More than a century ago, John Dewey challenged the education community to look to civic involvement for the betterment of both community and campus. Today, the challenge remains. In his landmark book, editor Thomas Ehrlich has collected essays from national leaders who have focused on civic responsibility and higher education. Imparting both philosophy and working examples, Ehrlich provides the inspiration for innovative new programs in this essential area of learning.

"At places distant from where you are, but also uncomfortably close," writes David Takacs, "a holocaust is under way. People are slashing, hacking, bulldozing, burning, poisoning, and otherwise destroying huge swaths of life on Earth at a furious pace." And a cadre of ecologists and conservation biologists has responded, vigorously promoting a new definition of nature: biodiversity --advocating it in Congress and on the Tonight Show; whispering it into the ears of foreign leaders redefining the boundaries of science and politics, (...) ethics and religion, nature and our ideas of nature. These scientists have infused the environmental movement with new focus and direction, but by engaging in such activities, they jeopardize the societal trust that allows them to be public spokespersons for nature in the first place. The Idea of Biodiversity analyzes what biodiversity represents to the biologists who operate in broader society on its behalf, drawing on in-depth interviews with the scientists most active today in the mission to preserve biodiversity, including Peter Raven, Thomas Lovejoy, Jane Lubchenco, and Paul Ehrlich. Takacs explores how and why these biologists shaped the concept of biodiversity and promoted it to society at large--examining their definitions of biodiversity their opinions about spirituality and its role in scientific work the notion of biodiversity as something of intrinsic value and their views on biophilia, E. O. Wilson's idea that humans are genetically predisposed to love nature. Takacs also looks at the work of twentieth-century forerunners of today's conservation biologists--Aldo Leopold, Charles S. Elton, Rachel Carson, David Ehrenfeld--and points out their contributions to the current debates. He takes readers to Costa Rica, where a group of scientists is using biodiversity to remake nature and society. And in an extended section, he profiles the thoughts and work of E. O. Wilson. "When I'm asked, 'should we save this species orthat species, or this place or that place?' the answer is always 'Yes!' with an exclamation point. Because it's obvious. And if you ask me to justify it, then I switch into a more cognitive consciousness and can start giving you reasons, economic reasons, aesthetic reasons. They're all dualistic, in a sense. But the feeling that underlies it is that 'yes!' And that 'yes!' comes out of the affirmation of being part of it all, being part of this whole evolutionary process. And agreeing with Arne Naess that each species, each entity, should be allowed to continue its evolution and to live out its destiny... just do its thing, as we say. Why not? And the 'why not?' is there's too many people."--Michael E. Soule, from an interview in The Idea of Biodiversity "An important contribution, a first distanced examination of a critical, modern topic by a scholarly, honest broker."--E. O. Wilson, Harvard University. (shrink)

Western Buddhist travel narratives are autobiographical accounts of a journey to a Buddhist culture. Dozens of such narratives have since the 1970s describe treks in Tibet, periods of residence in a Zen monastery, pilgrimages to Buddhist sites and teachers, and other Asian odysseys. The best known of these works is Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard; further reflections emerge from thirty writers including John Blofeld, Jan Van de Wetering, Thomas Merton, Oliver Statler, Robert Thurman, Gretel Ehrlich, and Bill Porter. (...) The Buddhist concept of 'no-self' helps these authors interpret certain pivotal experiences of 'unselfing' and is also a catalyst that provokes and enables such events. The writers' spiritual memoirs describe how their journeys brought about a new understanding of Buddhist enlightenment and so transformed their lives. Showing how travel can elicit self-transformation, this book is a compelling exploration of the journeys and religious changes of both individuals and Buddhism itself. (shrink)

This collection of vivid and eloquent testimonies by environmentalists, eco-theologians, and native peoples illustrates a variety of responses to the same universal question: Where are we as a species heading on this planet? Contributors include Rick Bass, Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard. Gretel Ehrlich, Barry Lopez, Peter Mattheisen, Thomas Moore, Terry Tempest Williams, and others.

