws light on judgements of rights and justice. Moral good is seen eventually as the coping stone, not the foundation stone of morality. (shrink)

A biography of Confucius, a Chinese philosopher of the ancient world.

'A scientific opinion is one which there is some reason to believe is true; an unscientific opinion is one which is held for some reason other than its probable truth.' - Bertrand Russell One of Russell's most important books, this early classic on science illuminates his thinking on the promise and threat of scientific progress. Russell considers three questions fundamental to an understanding of science: the nature and scope of scientific knowledge, the increased power over nature that (...) science affords, and the changes in the lives of human beings that result from new forms of science. With customary wit and clarity, Russell offers brilliant discussions of many major scientific figures, including Aristotle, Galileo, Newton and Darwin. With a new introduciton by David Papineau, King's College, London. (shrink)

Russell's classic examination of the relation between individual experience and the general body of scientific knowledge. It is a rigorous examination of the problems of an empiricist epistemology.

This book explores the rise of theoretical physics in 19th century Germany. The authors show how the junior second physicist in German universities over time became the theoretical physicist, of equal standing to the experimental physicist. Gustav Kirchhoff, Hermann von Helmholtz, and Max Planck are among the great German theoretical physicists whose work and career are examined in this book. Physics was then the only natural science in which theoretical work developed into a major teaching and research specialty in its (...) own right. Readers will discover how German physicists arrived at a well-defined field of theoretical physics with well understood and generally accepted goals and needs. The authors explain the nature of the work of theoretical physics with many examples, taking care always to locate the research within the workplace. The book is a revised and shortened version of Intellectual Mastery of Nature: Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein, a two-volume work by the same authors. This new edition represents a reformulation of the larger work. It retains what is most important in the original work, while including new material, sharpening discussions, and making the research more accessible to readers. It presents a thorough examination of a seminal era in physics. (shrink)

The key to human nature that Marx found in wealth and Freud in sex, Bertrand Russell finds in power. Power, he argues, is man's ultimate goal, and is, in its many guises, the single most important element in the development of any society. Writting in the late 1930s when Europe was being torn apart by extremist ideologies and the world was on the brink of war, Russell set out to found a 'new science' to make sense of the (...) traumatic events of the day and explain those that would follow. The result was Power , a remarkable book that Russell regarded as one of the most important of his long career. Countering the totalitarian desire to dominate, Russell shows how political enlightenment and human understanding can lead to peace - his book is a passionate call for independence of mind and a celebration of the instinctive joy of human life. (shrink)

Stanley Cavell has been a brilliant, idiosyncratic, and controversial presence in American philosophy, literary criticism, and cultural studies for years. Even as he continues to produce new writing of a high standard -- an example of which is included in this collection -- his work has elicited responses from a new generation of writers in Europe and America. This collection showcases this new work, while illustrating the variety of Cavell's interests: in the "ordinary language" philosophy of Wittgenstein and Austin, in (...) film criticism and theory, in literature, psychoanalysis, and the American transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The collection also reprints Richard Rorty's early review of Cavell's magnum opus, The Claim of Reason (1979), and it concludes with Cavell's substantial set of responses to the essays, a highlight of which is his engagement with Rorty. (shrink)

The indispensability argument is sometimes seen as weakened by its reliance on a controversial premise of confirmation holism. Recently, some philosophers working on the indispensability argument have developed versions of the argument which, they claim, do not rely on holism. Some of these writers even claim to have strengthened the argument by eliminating the controversial premise. I argue that the apparent removal of holism leaves a lacuna in the argument. Without the holistic premise, or some other premise which facilitates the (...) transfer of evidence to mathematical portions of scientific theories, the argument is implausible. (shrink)

The new explanatory or enhanced indispensability argument alleges that our mathematical beliefs are justified by their indispensable appearances in scientific explanations. This argument differs from the standard indispensability argument which focuses on the uses of mathematics in scientific theories. I argue that the new argument depends for its plausibility on an equivocation between two senses of explanation. On one sense the new argument is an oblique restatement of the standard argument. On the other sense, it is vulnerable to an instrumentalist (...) response. Either way, the explanatory indispensability argument is no improvement on the standard one. (shrink)

