Online research in philosophy

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 307-312, October 2011.

The introduction to the special issue briefly discusses the origins and development of the word "pragmatics", pragmatic theory and its application to neurolinguistics. The special issue covers a total of 11 articles investigating pragmatic and neuropragmatic issues from different theoretical, experimental and clinical perspectives.

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 345-359, October 2011.

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 259-262, June 2011.

One goal of environmental ethics is to recommend changes to patterns of human life so as to bring inhabited landscapes into line with a vision of the good. However, the complex intertwining of nature and culture in inhabited landscapes makes this project much more difficult, complicating ethical judgment and limiting the efficacy of ethical action. Technological momentum, a model introduced by historian Thomas P. Hughes to describe the development of complex technological systems, can shed some light on these difficulties. The process of metropolitan growth in the United States will serve to illustrate the consequences of technological momentum for environmental ethics and policy.

This introduction to the special issue on climate puts individual contributions in context. Climate change is the result of the current civilization paradigm and its modes of cognition. This suggests a failure of conventional ways of thinking, including mainstream philosophy. The articles in this issue illustrate alternative philosophical approaches, which point to civil evolution.