A wide family of many-valued logics—for instance, those based on the weak Kleene algebra—includes a non-classical truth-value that is ‘contaminating’ in the sense that whenever the value is assigned to a formula φ⁠, any complex formula in which φ appears is assigned that value as well. In such systems, the contaminating value enjoys a wide range of interpretations, suggesting scenarios in which more than one of these interpretations are called for. This calls for an evaluation of systems with multiple contaminating (...) values. In this paper, we consider the countably infinite family of multiple-conclusion consequence relations in which classical logic is enriched with one or more contaminating values whose behavior is determined by a linear ordering between them. We consider some motivations and applications for such systems and provide general characterizations for all consequence relations in this family. Finally, we provide sequent calculi for a pair of four-valued logics including two linearly ordered contaminating values before defining two-sided sequent calculi corresponding to each of the infinite family of many-valued logics studied in this paper. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the question of whether the expected consequences of holding a belief can affect the rationality of doing so. Special attention is given to various ways in which one might attempt to exert some measure of control over what one believes and the normative status of the beliefs that result from the successful execution of such projects. I argue that the lessons which emerge from thinking about the case ofbelief have important implications for the way we (...) should think about the rationality of a number of other propositional attitudes,such as regret, desire, and fear. Finally,I suggest that a lack of clarity with respect to the relevant issues has given rise to a number of rather serious philosophical mistakes. (shrink)

This paper investigates the use of theories of mechanics to provide answers to questions in the metaphysics of spatial location and persistence. Investigating spatial location, I find that in classical physics bodies pertend the region of space at which they are exactly located, while a quantum system spans a region at which it is exactly located. Following this analysis, I present a ‘no-go’ result which shows that quantum mechanics restricts the available options for locational persistence theories in an interesting way: (...) it demonstrates that the spatiotemporal path of a persisting thing is discrete in time. This leads to unpalatable consequences for both perdurantists and endurantists. In particular, I argue that Butterfield's ‘anti-pointilliste’ perdurantism is ruled out, and show that endurantists relying on immanent causation run into trouble. I conclude by suggesting the revival of Whitehead's alternative mode of persistence called ‘reiteration.’. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the question of whether the expectedconsequences of holding a belief can affect the rationality ofdoing so. Special attention is given to various ways in whichone might attempt to exert some measure of control over whatone believes and the normative status of the beliefs thatresult from the successful execution of such projects. I arguethat the lessons which emerge from thinking about the case ofbelief have important implications for the way we should thinkabout the rationality of a (...) number of other propositional attitudes,such as regret, desire, and fear. Finally,I suggest that a lack of clarity with respect to the relevant issueshas given rise to a number of rather serious philosophical mistakes. (shrink)

The Gamer’s Dilemma challenges us to justify the moral difference between enacting virtual murder and virtual child molestation in video games. The Dilemma relies for its argumentative force on the claim that there is an intuitive moral difference between these acts, with the former intuited as morally acceptable and the latter as morally unacceptable. However, there has been no empirical investigation of these claims. To explore these issues, we developed an experimental survey study in which participants were asked to reflect (...) on imaginary video game scenarios as part of a 2 (undertake virtual murder or molestation) X 2 (against an adult or child) X 2 (in a high or low realism virtual environment) factorial design. We found that there was a significant difference between people’s views about virtual murder and virtual molestation. Whether the virtual act was performed against an adult or child was non-significant in most conditions, whereas whether it was performed in a high or low realism virtual environment was significant in most conditions. Gender did not impact these results, whereas perceived gaming experience, hours of video game play per week, and integrity did. These results provide an empirical grounding for future discussions of the Gamer's Dilemma. (shrink)

In this book Han Thomas Adriaenssen offers the first comparative exploration of the sceptical reception of representationalism in medieval and early modern philosophy. Descartes is traditionally credited with inaugurating a new kind of scepticism by saying that the direct objects of perception are images in the mind, not external objects, but Adriaenssen shows that as early as the thirteenth century, critics had already found similar problems in Aquinas's theory of representation. He charts the attempts of philosophers in both periods (...) to grapple with these problems, and shows how in order to address the challenges of scepticism and representation, modern philosophers in the wake of Descartes often breathed new life into old ideas, remoulding them in ways that we are just beginning to understand. His book will be valuable for historians interested in the medieval background to early modern thought, and to medievalists looking at continuity with the early modern period. -/- . (shrink)

Centred on 'Foams', the third volume of his Spheres trilogy, this article questions the privilege granted by Peter Sloterdijk to motifs of inclusion and exclusion, contending that whilst his prioritization of dwelling as a central aspect of human existence provides a promising counterpoint to the dislocative and isolative effects of post-industrial capitalism, it is compromised by its dependence upon an anti-cosmopolitan outlook that views cultural distantiation as a natural and preferable state of human affairs, and valorizes a purported ontological security (...) attained through defensive postures with respect to perceived foreigners or externalities. Sloterdijk’s conceptualization of culture as a kind of immune system, it is argued, although posited as a rebuke to models of essentialism and ethno-nationalism, provides ontological support to the xenophobic critiques of immigration that are today finding increasing currency. (shrink)

