Environmental ethicists and experts in human health have raised concerns about the effects of hydraulic fracking to access natural oil and gas resources found deep in shale rock formations on surrounding ecosystems and communities. In this study, we analyzed the prevalence of discourse on brain and mental health, and ethics, in the peer-reviewed and grey literature in the five-year period between 2016 and 2022. A total of 84 articles met inclusion criteria for analysis. Seventy-six percent (76%) mentioned impacts on brain (...) (e.g., neural tube defects, neurological symptoms), and mental health (e.g., negative psychological effects, stress, depression) briefly; 11 reports dedicated substantive discourse to either or both together. References to safety (77%) dominated the ethics context. Discussion of environmental injustices as fracking sites disproportionately affect vulnerable communities appeared in 38% of the papers. We examine the findings through the lens of environmental neuroethics that brings human-made changes to the environment, brain and mental health, and ethics together into three interwoven lines of inquiry. (shrink)

Lives and work of Veṅkaṭanātha (Vedantadesika), 1268-1369, and Maṇavāḷa Māmun̲i, 1370-1444, Vaishnavite leaders and exponents of the Viśiṣṭādvaita school in Hindu philosophy from Tamil Nadu.

What can I Know? introduces and assesses what many consider to be the most important of all Kant’s great questions, set out in his Critique of Pure Reason , and one of the most important in philosophy itself: what are the bounds of knowledge? Michelle Grier begins with a helpful survey of the question prior to Kant, in particular the arguments of the rationalists Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz and the empiricists, above all Hume. She describes, in a clear and (...) engaging style, how Kant attempted to find a middle path between the two and what led to the famous "Copernican turn" in his philosophy. She explains the fundamental theories at the heart of Kant’s epistemology: the distinction between appearances and ‘things in themselves’; the transcendental unity of apperception; and Kant’s arguments concerning space and time. In the second part of the book, Grier introduces the main criticisms of Kant’s philosophy, including those of Hegel and Nietzsche. The final part situates Kant’s epistemology in the context of contemporary philosophical debates including those in cognitive science. These include a priori knowledge, correspondence versus coherentist theories of knowledge, ‘naturalized’ epistemology and perception. Including helpful chapter summaries and guides to further reading, What Can I Know? Is an outstanding introduction to Kant's epistemology and the legacy of Kant's question itself. (shrink)

This past February 22–24, the University of Virginia held a specially arranged conference on the subject of “Fukuyama and the End of History.” Invitations were extended to philosophers, historians, political scientists, sociologists, economists, and literary critics, with the host university contributing a number a speakers. Each person attending the conference received a copy of Francis Fukuyama’s well known article, “The End of History?” from The National Interest, 16 : 3–18, and Fukuyama himself was expected to attend. At the last minute (...) the organizers learned of the existence of Philip Grier’s “The End of History, and the Return of History,” which would within the next few weeks appear in The Owl, 21, 2 : 131–144. Upon receiving it, and the permission of the Editor of The Owl, the organizers decided to provide an advance copy of this article to everyone attending, along with the Fukuyama piece, so that the controversy over the latter’s possible mis-appropriation of Hegel would be a theme for discussion from the outset. (shrink)

Comparative study of Sankhya philosophy of Hinduism and the Ayurvedic system of Indic medicine.

In an influential treatise, Mikhail Bakhtin asserts that the aim of Dostoevsky's distinctive poetics is to advance a revolutionary, "polyphonic" model of moral truth. In this paper, I argue that while Bakhtin correctly identifies essential features of Dostoevsky's poetics, these features are better understood as oriented toward meeting the free modern individual's need to test ultimate moral ends and concomitant virtues in order to determine their truth. An Aristotelian poetics intended to educate audiences only in how to be virtuous to (...) achieve moral ends that are given by tradition will have different essential features than will a modern poetics whose purpose is to help individuals determine what the virtues are. It is this latter purpose, I argue, that drives Dostoevsky to create the new stylistic devices that Bakhtin observes in Dostoevsky's work, rather than the purpose of realizing a philosophically problematic "polyphonic" model of moral truth. (shrink)

