We assess J. Baird Callicott’s attempt in Earth’s Insights to reconcile his land ethic with the “environmental ethics” of indigenous peoples. We critique the rejection of ethical pluralism that informs this attempted rapprochement. We also assess Callicott’s strategy of grounding his land ethic in a postmodern scientific world view by contrasting it with the roles of “respect” and narrative in indigenous “ethics.”.

In this article we examine the specific contributions Native American thought can make to the ongoing search for a Western ecological consciousness. We begin with a review of the influence of Native American beliefs on the different branches of the modem environmental movement and some initial comparisons of Western and Native American ways of seeing. We then review Native American thought on the natural world, highlighting beliefs in the need for reciprocity and balance, the world as a living being, and (...) relationships with animals. We conclude that Native American ideas are important, can prove inspirational in the search for a modem environmental consciousness, and affirm the arguments of both deep ecologists and ecofeminists. (shrink)

This article looks at the idea of spirituality as it is discussed within ecophilosophical circles, particularly ecofeminism, bioregionalism, and deep ecology, as a means to improve human-nature interactions. The article also examines the use each ecophilosophy makes of a popular alternative to main-stream religion, that of Native American spiritualities, and problems inherent in adapting that alternative.

In this article we examine the specific contributions Native American thought can make to the ongoing search for a Western ecological consciousness. We begin with a review of the influence of Native American beliefs on the different branches of the modem environmental movement and some initial comparisons of Western and Native American ways of seeing. We then review Native American thought on the natural world, highlighting beliefs in the need for reciprocity and balance, the world as a living being, and (...) relationships with animals. We conclude that Native American ideas are important, can prove inspirational in the search for a modem environmental consciousness, and affirm the arguments of both deep ecologists and ecofeminists. (shrink)

I examine the roles of traditional Native American women with regard to their impact on maintaining appropriate spiritual, cultural, and physical relationships with the natural world and discuss lessons that ecophilosphers might find useful in reexamining their own spiritual, cultural, and physical relationships.

I examine the roles of traditional Native American women with regard to their impact on maintaining appropriate spiritual, cultural, and physical relationships with the natural world and discuss lessons that ecophilosphers might find useful in reexamining their own spiritual, cultural, and physical relationships.

The inaugural collection in an exciting new exchange between philosophers and geographers, this volume provides interdisciplinary approaches to the environment as space, place, and idea. Never before have philosophers and geographers approached each other's subjects in such a strong spirit of mutual understanding. The result is a concrete exploration of the human-nature relationship that embraces strong normative approaches to environmental problems.

Matthias Steup (Steup 2008) has recently argued that our doxastic attitudes are free by (i) drawing an analogy with compatibilism about freedom of action and (ii) denying that it is a necessary condition for believing at will that S's having an intention to believe that p can cause S to believe that p . In this paper, however, I argue that the strategies espoused in (i) and (ii) are incompatible.

Most approaches to iterated belief revision are accompanied by some motivation for the use of the proposed revision operator (or family of operators), and typically encode enough information in the epistemic state of an agent for uniquely determining one-step revision. But in those approaches describing a family of operators there is usually little indication of how to proceed uniquely after the first revision step. In this paper we contribute towards addressing that deficiency by providing a formal framework which goes beyond (...) the first revision step in two ways. First, the framework is obtained by enriching the epistemic state of an agent starting from the following intuitive idea: we associate to each world x two abstract objects x⁺ and x⁻, and we assume that, in addition to preferences over the set of worlds, we are given preferences over this set of objects as well. The latter can be considered as meta-information encoded in the epistemic state which enables us to go beyond the first revision step of the revision operator being applied, and to obtain a unique set of preferences over worlds. We then extend this framework to consider, not only the revision of preferences over worlds, but also the revision of this extended structure itself. We look at some desirable properties for revising the structure and prove the consistency of these properties by giving a concrete operator satisfying all of them. Perhaps more importantly, we show that this framework has strong connections with two other types of constructions in related areas. Firstly, it can be seen as a special case of preference aggregation which opens up the possibility of extending the frame-work presented here into a full-fledged framework for preference aggregation and social choice theory. Secondly, it is related to existing work on the use of interval orderings in a number of different contexts. (shrink)

