Designer Biology: The Ethics of Intensively Engineering Biological and Ecological Systems consists of thirteen chapters that address the ethical issues raised by technological intervention and design across a broad range of biological and ecological systems. Among the technologies addressed are geoengineering, human enhancement, sex selection, genetic modification, and synthetic biology.

Discusses three concepts crucial to an understanding of the nature of religion: anxiety, guilt, and freedom. The various essays examine these from the viewpoint of several different religious traditions, movements and thinkers. Contents: Editor's Preface. Donald Gard: A Personal Perspective. Part I. Guiltless Morality; The Family of Changing Woman: Nature and Women in Navaho Thought; The Sacraments as 'Fear-provoking' and 'Awe-inspiring' Rites in the Greek Fathers; The Doctrine of Karma; Two Concepts of Predestination in Current Islamic Thought. Part II. (...) The Spirit of Medieval Penitents; The Evolution of Freedom as Catholicity in Catholic Ethics; Agape and the Liberation Movements. Part III. Calvin's Idea of Freedom in the Ethics of Schleiermacher and Barth; Creativity and Freedom in the Thought of Martin Buber; The Liberating Visions of C. G. Jung; 'The World's Most Perverse Habit'; Appendix: Study Questions. (shrink)

'Het is wreed, weet je, dat muziek zo mooi kan zijn. Ze heeft de schoonheid van de eenzaamheid & van pijn; van kracht & vrijheid. De schoonheid van de teleurstelling & de nimmer verzadigde liefde. De wrede schoonheid van de natuur, en de eeuwigdurende schoonheid van de monotonie.'.

Not long ago, the actor and playwright Tim Robbins directed a production in New York and Los Angeles called Embedded. The play is strange, but nowhere more so than in one, infamous scene: a black mass in honor of the deceased political philosopher Leo Strauss, conducted by candlelight by advisers to President Bush in the run-up to the Iraq war. Characters who are transparent representations of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleezza Rice masturbate with abandon, (...) all the while yelping “hail Leo Strauss!” beneath an outsized portrait of his face. The scene reaches a climax with this verbal ejaculation from “Woof” : “I'm hard! I'm rock hard!”. (shrink)

Discusses three concepts crucial to an understanding of the nature of religion: anxiety, guilt, and freedom. The various essays examine these from the viewpoint of several different religious traditions, movements and thinkers. Contents: Editor's Preface. Donald Gard: A Personal Perspective. Part I. Guiltless Morality; The Family of Changing Woman: Nature and Women in Navaho Thought; The Sacraments as "Fear-provoking" and "Awe-inspiring" Rites in the Greek Fathers; The Doctrine of Karma; Two Concepts of Predestination in Current Islamic Thought. Part II. (...) The Spirit of Medieval Penitents; The Evolution of Freedom as Catholicity in Catholic Ethics; Agape and the Liberation Movements. Part III. Calvin's Idea of Freedom in the Ethics of Schleiermacher and Barth; Creativity and Freedom in the Thought of Martin Buber; The Liberating Visions of C. G. Jung; 'The World's Most Perverse Habit'; Appendix: Study Questions. (shrink)

A brief foray into a moral thicket, exploring why we should protect nature despite tsunamis, malaria, bird flu, cancer, killer asteroids, and tofu. Most of us think that in order to be environmentalists, we have to love nature. Essentially, we should be tree huggers—embracing majestic redwoods, mighty oaks, graceful birches, etc. We ought to eat granola, drive hybrids, cook tofu, and write our appointments in Sierra Club calendars. Nature's splendor, in other words, justifies our protection of it. But, asks (...) class='Hi'>Benjamin Hale in this provocative book, what about tsunamis, earthquakes, cancer, bird flu, killer asteroids? They are nature, too. For years, environmentalists have insisted that nature is fundamentally good. In The Wild and the Wicked, Benjamin Hale adopts the opposite position—that much of the time nature can be bad—in order to show that even if nature is cruel, we still need to be environmentally conscientious. Hale argues that environmentalists needn't feel compelled to defend the value of nature, or even to adopt the attitudes of tree-hugging nature lovers. We can acknowledge nature's indifference and periodic hostility. Deftly weaving anecdote and philosophy, he shows that we don't need to love nature to be green. What really ought to be driving our environmentalism is our humanity, not nature's value. Hale argues that our unique burden as human beings is that we can act for reasons, good or bad. He claims that we should be environmentalists because environmentalism is right, because we humans have the capacity to be better than nature. As humans, we fail to live up to our moral potential if we act as brutally as nature. Hale argues that despite nature's indifference to the plight of humanity, humanity cannot be indifferent to the plight of nature. (shrink)