This major study of Kant provides a detailed examination of the development and function of the doctrine of transcendental illusion in his theoretical philosophy. The author shows that a theory of 'illusion' plays a central role in Kant's arguments about metaphysical speculation and scientific theory. Indeed, she argues that we cannot understand Kant unless we take seriously his claim that the mind inevitably acts in accordance with ideas and principles that are 'illusory'. Taking this claim seriously, we can make much (...) better sense of Kant's arguments and reach a deeper understanding of the role he allots human reason in science. (shrink)

I came to this review not as an emerging scholar in political science or philosophy, but rather in language education. As such, the questions that I brought to the text were informed by my disciplinary formation and professional aspirations. I wondered: What benefits might language educators in the twenty-first century derive from reading The Public and its Problems? How might Deweyan reflections on the public, the state, community, and democracy inform or refresh ongoing debates in my field? As I read, (...) it struck me that Dewey’s writings do not feature more prominently in my field despite a great deal of overlap between his beliefs and those of many contemporary language educators and researchers. While the.. (shrink)

For the case of statistical theories, the criteria of explanation, prediction, and testability can all be viewed as particular instances of a more general evaluation scheme. Using the ideas of a gain matrix and expected gain from statistical decision theory, these three criteria can be compared in terms of the elements in their associated gain matrices. This analysis leads to (1) further understanding of the interrelationship between the current criteria, (2) the proposal of an ordering for the criteria, and (3) (...) the suggestion of a new criterion. (shrink)

Arthur Ripstein’s conception of Kantian freedom has exerted an enormous recent influence on scholars of Kant’s political philosophy; however, the conception seems to me flawed. In this paper, I argue that Ripstein’s conception of Kantian freedom as “your capacity to choose the ends you will use your means to pursue” – your “purposiveness” – is both too narrow and too broad: (1) Wrongful acts such as coercive threats cannot choose my ends for me; instead, such acts wrongfully restrict my perceived (...) options. And (2) rightful changes to the context in which I choose that render my means insufficient for my ends restrict my capacity to choose them. Alternatively, my purposiveness reduces to my entitlements; but then freedom as purposiveness is viciously circular or fails as a new approach to the “devastating” objection that motivates it. (shrink)

In this paper, I set out a new Kantian approach to resolving conflicts between moral obligations for highly autonomous machine agents. First, I argue that efforts to build explicitly moral autonomous machine agents should focus on what Kant refers to as duties of right, which are duties that everyone could accept, rather than on duties of virtue (or “ethics”), which are subject to dispute in particular cases. “Moral” machines must first be rightful machines, I argue. I then show how this (...) shift in focus from ethics to a standard of public right resolves the conflicts in what is known as the "trolley problem" for autonomous ma-chine agents. Finally, I consider how a deontic logic suitable for capturing duties of right might meet Kant’s requirement that rightfully enforceable obligations be consistent in a system of equal freedom under universal law. (shrink)

Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, several changes have been forcibly made and observed in various fields and areas of society, one of which include the field of education; the foundation of the formation of intellect and knowledge. After two years of studying indoors and private educational institutions holding virtual classes, the time has finally come for students to be re- adjusted once more to the blended mode of learning; a combination of virtual and in-person classes. Thus, this study aimed to (...) investigate the development of students’ study habits and how these habits could potentially affect the students’ academic achievement or performance. The study utilized a descriptivecorrelational design to examine the impact of study habits to the academic performance of 137 senior high school students. The study made use of the Palsane and Sharma’s Study Habits Inventory, or also known as PSSHI, and using this instrument, the study has been able to procure sufficient results that will answer the present study’s problems. Using linear regression analysis, the present study found that there was a significance between the study habits and academic performance of the senior high school students, thus the study’s null hypothesis was eventually rejected. (shrink)

This translation from Russian of The Philosophy of Hegel as a Doctrine of the Concreteness of God and Humanity marks the first appearance in English of any of the works of Russian philosopher Ivan Aleksandrovich Il’in. Originally published in 1918, on the eve of the Russian civil war, this two- volume commentary on Hegel marked both an apogee of Russian Silver Age philosophy and a significant manifestation of the resurgence of interest in Hegel that began in the early twentieth century. (...) Il’in’s colleague A. F. Losev accurately observed in the same year it appeared: “Neither the study of Hegel nor the study of contemporary Russian philosophical thought is any longer thinkable without this book of I. A. Il’in’s.” Some Hegel scholars may know this work through the abridged translation into German that Il’in produced himself in 1946. However, that edition omitted most of the original volume two. Noted Hegel scholar Philip T. Grier’s edition—with an introduction setting Il’in’s work in its proper historical, cultural, and philosophical contexts and annotation throughout—represents the first opportunity for non-Russian-speaking readers to acquaint themselves with the full scope of Il’in’s still provocative interpretation of Hegel. (shrink)

