A curious feature of this fifth volume in Routledge’s Environmental Philosophies series is the fact that, in 1987, co-editor Eric Katz argued that “a workable environmental ethic... cannot ultimately rest on the values of pragmatism, for these values are inextricably bound up with human desires and interests”. In contrast to the anthropocentric subjectivism of pragmatism, several decades of environmental thought have taught us to see ourselves as fellow members of a wider biotic community, with which we have much in (...) common, including a shared evolutionary history and a high degree of interdependence. Recognizing these facts, we can come to respect the interests and good of non-human members as well as our own. For example, in 1973 Richard Routley proposed the “last man” test for our moral intuitions: Would it be morally indifferent for the last person on earth to destroy all other living things if it were certain there would be no further humans to experience, need, or enjoy them? No, says Routley, it would be a moral crime; and, thus, we need an account of environmental values that is not forced into the mould of human chauvinism. Is not, then, “environmental pragmatism” an oxy- moron? (shrink)

Urban parking systems are a significant contributor to traffic congestion and driver frustration, with studies showing that up to 30% of urban traffic is caused by drivers searching for parking. Traditional parking systems often lack real-time data and adaptability, leading to inefficiencies such as overfilled lots and underutilized spaces. This paper explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and IoT technologies can optimize urban parking by enabling real-time parking space detection, demand forecasting, and dynamic pricing. By integrating data from IoT sensors, traffic (...) systems, and mobile applications, cities can reduce congestion, improve parking availability, and enhance the overall urban mobility experience. Experimental results demonstrate significant improvements in parking efficiency, traffic flow, and user satisfaction, offering a sustainable blueprint for smart urban parking systems. (shrink)

Buildings account for a significant portion of global energy consumption and carbon emissions, making energy efficiency a critical focus for urban sustainability. Traditional building management systems often lack the adaptability and precision needed to optimize energy usage dynamically. This paper explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and IoT technologies can enhance energy efficiency in smart buildings by enabling real-time monitoring, predictive maintenance, and adaptive control systems. By integrating data from smart meters, occupancy sensors, and environmental monitors, cities can reduce energy waste, (...) lower carbon footprints, and improve occupant comfort. Experimental results demonstrate significant improvements in energy savings, operational costs, and environmental impact, offering a sustainable blueprint for smart building management. (shrink)

Urban transportation systems face significant challenges due to increasing congestion, inefficient routes, and fluctuating passenger demand. Traditional public transportation networks often struggle to adapt dynamically to these challenges, leading to delays, overcrowding, and environmental inefficiencies. This paper explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and IoT technologies can optimize urban mobility by enabling real-time route optimization, demand forecasting, and passenger flow management. By integrating data from GPS trackers, fare collection systems, and environmental sensors, cities can reduce travel times, enhance commuter satisfaction, and (...) promote sustainable transportation. Experimental results demonstrate improvements in route efficiency, passenger load balancing, and operational costs, offering a blueprint for AI-driven smart urban mobility. (shrink)

Air pollution is a critical challenge for urban areas, contributing to public health crises and environmental degradation. Traditional air quality monitoring systems often lack the granularity and adaptability needed to address dynamic pollution sources and patterns. This paper explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and IoT technologies can enhance air quality management in smart cities by enabling real-time monitoring, pollution source identification, and adaptive mitigation strategies. By integrating data from IoT sensors, satellite imagery, and traffic systems, cities can reduce pollution levels, (...) improve public health outcomes, and promote sustainable urban environments. Experimental results demonstrate significant improvements in pollution detection accuracy, mitigation efficiency, and public awareness, offering a sustainable blueprint for urban air quality management. (shrink)

Urban wastewater management is a critical component of sustainable water cycles, but traditional systems often struggle with inefficiencies such as high operational costs, resource wastage, and environmental pollution. This paper explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and IoT technologies can optimize urban wastewater management by enabling real-time monitoring, predictive maintenance, and resource recovery. By integrating data from IoT sensors, water quality monitors, and treatment plants, cities can improve water quality, reduce operational costs, and recover valuable resources such as energy and nutrients. (...) Experimental results demonstrate significant improvements in treatment efficiency, resource recovery rates, and environmental impact, offering a sustainable blueprint for smart urban wastewater systems. (shrink)

Noise pollution is a growing concern in urban areas, contributing to public health issues such as stress, sleep disturbances, and hearing loss. Traditional noise monitoring systems often lack the granularity and adaptability needed to address dynamic noise sources and patterns. This paper explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and IoT technologies can enhance noise pollution management in smart cities by enabling real-time monitoring, source identification, and adaptive mitigation strategies. By integrating data from IoT sensors, traffic systems, and urban infrastructure, cities can (...) reduce noise levels, improve public health outcomes, and enhance the quality of life for residents. Experimental results demonstrate significant improvements in noise detection accuracy, mitigation efficiency, and public awareness, offering a sustainable blueprint for urban noise pollution management. (shrink)

