Several recent authors have recommended that “sense of place” should become an important concept in our evaluation of environmental policies. In this paper, we explore aspects of this concept, arguing that it may provide the basis for a new, “place-based” approach to environmental values. This approach is based on an empirical hypothesis that place orientation is a feature of all people’s experience of their environment. We argue that place orientation requires, in addition to a home perspective, a sense of the (...) space around the home place and that this dual aspect can be modeled using a “hierarchical” methodology. We propose a “triscalar,” place-oriented system for the analysis of environmental values, explore the characteristics of place-orientation through several examples, and employ these characteristics to distinguish acceptable and unacceptable aspects of the NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) idea. (shrink)

This article evaluates the centrality of class in the "social interpretation" of the French Revolution put forward by George Lefebvre, Albert Soboul, and others. The social interpreters introduce an admirable complexity into their explanations of the causes and dynamics of the Revolution, but this complexity stems from their use of loose, multiple, and often contradictory notions of class influenced partly by Joseph Barnave's "stage theory" of pre-Revolutionary France and by "vulgar Marxism." These notions contrast with the concept of class - (...) surplus-labor extraction - developed in the three volumes of Marx's Capital, and they also are the focus of criticisms advanced by revisionist historians such as Alfred Cobban and Franqois Furet. While the revisionists' criticisms are often justified and provide useful theoretical directions, the social interpreters' focus on class can be preserved by using this alternative concept. Using this concept can consistently convey the many class divisions in pre-Revolutionary France and the multiple class positions historical agents simultaneously occupied before, during, and after the Revolution. (shrink)

A growing literature testifies to the persistence of place as an incorrigible aspect of human experience, identity, and morality. Place is a common ground for thought and action, a community of experienced particulars that avoids solipsism and universalism. It draws us into the philosophy of the ordinary, into familiarity as a form of knowledge, into the wisdom of proximity. Each of these essays offers a philosophy of place, and reminds us that such philosophies ultimately decide how we make, use, and (...) understand places, whether as accidents, instruments, or fields of care. (shrink)

Victorian physics meets industrial capitalism Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-6 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9554-0 Authors Bruce J. Hunt, History Department, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station B7000, Austin, TX 78712-0220, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

The lack of metaphysical grounding of environmental values, and impatience towards the enterprise of seeking such grounding, result in a superficial and wrongheaded view of anthropocentrism. Anthropocentrism is best understood as a limiting condition, a point from which we can begin to reformulate an understanding of ourselves, our values, and our relation to the environment. It is not principally a starting point for the existence of values, as is assumed under traditional theories of anthropocentrism. To demonstrate and elaborate on this (...) position, the paper focuses on environmental values and how we traditionally assume them to be formed and legitimated. A critique of the analyses of two prominent figures in the field of environmental ethics, Bryan Norton and Eugene Hargrove, serves as the backdrop against which an alternative view is formed. This alternative is metaphysically grounded in an ecologically informed analysis of valuational activity. Against the tradition, the argument establishes two main points: 1) that attempts to ground environmental values on human preferences, agreements, traditions, or culturally driven commitments are liable to legitimate contrary values; and 2) that an ecologically driven analysis of values shows that valuations of the environment are not fundamentally conferred onto it by human beings. Positively, the paper attempts to show that our inclusion as members of the ecological community makes our valuational activity an integral and transformational element within more comprehensive ecological processes. As such, our moral commitment to the environment must be radically reshaped in order adequately to incorporate this renewed understanding. (shrink)

Legal decision-making emphasizes, in a very self-conscious way, the justificatory significance of reasons. This paper argues that the obligation to provide reasons for choices, which must be articulated and structured around a set of generally shared and publicly comprehensible categories of thought, can serve to make the space of possible choices ‘concept sensitive’ in a very useful way. In particular, concept sensitivity has the effect of restricting certain movements within the choice space so that some of the systematic difficulties in (...) achieving an equilibrium in social choice which arise out of an excess of rational doing are avoided. The resulting equilibrium is path dependent. But because it is dependent on a choice path which ‘makes sense’ (or is ordered by thought precisely because it is concept sensitive), it is not the sort of arbitary path-dependent social choice which originally concerned Kenneth Arrow. This paper illustrates these points with examples from criminal law procedure, contract law and constitutional law. (shrink)