Donald Davidson famously offered an explanation of “first-person authority”. However, he described first-person authority differently across different works—sometimes referring to the presumptive truth of agents’ self-ascriptions of their current mental states, and sometimes referring to the direct self-knowledge that agents often have of said states. First, I show that a standard Davidsonian explanation of first-person authority can at best, and with some modification, explain the presumptive truth of agents’ self-ascriptions. I then develop two Davidsonian accounts of direct self-knowledge—one accounting (...) for its function and another accounting for its source—pushing back in the process against deflationary and quietist rejoinders to these projects. Finally, I relate my Davidsonian accounts of direct self-knowledge back to the modified Davidsonian account of the presumptive truth of agents’ self-ascriptions. (shrink)

When Donald Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States in November 2016, many observers in the U.S. and international environmental communities began voicing concerns about the range...

History in a Post-Truth World: Theory and Praxis explores one of the most significant paradigm shifts in public discourse. A post-truth environment that primarily appeals to emotion, elevates personal belief and devalues expert opinion has important implications far beyond Brexit or the election of Donald Trump, and has a profound impact on how history is produced and consumed. Post-truth history is not merely a synonym for lies. This book argues that indifference to historicity by both the purveyor and recipient, (...) contempt for expert opinion that contradicts it, and ideological motivation are its key characteristics. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this work explores some of the following questions. What exactly is post-truth history? Does it represent a new phenomenon? Does the historian have a special role to play in preserving public memory from 'alternative facts'? Do academics more generally have an obligation to combat fake news and fake history both in universities and on social media? How has a 'post-truth culture' impacted professional and popular historical discourse? Looking at theoretical dimensions and case studies from around the world, this book explores the violent potential of post-truth history and calls on readers to resist. (shrink)

This compilation of biographical sketches of 400 “leaders” of American “science” could become a favorite resource for students at the secondary school level. Easy to navigate, with useful and quick summary information, it should appeal to those accustomed to instant feedback in a variety of predigested forms. Included in the list are 380 men and 20 women, not more than a quarter of whom started their careers before 1900. The earliest is Benjamin Banneker; the latest, Jason Lanier. Various features (...) make it easy and absorbing to search or browse the disk. One can search by text, attribute, or subject, with the results displayed for further actions. For example, one can search by some or all of the following “attributes”: occupation, birth and/or death date, sex, ethnicity, and birthplace. One can then view the results along a “timeline,” which is unfortunately anchored mostly by political events or wars rather than great events in science and technology. “Birthplace” leads to one of 85 basic, colored, easy‐to‐read “maps” of states and countries of origin. “Notebook” permits cutting, pasting, and annotating selected text from the disk or adding one's own to compile an original document. “Ethnicity” yields 375 Caucasians, 14 Afro‐Americans, 11 Asians, and 2 Hispanics. Most biographical sketches come with a photograph or portrait of the scientist and have bibliographical references for further information. Highlighted text links to other biographies, geographical locations, or a glossary of 294 terms to help with unfamiliar terminology. There is a 71‐term “subject index,” and appropriate “help” is available. But there are shortcomings. Glossary explanations are limited, and it's not clear why some terms are included but others not. A relative lack of inclusion of specialized terms limits technical understanding, and hence the educational value of the CD. Although the sketches are described as “in‐depth profiles,” most are quite short and have few bibliographic references. References, dating to 1996, are a mixture of popular and scholarly articles, books, and websites; Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology seems to be cited more often than the Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Credits describe the author, Amanda de la Garza, as “a professional writer, web page designer, and editor,” further reinforcing the impression that this is not a scholarly work. A perennial problem with such compilations is who's included and who's excluded. The absence of explicit selection criteria, as in this case, only augments inevitable questions about bias and representativeness. No scientist before Banneker is listed, and a number of pre‐Revolutionary notables are omitted. Many eminent scientists from 1800 to 1860 are omitted. Ironically, O. C. Marsh is in, but E. D. Cope is out. Barry Commoner is the one environmental biologist, Rachel Carson the sole ecologist. Nearly 25 percent of the list are physicists, who, despite their acknowledged importance in science, make up less than 10 percent of the scientific community. Nobelists are well represented—and the Nobel Prize may be a major selection criterion for the twentieth‐century scientists on the list. There are 18 inventors, 1 promoter, 1 explorer, and 1 industrialist among the “scientists,” who also include 33 “medical” people, including 8 surgeons. It is clear from the list of occupations that the term “scientist” is broadly inclusive; the consequent blurring of common distinctions between science, engineering, medicine, and invention further raises questions about what it means to be a “leader of science.” It would have been useful to have more attributes included, thus making the sketches more uniform and comparable and the search combinations more varied. A complete and separate bibliography would have been useful. So, too, would have been a Mac version, especially given Apple's connection with education and its appeal to scientists and engineers. All in all, this disk is a good pilot project with obvious promise. Much still remains to be done to make it a reputable educational tool for higher education. At the moment, it's sadly too truncated for other than the most superficial college or university work. (shrink)