Intuitions based on the first-person perspective can easily mislead us about what is and is not conceivable.1 This point is usually made in support of familiar reductionist positions on the mind-body problem, but I believe it can be detached from that approach. It seems to me that the powerful appearance of contingency in the relation between the functioning of the physical organism and the conscious mind -- an appearance that depends directly or indirectly on the first- person perspective -- must (...) be an illusion. But the denial of this contingency should not take the form of a reductionist account of consciousness of the usual type, whereby the logical gap between the mental and the physical is closed by conceptual analysis -- in effect, by analyzing the mental in terms of the physical. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was an English philosopher, remembered today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory. He also contributed to a diverse array of fields, including history, geometry, physics of gases, theology, ethics, general philosophy, and political science. He was one of the main philosophers who founded materialism. He visited Florence in 1636 and later was a regular debater in philosophic (...) groups in Paris, held together by Marin Mersenne. Hobbes's first area of study was an interest in the physical doctrine of motion and physical momentum. Despite his interest in this phenomenon, he disdained experimental work as in physics. He built a good reputation in philosophic circles and in 1645, he was chosen with Descartes, Gilles de Roberval and others, to referee the controversy between John Pell and Longomontanus over the problem of squaring the circle. His other works include: The Elements of Law Natural and Politic (1640) and De Cive (The Citizen): Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society (1651). (shrink)

Thomas Wheatland examines the influence of the Frankfurt School, or Horkheimer Circle, and how they influenced American social thought and postwar German sociology.

This article examines the ontology and politics of Peter Sloterdijk's Spheres trilogy, focusing in particular upon the notion of microspherical enclosure explicated in the first volume of this series. Noting Sloterdijk's unusual alignment of his philosophy with media theory, three main contentions are put forward. Firstly, that Sloterdijk's reconfiguration of Heidegger's fundamental ontology represents a largely unacknowledged renunciation of the primacy of Being-towards-death in the authentic existence of Dasein, foregrounding instead an originary co-belonging between mother and child. Secondly, that Sloterdijk (...) borrows from media theory a concern regarding the facticity of all communication, grounding philosophical discourse in the determinate locality of its origin, but does so while exalting a pre-natal communicative immediacy that would seem to disparage the everydayness of Dasein. Finally, that Sloterdijk's oft-justified scepticism regarding globalization often retreats into an anti-cosmopolitanism that, in its nostalgia for the comfort, security and immediacy of the matrixial co-belonging, evinces a covert but potentially noxious politics of exclusion. (shrink)

According to the analysis of intentional action that Michael Bratman has dubbed the 'Simple View', intending to x is necessary for intentionally x-ing. Despite the plausibility of this view, there is gathering empirical evidence that when people are presented with cases involving moral considerations, they are much more likely to judge that the action (or side effect) in question was brought about intentionally than they are to judge that the agent intended to do it. This suggests that at least as (...) far as the ordinary concept of intentional action is concerned, an agent need not intend to x in order to x intentionally. (shrink)

Some concepts that are now part and parcel of mathematics used to be, at least until the beginning of the twentieth century, a central preoccupation of mathematicians and philosophers. The concept of continuity, or the continuous, is one of them. Nowadays, many philosophers of mathematics take it for granted that mathematicians of the last quarter of the nineteenth century found an adequate conceptual analysis of the continuous in terms of limits and that serious philosophical thinking is no longer required, except (...) perhaps when the question of the continuum is transferred to the arena of set theory where it takes the form of the infamous continuum hypothesis. As Philip Ehrlich has recently shown, this conviction goes back to the early writings of Russell who, in 1903 and then again in later writings, forcefully and eloquently pushed the view that mathematicians had given the final answer to immemorial conundrums arising from the continuous and infinitesimals . This proclamation of victory came with what was announced as the necessary defeat of the notion of the infinitesimal, despite the fact that mathematicians like Thomae, Du Bois-Reymond, Stolz, Bettazi, Veronese, Levi-Civita, and Hahn were investigating mathematical structures containing infinitesimals in a mathematically rigorous and logically consistent manner. In this respect Russell was merely walking in the footsteps of Cantor, and many of Russell's contemporaries were only too keen to keep infinitesimals out of Cantor's paradise. However, although Cantor certainly wanted to send the notion of infinitesimal to Hell, the notion kept a low profile in the mathematical purgatory, making its way in the study of non-Archimedean ordered algebraic systems. Of course, nowadays everyone has heard of Robinson's attempt at resurrecting infinitesimals in analysis in the form of non-standard analysis, but Robinson's work, despite the fact that it had, in …. (shrink)