Having, in previous papers, distinguished at least three forms of consciousness , I now further examine their differences. This examination has some surprising results. Having argued that neither C1 nor C2 is a phenomenological state?and so different from CN?I now show that CN itself is best thought of as a subclass of a larger state . CS is the set of image?representation states. CN is that set of CS states that we are also C2 about. I argue that CN states (...) should be considered a subset of CS states because they share with other CS states imagistic representational powers as opposed to the sentential ones of C1 and C2. And I argue that there are good reasons to consider any state which utilises imagistic representation as a sensation. I then show that the notion of an unconscious sensation makes sense if we think of it as a CS state that is not C2. More radically, I conclude that either it makes sense to say that there are unfelt sensations or there are felt sensations we are not conscious about. While there are good reasons for saying one or the other of these surprising things, I argue that the second, more radical sounding, alternative is actually better motivated?and not quite so surprising as it sounds. (shrink)

Recent critics (Andrew Light, Bryan Norton, Anthony Weston, and Bruce Morito, among others) have argued that we should give up talk of intrinsic value in general and that of nature in particular. While earlier theorists might have overestimated the importance of intrinsic value, these recent critics underestimate its importance. Claims about a thing’s intrinsic value are claims about the distinctive way in which we have reason to care about that thing. If we understand intrinsic value in this manner, (...) we can capture the core claims that environmentalists want to make about nature while avoiding the worries raised by contemporary critics. Since the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value plays a critical role in our understanding of the different ways that we do and should care about things, moral psychology, ethical theory in general, and environmental ethics in particular shouldn’t give up on the concept of intrinsic value. (shrink)

The Hole Argument was originally formulated by Einstein and it haunted him as he struggled to understand the meaning of spacetime coordinates in the context of the diffeomorphism invariance of general relativity. This argument has since been put to philosophical use by Earman and Norton to argue against a substantival conception of spacetime. In the present work I demonstrate how Earman and Norton’s Hole Argument can be extended to exclude everything and not merely substantival manifolds. These casualties of (...) the hole demonstrate that the Hole Argument hinges essentially on our notion of determinism and not on the diffeomorphic freedom of general relativity. Just as Earman and Norton argue that we should not let our metaphysics run roughshod over the structure of our physical theories, so I will argue that, in particular, we should not uncritically allow our metaphysics to dictate what our physical theories must determine. The central conviction which drives the arguments of this paper is that deterministic theories are not required to determine for future moments what they cannot determine for any present or past moments. I provide two arguments to the effect that a physically informed notion of determinism does not require general relativity to determine substantival facts. Consequently the Hole Argument cannot be used against substantival spacetime. The position that I advocate is an instance of “sophisticated determinism.”. (shrink)

Many working in bioethics today are engaging in forms of normative interpretation concerning the meaningful contexts of relational agency and institutional structures of power. Using the framework of relational bioethics, this article focuses on two significant social practices that are significant for health policy and public health: the practices of solidarity and the practices of care. The main argument is that the affirming recognition of, and caring attention paid to, persons as moral subjects can politically motivate a society in three (...) respects. The recognition of solidarity and the attention of care can prompt progressive change toward a democratic willingness: (a) to provide for equal respect for rights and dignity; (b) to provide the social resources and services needed for just health and well‐being; and (c) to focus its creativity and wealth on the actualization of potential flourishing of each and all. Solidarity is discussed as a morally developmental stance that moves from standing up for another, standing up with another, and standing up as another. Care is discussed as a morally developmental stance that moves from the attentive rehabilitation of another, attentive companionship with and for another, and attentive commitment to another. (shrink)

Philosophers writing on the subject of human action have found it tempting to introduce their subject by raising Wittgenstein's question, 'What is left over if you subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?' The presumption is that something of particular interest is involved in an action of raising an arm that is not present in a mere bodily movement, and the philosopher's task is to specify just what this is. Unfortunately, such (...) an approach does not take us very far, since a person could properly be said to raise his (or her) arm while asleep or hypnotized even though he (or she) would not be performing an action in the sense of 'action' with which philosophers are particularly concerned. To avoid this kind of difficulty I shall approach the subject of human action is a more academic way: I shall expound some important rival theories of human action, and introduce the relevant issues by commenting critically on those theories. One of the issues I eventually introduce is a metaphysical one. A theory of action makes sense, I contend, only on the assumption that there are such 'things' as actions (or events). After considering some key arguments bearing on the issue I conclude that, as matters currently stand in philosophy, a metaphysically noncommittal attitude toward actions and events seems justified. (shrink)

In Norton(2003), it was urged that the world does not conform at a fundamental level to some robust principle of causality. To defend this view, I now argue that the causal notions and principles of modern physics do not express some universal causal principle, brought to light by discoveries in physics. Rather they merely assert that, according to relativity theory, spacetime has an invariant velocity, that of light; and that theories of matter admit no propagations faster than light.