The debate over whether we should believe that mathematical objects exist quickly leads to the question of how to determine what we should believe. Indispensabilists claim that we should believe in the existence of mathematical objects because of their ineliminable roles in scientific theory. Eleatics argue that only objects with causal properties exist. Mark Colyvan’s recent defenses of Quine’s indispensability argument against some contemporary eleatics attempt to provide reasons to favor the indispensabilist’s criterion. I show that Colyvan’s argument is not (...) decisive against the eleatic and sketch a way to capture the important intuitions behind both views. (shrink)

With a never-before published paper by Lord Henry Cavendish, as well as a biography on him, this book offers a fascinating discourse on the rise of scientific attitudes and ways of knowing. A pioneering British physicist in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Cavendish was widely considered to be the first full-time scientist in the modern sense. Through the lens of this unique thinker and writer, this book is about the birth of modern science.

The title of this Festschrift to Stephen Brown points to the understanding of medieval philosophy and theology in the longue durée of their traditions and discourses.

1 A PICTURE THEORY OF THEORY-MEANING Perplexities concerning Scientific Theories persist because the usual 'singled valued' philosophical analyses cannot do ...

Philosophy students often struggle to master the complex skills needed to succeed in their work, especially in writing thesis-driven essays. Research over the past forty years on instructional scaffolding, both generally and as applied in philosophy, has helped teachers to refine both instruction and assignment design to improve students’ performance on complex philosophical tasks. This essay reviews the fundamentals of scaffolding in order to motivate and support some innovative in-class exercises and writing assignments that can help students develop even finer-grained (...) skills. These skills are useful both intrinsically and for their transfer to longer-form essays, to other philosophical work, and to the general academic and intellectual development of our students. (shrink)

In Phenomenological Reduction in Heidegger's Sein und Zeit: a New Proposal, Matheson Russell investigates the indebtedness of the Heidegger of Being and Time to Husserl's transcendental phenomenology by way of distinguishing in it differing types of transcendental reduction. He supplies an overview of recent attempts to identify such reductions in order then to propose a new interpretation locating two levels of reduction in Heidegger's fundamental ontology. These concern, first, an enquiry going back to the horizon of 'existence', and, second, (...) one going back to the horizon of 'temporality'. While the first level is argued to be explicit in the published text, the second, Russell claims, lies within the horizon of the unfinished parts of Being and Time. (shrink)

The moral heart of normative law and economics is efficiency, especially dynamic efficiency that takes incentive effects into account. In the economic theory, justificatory argument is inherently at the institutional- or rule-level, not an the individual- or case-level. InMarkets, Morals, and the Law Jules Coleman argues against the efficiency theory on normative grounds. Although he strongly asserts the need to view law institutionally, he frequently grounds his criticisms of law and economics in arguments from little more than direct moral intuition (...) about individual cases. He evidently holds that consent provides a better normative basis for law than does efficiency and he uses consent arguments to attack recommendations from scholars in law and economics. His own chief contribution, however, is to law and economics rather than to any alternative theory. (shrink)

Russell Herman Conwell was an American Baptist minister, orator, philanthropist, lawyer, and writer. He is best remembered as the founder and first president of Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as the Pastor of The Baptist Temple, and for his inspirational lecture Acres of Diamonds. "Acres of Diamonds" originated as a speech which Conwell delivered over 6,000 times around the world. It was first published in 1890 by the John Y. Huber Company of Philadelphia. The central idea of the work (...) is that one need not look elsewhere for opportunity, achievement, or fortune--the resources to achieve all good things are present in one's own community. This theme is developed by an introductory anecdote, told to Conwell by an Arab guide, about a man who wanted to find diamonds so badly that he sold his property and went off in futile search for them; the new owner of his home discovered that a rich diamond mine was located right there on the property. Conwell elaborates on the theme through examples of success, genius, service, or other virtues involving ordinary Americans contemporary to his audience: "dig in your own back-yard!". (shrink)

Bertrand Russell se guió en esta obra por el más ajustado sentido de la unidad histórica y estudió a cada filósofo en relación con el medio en que actuó, teniendo siempre en cuenta las circunstancias sociales y políticas de su época. En este primer volumen se analizan la filosofía presocrática, las aportaciones de Sócrates, Platón y Aristóteles, la filosofía helenística y a los Padres de la primera filosofía católica. Jesús Mosterín analiza en su Prólogo la trayectoria biográfica y la (...) evolución del pensamiento de este gran filósofo: su rebelión contra el idealismo vigente; el desarrollo del logicismo aplicado a las matemáticas y al conocimiento empírico; su faceta de filósofo práctico y su trabajo en la historia de la filosofía que tendrá como resultado esta obra. (shrink)