In his recent book, Jaegwon Kim argues thatpsychophysical supervenience withoutpsychophysical reduction renders mentalcausation `unintelligible'. He also claimsthat, contrary to popular opinion, his argumentagainst supervenient mental causation cannot begeneralized so as to threaten the causalefficacy of other `higher-level' properties:e.g., the properties of special sciences likebiology. In this paper, I argue that none ofthe considerations Kim advances are sufficientto keep the supervenience argument fromgeneralizing to all higher-level properties,and that Kim's position in fact entails thatonly the properties of fundamental physicalparticles are causally efficacious.

According to the analysis of intentional action that Michael Bratman has dubbed the ‘Simple View’, intending toxis necessary for intentionallyx‐ing. Despite the plausibility of this view, there is gathering empirical evidence that when people are presented with cases involving moral considerations, they are much more likely to judge that the action (or side effect) in question was brought about intentionally than they are to judge that the agent intended to do it. This suggests that at least as far as the (...) ordinary concept of intentional action is concerned, an agent need not intend toxin order toxintentionally. (shrink)

In his recent book, Jaegwon Kim argues thatpsychophysical supervenience withoutpsychophysical reduction renders mentalcausation `unintelligible'. He also claimsthat, contrary to popular opinion, his argumentagainst supervenient mental causation cannot begeneralized so as to threaten the causalefficacy of other `higher-level' properties:e.g., the properties of special sciences likebiology. In this paper, I argue that none ofthe considerations Kim advances are sufficientto keep the supervenience argument fromgeneralizing to all higher-level properties,and that Kim's position in fact entails thatonly the properties of fundamental physicalparticles are causally efficacious.

Logics based on weak Kleene algebra (WKA) and related structures have been recently proposed as a tool for reasoning about flaws in computer programs. The key element of this proposal is the presence, in WKA and related structures, of a non-classical truth-value that is “contaminating” in the sense that whenever the value is assigned to a formula ϕ, any complex formula in which ϕ appears is assigned that value as well. Under such interpretations, the contaminating states represent occurrences of a (...) flaw. However, since different programs and machines can interact with (or be nested into) one another, we need to account for different kind of errors, and this calls for an evaluation of systems with multiple contaminating values. In this paper, we make steps toward these evaluation systems by considering two logics, HYB1 and HYB2, whose semantic interpretations account for two contaminating values beside classical values 0 and 1. In particular, we provide two main formal contributions. First, we give a characterization of their relations of (multiple-conclusion) logical consequence—that is, necessary and sufficient conditions for a set Δ of formulas to logically follow from a set Γ of formulas in HYB1 or HYB2 . Second, we provide sound and complete sequent calculi for the two logics. (shrink)

Exploring online criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ protest during ‘Euro 2020’, this article examines how alt- and far-right conspiracies were both constructed and communicated via the social media platform, Twitter. By providing a novel exploration of alt-right conspiracies during an international football tournament, a qualitative thematic analysis of 1,388 original tweets relating to Euro 2020 was undertaken. The findings reveal how, in criticisms levelled at both ‘wokeism’ and the Black Lives Matter movement, antiwhite criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ (...) protest were embroiled in alt-right conspiracies that exposed an assumed Cultural Marxist, ‘woke agenda’ in the tournament’s organization and mainstream media coverage. In conclusion, it is argued that conspiratorial discourses, associated with the alt-right, provided a framework through which the protest could be understood. This emphasises how the significance of conspiracy functions to promote the wider dissemination of alt-right ideology across popular cultural contexts, such as sport. (shrink)

Thomas Williams presents the most extensive collection of John Duns Scotus's work on ethics and moral psychology available in English. This accessible and philosophically informed translation includes extended discussions on divine and human freedom, the moral attributes of God, and the relationship between will and intellect.

Evolution and ethics. Prolegomena (1894).--Evolution and ethics (1893).--Science and morals (1886).--Capital, the mother of labour (1890).--Social diseases and worse remedies (1891): Preface. The struggle for existence in human society. Letters to the Times. Legal opinions. The articles of war of the Salvation Army.