Morphological elements, or structures, are sorted into four categories depending on their level of anatomical isolation and the presence or absence of intrinsically identifying characteristics. These four categories are used to highlight the difficulties with the concept of structure and our ability to identify or define structures. The analysis is extended to the concept of homology through a discussion of the methodological and philosophical problems of the current concept of homology. It is argued that homology is fundamentally a similarity based (...) concept rather than a phylogenetic concept, and a proposal is put forth to return to a comparative context for homology. It is shown that for both the concepts of structure and homology ana priori assumption of stable underlying patterns (i.e. archetypes) is essential. (shrink)

In their target article, “Proposed Principles for International Bioethics Conferencing: Anti-Discriminatory, Global, and Inclusive,” Jecker et al. (2024) highlight the growing international scope o...

In 1986, I argued that pains are essentially not phenomenal states. Using a Wittgen-steinian son of argument, I showed that the same sort of phenomena can be had on different occasions, and on one occasion persons be in pain, while on another occasion persons not be in pain. I also showed that very different phenomena could be experienced and, yet, organisms have the same sort of pain. I supported my arguments with empirical data from both laboratory and clinical studies. There (...) is nothing about this thesis I would now retract. However, there was a further thesis that needs to be reconsidered. I argued that phenomenal states are only accompaniments of pains, that pains are essentially a combination of cognitive, affective and behavioural/motivational states. This thesis I do now zaish to retract. I now argue that phenomenal states are necessary for pains, but still not sufficient. There must also be a cognitive state which involves an evaluation of the phenomenon as something like, 'Harm to the body'. The evaluation is a kind of de re belief, regarding the phenomenon as itself representing harm to the body. Besides admitting that phenomenal states are necessary for pains, I also now claim that other relevant belief states, affective states, and behavioural/motivational states are not necessary for pain, but normal consequences of pain. This revised theory is preferable to the 1986 one because it fits better with empirical facts (including providing better explanations for anomalous cases), fits better with certain powerful common-sense intuitions, and fits better with a larger theory of consciousness I have been developing. Among other things, it turns out that being in pain is a quite peculiar conscious state and considering it as a paradigm for consciousness is a serious mistake. (shrink)

Examining the thought of key postmodern thinkers like Nietzsche, Derrida and Marion, Bruce Ellis Benson offers profound insight into the nature of conceptual idolatry and our need for the biblical revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

Heartbeat bills are laws prohibiting abortion in most circumstances once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, and are common in US states. They have been criticised as poorly designed and disingenuous. In this letter to the editor I examine these criticisms.

Solidarity corresponds to virtuous social behavior, including personal freedom and responsibility, civic friendship, benevolence, reciprocity, and cooperation. These attributes are fundamentally good for individual persons and communities of work. Solidarity is therefore vitally important to the practice of humanistic management. This paper aims to provide management insights into the cultivation of solidarity. The paper begins by developing a theoretical framework to understand solidarity in business context, with attention to philosophical and theological connotations. An empirical research model is presented in the (...) form of a survey instrument to test for indications of solidarity in the workplace, and this measure is used to test several hypotheses regarding the positive associations of solidarity with validated measures of workplace engagement. Research results show that it is possible to identify and analyze workplace behaviors associated with solidarity. Data analysis confirms the validity of the model and demonstrates the positive associations of the hypotheses, based on empirical study of 40 workplaces and 399 employees. Moreover, the condition of whether the workplace was a public or private organization was found to affect the main relationship between solidarity and workplace engagement. The paper concludes with suggestions for practicable, tangible workplace behaviors based on the model, offering guidance in the pursuit of humanistic management. (shrink)

Innovation is fundamental to cumulative culture, allowing progressive modification of existing technology. The authors define innovation as an asocial process, uninfluenced by social information. We argue that innovation is inherently social – innovation is frequently the product of modifying others' outputs, and successful innovations are acquired by others. Research should target examination of the cognitive underpinnings of socially-mediated innovations.