This book seeks to address the relation of political philosophy and Donald Trump as a political phenomenon through the notions of patriotism, cosmopolitanism, and civic virtue. Political philosophers have been prescient in explaining trends that may explain our political misgivings. Madison warned during the debates on the Constitution that democracies are vulnerable to factions based on passion for personalities and beliefs; various continental thinkers have addressed the problem of nihilism—the modern loss of faith in objective standards of truth and (...) morality—that in Max Weber’s analysis pointed to the importance of charisma, in Carl Schmitt’s to the idea that politics is essentially rooted in the definition of friends and enemies, and in early Heidegger resulted in the emphasis on the enduring significance of local, rather than cosmopolitan values. The former concerns—regarding demagoguery, charisma and nihilism—will enable an evaluation of Trump as a political character, while the latter concerns—regarding the status of universal versus local values—will enable us to evaluate the content of “Trumpism.” Taken together, these essays seek to advance the public conversation about the relationship between the rise of Trump and the ideological forces that seek to justify that rise. (shrink)

This chapter offers a proceduralist argument against capital punishment. More specifically, it contends that the possibility of irrevocable mistakes precludes the just administration of the death penalty. At stake is a principle of political morality: legal institutions must strive to remedy their mistakes and to compensate those who suffer from wrongful sanctions. The incompatibility of remedy and execution is the crux of the irrevocability argument: because the wrongly executed cannot enjoy the morally required compensation, execution is impermissible. Along with defending (...) his key premises, Yost explains the complicated role that sentencing uncertainty plays in the argument. He concludes by noting some of the flaws in substantive consequentialist and retributivist justifications of capital punishment. (shrink)

We perceive smells as perduring complex entities within a distal array that might be conceived of as smellscapes. However, the philosophical orthodoxy of Odor Theories has been to deny that smells are perceived as having a distal location. Recent challenges have been mounted to Odor Theories’ veracity in handling the timescale of olfactory perception, how it individuates odors as a distal entities, and their claim that olfactory perception is not spatial. The paper does not aim to dispute these criticisms. Rather, (...) what will be shown is that Molecular Structure Theory, a refinement of Odor Theory, can be further developed to handle these challenges. The theory is further refined by focusing on distal perception that requires considering the perceptual object as mereologically complex persisting odor against a background scene conceived of as a smellscape. What will be offered is an expansion of Molecular Structure Theory to account for distal smell perception within natural environments. (shrink)

