1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

The Repugnant Conclusion served an important purpose in catalyzing and inspiring the pioneering stage of population ethics research. We believe, however, that the Repugnant Conclusion now receives too much focus. Avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion should no longer be the central goal driving population ethics research, despite its importance to the fundamental accomplishments of the existing literature.

Ordinary common sense suggests that we have just one set of shape concepts that we apply indifferently on the bases of sight and touch. Yet we understand the shape concepts, we know what shape properties are, only because we have experience of shapes. And phenomenal experience of shape in vision and phenomenal experience of shape in touch seem to be quite different. So how can the shape concepts we grasp and use on the basis of vision be the same as (...) the shape concepts we grasp and use on the basis of touch? I think this is the intuitive puzzle that underlies the question sent by the Dublin lawyer Molyneux to John Locke. This concerns a man born blind, who learns by the use of his touch to discriminate cubes from spheres. Suppose him now to gain the use of his sight. And suppose him to be presented with a cube and a sphere, of nighly the same bigness. Quaere, will he be able to tell, by the use of his vision alone, which is the sphere, and which the cube? (Locke 1975, II/ix/8.). (shrink)

John Turri gives an example that he thinks refutes what he takes to be “G. E. Moore's view” that omissive assertions such as “It is raining but I do not believe that it is raining” are “inherently ‘absurd'”. This is that of Ellie, an eliminativist who makes such assertions. Turri thinks that these are perfectly reasonable and not even absurd. Nor does she seem irrational if the sincerity of her assertion requires her to believe its content. A commissive counterpart (...) of Ellie is Di, a dialetheist who asserts or believes that The Russell set includes itself but I believe that it is not the case that the Russell set includes itself. Since any adequate explanation of Moore's paradox must handle commissive assertions and beliefs as well as omissive ones, it must deal with Di as well as engage Ellie. I give such an explanation. I argue that neither Ellie's assertion nor her belief is irrational yet both are absurd. Likewise neither Di's assertion nor her belief is irrational yet in contrast neither is absurd. I conclude that not all Moore-paradoxical assertions or beliefs are irrational and that the syntax of Moore's examples is not sufficient for the absurdity found in them. (shrink)

Whiskey Lao -- Fair warning -- Randomness at large -- We the addicted -- The best possible world -- The importance of being doomed -- Moral responsibility -- The upper limit to the value of possible worlds.

D. M. Armstrong is an eminent Australian philosopher whose work over many years has dealt with such subjects as: the nature of possibility, concepts of the particular and the general, causes and laws of nature, and the nature of human consciousness. This collection of essays explores the many facets of Armstrong's work, concentrating on his more recent interests. There are four sections to the book: possibility and identity, universals, laws and causality, and philosophy of mind. The contributors comprise an international (...) group of philosophers from the United States, England and Australia. An interesting feature of the volume is that Armstrong himself has written responses to each of the essays. There is also a complete bibliography of Armstrong's writings. (shrink)

Explores the Pragmatists' contributions to American social thought, drawing upon the writings of William James, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, James Hayden Tufts, and their various critics. This work also explores the Pragmatic analysis of society's potential for ongoing intelligent inquiry and cooperative evaluation to address social ills.

This is the third selection of major works on the Scottish Enlightenment and includes the same combination of hard-to-find and popular works as in the two previous collections. Contents: An Essay on the Natural Equality of Men [1793] William Lawrence Brown, New introduction by Dr. William Scott 308 pp An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue [1733] Archibald Campbell 586 pp The Philosophical Works [1765] William Dudgeon, New introduction by David Berman 300 pp Institutes of (...) Moral Philosophy For the use of Students in the College of Edinburgh [1769] Adam Ferguson 340 pp A Comparative view of the State and Faculties of Man with those of the Animal World [1774] John Gregory 426 pp An Apology for the Life and Writings of David Hume, Esq [1777] Samuel Jackson A Letter to Adam Smith, On the Life, Death and Philosophy of his friend David Hume Esq [1777] George Horne (Bishop of Norwich) 252 pp. (shrink)

