Increasingly, ethical concerns are being raised regarding bioenergy production. However, the ethical issues often do not stand out very clearly. The aim of the present paper is to improve on this situation by analyzing the bioenergy discussion from the perspective of land use. From this perspective, bioenergy production may give rise to ethical problems because it competes with other forms of land use. This may generate ethical problems mainly for two reasons. First, bioenergy production may compete, directly or indirectly, with (...) food production; and as consequence the food security of poor people may be adversely affected (social aspects arguments). Secondly, the production of bioenergy may directly or indirectly lead to deforestation and other changes of land use that have a negative effect on greenhouse gas emissions (environmental arguments). So from this perspective the main challenge raised by bioenergy production is to secure responsible land use. The purpose of the paper is not to advocate, or promote, a specific ethical position on bioenergy, but to structure the main arguments found. The paper falls in two parts. One part addresses social aspects arguments for using agricultural land for bioenergy—where food insecurity, malnourishment, and significant food poverty are the main concerns. The second part scopes environmental implications—notably greenhouse gas emissions impact, as affected by deforestation and other (indirect) land-use changes. Alongside showing some of the current dilemmas presented by wider land-use changes, arguments are analyzed from two ethical angels: a consequentialist and a deontological. (shrink)

This work consists of a series of articles which are general and mainly historical in nature. They trace, in more or less detailed fashion, the main patterns of thought in the great world religions in this century, especially in relation to science and economic systems. This is more an historical and sociological study than a philosophical one, and its value is primarily a peripheral one for the student of religious thought and practice. Of particular interest, mainly due to its esoteric (...) attraction, is an article on he position of the Orthodox Church in Soviet Russia, which is a model of Marxist interpretation of religion and its influence on society. In summary, more an interesting general history than an intensive study.—K. O. (shrink)

This book is primarily concerned with the problem of human knowledge of the Divine. Its main emphasis is on the defense of the dualist views of the author, and in this defense he presents an extended criticism of the encounters of empiricist philosophy with religion. This is a good survey of the positivist and language-analysis theories of the possibility of knowing God, and while the approach is critical, the author does present a fairly extensive bibliography of his opponent's views. A (...) further item of interest is the author's unusual interpretation of the meaning of the traditional proofs of God's existence, in which he unites all these proofs by reducing them all to an intuition of the existence of God which is more an attitude than a demonstration. Finally, this book does suffer from the fact that it is supposed to be an introduction to the topic of philosophy religion, while it is in fact more an introduction to this subject from a special point of view. The result is unified but partisan, a perhaps unavoidable consequence in this subject.—K. O. (shrink)

German educators have long been concerned with the didactics of scientific education. Shortly after the Humboldtian reforms of the early nineteenth century, university science professors realized that they had to rely on teachers in the Gymnasien for well-prepared students. By mid-century, these teachers responded with treatises on the pedagogy of scientific education, treatises whose ideas, when implemented, guaranteed scientifically literate students who would later lead Germany to her first place position in the scientific world by 1900. Now, in the twentieth (...) century, two special conditions have changed the sense in which students could and should be scientifically literate. Logical positivism and its heirs inaugurated rigidly exact methodologies for questioning the foundation and content of science, while technological advances, specifically atomic and nuclear weaponry, raised anew the question of the role of science in modern culture, politics, and society. In recent years German citizens have had a special interest in the latter. (shrink)

The book provides a practical guide to the application of Critical Realism (CR), an increasingly popular philosophy of social science, in empirical research projects. Each purpose-written chapter reviews major social science research methods and contains extended illustration of how to conduct inquiry using CR.