What, according to proponents of doxastic deontologism, is responsible belief? In this paper, we examine two proposals. Firstly, that responsible belief is blameless belief (a position we call DDB) and, secondly, that responsible belief is praiseworthy belief (a position we call DDP). We consider whether recent arguments in favor of DDP, mostly those recently offered by Brian Weatherson, stand up to scrutiny and argue that they do not. Given other considerations in favor of DDP, we conclude that the deontologist should (...) maintain that doxastic responsibility is a concept about freedom from appropriate blame. (shrink)

This biography of Hypatia, the female philosopher and mathematician in Christian Egypt, provides background on her work and her life as an elite woman at this time. There are many myths about Hypatia, including her research, inventions and the impact of her murder, all based on a handful of contemporary resources. Through presenting the different theories and myths alongside the available evidence, this book will enable the reader to make their own interpretations about her life. Whilst the evidence does leave (...) many questions unanswered, this book provides the evidence as it stands, separating the myth from reality. There is very little published on Hypatia and she forms quite a niche market in the history of ancient Egypt. However, she is an interesting example of how multicultural Alexandria functioned at such an unstable political time, and provides anecdotal evidence of the atrocities that occurred. This book will appeal to scholars, lay people and political and religious researchers, and will show that the history of Egypt does not end at Cleopatra. (shrink)

Nature sports include pursuits such as paragliding, white-water kayaking, free diving, mountaineering, and surfing. Participants in nature sports interact with geographical features (e.g. mountains, rivers, oceans, snow fields, ice sheets, caves, rock faces) as well as the dynamic forces that produce them (e.g. gravity, waves, thermal currents, flowing water, wind, rain, sun). In this article, I engage a representational approach to analyze how participants in nature sports interact with nature. Anthropocentric representations privilege participants’ interests, wants, desires, and ends; they typically (...) refer to claims of conquest/achievement in nature, or praise nature for its therapeutic qualities. In contradistinction, ecocentric representations recognize humankind as one entity in an interdependent world that comprises all living organisms and the geological processes and geomorphological features that sustain them. Ecocentric representations of nature sports highlight networks of participants and landforms that help preserve a balance between people and the environment. Yet, notwithstanding the allure of ecocentric representations, especially in the wake of evidence that human-induced greenhouse gases are predisposing environmental calamities, there is a substantial gap between the ontological concepts and categories of ecocentrism and lived sporting experiences and practices in nature. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to develop what I call an ‘Analytic, Fārābian’ conception of Orientalism. The motivation for this conception is that it helps us with the task––identified by Wael B. Hallaq––of going beyond ‘rudimentary political slogans’ attached to the theory of Orientalism and instead to identifying Orientalism’s underlying ‘psycho-epistemic pathology’ (Hallaq 2018, 4). In order to do this properly, according to Hallaq, we need to find a methodological alternative to that which makes Orientalist discourse possible. Hallaq identifies the (...) underlying problem as a commitment to secular humanism, and the solution its abandonment. However, I think the problem is a deeper one, which can roughly be stated as follows: how can we accept the pervasiveness of ideological influence without abandoning the idea that our theories aim (and to some extent succeed) at representing objective reality—such that we can say that Orientalism is a real phenomenon, and not merely something we happen to believe is a phenomenon. Conceiving Orientalism from within a Fārābian epistemology and using analytic tools to understand it (which I argue constitutes a unique and distinctive kind of fallibilism) makes head-way here where other conceptions fail. (shrink)

U ovom radu pokušavam razviti ono što nazivam 'analitičkom, farabijanskom' koncepcijom orijentalizma. Motivacija za ovu koncepciju je to što nam pomaže sa zadatkom––koji je identificirao Wael B. Hallaq––da idemo dalje od 'rudimentarnih političkih slogana' vezanih za teoriju orijentalizma i umjesto toga da identificiramo orijentalističku 'psihoepistemičku patologiju' ( Hallaq 2018, 4). Da bismo to učinili ispravno, prema Hallaqu, moramo pronaći metodološku alternativu onoj koja orijentalistički diskurs čini mogućim. Hallaq identificira temeljni problem kao predanost sekularnom humanizmu, a rješenje njegovo napuštanje. Međutim, mislim (...) da je problem dublji, koji se grubo može izraziti na sljedeći način: kako možemo prihvatiti sveprisutnost ideološkog utjecaja bez napuštanja ideje da naše teorije ciljaju (i do neke mjere uspijevaju) predstavljati objektivnu stvarnost––tako da možemo reći da je orijentalizam stvaran fenomen, a ne samo nešto za što slučajno vjerujemo da je fenomen. Koncipiranje orijentalizma unutar farabijanske epistemologije i korištenje analitičkih alata za njegovo razumijevanje (za koje tvrdim da predstavlja jedinstvenu i osebujnu vrstu falibilizma) napreduje tamo gdje druge koncepcije ne uspijevaju. (shrink)