Urban lighting systems are essential for safety, security, and quality of life, but they often consume significant energy and lack adaptability to changing conditions. Traditional lighting systems rely on fixed schedules and manual adjustments, leading to inefficiencies such as over-illumination and energy waste. This paper explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and IoT technologies can optimize urban lighting by enabling real-time adjustments, energy savings, and adaptive illumination based on environmental conditions and human activity. By integrating data from motion sensors, weather forecasts, (...) and traffic systems, cities can reduce energy consumption, enhance safety, and improve the quality of life for residents. Experimental results demonstrate significant improvements in energy efficiency, lighting quality, and operational costs, offering a sustainable blueprint for smart urban lighting systems. (shrink)

It seems that we can know moral truths. We are also rather reluctant to defer to moral testimony. But it’s not obvious how moral cognitivism is compatible with pessimism about moral testimony. If moral truths are knowable, shouldn’t it be possible for others to know moral truths you don’t know, so that it is wise for you to defer to what they say? Or, alternatively, if it’s always reasonable to refuse to defer to the wisest among us, doesn’t this show (...) that morality is not genuinely cognitive? There is a tension in our commonsense moral epistemology. In this chapter I (a) explicate this tension, (b) criticize how others have attempted to resolve it, and finally (c) explain how Rossian deontology helps us see that the tension is only apparent: morality is indeed knowable, despite the fact that it is usually wise to refuse to defer to moral testimony. (shrink)

The classic “retorsion” argument that any claim that all thought is relative is a self-refuting dialectical contradiction not only decisively refutes relativism but also demonstrates the presence of absolute truth in all thinking as its implicit enabling condition. In Augustine’s version, this takes the form of showing that truth itself, which Augustine identifies as God, is the “light of minds,” found within the soul by thought’s self-reflexive discovery of the ever-present condition for its own acts of judgment. In recent philosophy (...) this argument is taken up in the transcendental Thomism of Pierre Scheuer, S.J., and, with important clarifying distinctions, in the objective idealism of Vittorio Hösle. Thomas Nagel uses the same argument to reach what amounts to the same conclusion, though he does not call this conclusion ‘God.’ This concurrence indicates that there is no third alternative between complete nihilism and divinity as conceived by Augustine, Scheuer, and Hösle. (shrink)

Military withdrawals are a comparatively understudied topic within the broader subject of war and conflict. While both historians and Just War theorists have recently wrestled with this challenging topic, they have done so in isolation and failed to appreciate the complex interplay of both ‘ethical’ and ‘political’ considerations. This article examines the ethics and politics of military withdrawals by drawing from Just War theory and examining four historical cases of military withdrawal. We argue that there is a moral obligation to (...) end a war if, at any point during the conflict, it ceases to meet the requirements of jus ad bellum. We further suggest that ending an armed conflict is both a single episode and decision, as well as a process with its own moral and political considerations to be taken into account. Accordingly, ethical guidance on the issue of military withdrawals needs to be reconciled with difficult political realities if there is to be hope of a ‘model’ of ethical military withdrawal. (shrink)

The notion of digital virus covers, in our view, two points: computer viruses that infect our computers and technological solutionism, the unreasonable passion that consists in considering that the solution to all social problems lies in the digital world. Yet the digital world is as vulnerable as the biological world. Moreover, it is dangerous because it pushes us into a digital bondage that undermines democracy. The solution to the crisis is not less democracy, but more democracy. More precisely, we will (...) argue that digital devices do not strengthen democratic communication, they promote a digital connection that hinders deliberation and threatens the very idea of democracy. (shrink)

Leviathan-Toth, Ernesto Neto’s anti/counter-installation which could be seen hanging from the vaults of the Panthéon in autumn 2006 does not seek to exploit this national memorial as a space in which to stand as an exhibition. It responds to all of its surrounding factors – physical, aesthetic, political, and metaphysical, to attack the representative art whose constitutive-constitutional role in the republic, according to Hobbes, can be seen in Leviathan’s frontispiece. Setting up a sort of Critique et Clinique of Representation in (...) all senses of the term beginning with the short-circuit between politics and aesthetics, Neto’s operation sets its sights on the expansive dis-organisation of the multitude living under the « democratic » regime of contractual representation of which the Panthéon is the temple. It provides a body for the rhizomatic-bioenergetic perversion of the Image of the State-Machine, of the Form-State, by projecting a new infra and supra-organic type of reality which draws its « energy » from the forces of the multitudo dissoluta whose radical and vital recomposition it advocates. This work or non-work, derived from a Brazilian political-aesthetic constructivism which is undergoing redefinition, can now only take place in the context of a practice of displacement which incorporates and is constituted of the spectator-participant. (shrink)

The subject of this two-part article is the bearing of Søren Kierkegaard’s writings, and of their reception, upon the development of Religionswissenschaft or the comparative study of religion. This first part opens by taking account of Kierkegaard’s own awareness of, and relationship to, “non-Christian” religions, including his late reading of Schopenhauer; then considers Kierkegaard in juxtaposition with his contemporary F. Max Müller, the Sanskritist and foundational pioneer of comparative religion, and the two men’s contrasting relations to F.W.J. Schelling; and finally (...) examines the interest taken in Kierkegaard by William James, Max Weber, and Gerardus van der Leeuw as early twentieth-century contributors through three different disciplines to the study of comparative religion. (shrink)

