In an era of climate change, deforestation, melting ice caps, poisoned environments, and species loss, many people are turning to the power of the arts and humanities for sustainable solutions to global ecological problems. Introduction to the Environmental Humanities offers a practical and accessible guide to this dynamic and interdisciplinary field. This book provides an overview of the Environmental Humanities' evolution from the activist movements of the early and mid-twentieth century to more recent debates over climate change, sustainability, energy policy, (...) and habitat degradation in the Anthropocene era. The text introduces readers to seminal writings, artworks, campaigns, and movements while demystifying important terms such as the Anthropocene, environmental justice, nature, ecosystem, ecology, posthuman, and non-human. Emerging theoretical areas such as critical animal and plant studies, gender and queer studies, Indigenous studies, and energy studies are also presented. Organized by discipline, the book explores the role that the arts and humanities play in the future of the planet. Including case studies, discussion questions, annotated bibliographies, and links to online resources, this book offers a comprehensive and engaging overview of the Environmental Humanities for introductory readers. For more advanced readers, it serves as a foundation for future study, projects, or professional development. (shrink)

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is typically viewed as a time-limited intervention—a bridge to recovery or transplant—not a destination therapy. However, some patients with decision-making capacity request continued ECMO support despite a poor prognosis for recovery and lack of viability as a transplant candidate. In response, critical care teams have asked for guidance regarding the ethical permissibility of unilateral withdrawal over the objections of a capacitated patient. In this article, we evaluate several ethical arguments that have been made in favor of (...) withdrawal, including distributive justice, quality of life, patients’ rights, professional integrity, and the Equivalence Thesis. We find that existing justifications for unilateral withdrawal of ECMO support in capacitated patients are problematic, which leads us to conclude that either: (1) additional ethical arguments are necessary to defend this approach or (2) the claim that it is not appropriate to use ECMO as a destination therapy should be questioned. (shrink)

If spacetime does not exist, it does so in a very unusual way. It curves in response to massive objects. It warps in response to high velocities. The Substance of Spacetime treats spacetime, not merely as a geometric abstraction, but as a real physical substance, opening a window onto reality that would otherwise be impossible to even contemplate.

Chapman et al. (2025) frame the issue of ethical regulation of data-centric research, including AI and large language models, in an important and challenging manner. While we agree that the risks t...

For many in the United States, an important step in dismantling the structural evil of racism would be the total removal of Confederate monuments from the southern landscape. While the motivation behind this recommendation is laudable, such a move may also serve to assuage white guilt while leaving the structures of white privilege basically untouched. This essay uses recent work in theology and memory to assess these monuments as well as calls for their removal, and suggests that at least some (...) should remain standing as signs of a crisis that remains with us, bent toward the goal of justice by means of remembering a devastating history under the aspect of God’s judgment. The upshot is that Christians have a strong theological warrant to support calls to add markers around certain Confederate monuments in order to contextualize and “fill out” the untruthful story they currently tell. (shrink)

While many scholars agree that the ‘‘separation thesis’’ (Freeman in Bus Ethics Quart 4(4):409–421, 1994)—that business issues and ethical issues can be neatly compartmentalized—is harmful to business ethics scholarship and practice, they also conclude that eliminating it is either inadvisable because of the usefulness of the positive/ normative distinction, or actually impossible. Based on an exploration of the fact/value dichotomy and the pragmatist and virtue theoretic responses to it, we develop an approach to eliminating the separation thesis that integrates ‘‘business’’ (...) with ‘‘ethics’’ while still permitting a positive/ normative distinction, which we call ‘‘ethics from observation.’’. (shrink)

Assume that, even with a time machine, Tim does not have the ability to travel to the past and kill Grandfather. Why would that be? And what are the implications for traditional debates about freedom? We argue that there are at least two satisfactory explanations for why Tim cannot kill Grandfather. First, if an agent’s behavior at time _t_ is causally dependent on fact _F_, then the agent cannot perform an action (at _t_) that would require _F_ to have not (...) obtained. Second, if an agent’s behavior at time _t_ is causally dependent on fact _F_, then the agent cannot perform an action (at _t_) that would prevent _F_ from obtaining. These two explanations have distinct upshots for more traditional debates over freedom. The first implies that causal determinism is incompatible with the ability to do otherwise and also raises questions about the traditional arguments for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and the ability to do otherwise; the second does neither. However, both explanations imply that the Molinist account of divine providence renders agents unable to do otherwise, at least in certain circumstances. (shrink)

ABSTRACTInitial evaluations generalise to new contexts, whereas counter-attitudinal evaluations are context-specific. Counter-attitudinal information may not change evaluations in new contexts beca...