Perhaps no other critical label has been made to cover more ground than "irony," and in our time irony has come to have so many meanings that by itself it means almost nothing. In this work, Wayne C. Booth cuts through the resulting confusions by analyzing how we manage to share quite specific ironies—and why we often fail when we try to do so. How does a reader or listener recognize the kind of statement which requires him to reject (...) its "clear" and "obvious" meaning? And how does any reader know where to stop, once he has embarked on the hazardous and exhilarating path of rejecting "what the words say" and reconstructing "what the author means"? In the first and longer part of his work, Booth deals with the workings of what he calls "stable irony," irony with a clear rhetorical intent. He then turns to intended instabilities—ironies that resist interpretation and finally lead to the "infinite absolute negativities" that have obsessed criticism since the Romantic period. Professor Booth is always ironically aware that no one can fathom the unfathomable. But by looking closely at unstable ironists like Samuel Becket, he shows that at least some of our commonplaces about meaninglessness require revision. Finally, he explores—with the help of Plato—the wry paradoxes that threaten any uncompromising assertion that all assertion can be undermined by the spirit of irony. (shrink)

The first edition of The Rhetoric of Fiction transformed the criticism of fiction and soon became a classic in the field. One of the most widely used texts in fiction courses, it is a standard reference point in advanced discussions of how fictional form works, how authors make novels accessible, and how readers recreate texts, and its concepts and terms—such as "the implied author," "the postulated reader," and "the unreliable narrator"—have become part of the standard critical lexicon. For this new (...) edition, Wayne C. Booth has written an extensive Afterword in which he clarifies misunderstandings, corrects what he now views as errors, and sets forth his own recent thinking about the rhetoric of fiction. The other new feature is a Supplementary Bibliography, prepared by James Phelan in consultation with the author, which lists the important critical works of the past twenty years—two decades that Booth describes as "the richest in the history of the subject.". (shrink)

Shah, N. The Philosophical Quarterly, 56, 481–498 (2006) has defended evidentialism on the premise that only it (and not pragmatism) is consistent with both (a) the deliberative constraint on reasons and (b) the transparency feature of belief. I show, however, that the deliberative constraint on reasons is also problematic for evidentialism. I also suggest a way for pragmatism to be construed so as to make it consistent with both (a) and (b) and argue that a similar move is not available (...) to the evidentialist. Thus, far from settling the debate in favour of evidentialism, considerations concerning the deliberative constraint on reasons support pragmatism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Our Best RhetorologistWayne C. BoothAristotle’s Rhetoric: An Art of Character, by Eugene Garver; 328 pp. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, $53.95.Eugene Garver’s new book is not only an original and challenging account of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. It is one of the fullest and most responsible encounters ever with philosophical, political, and ethical issues raised by the theory and practice of rhetoric. I’ll go even further. Because Garver grapples so (...) well with how Aristotle’s problems differ from ours, and how his solutions do not quite fit what we most need, I hereby confer upon him, without irony, the title of supreme “rhetorologist” (a term he needs but does not use).A rhetorologist is not just “rhetorician” or “rhetorical theorist” or “philosopher of rhetoric.” Garver’s work dramatizes our need for a term for the “comparativist of rhetorics,” the thinker who probes how disparate rhetorical practices and theories compete and are finally, inescapably related. In earlier times when all philosophers were trained to think about rhetoric the term “genuine philosopher” might have served the trick. But it won’t work today.Garver has spent decades on this masterwork of rhetorology, and he thus joins those rare masters-of-interrelated-rhetorics—Kenneth Burke, Richard McKeon, who else?—those who do justice both to the importance and the complexities of a subject that Aristotle has led us into but himself could never have dreamed of, since he had available no fully developed alternative “rhetorics” to do a “-logy” on. [End Page 116]The book is too ambitious and complex to allow full justice here. It is a book not just to read but to study; it is a book to teach from. All attentive readers will find themselves drawn into issues previously dodged, or engaged in quarrels about theses they’ve never met before. Those like me whose interests overlap strongly with Garver’s will of course dispute about some points. What will prove important, as the book gets discussed, will be our recognition of just why the project itself has led Garver, and leads us, into some inescapable juggling with several different and potentially contradictory theses, each of them so important that it must at moments have invited Garver to consider it as primary. Indeed, when an original thinker bites off more than anyone can chew, let alone fully digest, we should not be surprised if we have a hard time deciding just what the main point is. Several times in my first reading I thought, “Garver has mistitled this book: it should be called...”—and then I’d try out a title that fit the argument at that point but would not fit precisely what came next.The result is that different sympathetic readers will find different books here, with at least the following ambiguously related purposes—all of them to my mind either firmly achieved or at least pursued so effectively that refutation will prove difficult. Some of them are the overt theses of particular chapters, but all are found echoed or implied in every chapter. And all are finally and impressively interrelated.IFirst, Garver works, as he must, to show the faults of past readings of the Rhetoric. The chief of these has been the reduction to a handbook for rhetors; it is not a technical handbook, though it can be used as that, but an effort to “construct a civic relation between argument and ethos, so between techn̄e and phron̄esis [prudence]” (p. 77). “Aristotle’s political project is to maximize the active—energeia—side of rhetoric and so civilize the activity of influencing beliefs and judgments and convert into a minor irritant the role played by disreputable tactics such as playing on irrelevant emotions in the hearers” (p. 40). “I have... assumed that instead of doing that job [the ‘handbook’ job] badly, Aristotle is in fact trying to accomplish something else. I see him exhibiting the internal values and standards of rhetorical argument to legislators and citizens” (p. 235), [and thus making possible] “a new conception of the ethical, and of the relation of logos and ethos” (p. 16). “Aristotle’s Rhetoric is about a civic art... (shrink)