Through the summer and fall of 1989, Hegel scholars in America were treated to the unusual spectacle of a debate in the mass media over the meaning and truth of Hegel’s philosophy of history, a debate running through the pages of major daily newspapers, the weekly news magazines, and the journals of opinion. The occasion for this unaccustomed attention devoted to Hegel was the appearance of an article by Francis Fukuyama in the Summer 1989 issue of The National Interest entitled (...) “The End of History?”. (shrink)

Why must we respect others’ rights to dispute scientific knowledge such as that the Earth is round, or that humans evolved, or that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are warming the Earth? In this paper, I argue that in On Liberty Mill defends the freedom to dispute scientific knowledge by appeal to a novel social epistemic rationale for free speech that has been unduly neglected by Mill scholars. Mill distinguishes two kinds of epistemic warrant for scientific knowledge: 1) the positive, direct evidentiary (...) warrant that scientific experts construct for their knowledge by applying the methods Mill had set out in his A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, and 2) a social testimonial warrant that the non-expert “public” has for what Mill refers to as their “rational[ly] assur[ed]” beliefs on scientific subjects. Mill does not argue that scientific claims can never be proven true with complete practical certainty to scientific experts, nor does he argue that scientists must engage in free debate with critics such as flat-earthers in order to fully understand the grounds of their scientific knowledge. Instead, Mill argues that in the absence of the freedom to dispute scientific knowledge, non-experts cannot establish that scientific experts are credible sources of testimonial knowledge. To establish the credibility of scientific expert speakers, non-expert audiences must have a rational assurance, Mill argues, that experts have satisfactory answers to objections that might undermine the positive, direct evidentiary proof of scientific knowledge. But since non-experts cannot distinguish objections that undermine such expert proof from objections that do not, censorship of any objection — even the irrelevant objections of literal or figurative flat-earthers — will prevent non-experts from determining whether scientific expert speakers are credible. Hence, while censoring irrelevant objections would not undermine the positive, direct evidentiary warrant that scientific experts have for their knowledge, doing so would destroy the non-expert, social testimonial warrant for that knowledge. The asymmetry between how expert scientific speakers and non-expert audiences warrant their scientific knowledge is what both generates and necessitates Mill’s social epistemic rationale for the “absolute” freedom to dispute it. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Legal Philosophies of Russian Liberalism. By Andrzej Walicki. A History of Russian Philosophy, Edited by Valery A. Kuvakin.

In this paper, I set out some basic elements of a deontic logic with an implementation appropriate for handling conflicting legal obligations for purposes of programming autonomous machine agents. Kantian justice demands that the prescriptive system of enforceable public laws be consistent, yet statutes or case holdings may often describe legal obligations that contradict; moreover, even fundamental constitutional rights may come into conflict. I argue that a deontic logic of the law should not try to work around such conflicts but, (...) instead, identify and expose them so that the rights and duties that generate inconsistencies in public law can be explicitly qualified and the conflicts resolved. I then argue that a credulous, non-monotonic deontic logic can describe inconsistent legal obligations while meeting Kant’s demand for consistency in the prescriptive system of public law. Finally, I propose an implementation of this logic via a modified form of “answer set programming,” which I demonstrate with some simple examples. (shrink)

The central challenge of “machine ethics” is to build autonomous machine agents that act morally rightly. But how can we build autonomous machine agents that act morally rightly, given reasonable disputes over what is right and wrong in particular cases? In this chapter, I argue that Immanuel Kant’s political philosophy can provide an important part of the answer.