Volume 25, Issue 2, February 2025, Page 85-87.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On PartnershipRyan Schwarz, Duncan Smith-Rohrberg Maru, Dan Schwarz, Bibhav Acharya, Bijay Acharya, Ruma Rajbhandari, Jason Andrews, Gregory Karelas, Ranju Sharma, and Mark ArnoldyRecently, Bayalpata Hospital, in the rural district of Achham, Nepal almost collapsed under the weight of its own staff's discontent. The hospital had been largely abandoned until 2009 when our organization, Nyaya Health, renovated and opened it in partnership with the Nepali government. Since then, the hospital (...) has seen great progress and has experienced widespread community support. Nonetheless, earlier this year, a broad-based staff revolt occurred, led primarily by our senior clinical staff members, raising concerns that Nyaya's management policies were ineffective, and wages and benefits were too low. The unrest included everything from a strike, limiting services to our patients, to aggression against non-strikers and slander and racist comments in public media against the Nyaya Health Board of Directors. Ultimately, the conflict was resolved, though not without the departure of our three most senior clinicians. The incident deeply damaged staff morale [End Page 101] and impeded basic services to our patients, and from our perspective as a leadership and management team, it was deeply troubling and spiritually challenging. We have learned much in the wake of the strike, but here we focus more narrowly on the concept of partnerships in our work by examining the recent strike and the two key issues that lead to it: wages and benefits, and management policies at Bayalpata Hospital.In grappling with the recent staff crisis, some of our leadership team expressed concerns that we would never be able to develop a true partnership in Achham if our senior-level employees led strikes against the organization. The leaders of the strike were our most well-educated and high-ranking staff. They were also individuals who had come to work for us specifically citing the moral imperative of our work, and their pride in helping to serve the poorest of the poor. One leadership team member asked, "What is 'partnership' then? We came into this work with the premise that we would work together, with our partnership built around the right to health—but who are our partners if they lead strikes damaging the very services our collective mission aims to offer?"Another leadership team member commented, "The first time I visited Achham I was invited for tea at Meena's* house (one of Nyaya's midwives). We arrived at her house and Meena greeted us warmly. She showed us in to a small room: there was no furniture, but there was an immaculately swept mat which we joined her on. We drank tea, seated on her rug, and listened to her tell us how she had come to live in the house, how she had come to work for Nyaya, and her pride in now being able to provide both for her own children, as well as, the children of her relatives. As the only employed family member, she now had the challenge of providing for all of them. When we question our partnership, I'm taken back to Meena's warm, but extremely poor, home. She has worked for Nyaya for almost four years. She has helped our organization provide free care to over 75,000 people. Is this not a type of 'partnership'?"Allow us to offer some background on the issue of wages—Meena has been with our team since 2008, and has been paid about $2,500 per year—a generous wage compared to other employers in the region. Meena was one of the striking staff members. Among other concerns about the way the hospital was being run, she and other staff asked indignantly why we couldn't provide them with higher wages, better benefits, and more resources, both for her and the hospital. Notably, Meena's salary (and the rest of our staff's) was well above her equivalent in other, more urban hospitals (to compensate for the extremely remote area in which we work), and in a district where most families are farmers, our staff's salaries occupy the highest income bracket in the region. Nonetheless, as is common throughout the world in both rich and poor areas... (shrink)