Tome I. Politique des savoirs. Science(s) et religion. -- tome II. Pouvoirs : politique intérieure et politique extérieure.

Booth explains that international relations are a critical level in the business of determining who gets what across the world. He gives an introduction and shows how they directly or indirectly affect all our lives.

These lectures [FN#1: Delivered at the 32nd Anniversary of the Theosophical Society held at Benares, on Dec. 27th, 28th, 29th, and 30th, 1907.] are intended to give an outline of Yoga, in order to prepare the student to take up, for practical purposes, the Yoga sutras of Patanjali, the chief treatise on Yoga. I have on hand, with my friend Bhagavan Das as collaborateur, a translation of these Sutras, with Vyasa's commentary, and a further commentary and elucidation written in the (...) light of Theosophy.[FN#2: These have never been finished or printed.] To prepare the student for the mastering of that more difficult task, these lectures were designed; hence the many references to Patanjali. They may, however, also serve to give to the ordinary lay reader some idea of the Science of sciences, and perhaps to allure a few towards its study. Annie Besant. (shrink)

Since 1995, students, researchers, and professionals have turned to The Craft of Research for clear and helpful guidance on how to conduct research and report it effectively. Now, master teachers Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams have completely revised and updated their classic handbook. The new edition will continue to help thousands of students and writers plan, carry out, and report on research to produce effective term papers, dissertations, articles, or books -- in any field, (...) at any level. (shrink)

Etienne Balibar, Olivier Bloch, Jean-Claude Bourdin, Isabelle Garo, Alain Gigandet, Pascale Gillot, Annie Ibrahim, Irène Pereira et André Tosel se penchent dans cet ouvrage sur les problèmes et les perpectives induites par le matérialisme althusserien. " Jamais un coup de dés n'abolira le hasard ". Althusser fait un bref commentaire de cette célèbre sentence mallarméenne dans un texte de 1982 - Le courant souterrain du matérialisme de la rencontre. II y conclut que l'histoire n'est que la révocation permanente du (...) fait accompli par le "fait à accomplir" sans qu'on sache à l'avance ni jamais, ni où, ni comment. Affaire de jeu de dés à jeter sur la table vide... Ainsi est déterminée une position en philosophie et en politique, assiette inédite qui en appelle à l'aléatoire et se donne comme un " chantier " ouvert à nos explorations. De fait, les catégories du sujet, de l'aliénation, de la dialectique, de l'idéologie, sont bradées ou ébranlées au profit du processus hasardeux et de la vicissitude des formes. Pourtant, ni le primat de la lutte des classes ni la thèse de la matérialité objective du monde ne sont sacrifiés au nouvel horizon de la conjoncture. Il se peut qu'il y ait deux voies du matérialisme, aussi légitimes l'une que l'autre - matérialisme de la nécessité et matérialisme de la rencontre. Gageons que ce dernier puisse faire que les éléments vivants d'un ensemble politique"s'accrochent " entre eux et au tout de telle sorte que ce qui est vrai en théorie le soit aussi en pratique. (shrink)