Acts of violence and murder have historically proved difficult to accommodate in standard accounts of the formula of universal law (FUL) version of Kant’s Categorical Imperative (CI). In “Murder and Mayhem,” Barbara Herman offers a distinctive account of the status of these acts that is intended to be appropriately didactic in comparison to accounts like the practical contradiction model. I argue that while Herman’s account is a promising one, the distinction she makes between coercive and non-coercive violence and her response (...) to concerns with the classification of the latter as imperfect duties raise significant questions about the status of some duties. I suggest that we look, instead, to Kant’s treatment of suicide in The Metaphysics of Morals for an account of norms of non-violence and, in particular, to the connection between this duty and concerns with inner freedom and moral health. I argue that we can use this account to inform our general understanding of duties prohibiting killing and violence, and that the resulting account is a promising one. (shrink)

We are immersed within an odorous sea of chemical currents that we parse into individual odors with complex structures. Odors have been posited as determined by the structural relation between the molecules that compose the chemical compounds and their interactions with the receptor site. But, naturally occurring smells are parsed from gaseous odor plumes. To give a comprehensive account of the nature of odors the chemosciences must account for these large distributed entities as well. We offer a focused review of (...) what is known about the perception of odor plumes for olfactory navigation and tracking, which we then connect to what is known about the role odorants play as properties of the plume in determining odor identity with respect to odor quality. We end by motivating our central claim that more research needs to be conducted on the role that odorants play within the odor plume in determining odor identity. (shrink)

Capital punishment—the legally authorized killing of a criminal offender by an agent of the state for the commission of a crime—stands in special need of moral justification. This is because execution is a particularly severe punishment. Execution is different in kind from monetary and custodial penalties in an obvious way: execution causes the death of an offender. While fines and incarceration set back some of one’s interests, death eliminates the possibility of setting and pursuing ends. While fines and incarceration narrow (...) one’s routes to happiness, death eliminates its possibility. Not surprisingly, there is much debate about the moral permissibility of capital punishment. This entry maps the terrain of this debate. The first section discusses justifications of the death penalty as they appear in major theories of punishment. The second section surveys moral objections to execution that apply to most justifications. The third addresses procedural criticisms, which do not target the morality of execution so much as the justice of its implementation. (shrink)

At least some of your beliefs are commitments. When you believe that P as a commitment, your stance on P is such that you believe it on the basis of your considered judgement. Sometimes, you also believe that you believe P. Such self‐beliefs can also be commissive in a sense, as when they are reflective endorsements of your lower‐order commissive beliefs. In this paper I argue that one's commissive self‐beliefs ontologically constitute one's lower‐order commissive beliefs because one's commissive self‐beliefs instantiate (...) the same inferential dispositions that are constitutive of one's lower‐order commissive beliefs. Constitutive relations between commissive self‐beliefs and first‐order commissive beliefs are maximally epistemically secure because they do not result from any epistemic procedure by which one must try (and possibly fail) to detect one's first‐order commissive beliefs. This maximal epistemic security suffices to warrant one's commissive self‐beliefs, such that one possesses commissive self‐knowledge of an especially privileged sort. (shrink)

Kant famously insists that free will is a condition of morality. The difficulty of providing a demonstration of freedom has left him vulnerable to devastating criticism: critics charge that Kant's post-Groundwork justification of morality amounts to a dogmatic assertion of morality's authority. My paper rebuts this objection, showing that Kant offers a cogent demonstration of freedom. My central claim is that the demonstration must be understood in practical rather than theoretical terms. A practical demonstration of x works by bringing x (...) into existence, and what the demonstration of freedom brings into existence is a moral will, a will regulated by the moral law and capable of acting in accordance with it. Since to act morally is to act freely, bringing a moral will into existence actualizes our capacity for freedom and demonstrates that we possess it. To confirm the viability of such a demonstration, Kant must establish that agents can regulate their wills by practical principles, and that practical judgments are efficacious of themselves (i.e., that non-Humean motivational internalism is true). Kant, I argue, is successful on both counts. (shrink)

The almost 300 articles contain not only historical accounts but also some indication of the state of present day study in classical philosophy.