In The Community Reconstructs James Campbell explores the Pragmatists' contributions to American social thought, drawing upon the writings of William James, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, James Hayden Tufts, and their various critics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Evolution of the Society for the Advancement of American PhilosophyJames Campbelldespite my increasingly decrepit appearance, I can lay no claim to being one of the founders of SAAP. When I joined the Society in the mid-1970s, it was already a well-functioning organization—if a much smaller one than today. After a few years of attending meetings, I began to submit papers, and I first appeared on the program at (...) our sixth annual meeting at John Carroll University in 1979. (See Fig. 1, the complete program, below.) While I was not one of the founders of SAAP, I did know them all. Presiding at the early meetings were, in the order of their presidencies, such elders as John Lachs, John J. McDermott, Darnell Rucker, James Gouinlock, Beth J. Singer, Peter H. Hare, Sandra B. Rosenthal, Thelma Z. Lavine, Joseph Betz, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, and Andrew J. Reck. Serving in the background at the same time were such patron saints as Justus Buchler, Douglas Greenlee, Abraham Edel, Max Harold Fisch, Elizabeth Flower, Edward H. Madden, David L. Miller, Frank M. Oppenheim, Evelyn Shirk, John E. Smith, and H. S. Thayer. It was a good time to be coming to American Philosophy, under the guidance of a Society that respected the fundamentals of pluralism and "fallibilism."1IThe brief discussion of the evolution of SAAP that I offer here initially emphasizes what the Society has meant to me over nearly five decades.2 As I was entering graduate school in 1974, I was drawn by the American philosophical tradition. It was, as William James writes, my "dumb conviction" that the best answers were to be found in this philosophical direction and not in the others, and that my job was to pursue these answers.3 What I found in this tradition was a refuge from both the analytic style of philosophy then dominant in America, with what I saw as its obsession with truth4 and its [End Page 1] confusion of cleverness with wisdom, and the alternatives of the various continental traditions that, although they pursued wisdom, seemed to me to rely too strongly on the mysterious or the untranslatable. My own sense of the American philosophical tradition at the time was an amalgam of Puritanism, Deism, Transcendentalism, Pragmatism in its various forms, and a large dose of Columbia Naturalism. Through further study and especially through my interactions at SAAP meetings, I became more grounded in these approaches and more open to other strands within the tradition.5 For me, cooperative interaction with others was essential to further understanding. Just as for Josiah Royce, the secret was "the community."6Among the lessons that I drew from the American philosophical tradition were the following. I knew that it was necessary to resist the human tendency to believe that what works for me will work for everyone else. As George Santayana reminds us, all philosophy is "personal."7 Thus, certain thinkers and certain thoughts will benefit from their initial plausibility to us, and other thoughts and thinkers will be initially suspect. To counter this personal prejudice, we need to partake in careful, long-term study. On a related point, Ralph Waldo Emerson urges us to seek insight from others, to accept what he calls "provocation" while not accepting their answers.8 At the same time, we live among these other individuals, marry them, teach their children, and benefit from their contributions to our social existence. In other words, American Philosophy teaches us that people are social creatures—a point which both Emerson and James were wary of, but not blind to—and that our thinking should focus on the world of shared experience. As Benjamin Franklin writes, our efforts in "Philosophy" make sense only when our pursuit of wisdom is related to human well-being.9 This point is so important that we need to wonder how our efforts were ever allowed to narrow and separate from a broad sense of human welfare to focus upon supposedly more important minutiae. With John Dewey, I saw the job of philosophers to be helping individuals to understand and deal with their philosophical "problems" of living.10 And, perhaps more... (shrink)

