Edward Verrall Lucas and Francis Meynell were men of letters in the old-fashioned sense. They were indefatigable both in creating text and bringing like matter together in new and meaningful forms. Lucas was a journalist, anthologist and publisher. Meynell was a printer, anthologist and publisher, and also a poet of considerable sensitivity and charm. Lucas did not write much poetry but was passionate about its merits, and sought, through his collections, to bring children into contact with the best of verse. (...) Today, the significant contributions that these men made to publishing in Britain are in danger of becoming forgotten, relegated to the minor byways of publishing history. This article examines the origins and connections between two hugely successful anthologies that were inspired by a growing public interest in, and engagement with, the English countryside. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to set out a structured meta‐methodology, named DIODE, for the ethical assessment of new and emerging technologies. DIODE has been designed by a mixture of academics, governmental people and commercial practitioners. It is designed to help diverse organisations and individuals conduct ethical assessments of new and emerging technologies. A framework discussion paper was developed for consultation to ensure that DIODE addresses fundamental ethical concerns, has appropriate and manageable scope and is comprehensive in its ethical (...) compass. The resulting DIODE meta‐methodology uses flowcharts and templates, encompassing the use of diverse tools and techniques. There are two different angles for the ethical assessment of new technologies; a strategic-abstract angle and a project-application specific angle. DIODE includes two channels to accommodate this distinction. Early stage testing yielded positive feedback and mostly favourable comment. Additional guidance materials are being developed in response to the feedback. Without training and guidance, it is difficult for technologists to take ethical concerns into account during the development and deployment of new technologies. DIODE can provide that training and guidance through a practical meta‐methodology which should help ICT professionals, policy makers and academics. There is very little structured methodology material available on the ethical assessment of new technologies. The depth and sophistication contained in DIODE is therefore believed to be unique. DIODE provides practical help while remaining rooted in the philosophical and theoretical concepts of ethics. (shrink)

Food Sovereignty is a vibrant discourse in academic and activist circles, yet despite the many shared characteristics between issues surrounding food and public health, the two are often analysed in separate frameworks and the insights from Food Sovereignty are not sufficiently brought to bear on the problems in the public health discourse. In this paper, I will introduce the concept of 'self-organised community viability' as a way to link food and health, and to argue that what I call the 'Health (...) Security' paradigm requires a 'Health Sovereignty' response modelled on Food Sovereignty. (shrink)

One serious harm facing communities in the Anthropocene is epistemic loss. This is increasingly recognized as a harm in international policy discourses around adaptation to climate change. Epistemic loss is typically conceived of as the loss of a corpus of knowledge, or less commonly, as the further loss of epistemic methodologies. In what follows, I argue that epistemic loss also can involve the loss of epistemic self-determination, and that this framework can help to usefully examine adaptation policies.

We study a canonical modal logic introduced by Lemmon, and axiomatised by an infinite sequence of axioms generalising McKinsey’s formula. We prove that the class of all frames for this logic is not closed under elementary equivalence, and so is non-elementary. We also show that any axiomatisation of the logic involves infinitely many non-canonical formulas.

This paper concerns the attempt to formulate an empirical version of the problem of evil, and the attempt to counter this version by what is known as ‘sceptical theism’. My concern is to assess what is actually achieved in these attempts. To this end I consider the debate between them against the backdrop of William Rowe's distinction between expanded standard theism and restricted standard theism (which I label E and R respectively). My claim is that the empirical version significantly fails (...) to challenge E in the way that a workable logical version would; and that sceptical theism significantly fails to defend R in the way that a workable theodicy would. My conclusion is that sceptical theism and the empirical argument play a significantly more limited role in the debate over evil than the arguments they are supposed to replace. (Published Online August 11 2004). (shrink)

Despite US policy documents which recommend that in areas of environmental risk, interaction between scientific experts and the public move beyond the so-called “Decide, Announce, and Defend model,” many current public involvement policies still do not guarantee meaningful public participation. In response to this problem, various attempts have been made to define what counts as sufficient or meaningful participation and free informed consent from those affected. Though defining “meaningfulness” is a complex task, this paper explores one under-examined dimension that concerns (...) the relationship between consent and the idea that citizens should be sufficiently informed: epistemic capacity. This paper will look at some of the work on meaningful participation and consent, give a definition of epistemic capacity, and argue that only a community with sufficient epistemic capacity can have the understanding and competence to give informed enough consent and thus participate meaningfully. (shrink)

