Proposed solutions to sustainability often bring different economic sectors into conflict; when a sustainable solution for one sector is non-sustainable for another it creates what we call the dilemma of sustainability. A recent example took place in the Columbia Basin of the Pacific Northwest, involving competing notions of sustainability by fisheries and the energy industry. Taking up some ideas of Eger and Lyotard, we criticize the constructivist approach which treats large ecosystems as constructions and the process of resolving conflicts of (...) sustainability as one solely consisting of negotiations involving the trading off of interests. We propose instead to treat such conflict resolution via a Gadamerian-inspired hermeneutics that sees different economic sectors as having different interpretations of sustainability and that aims at common understanding. (shrink)

Transition to a sustainable energy regime is one of the key global societal challenges for the coming decades. Many technological innovations are in the pipeline, but an uncritical appraisal of anything and everything called green innovation lacks methods for testing both the necessity and the sufficiency of these developments. We propose to develop a philosophy of energy to fill this lacuna. Its task is to explore and clarify the space in which the so-called energy transition is taking place. This article (...) sketches the fundaments of such a philosophy and suggests how it might be built upon the work of twentieth century critics of the functioning of energy in society, including Mumford, Bataille, and Heidegger; but not without empirical analysis of contemporary energy systems. Via the example of flux and potentiality - two apparently opposing conceptions of energy - we propose that a philosophy of energy allows for a broader perspective on specific problems in energy transition, and illuminates implicit and problematic assumptions behind these problems. (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 was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. 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. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. 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)

Freedom and security are often portrayed as things that have to be traded off against one another, but this view does not capture the full complexity of the freedom-security relationship. Rather, there seem to be four different ways in which freedom and security connect to each other: freedom can come at the cost of security, security can come at the cost of freedom, freedom can work to the benefit of security, and security can work to the benefit of freedom. This (...) paper analyses each of these connections in turn. It shows that particular understandings of freedom can help us to see particular connections between freedom and security. The practical examples used to illustrate these connections are drawn from the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be suggested that, in the face of challenges such as this one, taking into account all four connections between freedom and security can ultimately help decision-makers in upholding both. (shrink)

The central thesis of this essay is that basic income experiments are justified if their expected benefits in terms of justice exceed their expected costs in terms of justice. The benefits are a function of basic income’s effect on the level of justice attained in the context in which it is implemented, and the experiment’s impact on future policy-making. The costs comprise the sacrifices made as a result of the experiment’s interventional character, as well as the study’s opportunity costs. In (...) light of the proposed standard of justification for basic income experiments, the factors that play a role in it, and the way these interact with one another, this essay provides some practical recommendations for researchers hoping to conduct such an experiment. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a wider application of Archon Fung's (2007) idea of a "pragmatic equilibrium". Would implementation of the practical recommendations that follow from a certain theory really contribute to the realisation of the values on which the theory was built? If political philosophers asked this question more often, this would benefit both the quality and the relevance of their theories. [Dutch].

L'article montre que, contrairement à ce qui est généralement admis, il existe de la variation dans le sens des mots même en corpus spécialisés. Mise en relation avec les sous-domaines dont lesquels sont repérés ces différents sens, cette variation peut être assimilée à une variation de point de vue.

La confrontation Kant/Wittgenstein qui se dessine ici n'a pas pour objectif principal de présenter les doctrines des deux auteurs. Il s'agit plutôt de marier ces pensées qui ne le désirent pas, de profiter de la confrontation pour faire avancer le débat. Quel débat? Contrairement à I'ordre historique, il tire son origine de Wittgenstein: comment faut-il comprendre les prorèmes que soulève Wittgenstein, les interdits qu'il pose? Certaines de ses affirmations ne peuvent tout simplement pas être des jugements analytiques, aurait dit Kant. (...) Nombre de ses «remarques grammaticales» ne sont évidemment pas des tautologies, et la question se pose au moins de savoir comment elles sont possibles comme jugements analytiques. (shrink)