In _The Moral Austerity of Environmental Decision Making_ a group of prominent environmental ethicists, policy analysts, political theorists, and legal experts challenges the dominating influence of market principles and assumptions on the formulation of environmental policy. Emphasizing the concept of sustainability and the centrality of moral deliberation to democracy, they examine the possibilities for a wider variety of moral principles to play an active role in defining “good” environmental decisions. If environmental policy is to be responsible to humanity and to (...) nature in the twenty-first century, they argue, it is imperative that the discourse acknowledge and integrate additional normative assumptions and principles other than those endorsed by the market paradigm. The contributors search for these assumptions and principles in short arguments and debates over the role of science, social justice, instrumental value, and intrinsic value in contemporary environmental policy. In their discussion of moral alternatives to enrich environmental decision making and in their search for a less austere and more robust role for normative discourse in practical policy making, they analyze a series of original case studies that deal with environmental sustainability and natural resources policy including pollution, land use, environmental law, globalism, and public lands. The unique structure of the book—which features the core contributors responding in a discourse format to the central chapters’ essays and debates—helps to highlight the role personal and public values play in democratic decision making generally and in the field of environmental politics specifically. _Contributors._ Joe Bowersox, David Brower, Susan Buck, Celia Campbell-Mohn, John Martin Gillroy, Joel Kassiola, Jan Laitos, William Lowry, Bryan Norton, Robert Paehlke, Barry G. Rabe, Mark Sagoff, Anna K. Schwab, Bob Pepperman Taylor, Jonathan Wiener. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We argue that in societies like our own the prevailing view that parents have both special responsibilities for and special rights over their children fails to give a proper understanding of the autonomy both of parents and of children. It is our claim that there is a logical priority of the separable interests of a child over the autonomy of its parents in the fulfilment of their special responsibilities for and the exercise of their special rights over their children. (...) However, we believe that in acknowledging the child as a distinct locus of interests appropriate weight can still be given to parental autonomy. In particular, since raising a child is a long‐term commitment which plays a central role in the life‐plans of many adults it will be a legitimate exercise of an adult's autonomy strongly to influence the future of any children involved in such a plan. Such influence will be quite separate from paternalistic concern for those children. But the logical priority of the child's interests will at the same time show why parents are not entitled to behave proprietorially toward their children, even when paternalistic concern is called for. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

We present Backward Clock, an original counterexample to Robert Nozick’s truth-tracking analysis of propositional knowledge, which works differently from other putative counterexamples and avoids objections to which they are vulnerable. We then argue that four ways of analysing knowledge in terms of safety, including Duncan Pritchard’s, cannot withstand Backward Clock either.

The rubric “The Late Derrida,” with all puns and ambiguities cheerfully intended, points to the late work of Jacques Derrida, the vast outpouring of new writing by and about him in the period roughly from 1994 to 2004. In this period Derrida published more than he had produced during his entire career up to that point. At the same time, this volume deconstructs the whole question of lateness and the usefulness of periodization. It calls into question the “fact” of his (...) turn to politics, law, and ethics and highlights continuities throughout his oeuvre. The scholars included here write of their understandings of Derrida’s newest work and how it impacts their earlier understandings of such classic texts as Glas and Of Grammatology . Some have been closely associated with Derrida since the beginning—both in France and in the United States—but none are Derrideans. That is, this volume is a work of critique and a deep and continued engagement with the thought of one of the most significant philosophers of our time. It represents a recognition that Derrida’s work has yet to be addressed—and perhaps can never be addressed—in its totality. (shrink)

Introduction Martin Heidegger died on May 26,. Although he will write no more, newly published works of his will continue to appear for some years yet. ...

In this journal, Hamid Vahid argues against three families of explanation of Moore-paradoxicality. The first is the Wittgensteinian approach; I assert that p just in case I assert that I believe that p. So making a Moore-paradoxical assertion involves contradictory assertions. The second is the epistemic approach, one committed to: if I am justified in believing that p then I am justified in believing that I believe that p. So it is impossible to have a justified omissive Moore-paradoxical belief. The (...) third is the conscious belief approach, being committed to: if I consciously believe that p then I believe that I believe that p. So if I have a conscious omissive Moore-paradoxical belief, then I have contradictory second-order beliefs. In their place, Vahid argues for the defective-interpretation approach, broadly that charity requires us to discount the utterer of a Moore-paradoxical sentence as a speaker. I agree that the Wittgensteinian approach is unsatisfactory. But so is the defective-interpretation approach. However, there is a satisfactory version of each of the epistemic and conscious-belief approaches. (shrink)

The degradation of modern sport--its commercialization, trivialization, widespread cheating, cult of athletic stars and celebrities, and manipulation by the media--has led to calls for its transformation. William J. Morgan constructs a critical theory of sport that shores up the weak arguments of past attempts and points a way forward to making sport more humane, compelling, and substantive. Drawing on the work of social theorists, Morgan challenges scholars and fans alike to explore new spaces in sport culture and imagine the (...) rich cultural and political possibilities to be found in the pastimes we follow with such passion. (shrink)