In Understanding Social Action, Promoting Human Rights, editors Ryan Goodman, Derek Jinks, and Andrew K. Woods bring together a stellar group of contributors from across the social sciences to apply a broad yet conceptually unified array of advanced social science research concepts to the study of human rights and human rights law.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Weird John Brown: Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics by Ted A. Smith, and: Bodies of Peace: Ecclesiology, Nonviolence, and Witness by Myles WerntzRyan Andrew NewsonWeird John Brown: Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics Ted A. Smith Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015. 224pp. $22.95Bodies of Peace: Ecclesiology, Nonviolence, and Witness Myles Werntz Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014. 272pp. $44.00Arguments about the morality of violence are (...) currently being reinvigorated by a diverse group of theologians who are considering these questions for a world in which the nation-state no longer provides the sole context for political reflection. Both Ted Smith and Myles Werntz have contributed to this budding conversation by reframing the way theological ethicists might approach questions of violence and war.In Weird John Brown, Ted Smith provides an engaging account of the violent abolitionist, examining the theological significance of John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Smith uses Brown to question the capacity of ethics as a discipline to assess the significance of every phenomenon. By “ethics,” Smith means those forms of moral reasoning that assume reality to be composed of a closed network of cause and effect. Ethics thus understood exerts a “strong gravitational pull” on the contemporary mind, privileging “universalizable moral obligations” that take precedence over goods like beauty or piety and resisting the suggestion that any act’s significance may lie beyond this-worldly relationships (4–5). In fighting for a just cause by violent, treasonous means, Brown problematizes the sufficiency of such ethical habits of description. [End Page 223]Neither crazed fundamentalist nor freedom fighter, Brown’s significance for Smith lies beyond ordinary ethical considerations. He is a “portent,” following W.E.B. Du Bois—a sign questioning the state’s presumed monopoly on legitimate violence (17), pronouncing judgment over a nation built on chattel slavery, and (perhaps) issuing hope for a new society to emerge in his wake (175). Only as “a flawed prophet who is caught up in a story of redemption that he cannot quite imagine” (88) does Brown’s significance come into view.For Smith, the state executing him is clearly not “less violent” than Brown. Indeed, Brown reveals the particular form of violence to which the “neutral” rule of law gives rise: violence reinforcing the legitimacy of state rule. Following Walter Benjamin, Smith describes a “mythic” cycle whereby an original violence that establishes a state, and the law that later legitimates that founding, reinforce one another (56, 70–71). Justice becomes equated with “law,” with no place for exceptions to law that might contribute to the overall health of the state (57). This cycle cannot be broken by moral imperatives articulated within the system; it is broken only by what Benjamin calls “divine violence”—necessarily exceptional interruptions to the cycle that challenge the system as such (73).Recognizing the possibility of such interruptions to the ethical does not eliminate the need for phronesis. Instead, it transposes practical wisdom to a key “marked by freedom and the love that freedom makes possible” (82); it stresses the importance of cultivating “the capacity for reasoning together about the form of a higher law” (109) that thereby relieves the law from being all in all. And while many fear that phrases like “higher law” only incite irrational, unchecked violence, Smith rightly sees that “mundane” politics can manifest a violence that is equally devastating, while concepts like “higher law” have checked violence as often as inspired it. To respond to violence done in the name of a higher law, we need better and deeper religious reasoning, “the kind that can imagine the higher law as something other than a code to be enforced and history as something more than an endless succession of homogeneous moments to be wrenched into conformity with the law” (88).Smith does not directly address the question of justified violence. His task is more difficult: to reset the parameters of such discussions so that they might continue without being restricted by “intramundane accounts of the good” (35). Smith thus challenges just warriors and pacifists alike not to argue on prudential grounds alone but to risk reasoning beyond the state’s... (shrink)

This is the Editorial of the Research Topic (Special Issue) in Frontiers in Psychology and Frontiers in Neurorobotics: Intrinsic motivations and open-ended development in animals, humans, and robots.

From The Philosophy of War Films, page 335-354, available online: https://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=3324#.WBPirVdeCi4. Copyright?? 2014 by University of Kentucky Press.

Though not yet a well-known figure outside of Japan, Naka Tarō 那珂太郎 stands at the crossroads of philosophical and artistic exchanges in twentieth-century Japanese literature. Not only was Naka a devotee of the great poet Matsuo Bashō 松尾芭蕉 and Kyōto School 京都学派 head and titan of modern Japanese literature Nishida Kitarō 西田幾多郎, but he was also versed in philosophy and art from Western Europe, with Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Charles Baudelaire all having exerted a great influence on his poetry. (...) Indeed, these "Western" figures influenced the Kyōto School itself; the work of Nishida and his acolytes and associates including Nishitani Keiji 西谷啓治, Watsuji Testurō 和辻哲郎, and Kuki Shūzo 九鬼周造 would have been... (shrink)

Progressive supranuclear palsy is a movement disorder with prominent tau neuropathology. Brain diseases with abnormal tau deposits are called tauopathies, the most common of which is Alzheimer's disease. Environmental causes of tauopathies include repetitive head trauma associated with some sports. To identify common genetic variation contributing to risk for tauopathies, we carried out a genome-wide association study of 1,114 individuals with PSP and 3,247 controls followed by a second stage in which we genotyped 1,051 cases and 3,560 controls for the (...) stage 1 SNPs that yielded P ≤ 10-3. We found significant previously unidentified signals associated with PSP risk at STX6, EIF2AK3 and MOBP. We confirmed two independent variants in MAPT affecting risk for PSP, one of which influences MAPT brain expression. The genes implicated encode proteins for vesicle-membrane fusion at the Golgi-endosomal interface, for the endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response and for a myelin structural component. © 2011 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