Le but de ces quelques remarques sur le jugement est de faire apparaître cette notion sous différents éclairages , tout en assurant une certaine progression d’un point de vue à l’autre. Dans la première section, il sera question non seulement de la synthèse au sens kantien du jugement synthétique fondé sur l’intuition, mais également des trois synthèses predicative, véritative et apophantique distinguées par Heidegger et reprises par Lotz. La deuxième section, plus proche de la pensée de Wittgenstein, s’interroge sur le (...) jugement dans le cadre de la « grammaire philosophique ». Enfin, la troisième section examine l’idée d’un primat du jugement sur la base du primat de la raison théorique soutenu par Jacques Poulain. En apparence, cette thèse prend le contre-pied de celle de Kant dans la Critique de la raison pratique, sans qu’on puisse lui attribuer la volonté de fonder une nouvelle « philosophie théorique ».The aim of the following remarks on judgment is to present this notion from different points of view , with a certain progression from the first to the others point of view. In the first section, it will be question not only of synthesis in the kantian sense which bears upon intuition, but equally of the three syntheses distinguished by Heidegger and Lotz. The second section, more wittgensteinian in spirit, asks the question of judgment in the context of the " philosophical grammar ". Finally, the third section investigates Jacques Poulain’s idea of a primacy of judgment on the basis of the primacy of theoretical reason over practical reason. At first sight, this thesis of Poulain seems to go against Kant’s thesis in the Critic of practical Reason, but we don’t have to attribute to him the will to establish a new " theoretical philosophy ". (shrink)

Formal principles governing best practices in classification and definition have for too long been neglected in the construction of biomedical ontologies, in ways which have important negative consequences for data integration and ontology alignment. We argue that the use of such principles in ontology construction can serve as a valuable tool in error-detection and also in supporting reliable manual curation. We argue also that such principles are a prerequisite for the successful application of advanced data integration techniques such as ontology-based (...) multi-database querying, automated ontology alignment and ontology-based text-mining. These theses are illustrated by means of a case study of the Gene Ontology, a project of increasing importance within the field of biomedical data integration. (shrink)

In 1655 La Peyrère was the first to substantially argue for and popularize polygenism—the view that God created multiple original human mating pairs in separate acts of creation with numerous created before Adam. Positing or rejecting polygenism has been central to modern theorizing about human types and origins. Prominent recent interpreters have maintained that La Peyrère’s polygenism does not imply a hierarchy of human types. This paper reconstructs La Peyrère’s account and, in opposition to the dominant view, argues that his (...) polygenism produces a human species hierarchy. The Adamite species is superior to the Pre-Adamite species in virtue of its material composition, mode of creation, and form. The upshot is that La Peyrère’s theological system posits a proto-racialist conception of human types. (shrink)

This article analyses 2001 in terms of what I term paleofuturism. Fusing deep future and deep past, this cyclical figure reconciles rational machinic intelligence with diverse repressed temporal layers: archaic cultures, the embryonic state of individuals, and bygone biological and geological eras. In 2001, paleofuturism is nourished by Nietzsche’s Übermensch of the future, reborn as a child, and by Jungian ideas of individuation, the reconciliation with the shadow of the collective unconscious that leads to the black cosmos itself. Further paleofuturist (...) contexts for 2001 are explored in the so-called “ancient astronaut thesis” of science fiction, speculative science, and pseudo-science. Finally, in minimalism and earth art of the late 1960s we meet a structural parallel to 2001’s bypassing of the organic human body, one that bridges the inorganic entropic realities of deep future and deep past. (shrink)

Departing from Duchamp’s advice in 1961 of finding the “com- mon factor” between the non-representative and the representa- tive, translated here into modernism and avant-garde, this article seeks to understand the readymades as objects that have passed metaphorically through Duchamp’s magnum opus, the unfinished Large Glass. More precisely, the readymades are seen as mass-produced utensils that have been stripped bare of their usual function, i.e. their actualization, in order to regain potentiali- ty. Mapping Giorgio Agamben’s interpretation of Herman Melville’s short (...) story Bartleby, the Scrivener onto the readymades, this shrink-to-expand strategy is understood as a skeptical suspen- sion of judgment, epoché, comparable to Bartleby’s polite refusal to work. Moreover, it is seen as equivalent to the down-scaling of dimensionality observed in the Large Glass, where transparency in one go eliminates the representation of spatial circumstances and opens up the objects toward the ever-changing physical surround- ings, thereby exposing more of those 4-dimensional projections, which are normally suppressed in our reduced 3-dimensional per- ception of the world. (shrink)

This essay examines the complex relationship between Christianity and the climate crisis. It first looks at theological convictions found in statements made by church leaders meant to advance Christian engagement. It then examines the now legendary acerbic attacks made by historian Lynn White in the late 1960s, criticizing these same theological convictions for actually disabling environmental engagement. Centrally, it then turns to the progressive, eco-theology of Sallie McFague who, while echoing White’s concerns, offers more recent and thorough criticisms of tradition-based (...) Christian theology, focusing especially on its propagating an outdated anthropology and earth-fleeing spiritualities. Finally, the essay focuses on the tragic immediacy of the climate catastrophe, suggesting that a North American culture of optimism and consumerism is causing millions to respond with indifference and denial, and that an activist-oriented pessimism may be a more mature and constructive response to the dire situation we now face. (shrink)