This article reviews the effects of malnutrition on early brain development using data generated from animal experiments and human clinical studies. Three related processes, each with their own functional consequences, are implicated in the alteration of brain development. (1) Maternal undernutrition at the start of pregnancy results in reduced transfer of nutrients across the placenta, allowing the conservation of effort for future reproductive episodes. (2) Differential allocation to growing organs by the fetus in response to nutritional stress spares the brain (...) to a large though still limited degree, reflecting the organ’s relative contribution to survival and reproductive success. (3) Prenatal malnutrition disrupts developing neurotransmitter systems, which results in the expression of specific cognitive and affective traits. It is argued that the increasing size and therefore cost of the brain, in conjunction with increasing ecological instability and marginality, reinforced selection for maternally controlled growth suppression of offspring, reallocation of organ growth rates by offspring, and behavioral changes related to development of neurotransmitter systems. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe latest draft of UNESCO's proposed Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights is a major disappointment. The committee of government ‘experts’ that produced it made sure that it would not introduce any new obligations for States, and so the document simply restates existing agreements and lists desirable goals without specifying how they can be achieved. This article focuses on the shortcomings of the document as it would apply to health care. These shortcomings are evident in the document's scope, aims (...) and principles. The conclusion is that if UNESCO still thinks that such a declaration is needed, it should produce either an ethical document addressed to individuals and groups, which would be primarily educational in nature, or a legal document addressed to States, which should not have the word ‘ethics’ in its title. (shrink)

In many developing countries people and livestock suffer from preventable or curable diseases, and their agriculture is vulnerable to natural disasters. A considerable amount of technical aid is directed at alleviating these problems using modern science and technology, and yet most of these efforts either fail or even leave peasants and pastoralists worse off than before. In this paper we consider some of the problems that arise in relation to development projects, focusing our attention on the savannah regions of Africa (...) and, in particular, on the control of tsetse flies, which are the vectors of the African trypanosomiases, called nagana in cattle and sleeping sickness in people. We present a detailed case study of a project designed to enable a Maasai community in Kenya to carry out their own tsetse fly control. We examine the complex set of relationships and power structures that mediate the actions of the players in development: scientists, local communities, governmental and nongovernmental institutions, and development agencies. The purpose of this paper is not to present solutions to complex and difficult problems but rather to raise questions that should provide a framework for a debate concerning the role of science and technology in the development process. (shrink)

The Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011 and its corollaries, Occupy Sandy and Occupy Debt, have been largely understood as secular movements. In spite of this, religious actors not only participated, but in some cases played an integral role within the movement, lending material support, organizing expertise, and public statements of support. We rely on interviews with faith leaders in New York and Oakland, and engage in an analysis of print and online media to explore the role of religious actors (...) and groups in Occupy Wall Street. Religious participants were often long-time veterans of progressive political struggles and drew inspiration from their faith traditions. Nonetheless, religious commitments were secondary to political objectives shared by themselves and their secular counterparts. Religious leaders believed they offered symbolic authority to the movement and highlighted this in their engagement in the hope of giving it greater moral weight. Current discussions on postsecularism and public religions are considered. (shrink)

G. E. Moore observed that to assert, 'I went to the pictures last Tuesday but I don't believe that I did' would be 'absurd'. Over half a century later, such sayings continue to perplex philosophers. In the definitive treatment of the famous paradox, Green and Williams explain its history and relevance and present new essays by leading thinkers in the area.

This paper is roughly in two parts. The first deals with whether know-how is constituted by propositional knowledge, as discussed primarily by Gilbert Ryle (1949) The concept of mind. London: Hutchinson, Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson (2001). Knowing how. Journal of Philosophy, 98, pp. 411–444 as well as Stephen Hetherington (2006). How to know that knowledge-that is knowledge-how. In S. Hetherington (Ed.) Epistemology futures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The conclusion of this first part is that know-how sometimes does and sometimes (...) does not consist in propositional knowledge. The second part defends an analysis of know-how inspired by Katherine Hawley’ (2003). Success and knowledge-how. American Philosophical Quarterly, 40, pp. 19–31, insightful proposal that know-how requires counterfactual success. I conclude by showing how this analysis helps to explain why know-how sometimes does and sometimes does not consist of propositional knowledge. (shrink)

I supply an argument for Evans's principle that whatever justifies me in believing that p also justifies me in believing that I believe that p. I show how this principle helps explain how I come to know my own beliefs in a way that normally makes me the best authority on them. Then I show how the principle helps to solve Moore's paradoxes.