In this paper, I develop two philosophically suggestive arguments that the late Justice Stevens made in Citizens United against the idea that business corporations have free speech rights. First, (1) while business corporations conceived as real entities are capable of a thin agency conceptually sufficient for moral rights, I argue that they fail to clear important justificatory hurdles imposed by interest or choice theories of rights. Business corporations conceived as real entities lack an interest in their personal security; moreover, they (...) are incapable of exercising innate powers of choice. Second, (2) I argue that the structure and functionally individualized purpose of a business corporation—to increase value for its shareholders—undermines the implicit joint commitment necessary to derive corporate rights of free speech from non-operative shareholder-member rights. Since one cannot transfer innate moral rights such as free speech, any exercise of this right on behalf of another must be limited in scope. (shrink)

The three papers published in this number of the Owl of Minerva provide a series of reflections upon the theme of Bildung in Hegel's philosophy. The first, by Jeffrey Reid, explores two contrasting conceptions of Bildung involved in the founding and earliest years of the University of Berlin. The first conception, espoused and developed by Fichte, Humboldt, and Schleiermacher treats Bildung as a spontaneous, natural instinct toward self-development, visible above all in the form of genius, attributed to individuals or to (...) nations. Reid connects this notion of Bildung in significant measure with the Sturm und Drang movement. Hegel opposed to it a very different conception of Bildung resting ultimately upon his distinction between nature and spirit. In Hegel's usage, Bildung refers to the process of development whereby the merely natural individual is transcended, raised to the level of spirit as a member of a moral community, or citizen of an ethical state. As Reid points out, these two conceptions of Bildung have conflicting implications for the role of the university, especially in relation to the state, and the choice between them remains a significant one today. (shrink)

A long time ago, I procured a little book edited by Soren Kierkegaard entitled The Sickness Unto Death (1849). What is more, I read it. (I must confess to having been first attracted to it solely by its title). For and as a tribute to Alastair Hannay I was inspired to set down in print this brief (altogether too brief, philosophically speaking) and unsystematic reflection. What struck me most palpably was the suggestion that, although our worldly endeavors and thus our (...) publications are, so to speak, temporally limited, our despair is not. I write on the obligations and privileges of that mood. (shrink)

The life and thought of Vladimir Solov’ëv have long fascinated students of Russian culture. Poet, philosopher, mystic, theologian, scholar, humorist, theosopher, ecclesiologist—a tale of Solov’ëv’s very considerable influence could be told by focusing on any single one of these terms. Attempting to encompass all of them at once in a grand summation of the significance of his life is a thoroughly daunting task. Perhaps it will never be accomplished to general satisfaction in a single work, which might partly explain the (...) steadily expanding stream of articles and monographs in several languages devoted to the study of this remarkable figure. Nemeth, perhaps wisely, declines any attempt to... (shrink)

(1998). Transcendental illusion and transcendental realism in Kant's second antinomy. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 47-70.

The publication of volume 2 of Philip T. Grier’s translation of _The Philosophy of Hegel as a Doctrine of the Concreteness of God and Humanity _completes the first appearance in English of any of the works of Russian philosopher I. A.Il’in. Most of the contents of volume 2 will be unknown even to those who have read the 1946 German version prepared by Il’in, because in that version he omitted eight of the original ten chapters. These omitted chapters provide (...) an extended reflection on the central categories of Hegel’s moral, legal, and political philosophies, as well as of the philosophy of history. The topics examined are, in order: freedom, humanity, will, right, morality, ethical life, personhood and its virtue, and the state. Contained within these chapters are some notably insightful expositions of core doctrines in Hegel’s philosophy. Il’in’s colleague A. F. Losev accurately observed in the same year the text first appeared: “Neither the study of Hegel nor the study of contemporary Russian philosophical thought is any longer thinkable without this book of I. A. Il’in’s.”. (shrink)

Between 1820 and 1870, middle-class Americans became convinced of the role nonhuman animals could play in socializing children. Companion animals in and around the household were the medium for training children into self-consciousness about, and abhorrence of, causing pain to other creatures including, ultimately, other people. In an age where the formation of character was perceived as an act of conscious choice and self-control, middle-class Americans understood cruelty to animals as a problem both of individual or familial deficiency and of (...) good and evil. Training children to be self-conscious about kindness became an important task of parenting. Domestic advisors also argued that learning kindness was critical for boys who were developmentally prone to cruelty and whose youthful cruelty had implications both for the future of family life and for the body politic. The practice of pet keeping, where children became stewards of companion animals who were then able to teach young humans such virtues as gratitude and fidelity, became a socially meaningful act. (shrink)