I will argue in this paper that Andrew Feenberg has erred in his claim on technological adaptability. Adapting to modern technology may not always be liberating. Drawing from his reflections on Heidegger and Marcuse, I will explain why Feenberg thinks that adaptability has a redemptive role in the midst of technological domination. I will also show why technological domination still characterizes human relations in the modern age. Advanced technologies including social media, have continued to manipulate people and as such, (...) diminish rather than deepen the authenticity of human life. For instance, two people in a café sometimes spend more time on their smartphones rather than valuing their face-to-face encounter; here, one can point out the lack of authenticity in human relations. This clearly manifests how consumer culture has taken over human life. In addition, it can be said that the notion of adaptability also fails to account for the hegemonic social relations created by modern technological innovations, since these gadgets remain beyond the reach of the masses, thus broadening the divide between classes of people in society. In order to address this, I propose that people should use technology in a socially sensitive way in order to truly give meaning to their lives and to effectively resist the totalitarian tendency of the modern age. (shrink)

The question at hand is whether or not a liberal arts education can be politically neutral, but the very fact that this question is phrased in the curious manner that it is, which is to say that we place emphasis on "can" as opposed to "is" or "how we might better ensure," speaks to the nature of a problem that much more deeply rooted than the mere question of scholarly polarization. Borrowing from Christopher Schlect of New Saint Andrews College, we (...) might say that the "liberal arts teach us how to learn—how to freely gain knowledge and understanding," and that the manner in which they do this is by teaching students not only methodologies for solving problems that are presented to them, but also how to identify problems of their own accord (79). That would mean, by definition, that a political neutral liberal arts curriculum would necessitate not only an active awareness of one's ethical orientation, but also an active tempering of the biases that accompany that orientation out of respect for the spirit of liberalism and in recognition of one's own fallible nature. Unfortunately, since, as I intend to illustrate, our moral and therefore political senses are similar to aesthetic taste as described by Kant in his third critique, they carry with them the paradoxicality of pure subjectivity tethered to the expectation of universality, making the possibility of political neutrality in the liberal arts a grim proposition, to put it at its absolute mildest. In order to determine whether this problem is in any way manageable, it is necessary to analyze of the nature of moral and political taste in a general sense, the rhetoric that educator use toward members of opposing moral frameworks, how that rhetoric is buttressed by institutional teloi, and finally, how different systems of normative ethics might contribute to neutrality in the liberal arts. (shrink)

This paper explores the prospects for a Pritchardean epistemological disjunctivist account of memory knowledge. We begin by providing an overview of Duncan Pritchard's epistemological disjunctivist account of perceptual knowledge, as well as the theoretical advantages of such an account. Drawing on that account, we present and motivate our own Pritchardean epistemological disjunctivist account of memory knowledge. After distinguishing different sorts of memory and the different roles that memory can play in knowledge acquisition, we set out our account and argue that (...) the case for epistemological disjunctivism enjoys parity with the case for epistemological disjunctivism of perceptual knowledge. We also consider objections to our account. The first is from Joe Milburn and Andrew Moon, who argue against a general epistemological disjunctivism of memory on the basis of differences in memory types. The second objection arises from a Radford-like case whereby one's true belief is from memory even though one lacks rational support that is reflectively accessible to one. (shrink)

Everyone misses the point of Plato's cave. What a coincidence, because everyone also misses the point of BioShock. The moment one's interactivity with the game is revealed as a fake isn't the moment when one kills Andrew Ryan in a cutscene. It's what happens after that. Atlas tells to abort the self‐destruct sequence. One has the choice of whether to abort self‐destruct sequence or not, but, positioned as it is, that choice has been exposed as meaningless within the (...) basic fabric of game's mechanics. The non‐choice of disarming self‐destruct sequence ends up in the same place as the other, more famous ethical dilemma of BioShock; the choice of whether to harvest the Little Sisters or to save them. That's the part that everyone gets wrong where BioShock is concerned, and so it's the part where comparing the game to Plato's cave can really help get both of them right. (shrink)

BioShock begins simply with the text “1960 Mid‐Atlantic.” The player's horizon shifts to accommodate this fact, like not being so surprised that Jack can smoke in the airplane. What follows in BioShock is the development of a narrative where it is assumed that Jack is entering Rapture for the first time in his life. Later, it is revealed that he is not. When Andrew Ryan exposes Jack's real identity, Ryan is falsifying both the narrative of Jack coming (...) to Rapture for the first time and the meta‐narrative of the player operating a free agent as an avatar. Understanding how BioShock effectively manipulates players will take us through a variety of territories: cognitive science, philosophy of mind, philosophical hermeneutics, philosophy of video gaming, and philosophy of free will. It's all a testament to the brilliance of BioShock and a demonstration of how video games can teach us‐ even change us. (shrink)