The aim of Dimitris Vardoulakis’s paper, ‘Toward a Critique of the Ineffectual: Heidegger’s Reading of Aristotle and the Construction of an Action without Ends’, is to provide the foundation for a critique of aimless action by tracing its genesis to Heidegger’s putative misinterpretation of Aristotelian phronēsis (practical wisdom) in the 1920s. Inasmuch as ‘the ineffectual’—the name Vardoulakis gives to action devoid of ends—plays a crucial role in post-Heideggerian continental philosophy, he thereby seeks to diagnose and to provide an aetiology of (...) an illness afflicting contemporary thought. In my response, I will first argue that, while Vardoulakis is right to identify an emphasis on the ineffectual in Heidegger, he is mistaken about its origin. Heidegger does not strip phronēsis of instrumentality, nor does he mistranslate Nichomachean Ethics 1139a31–32. Second, I trace an alternative source for the ineffectual, which is not simply a negative alternative to technological machination but stems from a positive experience of what Meister Eckhart, and Heidegger in his wake, called life without why. Finally, I look at a couple of texts, including one discussed by Vardoulakis, in which even the later Heidegger is not entirely dismissive of calculative instrumentality but instead assigns the latter to a secondary, restricted site of competence. (shrink)

Sustainability is commonly recognized as an important goal, but there is little agreement on what sustainability is, or what it requires. This paper looks at some common approaches to sustainability, and while acknowledging the ways in which they are useful, points out an important lacuna: that for something to be sustainable, people must be willing to work to sustain it. The paper presents a framework for thinking about and assessing sustainability which highlights people working to sustain. It also briefly discusses (...) Integrated Water Resource Management and the example of the California Water Plan to explore what such a perspective brings that is overlooked in other approaches, and how this approach might be pursued. Ultimately, this framework argues that a system can only be described as sustainable if people’s work to sustain the system is biophysically possible, socially possible, and if people would freely choose to do the sustaining work. -/- Read More: http://ascelibrary.org.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/doi/abs/10.1061/%28ASCE%29WR.1943-5452.0000526. (shrink)

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this paper, I will look at what role being able to provide justification plays in several prominent conceptions of epistemology, and argue that taking the ability to provide reasons as necessary for knowledge leads to a biasing toward false negatives. However, I will also argue that asking for reasons is a common practice among the general public, and one that is endorsed by “folk epistemology.” I will then discuss the fact that this asking for reasons is done neither constantly (...) nor arbitrarily, but rather in a systematic way that produces ignorance by oppressing some knowledge and some knowers, in particular those from already marginalized groups. After looking at the implications of all this, I will ultimately argue that we must be very careful when we ask for reasons, and acknowledge it as the powerful weapon it is. (shrink)

Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned it to something that is his own, and thereby (...) makes it his Property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, hath by his labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men. For this Labour being the unquestionable Property of the Labourer, no Man but he can have a right to what that is once joyned to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, section 27. (shrink)

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

In the early years of the twentieth century, Professor Karl Lamprecht was a powerful and controversial figure in German academia, offering a universal interpretation of history that drew on an eclectic mix of politics, economics, anthropology and psychology. This article explores Mark Hovell’s experiences of working with Lamprecht at the Institut für Kultur- und Universalgeschichte [Institute for Cultural and Universal History] in Leipzig between 1912 and 1913, while also situating Hovell’s criticisms of the Lamprechtian method within wider contemporary assessments of (...) Lamprecht’s scholarship. (shrink)

By comparison with the Irish mission to Northumbria, the mission of Augustine to Kent can seem unexciting. One modern historian has even had occasion to ask “whether Augustine was quite the unimpressive figure which is usually depicted.” This impression is created even though, or perhaps because, the mission of Augustine is among the best-evidenced acts of evangelization in the early Middle Ages. Given the involvement of Gregory the Great and the direct interest of Bede, as well as the more tangential (...) interest of the anonymous author of the Life of Gregory the Great, written at Streoneshealh in Northumbria, it is not surprising that the story of Augustine's mission should be among the best known in Anglo-Saxon history. Nevertheless, there are difficulties in the traditional narrative, as has long been recognized. Despite the vindication of certain aspects of Bede's account, his overall interpretation of the mission still gives cause for concern. At the same time the letters of Gregory the Great continue to provide the opportunity to reassess the context in which the mission must be understood. Further, certain aspects of Gregory's theology allow an insight into Augustine's approach to mission, and may ultimately explain why he can appear so much less interesting than his Irish counterparts. It is, therefore, worth considering these issues yet again. (shrink)

This book offers fresh perspectives on issues of food justice. The chapters emerged from a series of annual workshops on food justice held at Michigan State University between 2013 and 2015, which brought together a wide variety of interested people to learn from and work with each other. Food justice can be studied from such diverse perspectives as philosophy, anthropology, economics, gender and sexuality studies, geography, history, literary criticism, philosophy and sociology as well as the human dimensions of agricultural and (...) environmental sciences. As such, interdisciplinary workshops are a much-needed vehicle to improve our understanding of the subject, which is at the center of a vibrant and growing discourse not only among academics from a wide range of disciplines but also among policy makers and community activists. The book includes their perspectives, offering a wide range of approaches to and conceptions of food justice in a variety of contexts. This invaluable work requires readers to cross boundaries and be open to new ideas based on different assumptions. (shrink)