Some species face extinction if they are unable to keep pace with climate change. Yet proposals to assist threatened species’ poleward or uphill migration (‘assisted migration’) have caused significant controversy among conservationists, not least because assisted migration seems to threaten some values, even as it protects others. To date, however, analysis of ethical and value questions about assisted migration has largely remained abstract, removed from the ultimately pragmatic decision about whether or not to move a particular species. This paper uses (...) the case study of the whitebark pine, a keystone species of sub-alpine habitats in western North America, to consider how particular cases of assisted migration may be ethically approached. After taking into account the value of species, wildness, place, ecosystems, culture and sentient animals, we conclude that, on balance, there appear to be good reasons to move the whitebark pine. (shrink)

Our language and metaphors about environmental issues reflect and affect how we perceive and manage them. Discourse on invasive species is dominated by aggressive language of aliens and invasion, which contributes to the use of war-like metaphors to promote combative control. This language has been criticised for undermining scientific objectivity, misleading discourse, and restricting how invasive species are perceived and managed. Calls have been made for alternative metaphors that open up new management possibilities and reconnect with a deeper conservation ethic. (...) Here, we turn to Indigenous perspectives because they are increasingly recognised as offering important and novel voices in invasive species discourse. We examine how Australian Aboriginal elders and land managers (rangers) speak about 'environmental weeds' (the term used to describe invasive plants in Australia) and weed management. Based on qualitative research with five Aboriginal groups in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, our findings indicate that Aboriginal elders speak about weeds through passive, neutral language and prefer metaphors for weed management that focus on health, care and creation. We outline the influence that this language has for how rangers practice weed work and discuss its implications for the mainstream paradigm. (shrink)

Culture, livelihoods and political-economic status all influence people's perception of introduced and invasive species, shaping perspectives on what sort of management of them, if any, is warranted. Indigenous voices and values are under-represented in scholarly discourse about introduced and invasive species. This paper examines the relationship between the Xeni Gwet'in First Nation (one of six Tsilhqot'in communities) and wild or free-roaming horses in British Columbia, Canada. We outline how Xeni Gwet'in people value horses and experience management actions, contextualising the controversy (...) over wild horses amidst power imbalances in the expression of environmental values. We suggest that Indigenous voices are vital to include when evaluating impacts of controversial species and developing management strategies. (shrink)

1. Insect sampling for the purpose of measuring biodiversity – as well as entomological research more generally – largely assumes that insects lack consciousness. Here, we briefly present some arguments that insects are conscious and encourage entomologists to revisit their ethical codes in light of them. 2. Specifically, we adapt the Three Rs, guidelines proposed in 1959 by WMS Russell and RL Burch that have become the dominant way of thinking about the ethics of using animals in research. 3. The (...) Three Rs specify the need to replace, reduce, and refine the use of animals in research, yet have received little attention in entomological circles, which is perhaps unsurprising given that Russell and Burch explicitly excluded invertebrates from their purview. 4. As a specific case, we consider issues of suffering and bycatch in the use of Malaise traps for insect sampling. 5. While we do not claim that entomologists have an obligation to adopt the Three Rs framework wholesale, we do suggest that there is reason to adopt it in a modified form to mitigate moral risk especially in the context of conservation. (shrink)

Ronald Sandler's ‘Climate change and ecosystem management’ provides a fine summary of reasons to modify our approach to ecosystem management given ‘rapid and uncertain ecological change’. We...

Brendon Larson’s Metaphors for Environmental Sustainability: Redefining our Relationship with Nature is a thought provoking treatment of what can be a challenging and sometimes controversial subject. Primarily, but not exclusively, through four feedback metaphors: progress, competition, barcoding, and meltdown, Larson challenges the dominant scientific discourse, highlighting the limits of a single-lens scientific narrative while emphasizing the value of welcoming ambiguity, and diversity as a means to fruitful discussion and inquiry in addressing the issues surrounding environmental sustainability. Furthermore, (...) rather than fencing ourselves off from nature, Larson demonstrates the importance of breaking down narratives of duality, and seeing ourselves as one with nature, not separate from it, in addressing issues concerning environmental sustainability. This book is valuable not only for its message, but also for how its concepts are presented. Larson presents historical and cultural frameworks to contextualize evolutionary and current environmental sustainability narratives. This book exemplifies phenomenological practices and perceptions, and is a valuable and insightful read for any individual, practitioner, or academic with an interest in environmental sustainability. (shrink)

This article investigates the interplay of agriculture and writing in the elder Cato's aristocratic self-fashioning . I argue that the De Agricultura represents Cato and his contemporaries as individual, small-plot farmers by making explicit the agricultural inflection of a more general masterly extensibility, i.e., that slaves were prosthetic tools with which owners accomplished various tasks, a move that in turn reveals the ubiquitous, assiduous “labor” of the individual owner. The preface's valorization of small-plot farmers, past and present, contextualizes the owner's (...) “labor” both culturally and historically , and thereby seeks to bridge the agricultural and temporal divide that separates Cato and his contemporaries from their esteemed predecessors. (shrink)