In Rapture some mad shit happens: there are Plasmids that allow players to fire bees out of their hands, generate electricity bolts, set enemies on fire, pick stuff up using telekinetic powers, and much more. One theory is that physical things are those that can be completely described by the vocabulary of the best possible theory of physics. Physicalism would thus be the view that this theory of physics would completely specify all the fundamental categories, all the ingredients we need (...) to make the world. Another theory is that the physical properties are the ones needed to account for the objects we accept as physical; for example, Andrew Ryan's putter. The physicalist's claim would be that these properties are the only ones we need to account for the rest of the world. (shrink)

From nearly the author's first experience entering the underwater city of Rapture in BioShock, she is treated to a taste of Andrew Ryan's propaganda. Andrew Ryan regularly says that citizens of Rapture need to avoid all contact with the surface world because it's filled with parasites who seek to destroy Rapture. Even though what Ryan says about the outside world is true, he's lying because he believes it to be false. According to Harry Frankfurt, bullshit (...) is when the speaker doesn't particularly care whether what she says is true or false. The analysis in this chapter suggests that propaganda is more closely connected to bullshitting than lying. The author says that if propaganda is more closely associated with bullshit than lies, then this also means that one should be particularly worried by governments (or individuals with power, such as Andrew Ryan) that engage in lots of propaganda. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rethinking Cooperation with Evil: A Virtue-Based Approach by Ryan ConnorsGary AtkinsonCONNORS, Ryan. Rethinking Cooperation with Evil: A Virtue-Based Approach. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023. xiii + 313 pp. Paper, $34.95The author adheres closely to the recommendation to tell his reader what he intends to do, tell him what he is doing while doing it, and having finished, tell him what he’s done, (...) a recommendation worth following for a work as tightly structured and complex as this one. It is clear, irenic, and shows extensive research: nearly 1,000 footnotes in its 275 pages of text offering many avenues for further exploration including numerous references to “alternative” accounts. It is far more than an analysis of cooperation, for it exposes the reader to a universe of concepts, many of which are seldom introduced in studies on the topic. It is also bracing, an elixir likely to incite (and likely intended to incite) the reader to a deeper commitment to careful moral thought and conscientious moral action. Few readers will close this book with a feeling of time unprofitably spent.The introduction makes clear the book’s two central claims: (i) that an adequate analysis of the topic of cooperation with evil has yet to be provided and (ii) that a virtue-based approach stemming from St. Thomas Aquinas contains the elements for its provision. In support of these claims the book is organized into five chapters, the first three foundational and the last two matters of application.Chapter 1, “The Teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas: Received and Jettisoned,” begins with a presentation of St. Thomas’s treatment of five topics—borrowing money from known usurers, scandal, restitution for [End Page 709] crimes committed by agents working together, exacting oaths from known perjurers, production of objects used for sinful purposes. This first section is followed by an examination of three theologians in the tradition of Thomistic analysis, Jean Capreolus (d. 1444), Giacomo de Vio Cajetan (d. 1534), and John of St. Thomas (d. 1644). Following this section is a third containing an account of the departure from the Thomistic mode of analysis represented by Thomas Sanchez (d. 1610) and St. Alphonsus Liguori (d. 1787). The first chapter provides a nice introduction and solid grounding for what is to come.Chapter 2, “A Broad Sampling of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Casuist Authors,” explores in its first section the manuals of nine figures: Aloysius Sabetti, Thomas Slater, Dominicus Prümmer, Benoit-Henri Merkelbach, Noldin-Schmitt, Jone-Adelman, McHugh-Callan, Henri Davis, and Bernhard Häring. The second and third sections highlight the lack of consensus among the authors and the consequent perplexity encountered by a conscientious moral agent regarding what counts as a “sufficient, proportionate, serious, or grave” reason for cooperation with evil. At several points throughout this book the author acknowledges the good sense of the casuists and the careful articulation of their judgments, but he finds their general approach to be wanting for several reasons, including their tendency to neglect consideration of the moral virtues and the nature of the act of cooperation itself.The extensive historical grounding provided by chapters 1 and 2 prepares the reader for chapter 3, “The Renewal of Theology: A Return to Virtue,” the focal chapter of the book. The first section concerns the thought of Servais Pinckaers, who “initiated a revival of St. Thomas’s moral theory that continues to the present day.” This is followed by a section treating of magisterial documents adopting St. Thomas’s and Pinckaers’s approach: Veritatis splendor, Evangelium vitae, Declaration on Euthanasia (1980), Vademecum for Confessors Concerning Some Aspects of Conjugal Life (1997), Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (2009). The third section considers the work of three twenty-first-century moralists who apply Thomistic methods to the topic of cooperation with evil: Steven Long, Archbishop Anthony Fisher, and Andrew McLean Cummings.Chapter 4, “A New Way Forward: the Virtuous Person Faces a Moral Dilemma,” is the first of two chapters showing St. Thomas’s approach at work. The author calls this approach both “object based” and “virtue based,” marking the two features receiving... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Preservation and Protest: Theological Foundations for an Eco-Eschatological Ethics by Ryan Patrick McLaughlinJennifer Janzen-BallPreservation and Protest: Theological Foundations for an Eco-Eschatological Ethics Ryan Patrick McLaughlin MINNEAPOLIS: FORTRESS PRESS, 2014. 460 PP. $49.00Ryan Patrick McLaughlin's book on ecological-eschatological ethics explores four different taxonomies of "nonhuman theological ethics": anthropocentric and cosmocentric conservation ethics, which fall under values-based ethics, and anthropocentric and cosmocentric transfiguration ethics, which fall under teleological-based (...) ethics (1–2). McLaughlin's focus is a constructive [End Page 206] ethics of cosmocentric transfiguration whereby the entire cosmos "shares in the eschatological hope of a harmonious participation in God's triune life that entails the end of suffering, predation, and death" (2). The title of the book reflects an internal tension based on the protection of nature and honoring the integrity of ecosystems (entailing the recognition of suffering, predation, and death that occurs in nature) and the protest or "witness" against these violent aspects of nature, with hope for eschatological transformation of them (400).The bulk of McLaughlin's book outlines his taxonomical classification of various ecological ethics. Relying heavily on the work of Jürgen Moltmann and Andrew Linzey, McLaughlin focuses on the theological areas of cosmology, anthropology, and eschatology, addressing issues of "both salvation and value" (24). He engages in this strategy to point out potential weaknesses in other ecological ethics paradigms that can then be addressed in his construction of cosmocentric transfiguration.While the taxonomies and reviews are clear, the overall effect of such lengthy exploration of others' work is that McLaughlin's creative theo-ethical work is really limited to two chapters (and a third if you include the chapter responding to potential critiques). For McLaughlin, "the good is always the promotion of life and the alleviation of suffering" (394)—a cogent point central to his thesis, and yet this becomes obscured in some ways because of the detailed exposition of others' work. Moreover, his reliance on white male scholars engaged in this field limits the effectiveness of his review and diversity of perspectives. His system of classification may also restrain creative engagement with others' work and the possibilities of cosmocentric transfiguration since the taxonomy may force the work into particular boxes that obscure nuances within the paradigm and the field itself.This book explores an as-yet underdeveloped field within ecological ethics. As such, the audience is primarily other scholars, from Orthodox to evangelical. The in-depth theological exploration of cosmology, anthropology, and eschatology within the framework of cosmocentric transfiguration offers new insights for ecological ethics and thus furthers the conversation. McLaughlin also points toward some concrete actions that people can take to witness against suffering (e.g., vegetarianism), which allows this book to be a valuable contribution to practical and applied ethics in ecology. One area that I believe warrants further consideration and exploration is the dialogue around suffering and death (redemptive or not) as well as finitude. While there is much suffering and death that is not redemptive in any way from a Christian perspective, there is also value to some forms of suffering and death.The book could be used pedagogically in an advanced graduate seminar in ecological ethics, particularly as a helpful secondary source to be read in conjunction with the primary sources McLaughlin draws on in the first ten chapters. His review of various eco-theologians is certainly extensive and [End Page 207] commendable. McLaughlin's construction of cosmocentric transfiguration is worth wrestling with as he continues to refine and develop this perspective within the field of ecological ethics.Jennifer Janzen-BallSt. Andrew's College, SaskatoonCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bioshock and the Art of RaptureGrant TavinorI am Andrew Ryan, and I am here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? "No!" says the man in Washington, "It belongs to the poor." "No!" says the man in the Vatican, "It belongs to God." "No!" says the man in Moscow, "It belongs to everyone." I rejected these answers; instead, (...) I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose Rapture! A city where the artist would not fear the censor; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well.Andrew Ryan, opening BioshockIBioshock is the Masterpiece of recent gaming. Genre-wise the game is a first person-shooter survival-horror game—already a complicated mix of gaming forms—and Bioshock is excellent in these gaming terms: playing the game is a consistently engaging, challenging, and tense experience. The narrative of the game, set in Rapture, a dystopian city beneath the sea, fits perfectly with this interactive gaming form. The premise of Bioshock is a parody of Ayn Rand's objectivist novel Atlas Shrugged. Led by the magnate Andrew Ryan, the industrialists, artists, and scientists have retreated from the world and built Rapture through sheer force of will. But when the player enters the city at the beginning of the game, it is evident that nature is pushing back, and that the sea is slowly but surely retaking Rapture, while its citizens have become corrupted by the arts and sciences the city was built upon: as genetically manipulated "splicers" they now creep through Rapture's darkened halls bemoaning their lost humanity. Andrew Ryan "chose the impossible," [End Page 91] and inevitably his hubris is being repaid by the recalcitrance of human nature and the impermanence of human achievement. Much of the immense fun of Bioshock derives from the irony of an objectivist utopia running amok.The immediate visual impact of Bioshock, depending on its employment of cutting-edge high definition 3D computer graphics, is striking. The aesthetic qualities of the water, in particular, have drawn wide praise. The world of Rapture is also presented through an engaging and excellent style. To depict this decaying world, Bioshock draws on the architectural motifs and cultural themes of 1930s and 1940s America. Portrayals of decaying art deco facades, faded