There is a familiar problem in moral theories that recognize positive obligations to help others related to the practical room these obligations leave for ordinary life, and the risk that open-ended obligations to help others will consume our lives and resources. Responding to this problem, Kantians have tended to emphasize the idea of limits on positive obligations but are typically unsatisfactorily vague about the nature and extent of these limits. I argue here that aspects of Kant’s discussion of duties of (...) virtue owed to ourselves suggest a useful metric we can use in discussing these limits and that generalizing this account and combining it with elements of Barbara Herman’s view, offers us an attractive model of moral deliberation with the resources we need to engage the critic’s challenge properly. (shrink)

Nietzsche distinguished between two forces in art: Apollonian, which represents order and reason, and Dionysian, which represents chaos and energy. Economists, Ward argues, have operated for too long under the assumption that their work reflects the scientific, Apollonian principals that inform physics when they simply do not apply to economics: 'constants' in economics stand in for variables, and the core scientific principles of prediction and replication are all but ignored by economists. Ward encourages economists to reintegrate the standard rigor of (...) the scientific method into their work while embracing the fact of the shape-shifting changeability of human beings. Economists can still aspire to scientific standards, as is demonstrated by the success of biology, in which there is considerable Dionysian variability. Economists must avoid the temptation to wish away dynamic complexity and diversity and must recognize, among other things, that the desire to take risks is fundamentally human. The second half of the book takes some first steps toward creating this new Dionysian Economics. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher. He is a central figure of modern philosophy, and set the terms by which all subsequent thinkers have had to grapple. He argued that human perception structures natural laws, and that reason is the source of morality. His thought continues to hold a major influence in contemporary thought, especially in fields such as metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics.

The early essays in this volume proceed on the assumption that a compatability system can be fashioned that will not only bring religious knowledge claims into harmony with scientific claims, but will also show there to be a fundamental similarity of method in religious and scientific thinking. They are not, however, unambiguously successful. Consequently Wiebe sets out in the succeeding essays to seek an understanding of the religion/science relationship that does not assume they must be compatible. The examination, in the (...) final analysis, reveals a fundamental contradiction in the compatability system building programme which suggests that religious belief is beyond legitimation. (shrink)

Understanding Hume’s theory of space and time requires suspending our own. When theorizing, we think of space as one huge array of locations, which external objects might or might not occupy. Time adds another dimension to this vast array. For Hume, in contrast, space is extension in general, where being extended is having parts arranged one right next to the other like the pearls on a necklace. Time is duration in general, where having duration is having parts occurring one aft (...) er another like the notes of a song. Hume’s diff erent view stems from his empiricism, his reliance on experience and observation as the foundation of our concepts. Nothing in our experience suggests a single vast array of locations. Rather, we simply notice that bodies are similar insofar as they have lengths that can be compared. Likewise, nothing in our experience suggests a single dimension of time. Rather, we simply notice that diff erent successions are similar insofar as they have durations that can be compared. Th eorizing that these observations show there to be a single multidimensional array goes well beyond the evidence for Hume. As a skeptic, he fi nds himself unable to assent to theories that stray too far beyond the deliverances of the senses. For Hume, the ideas of space and time are each a general idea of simple—partless— objects arrayed in a certain manner. He argues that the structures of the ideas of space and time refl ect the structures of space and time. Th erefore, space and time are not infi - nitely divisible, and they are ways simple objects are arrayed. Consequently, there is no such thing as empty space nor time without change. (shrink)

Causal realists maintain that the causal relation consists in something more than its relata. Specifying this relation in nonreductive terms is however notoriously difficult. Michael Tooley has advanced a plausible account avoiding some of the relation’s most obvious difficulties, particularly where these concern the notion of a cross-temporal connection. His account distinguishes discrete from nondiscrete causation, where the latter is suitable to the continuity of cross-temporal causation. I argue, however, that such accounts face conceptual difficulties dating from Zeno’s time. A (...) Bergsonian resolution of these difficulties appears to entail that, for the causal realist, there can be no indirect causal relations of the sort envisioned by Tooley. A consequence of this discussion is that the causal realist must conceive all causal relations as ultimately direct. (shrink)