Some metaphysics are provided showing that what is commonly called ‘the physical world’ can be deconstructed into three ‘levels’: a single, unified ‘noumenal world’ on which everything supervenes; a ‘phenomenal world’ that we each privately experience through direct perception of phenomena; and a ‘collective world’ that people in any given ‘language using group’ experience through learning, using and adapting that group’s language. This deconstruction is shown to enable a clear account of qualia and of how people can hold some things (...) to be physically real even when it is clear no one can ever directly experience those things as phenomena. It is further shown to enable a single, internally consistent, largely empirically supported conceptual framework – a ‘metacosmology’ – able to encompass not only the physical world as people conceive of it for everyday purposes, and as scientists conceive of it for scientific purposes, but also people’s first person phenomenal experience of a physical world and, prospectively, the mechanisms by which such first person, conscious experiences can be generated. (shrink)

In States of Knowledge, Sheila Jasanoff argues that we gain explanatory power by thinking of natural and social orders as being produced together, but she and her volume contributors do not yet offer a theory of the coproduction of scientific knowledge and social order. This article uses Mary Douglas’s cultural theory to identify four recurring states of knowledge and to specify political–cultural conditions for the coproduction of scientific knowledge, social order, and scientific, cultural, and policy change. The plausibility of this (...) theory is illustrated by using it to explain the coproduction and transformation of forest and wildlife science and management in the Pacific Northwest. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that the apparent historical inaccuracies contained within Lewis Nordan’s Wolf Whistle represent a systematic repeal of the controversial history surrounding the murder of Emmett Till in 1955. Nordan reconstitutes the principle characters to function as iconoclasms of the historical record. As iconoclasms, these representations undermine our culture’s accepted model of history, what Hayden White terms the “historical account”.

This is Appendix A to the note: Deconstructing the Physical World (DPW). It shows how the conceptual framework developed in DPW relates to Russellian Monism (RM) and that it can accrue RM’s benefits while defeating the combination problem that challenges many RMs.

Three distinct explanatory models are described which underpin the relationship between the cultural authority of science and public trust. This essay describes how current discourses framed around how the enterprise of science is undertaken; damage these models, diminishing knowledge–attitudes, alienating the public while reducing the cultural meaning of science.

We show, using a variation of Woodin’s partial order ℙ max , that it is possible to destroy the saturation of the nonstationary ideal on ω 1 by forcing with a Suslin tree. On the other hand, Suslin trees typcially preserve saturation in extensions by ℙ max variations where one does not try to arrange it otherwise. In the last section, we show that it is possible to have a nonmeager set of reals of size ℵ1, saturation of the nonstationary (...) ideal, and no weakly Lusin sequences, answering a question of Shelah and Zapletal. (shrink)

This paper explores the primary causes or factors underlying cultural conflict in all its forms and seeks to answer the questions that follow. Why do people hate and wage wars against each other in the name of culture? Are cultural wars necessary or inherent in the very nature of culture as a phenomenon of human life? Can cultural differences be a justifiable cause of war? In my attempt to explicate and answer these questions, I shall first advance a concept of (...) culture. What do we mean when we speak of culture? What is the essential structure or building blocks of culture as a human phenomenon? The proposition I shall defend is that the tendency of animosity, tension, and conflict among people is not and cannot be inherent in their cultures. Accordingly, any claim that cultural difference is directly or indirectly a cause of cultural violence is not tenable, even though such violence may take place in the name of culture or cultural allegiance. But, if the tendency towards animosity, tension, or conflict is not inherent in the essential structure of culture, what might be the roots of the so-called cultural wars? The thesis I advance and elucidate in detail is that an answer to this question should proceed from an analysis of Socrates’s dictum that ignorance is the source of human evil. A discussion of this dictum and its implications, in the process of examining the roots of cultural wars, will reveal that the real culprits behind cultural conflicts are a cluster of political, intellectual, economic, psychological, and educational factors. (shrink)

This essay is an analytical, critical, and evaluative exploration of the roots of the crisis of ethical theory. By crisis, the author means a state of inner separation or alienation. In what sense is ethical theory separated or alienated from itself? What is the self from which it is alienated? The thesis the author defends is that the crisis of ethical theory is embedded in the crisis of philosophy, the crisis of philosophy is embedded in the crisis of culture, and (...) the crisis of culture is embedded in the growth and development of modernity. A theory is in crisis when it is alienated from its function. A theory’s reason for being is its function. Thus, an understanding of this kind of crisis should be attained in the context in which it has taken place, viz., the crisis of philosophy and the crisis of culture. This is based on the assumption that ethical theory is an integral part of philosophy and philosophy is an integral part of culture. (shrink)

Countable homogeneous relational structures have been studied by many people. One area of focus is the Ramsey theory of such structures. After a review of background material, a partition theorem of Laflamme, Sauer, and Vuksanovic for countable homogeneous binary relational structures is discussed with a focus on the size of the set of unavoidable colors.