Many libertarians believe that self-ownership is a separate matter from ownership of extra-personal property. “No-proviso” libertarians hold that property ownership should be free of any “fair share” constraints, on the grounds that the inability of the very poor to control property leaves their self-ownership intact. By contrast, left-libertarians hold that while no one need compensate others for owning himself, still property owners must compensate others for owning extra-personal property. What would a “self” have to be for these claims to be (...) true? I argue that both of these camps must conceive of the boundaries of the self as including one's body but no part of the extra-personal world. However, other libertarians draw those boundaries differently, so that self-ownership cannot be separated from the right to control extra-personal property after all. In that case, property ownership must be subject to a fair share constraint, but that constraint does not require appropriators to pay compensation. This view, which I call “right libertarianism,” differs importantly from the other types primarily in its conception of the self, which I argue is independently more plausible. (shrink)

The connection between Adam Smith and Alasdair MacIntyre is not evident at first glance. In fact, those who know MacIntyre’s work might bristle at the association. MacIntyre is inherently anticapitalist. He believes that moral people ought to reject the modern state and large-scale corporations.1 He also rejects what he terms the enlightenment project, claiming not only that it failed but that it was doomed to do so.2 Furthermore, MacIntyre’s perspectivalism seems to run counter to any “impartial spectator” theory such as (...) Smith ’s; tradition-bound rationality necessarily assumes partiality.3 In short, MacIntyre regards himself as an opponent of the liberal tradition, that intellectual lineage which is most closely associated with Smith, and, although he rejects association with communitarianism, he holds a similar place in contemporary philosophy. He is liberalism’s critic, not its reformer. But ethics makes strange bedfellows. MacIntyre’s theory of rationality, I contend, provides a useful and important complement to Smith ’s moral psychology. It allows for the intermingling of emotion and reason that is so important for Smith ’s work.4 It creates a structure for bridging Smith ’s individuals and the communities of which they are a part. In essence, I argue, MacIntyre’s work allows us to better understand Smith ’s jump from deliberation on the individual level to the development of cultural standards and norms. I conclude that Smith ’s emphasis on the individual results in an incomplete theory of communal rationality, and that MacIntyre’s emphasis on tradition leaves out a foundation of individual agency. The two theories, however complement each other well. As a bit of preparation, it is worth mentioning that both thinkers, and Smith, in particular, are often portrayed inaccurately. Smith is not the self-interest focused libertarian that he is made out to be. He is, instead a sophisticated moral theorist whose first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments was celebrated and influential in its time. (shrink)

The access problem for mathematics arises from the supposition that the referents of mathematical terms inhabit a realm separate from us. Quine’s approach in the philosophy of mathematics dissolves the access problem, though his solution sometimes goes unrecognized, even by those who rely on his framework. This paper highlights both Quine’s position and its neglect. I argue that Michael Resnik’s structuralist, for example, has no access problem for the so-called mathematical objects he posits, despite recent criticism, since he relies on (...) an indispensability argument. Still, Resnik’s structuralist does not provide an account of our access to traditional mathematical objects, and this may be seen as a problem. (shrink)

Critical thinking is often nominated as a graduate attribute, a learning outcome, and is even offered as a discrete subject in schools and universities. Therefore, it is important to gain clarity about the fundamental goal or purpose of critical thinking education. What should instructors be aiming at when they seek to instil critical thinking in their students? In this paper, we argue that the aim of critical thinking is the achievement and maintenance of intellectual autonomy. In setting out our argument (...) for this conclusion, we investigate the three most plausible candidates for the goal of critical thinking practice. The first such candidate is successful inquiry: inquiry that succeeds in obtaining epistemic goods such as knowledge, true belief, or empirically adequate explanation. The second candidate is epistemically virtuous inquiry, i.e. inquiry that exhibits the full range of epistemic virtues, including the skills and capacities needed to support them. The third candidate is intellectual autonomy. We develop an account of intellectual autonomy as a form of self-respect attached to one’s epistemic and intellectual life and argue that only intellectual autonomy in this sense does full justice to the practice of critical thinking. (shrink)