Hatred As A Sign Of Life. We've seen a lot of this in the last year, in the last four to five years, in fact. So much hatred that people were willing to risk their lives rather than wear a mask to protect themselves (and others) from COVID-19.So much hatred against them... against the other... against those others.If nothing else, this past year made strikingly visible the divides that exist in the United States, and yet the nature of the major (...) divide remained unspoken.It is not race; it is socioeconomic class.Race is the smoke and mirrors used to hide the class disparities that exist. The truth is really very simple. For every black, urban member of the poor, there are several white members of the rural poor who are wondering why they are not getting as much attention. Members of the (predominantly white and middle- to upper-class) intelligentsia are so focused on not being racist that they don't see how prejudiced they are against the poor. We see a black student and think “Poor kid! All the prejudice he or she has faced!” We fail to see the poverty in a white face. We also fail to see wealth in a black face.I once had a black student come to my office in a fury. A professor had told her that she wrote well, “all things considered,” which she took to mean that she wrote very well for a black student. I believe her interpretation was correct. Why was she upset? Because both of her parents were lawyers. Of course, she knew how to write! One assumes that all children of lawyers know how to write—regardless of skin color. Apparently, there was doubt about the existence of black lawyers.Furthermore, we shouldn't talk about white privilege. As many whites will point out, they're white, but they're not privileged. This term is part of why Clinton failed so miserably in 2016. The truth is that it's wealth privilege. You may disagree with this. But it's the inability to see the suffering of poverty in rural white communities that led to the creation of Trump supporters. I know that middle-class and wealthy people (black and white) also supported Trump, but not for the same reasons as the white rural poor. The white rural poor had had enough.Moreover, when you make the comparison by the right measures, you find that blacks and whites of the same socioeconomic class have the same rates of college graduation, the same rates of employment, and the same leverage of wealth and class. A black kid from West Philly has nothing in common with the black wealthy elites that summer at Oaks Bluff on Martha's Vineyard. That black kid has more in common with the poor “white trash” kid from Alabama who also can't afford the opportunity costs that go with attending college.Until we own up to the problem of socioeconomic class, we will face continued trouble in the United States. Let us be honest with ourselves. The “problem of race” in the United States is about economics. The notion of reparations is about money. The idea that most black families have not acquired as much wealth as some white families is a matter of money. It's not a “problem of race” per se. It's the problem that your skin color may be making it hard for you to make money. Well and good. But being white does not ipso facto help you to make money either. I hate to break it to people, but not all white people are wealthy. White privilege gives off the impression that they are.For every force, there is an equal and opposite force. For every BLM protester, there is somewhere in the hinterland a Proud Boy. For every window smashed by looters, evidence increased that the Capitol needed to be retaken from the powers that be because they were leading our nation astray. For every black person shot illegitimately by police, the white rural poor could name a white person shot for equally illegitimate reasons. I've often wondered why the black urban poor get so much attention. I think it's because they are closer to the TV stations that create our reality.Hatred is usually a product of fear. If whites fear blacks, it's because they fear that blacks will do unto them what they did unto blacks. But they are also jealous—another primeval source of hatred. Why is their poverty and pain being ignored? Was it only made visible by the opioid epidemic?Johnson's “War on Poverty” was never won. Urban renewal renewed nothing. But race is the cause célèbre du jour. Perhaps by this time next year, it won't be. But the fear will remain. Fear of the Other. Jealousy of the Other. Hatred toward the Other. Such hatred can turn into violence at the drop of a hat. Ask the Russians. Ask the Chinese. We don't want a race war, if only because blacks are easier to pick out in a crowd than Jews. It would end very badly. If you want to prevent the race war, solve the poverty problem. Then peace and justice can—even if only in a limited sense—prevail. This is a better kind of life than one based on hatred. We must ignore the dog whistle of race. Instead, we must focus on the numbing reality of poverty. Everybody's poverty. (shrink)