Hollywood socialites, and echoes of Hearst, Hughes, and Citizen Kane, are combined with period music and philosophical and literary references to produce a coherent artistic statement.Two features of Bioshock bear out its unique artfulness as a game. First is the role in the game-world of the Little Sisters: cute little girls that pose a game obstacle with which the player must decide how to deal. In Bioshock, the task of harvesting the game-world resources needed to survive is given a moral dimension in that the resources can be extracted only from the Little Sisters by killing them, and so a key part of the gameplay rests on an emotionally provocative moral choice. The second artful aspect of the game that warrants special attention is a narrative twist partway through the game where it becomes evident that player's principle sympathetic source of information in the game-world is a dissemblance. Bioshock has an interactive twist on an untrustworthy narrator, which clouds and complicates the decisions the player has made in Rapture. Rather than an actor, the player-character is a pawn in someone else's game. At the forefront of both of these aspects of Bioshock are considerations of freewill and morality.To really appreciate the art of Bioshock we need to understand its nature as a game, and moreover, to treat the gaming nature seriously and with sympathy. Bioshock is a videogame, and it is also clearly art; but it is not as if the game is art despite its being a videogame and that the art is a mere gloss or veneer. Rather, Bioshock's nature as a game allows it to be art of a distinctive kind. Treating videogames as a kind... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Some Aspects of Christian Mystical Rhetoric, Philosophy, and PoetryRyan J. StarkThis is an article about poets and poetic philosophers who make spirited arguments. My purpose in particular is to clarify the nature of mystical rhetoric, which needs to be distinguished from secular rhetoric (i.e., “secular” as nonspiritual). As ways of existing in language, they are ontologically incommensurable, and we should treat them as such. Mystical rhetoric is that into (...) which Spirit enters, conveying to both writer and reader some aspect of providential kairos that cannot otherwise be attained. That is, God completes mystical inferences. God participates, illuminating the hearts of those who open themselves to grace through faith. Or, in other words, writers and readers who want to enter into numinous arguments must shelve the hermeneutics of suspicion. An overly critical stance actually diminishes the possibility of insight, even if it is well intended, much like nervous backseat driving, which—though aimed at producing safety—inevitably works against it. I am not suggesting, however, that skeptics are at a complete loss when approaching mystical rhetorical situations. Rather, they simply do not grasp the metaphysical, enchanted, or occult dimensions of the discourses at work, because they have closed themselves off to Spirit or—more commonly—have attempted to transmogrify Spirit into secular concepts, which distorts spirited language and leads to mischaracterizations of religious experience.1 In contrast, I provide a Christian approach to [End Page 260] mystical rhetoric, one that neither discounts nor sidesteps the real presence of the supernatural.Inspired Rhetoric and HermeneuticsFuror poeticus is a key element of mystical persuasion. The phrase literally means “poetical fury,” and the idea behind it in a Christian framework is that the Holy Spirit aids writers in creating imaginative texts (e.g., sonnets, sermons, essays, novels, blogs, etc.) or, in pernicious instances, demons aid writers.2 In either case, a mysterious force helps the author to compose. Moreover, furor touches readers or listeners, a point seldom emphasized but nonetheless central to this sublime practice of composition. Inspired writing requires inspired reading: furor poeticus needs furor lectoris.3 The Spirit aids readers in understanding mystical rhetoric, as long as those readers participate earnestly in the discourse. John Milton (1674, 7.31), for example, famously envisions such a “fit audience” in the third invocation to the Muse in Paradise Lost (i.e., the “great Argument”), where he calls on the reader for hermeneutical verve, a spirited reading to complement his enthusiastic writing. Søren Kierkegaard also writes to an audience capable of spiritually minded hermeneutics, allowing him to perform various edifying dissimulations through pseudonyms: the despairing aesthete, the unscrupulous seducer, the rigid moralist, and so forth. These inspired writers expect believing readers to contribute to their works, to complete their disputations, in fact, through spirited exegesis. Their methods of composition demand it, which is to say that writers touched by furor leave little room in their arguments for the sustainable disposition of the uninspired reader.Cicero explains spirited rhetoric and hermeneutics in De divinatione, where Quintus talks about how inspired readers experience the same type of furor as inspired writers, seers, and prophets: “Men capable of correctly interpreting all these signs of the future seem to approach very near the divine spirit of the gods whose will they interpret, just as scholars do when they interpret the poets” (1938, 226). Scholarship, in other words, is capable of tapping into mystical energy, making the scholars as prophetic as the vates on which they write. In the second book of On Christian Doctrine (1958, 75–78), Augustine also explains the importance of mystical exegesis as a form of prophecy, where sincere readers undergo the same type of inspiration as mystical writers. For Augustine, spirited reading begins with prayer and ends with revelation. In both accounts of furor, Cicero’s and Augustine’s, [End Page 261] the inspired audience and the inspired writer together experience rapture, a divine vision or illumination, which is precisely the type of communion that occurs during mystical discourses.4Still, the idea of seeking communion with God is potentially unsettling. The notion produces anxieties of psychosis, possession, and self-erasure. Plato famously expresses such concerns in Ion, for example... (shrink)