The paper aims for an improvement of the so-called argument from consciousness while focusing on the first-person-perspective as a unique feature of consciousness that opens the floor for a theistic explanation. As a side effect of knowledge arguments, which are necessary to keep a posterior materialism off bounds, the paper proposes an interpretation of divine knowledge as knowledge of things rather than knowledge of facts.

Though it enjoys widespread support, the claim that perceptual experiences possess nonconceptual content has been vigorously disputed in the recent literature by those who argue that the content of perceptual experience must be conceptual content. Nonconceptualism and conceptualism are often assumed to be well-defined theoretical approaches that each constitute unitary claims about the contents of experience. In this paper I try to show that this implicit assumption is mistaken, and what consequences this has for the debate about perceptual experience. I (...) distinguish between two different ways that nonconceptualist proposals about perceptual content can be understood: as claims about the constituents that compose perceptual contents or as claims about whether a subject’s undergoing experiences with those contents requires them to possess the concepts that characterize those contents. I maintain that these ways of understanding conceptualism and nonconceptualism are orthogonal to one another. This is revealed by the conceptual coherence of positions in which the contents of experiences have both conceptual and nonconceptual features; positions which possess their own distinctive sources of philosophical motivation. I argue that the fact that there is a place in conceptual space for such positions, and that there may be good reason for theorists to adopt them, creates difficulties for both the central argument for nonconceptualism and the central argument for conceptualism. I set out each of these arguments; the Argument from Possession-Independence and the Epistemically-Driven Argument. I then try to show how the existence of mixed positions about perceptual content derived from a clear distinction between compositional and possessional considerations constitutes a significant obstacle for those arguments as they stand. The takehome message of the paper is that unless one clearly acknowledges the distinction between issues about the composition of perceptual content and issues about how subject’s capacities to undergo certain experiences relates to their possession of concepts one runs the risk of embracing unsatisfying philosophical arguments in which conclusions relevant to one conception of nonconceptual and conceptual content are grounded on arguments that concern only the other; arguments that cannot, in themselves, sustain them. (shrink)

The acquisition and display of material artefacts is the raison d’être of museums. But what constitutes a museum artefact? Contemporary medicine is increasingly producing artefacts that do not fit the traditional museological understanding of what constitutes a material, tangible artefact. Museums today are therefore caught in a paradox. On the one hand, medical science and technologies are having an increasing pervasive impact on the way contemporary life is lived and understood and is therefore a central part of the contemporary world. (...) On the other hand, the objects involved in medical diagnostics and therapies are becoming increasingly invisible and intangible and therefore seem to have no role to play as artefacts in a museum context. Consequently, museums are at risk of becoming alienated from an increasingly important part of contemporary society. This essay elaborates the paradox by employing Gumbrecht’s distinction between ‘presence’ and ‘meaning’.Keywords: Exhibitions; Material culture/materiality; Contemporary science; Technology and medicine; Presence effects; Public engagement with science; History of medical science. (shrink)

This book analyzes iconic British children's literature through the lens of formal educational theory, policy, and practice. Examining themes like growth mindset and project-based learning alongside educational philosophers like Plato, Rousseau, and Dewey, the author sheds new light on children’s classics from Alice in Wonderland to Harry Potter.

Sarah Kofman, Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and the author of over twenty books, was one of the most significant postwar thinkers in France. Kofman's scholarship was wide-ranging and included work on Freud and psychoanalysis, Nietzsche, feminism and the role of women in Western philosophy, visual art, and literature. The child of Polish Jewish immigrants who lost her father in the Holocaust, she also was interested in Judaism and anti-Semitism, especially as reflected in works of literature and (...) philosophy. This book is an anthology of some of Kofman's most significant writings on these and other topics. Its purpose is to provide a general introduction to Kofman's thought, which has been highly influential in both Europe and America. Although some of the selections have been published previously, the majority of the books contents appear in English translation for the first time. (shrink)

While Good’s book forces us to recognize the caricatures of Hegel and idealism that have dominated Anglo-American thought, Dewey’s relationship with idealism in general and Hegel in particular remains complex. Good proposes that the main reason for Dewey’s rejection of idealism was World War I. I find this implausible. Good downplays the central influence of James on Dewey, first with the Principles and then with his radical empiricism. By his move to Columbia in 1905 and in his article of that (...) year, “The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism,” Dewey had rejected all types of philosophy that equated reality with the object of knowledge, including idealism and Hegel. For Dewey, reality includes types of experiences that are not instances of knowing and that ideals, functionally understood, are possibilities, not actualities. (shrink)