This paper examines the influences which shape the tone and character of Sallie McFague’s ecotheology, while also suggesting that her theology holds immense socially transformative potential even while departing from many of the basic assumptions of traditional Christian theism. Contrary to the beliefs of majority Christianity, which most often assume the adequacy of supernatural and interventionist images of God, McFague contends that these outdated images seriously debilitate Christian agency and place our planet in peril. Changing Christian habits of thought about (...) God, therefore, may yet prove to be a necessary, though not sufficient, prerequisite to resolve our environmental plight. Ultimately, I suggest that McFague’s reconstructive theology is a significant part of a larger blossoming of immanentalist sensibilities within North American religious culture at large, and in relation to which Christian churches will have to adjust in order to survive. This theological sea change may yet have the effect of moving McFague’s reconstructive proposals from the margins into the mainstream of Christian discourse and practice. (shrink)

Important study focuses on the revival and assimilation of ancient Greek mathematics in the 13th–16th centuries, via Arabic science, and the 16th-century development of symbolic algebra. This brought about the crucial change in the concept of number that made possible modern science — in which the symbolic "form" of a mathematical statement is completely inseparable from its "content" of physical meaning. Includes a translation of Vieta's Introduction to the Analytical Art. 1968 edition. Bibliography.

The Meno, one of the most widely read of the Platonic dialogues, is seen afresh in this original interpretation that explores the dialogue as a theatrical presentation. Just as Socrates's listeners would have questioned and examined their own thinking in response to the presentation, so, Klein shows, should modern readers become involved in the drama of the dialogue. Klein offers a line-by-line commentary on the text of the Meno itself that animates the characters and conversation and carefully probes each significant (...) turn of the argument. "A major addition to the literature on the Meno and necessary reading for every student of the dialogue."--Alexander Seasonske, Philosophical Review "There exists no other commentary on Meno which is so thorough, sound, and enlightening."-- Choice Jacob Klein was a student of Martin Heidegger and a tutor at St. John's College from 1937 until his death. His other works include Plato's Trilogy: Theaetetus, the Sophist, and the Statesman, also published by the University of Chicago Press. (shrink)

Science and technology are so intertwined that technoscience has been argued to more accurately reflect the progress of science and its impact on society, and most socioscientific issues require technoscientific reasoning. Education policy documents have long noted that the general public lacks sufficient understanding of science and technology necessary for informed decision-making regarding socioscientific/technological issues. The science–technology–society movement and scholarship addressing socioscientific issues in science education reflect efforts in the science education community to promote more informed decision-making regarding such issues. (...) Now Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics education has emerged as a major reform movement impacting science education. STEM education efforts emphasize literacy across the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, but with rare exceptions, treat issues of technology superficially and uncritically. Informed decision-making regarding many personal and societal issues requires technological literacy beyond merely becoming an enthusiastic designer or skilled user of technology, but the science education community has given little attention to what such literacy entails. Here, we present results of an extensive review of the literature regarding the nature of technology in order to identify key issues among scholars who study technology. We then provide predominant perspectives among those scholars and suggest which identified NOT issues are most essential to address as part of STEM education efforts that seek to promote informed personal and societal decision-making. (shrink)

Amalgamating evidence of different kinds for the same hypothesis into an overall confirmation is analogous, I argue, to amalgamating individuals’ preferences into a group preference. The latter faces well-known impossibility theorems, most famously “Arrow’s Theorem”. Once the analogy between amalgamating evidence and amalgamating preferences is tight, it is obvious that amalgamating evidence might face a theorem similar to Arrow’s. I prove that this is so, and end by discussing the plausibility of the axioms required for the theorem.