That holobionts are units of selection squares poorly with the observation that microbes are often recruited from the environment, not passed down vertically from parent to offspring, as required for collective reproduction. The taxonomic makeup of a holobiont’s microbial community may vary over its lifetime and differ from that of conspecifics. In contrast, biochemical functions of the microbiota and contributions to host biology are more conserved, with taxonomically variable but functionally similar microbes recurring across generations and hosts. To save what (...) is of interest in holobiont thinking, we propose casting metabolic and developmental interaction patterns, rather than the taxa responsible for them, as units of selection. Such units need not directly reproduce or form parent-offspring lineages: their prior existence has created the conditions under which taxa with the genes necessary to carry out their steps have evolved in large numbers. These taxa or genes will reconstruct the original interaction patterns when favorable conditions occur. Interaction patterns will vary in ways that affect the likelihood of and circumstances under which such reconstruction occurs. Thus, they vary in fitness, and evolution by natural selection will occur at this level. It is on the persistence, reconstruction, and spread of such interaction patterns that students of holobiosis should concentrate, we suggest. This model also addresses other multi-species collectively beneficial interactions, such as biofilms or biogeochemical cycles maintaining all life. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Al Mele (2003) suggests that the Simple View of intentional action is “fiction” because it is “wholly unconstrained” by a widely shared (folk) concept of intentional action. The Simple View (Adams, 1986, McCann, 1986) states that an action is intentional only if intended. As evidence that the Simple View is not in accord with the folk notion of intentional action, Mele appeals to recent surveys of folk judgments by Joshua Knobe (2003, 2004a, 2004b). Knobe’s surveys appear (...) to show that the folk judge unintended but known side effects of actions to be performed intentionally. In this paper we will reject Mele’s suggestion that the Simple View is “fiction.” We will also discuss the relationship between surveys and philosophical theories, and the abilities of surveys to access folk core concepts. We will argue that considerations of both fail to support Mele’s suggestion. (shrink)

The subject of this book, which is the first to be devoted to a single photograph, is Camille Silvy's remarkable River Scene.

Life and work of the French photographer Camille Silvy.

In this study, we examined the perception of actual and ideal ethical climate type among 95 nurses working in the internal medicine wards of one central hospital in the state of Israel. We also examined whether nurses’ demographic characteristics influence that perception and if a relationship between perceptions of an actual and an ideal ethical climate type influences nurses’ job satisfaction. A questionnaire composed of three subquestionnaires was administered and the responses analyzed using multiple linear regressions, analysis of variance and (...) Pearson’s correlation coefficient. The results demonstrated that demographic characteristics (such as: gender, job tenure and level of education) partially influence the perception of an ideal ethical climate. Incongruence in perceptions of ‘caring’ and ‘independence’ climate types indicated a decline in nurses’ job satisfaction, while perception of actual ‘caring’ and ‘service’ climates positively influenced all aspects of job satisfaction. We recommend constructing training programs emphasizing the ethics of nursing practice and also to help lead nurses to clarify an ethical framework and guide nursing staff in dealing with ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

Background/Aim: The law on consent has changed in Scotland with the introduction of the Adults with Incapacity Act 2000. This Act introduces the concept of proxy consent in Scotland. Many patients in intensive care are unable to participate in the decision making process because of their illness and its treatment. It is normal practice to provide relatives with information on the patient’s condition, treatment, and prognosis as a substitute for discussion directly with the patient. The relatives of intensive care patients (...) appeared to believe that they already had the right to consent on behalf of an incapacitated adult. The authors’ aim was to assess the level of knowledge among relatives of intensive care patients of both the old and new law using a structured questionnaire.Methods: The next of kin of 100 consecutive patients completed a structured questionnaire. Each participant had the questions read to them and their answers recorded. Patients were not involved in the study.Results: Few were aware of the changes. Most thought that they previously could give consent on behalf of an incapacitated adult. Only 13% have ever discussed the preferences for life sustaining treatment with the patient but 84% felt that they could accurately represent the patient’s wishes.Conclusions: There appeared to be a lack of public awareness of the impending changes. The effectiveness of the Act at improving the care of the mentally incapacitated adult will depend largely on how successful it is at encouraging communication and decision making in advance of incapacity occurring. (shrink)