We propose that corporations should be subject to a legal obligation to identify and internalise their social costs or negative externalities. Our proposal reframes corporate social responsibility as obligated internalisation of social costs, and relies on reflexive governance through mandated hybrid fora. We argue that our approach advances theory, as well as practice and policy, by building on and going beyond prior attempts to address social costs, such as prescriptive government regulation, Coasian bargaining and political CSR.

Few sectors are more affected by COVID-19 than higher education. There is growing recognition that reopening the densely populated communities of higher education will require surveillance technologies, but many of these technologies pose threats to the privacy of the very students, faculty, and staff they are meant to protect. The authors have a history of working with our institution’s governing bodies to provide ethical guidance on the use of technologies, especially including those with significant implications for privacy. Here, we draw (...) on that experience to provide guidelines for using surveillance technologies to reopen college campuses safely and responsibly, even under the specter of covid. We aim to generalize our recommendations, so they are sensitive to the practical realities and constraints that universities face. (shrink)

The US is facing enormous challenges as it enters the second decade of the twenty-first century. Some of these major issues are environmentalism and its claim of global warming; the danger from terrorism generated by Islamic fundamentalism; and affordable, quality health care. Additionally, education in America remains an unresolved dilemma contributing to America's lack of economic competitiveness. Andrew Bernstein argues that the US government is pushing the nation toward socialism in its attempt to resolve America's problems. The government's increasing (...) control of the banking industry, its massive bailouts of auto makers, and its proposal of emissions legislation are also examples of the expansion of government's power. Bernstein argues that whatever the intentions of the government, or its illusions about the workability of its proposals, morally upright and practical solutions can only come from moving to the opposite end of the political-economic spectrum: the establishment of laissez-faire capitalism. In Atlas Shrugged, and in her non-fiction works, Ayn Rand developed a systematic body of thought, a comprehensive philosophy she dubbed "Objectivism." This philosophy has been neglected by most professional intellectuals, but it is now beginning to be seriously studied in academic philosophy departments. Objectivism provides the moral and philosophic validation of the political-economic principles of individual rights and free markets. Analysis of today's gravest social and political issues within this philosophic framework, as undertaken by Bernstein in this volume, constitutes a unique way of identifying rational solutions to these pressing issues. of laissez-faire capitalism. In Atlas Shrugged, and in her non-fiction works, Ayn Rand developed a systematic body of thought, a comprehensive philosophy she dubbed "Objectivism." This philosophy has been neglected by most professional intellectuals, but it is now beginning to be seriously studied in academic philosophy departments. Objectivism provides the moral and philosophic validation of the political-economic principles of individual rights and free markets. Analysis of today's gravest social and political issues within this philosophic framework, as undertaken by Bernstein in this volume, constitutes a unique way of identifying rational solutions to these pressing issues. (shrink)