The Filter Dichotomy says that every uniform nonmeager filter on the integers is mapped by a finite-to-one function to an ultrafilter. The consistency of this principle was proved by Blass and Laflamme. A medial limit is a universally measurable function from [Formula: see text] to the unit interval [0, 1] which is finitely additive for disjoint sets, and maps singletons to 0 and ω to 1. Christensen and Mokobodzki independently showed that the Continuum Hypothesis implies the existence of medial limits. (...) We show that the Filter Dichotomy implies that there are no medial limits. (shrink)

The forcing construction Pmax, invented by W. Hugh Woodin, produces a model whose collection of subsets of ω₁ is in some sense maximal. In this paper we study the Boolean algebra induced by the nonstationary ideal on ω₁ in this model. Among other things we show that the induced quotient does not have a simply definable form. We also prove several results about saturation properties of the ideal in this extension.

To the best of my knowledge, no one in recent decades has written a book of this magnitude about the semantics of natural language. Certainly, nothing available today matches this volume in depth, precision, and coherence. The authors present classical and recent results of linguistic semantics within the framework of interpretative T-theories and defend the philosophical foundations of their approach by showing how it fits into the larger enterprise of cognitive linguistics. The book also includes an array of excellent exercises (...) and a good list of references. (shrink)

It is important for psychology - as a discipline of thought about the nature of psyche - and for psychotherapy, as its practice of understanding, to draw a distinction between neurotic and authentic suffering if it aims to assist a person to become an indivisible being. A difficulty with mainstream psychology is the conviction that psyche begins and ends in the realm of Reason as this conviction tends to establish a reality of permanence, absolutes and substance, and hence consequently, colludes (...) with the ‘ten thousand things’ of neurotic suffering. When reason sets the rules of reality, it is argued, a deep sense of alienation and meaninglessness takes root. A psychology stuck in this realm is unable to attend to authentic human suffering, which is the reconciliation and synthesis of opposites in human nature. In the dichotomy of subject and object, and unconscious and conscious, a psychology of the reason unwittingly identifies with and acts out that which it rejects as inferior. It thus suffers from the very condition it sets out to alleviate. The concepts of enlightenment and individuation on the other hand draw a clear distinction between neurotic and authentic suffering. They conceive of a reality in which subject and object are one, so providing support to one suffering authentically so as to remain true to oneself and thus to become an indivisible being. (shrink)

Objective Semiotica is published in six annual issues, in two languages (English and French). From time to time, Special Issues, devoted to topics of particular interest, are assembled by Guest Editors. The publishers of Semiotica offer an annual prize, the Mouton d'Or, to the author of the best article each year. The article is selected by an independent international jury. Topics We welcome papers reporting results of research in all branches of semiotic studies. Article formats Research articles, in-depth reviews, guest (...) editorials, reports Mouton D’Or Winner 2022 "Semiotricité et corps en jeu", Parlebas, Pierre, 248, 9-35. The judges commented: "The Committee members made this decision based on many appreciations. First, the article contains a concise theory on semiotics of movement, synthesizing decades of research of the author. It opens an exciting framework for the contribution of many other authors. The theoretical grounds of semiotircity are built on the most classical semiotic approaches and represent a genuine development. Second, the article refreshes semiotics methodology in very original way, by engaging the applied semiotics for furtive and instantaneous activities analysis. Third, the article is pretty clear and well structured, written in very comprehensible French. The theoretical frame it opens is thorough and far reaching. Fourth, the semiotic theory of movement comes in a very special moment when the whole world is football, but it covers also many other areas of applicability which reflect major trends such as the general gamification of life thanks to new media and digital technologies. It is crucial for semiotic theory to open its theoretic scope towards significant cultural trends and become more attractive for young researchers." Les membres du comité ont pris leur décision en fondant leur appréciation sur quatre éléments principaux. Premier élément : l'article, en peu de mots, en prenant appui sur des décennies de recherche de la part de l'auteur, déploie de manière précise les termes d'une sémiotique du mouvement. Les fondements théoriques de la sémiotricité sont construits sur des approches sémiotiques bien établies et représentent un véritable développement dans le domaine. En cela, le texte ouvre un cadre passionnant pour les contributions de nombreux autres chercheurs. Deuxièmement, l'article renouvelle la sémiotique appliquée de manière très originale, l'engageant dans une approche efficace des actions instantanées et furtives; la méthodologie sémiotique en général en tire donc aussi profit. Troisième point, en plus d'être profond, avec un cadre théorique d'ampleur et de grande portée, l'article est particulièrement bien structuré et écrit dans un français très compréhensible, ce qui est un véritable gain pour sa diffusion. Enfin, quatrièmement, s'il est indéniable que le texte pourrait bénéficier d'une visibilité complémentaire due à la ferveur liée au contexte récent de la coupe du monde de football au Qatar, il couvre surtout de nombreux autres domaines d'applicabilité qui reflètent des tendances majeures telles que la gamification générale de la vie, portée par les nouveaux médias et les technologies numériques. L'on y voit une belle opportunité pour la théorie sémiotique d'ouvrir son champ à la faveur de tendances culturelles significatives; ceci est une garantie pour continuer à attirer de nouvelles générations de chercheurs. (shrink)