The tuning-fork model of human social cognition, based on the discovery of mirror neurons (MNs) in the ventral premotor cortex of monkeys, involves the four following assumptions: (1) mirroring processes are processes of resonance or simulation. (2) They can be motor or non-motor. (3) Processes of motor mirroring (or action-mirroring), exemplified by the activity of MNs, constitute instances of third-person mindreading, whereby an observer represents the agent's intention. (4) Non-motor mirroring processes enable humans to represent others' emotions. After questioning all (...) four assumptions, I point out that MNs in an observer's brain could not synchronically resonate with MNs in an agent's brain unless they discharged in a single brain in two distinct tasks at different times. Finally, I sketch a conceptualist alternative to the resonance model according to which a brain mechanism active in both the execution and the perception of e.g., the act of grasping is the neural basis of the concept of e.g., grasping. (shrink)

Concepts. Health ; Disease ; Death -- Models and kinds. Causation and kinds ; Holism and reductionism ; Controversial diseases -- Evidence and inference. Evidence in medicine ; Objectivity and the social structure of science ; Inference ; Effectiveness, skepticism, and alternatives ; Diagnosis and screening -- Values and policy. Psychiatry: care or control? ; Policy ; Public health.

The idea that perceptual and cognitive systems must incorporate knowledge about the structure of the environment has become a central dogma of cognitive theory. In a Bayesian context, this idea is often realized in terms of “tuning the prior”—widely assumed to mean adjusting prior probabilities so that they match the frequencies of events in the world. This kind of “ecological” tuning has often been held up as an ideal of inference, in fact defining an “ideal observer.” But widespread as this (...) viewpoint is, it directly contradicts Bayesian philosophy of probability, which views probabilities as degrees of belief rather than relative frequencies, and explicitly denies that they are objective characteristics of the world. Moreover, tuning the prior to observed environmental frequencies is subject to overfitting, meaning in this context overtuning to the environment, which leads (ironically) to poor performance in future encounters with the same environment. Whenever there is uncertainty about the environment—which there almost always is—an agent's prior should be biased away from ecological relative frequencies and toward simpler and more entropic priors. (shrink)

One hundred and ninety‐six Israeli middle‐school students participated in a study that explored the effects of moral orientation (moral versus conventional)and of three situational variables on attitudes toward two types of cheating in school exams—copying from others (‘active’)and letting others copy (‘passive’). Several vignettes that were comprised of different combinations of the three situational variables—exam importance, supervision level and peers' norms—were used as the main instrument. It was found that a‐morally oriented students approved significantly more of cheating than morally oriented (...) students. Importance of exam had marginally significant effects on active copying. Level of supervision during exam and classmates' norms had significant effects on both active and passive cheating attitudes. (shrink)

Critics of commodification often claim that the buying and selling of some good communicates disrespect or some other inappropriate attitude. Such semiotic critiques have been leveled against markets in sex, pornography, kidneys, surrogacy, blood, and many other things. Brennan and Jaworski (2015a) have recently argued that all such objections fail. They claim that the meaning of a market transaction is a highly contingent, socially constructed fact. If allowing a market for one of these goods can improve the supply, access or (...) quality of the good, then instead of banning the market on semiotic grounds, they urge that we should revise our semiotics. In this reply, I isolate a part of the meaning of a market transaction that is not socially constructed: our market exchanges always express preferences. I then show how cogent semiotic critiques of some markets can be constructed on the basis of this fact. (shrink)

The central aims of this paper are to show how linguistic corpora have been used and can be used in philosophy and to argue that linguistic corpora and corpus analysis should be added to the philosopher’s toolkit of ways to address philosophical questions. A linguistic corpus is a curated collection of texts representing language use that can be queried to answer research questions. Among many other uses, linguistic corpora can help answer questions about the meaning of words and the structure (...) of discourse. Through a discussion of examples, the paper shows that there are many philosophical questions that can be addressed by using a linguistic corpus. However, linguistic corpora need not (and often cannot) replace traditional philosophical methods. Lastly, it argues that the special properties of linguistic corpora, including their independence and the current ease and cheapness of access, make them an indispensable resource for philosophers. (shrink)

Can we describe certain sonic experiences as “homely,” even when they take place outside of a traditional home-space? While phenomenological accounts of home abound, with writers detailing a rich spectrum of the felt characteristics of the homely including safety, familiarity, and affective “warmth,” there is a scarcity of research into sonic experience that engages with such literatures. With specific interest in the experience of embodied space, I account here for what might be termed feelings of “sonic homeliness” as they emerge (...) during headphone listening. After forming a conceptual model of homeliness that draws from phenomenological philosophy, I investigate its applicability to experiences of headphone listening. Through analysis of primary interview data, I consider how headphones may be said to territorialize space for listeners, analyzing how sonic “boundaries” are experienced in relation to the body, as well as how some listeners describe their experiences as interiorized, comforting, and “wombic.”. (shrink)