Si le concept husserlien de passivité a fasciné toute une génération de philosophes (Merleau-Ponty, Landgrebe, Levinas, Henry), il a rarement fait l'objet d'une étude qui adopte la perspective du fondateur de la phénoménologie. Sa célébrité a comme masqué sa spécificité, créant une sorte de doctrine officielle de la passivité qui a, en fin de compte, peu de choses à voir avec la pensée et les intentions de Husserl. En effet, là où les phénoménologues contemporains voient dans la passivité la zone (...) d'ombre où le programme d'une phénoménologie transcendantale et subjective s'effondrerait, Husserl considère, de son côté, qu'elle appartient sans reste à la sphère de la constitution et qu'elle consolide par conséquent son transcendantalisme. Loin d'être un domaine de sens irréductible à la rationalité, elle représente même le fondement des opérations de la pensée catégoriale. C'est en son sein que doivent être cherchées les « sources » des formes supérieures de la logique. Toute passive et préconsciente qu'elle soit, l'expérience antéprédicative appartient sans reste pour Husserl au sujet transcendantal et ne le destitue donc pas de sa position centrale et primordiale. Ce travail s'attache ainsi à suivre cette genèse du catégorial à partir de l'expérience passive et à montrer qu'elle entre dans le projet général, qui a été toujours celui de Husserl, d'asseoir la phénoménologie transcendantale sur le socle originaire de l'expérience du monde. Remerciements Avant-propos Remarques Chapitre premier. Le sens phénoménologique de la passivité Chapitre II. La refondation méthodologique de la phénoménologie Chapitre premier. La formation du concept husserlien de « synthèse passive » Chapitre II. La constitution passive de l'expérience dans les Analysen zur passiven Synthesis Chapitre III. Le rôle de l'affection dans la formation de l'unité sensible Chapitre IV. La phénoménologie de l'inconscient Chapitre premier. Les présupposés fondamentaux de la généalogie de la logique Chapitre II. L'analyse généalogique du jugement prédicatif Chapitre III. L'origine de l'erreur dans la passivité Conclusion.Le conflit des fondements Bibliographie Index nominum. (shrink)

Performing reason: Mendelssohn on Judaism and enlightenment -- Jacobi and Mendelssohn: the tragedy of a messianic friendship -- In the year of the Lord 1800: Rosenzweig and the Spinoza quarrel -- Reinhold and Kant: the quest for a new religion of reason -- Beautiful life: Mendelssohn, Hegel, and Rosenzweig -- Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig, and political theology: beyond sovereign violence -- Beyond 1800: an immigrant Rosenzweig.

Recognition of legal personhood in contemporary international and domestic law is a matter of signs. Those signs identify the existence of the legal person: human animals, corporations and states. They also identify facets of that personhood that situate the signified entities within webs of rights and responsibilities. Entities that are not legal persons lack agency and are thus invisible. They may be acted on but, absent the personhood that is communicated through a range of indicia and shapes both legal and (...) popular understanding of powers and obligations, they lack standing in judicial fora. They are signified as entities that are the subjects of action by legal persons, for example exploitation through rights regarding natural resources or commodification of ‘wild’, companion and other non-human animals. They are also signified as members of a diverse class of non-persons such as ‘nature’ and ‘the environment’. This article explores the consequences of law’s signification of personhood and the natural world before asking whether we both should and could recognise domains such as specific rivers, forests or even Antarctica as a type of legal person. Recognition might acknowledge the salience of nature in the ontologies of colonised First Peoples. It might also underpin a global response to climate change as the existential crisis of the Anthropocene. In understanding law as a matter of signifiers and syntaxes the article cautions that ostensible recognition of some domains as persons has been aspirational rather than substantive, with observers misreading the sign as necessarily transforming power relationships. The article also cautions that personhood for nature or particular domains may be contrary to the self-determination of colonised First Peoples. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: A‐theories, T‐theories, and P‐theories Problems with A‐theories and T‐theories Predication Advantages of P‐theories A New Look at Some Old Examples What are Concepts? Some Problems about DSTs More about Concepts The Plausibility of the P‐theory.