In his later writings, Kant distinguishes between autonomy and self-mastery or self-command. My article explains the relation between these two ideas, both of which are integral to his understanding of moral agency and the pursuit of virtue. I point to problems with other interpretations of this relation and offer an alternative. On my view, self-command is a condition or state achieved by those agents who become proficient at solving problems presented by the passions. Such agents are able to stick to (...) the results of self-legislation over time and thereby achieve a form of temporally extended freedom. (shrink)

In this review essay, I examine the second edition of Ursula Goodenough's The Sacred Depths of Nature. I argue that her version of religious naturalism is a kind of Protestantism, and that her work has opened a gate which leads into new and post-theistic forms of religion. Along the way, I invoke Hekate, Loki, and Cernunnos.

The Italian term sprezzatura refers to making what one does appear nonchalant and effortless when it in fact involves calculation and effort. This notion, which comes from Baldassare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier, captures a practice that permeates many areas of our aesthetic lives, from the performing arts to everyday social interactions, and is useful for criticism and appreciation. However, this concept has received little attention in philosophical aesthetics. By filling out and making more precise Castiglione's casual and indirect (...) remarks about sprezzatura, I show how this concept both points to heretofore underappreciated aesthetic values and helps us see important aesthetic and moral differences between cases that otherwise seem alike. (shrink)

The last 50 years of research has taught us that conditionals are non-monotonic in the antecedent. That is, they invalidate Antecedent Strengthening. Many accounts have been developed for such conditionals, starting with Stalnaker and Lewis. These accounts converge roughly to Burgess’ conditional logic $${{\,\mathrm{\textsf{B}}\,}}$$ B or the non-monotonic reasoning system $$\textbf{P}$$ P. The latter two have Cautious Monotonicity as a weak replacement for Antecedent Strengthening. Lewis’ weakest conditional logic $${{\,\mathrm{\textsf{V}}\,}}$$ V or its non-monotonic reasoning counterpart system $$\textbf{R}$$ R are obtained (...) by adding a stronger proxi for Antecedent Strengthening – the law of Rational Monotonicity. I argue that Rational Monotonicity is too much while Cautious Monotonicity is not enough monotonicity. I investigate two other monotonicity postulates, which are jointly weaker than Rational Monotonicity. One of them is related to Disjunctive Rationality, the other one is related to the idea of replacing the preservation law encoded in Rational Monotonicity by a pivoting principle – instead of conserving a conclusion when adding a compatible supposition, the principle recommends pivoting from a disjunction to another disjunction when the reason for the first is undermined by such an addition. This gives rise to three logics in between $${{\,\mathrm{\textsf{B}}\,}}$$ B and $${{\,\mathrm{\textsf{V}}\,}}$$ V and three other logics in between $${{\,\mathrm{\textsf{BN}}\,}}$$ BN and $${{\,\mathrm{\textsf{VN}}\,}}$$ VN obtained by strengthening $${{\,\mathrm{\textsf{B}}\,}}$$ B and $${{\,\mathrm{\textsf{V}}\,}}$$ V by a consistency axiom. I prove soundness, completeness and decidability results for these six new logics, using set-selection semantics, its correspondence theory, and filtrations. In the second follow-up paper, I investigate five other semantics for the new logics: well founded strict order semantics, a new closeness semantics, several weakenings of ranking semantics, and new versions of Lewis’ and Burgess’ similarity semantics. (shrink)

Bernard Williams argued that philosophers should pay more attention to the role thick ethical concepts play in our moral thinking, and, separately, that all reasons for action depend in the first place upon the agent's pre-exisitng motives. Here I argue that these two views are in tension. Much like the standard examples of thick ethical concepts, the concept REASONABLE is likewise thick, and the features of the world that guide its correct use have much less to do with the agent's (...) pre-existing motives than internalism about reasons for action maintains. (shrink)

Children and individuals with developmental disabilities compared to typical participants are disadvantaged not only by virtue of being vulnerable to risks inherent in research participation but also by the higher likelihood of exclusion from research altogether. Current regulatory and ethical guidelines although necessary for their protection do not sufficiently ensure fair distributive justice. Yet, in view of disproportionately higher burdens of co-occurring physical and mental disorders in individuals with DD, they are better positioned to benefit from research by equitable participation. (...) Greater elucidation of this ethical dilemma is called for by researchers, institutional review boards, and funding agencies to urgently redress the imbalance. This article discusses many of the regulatory principles to ensure better research participation of children and individuals with DD: human rights, validity, distributive justice, beneficence/nonmaleficence, and autonomy. (shrink)

I reply to Bernard Wills (2023) review essay on my book Believing in Dawkins: The New Spiritual Atheism (2020). I discuss idolatry, Neoplatonism, the New Atheism, and atheistic Platonism.

This paper examines Larry A. Hickman’s warnings about the dangers of algorithmic technologies for democracy and then considers educational policy initiatives that are important for combatting such threats over the long term. John Dewey’s philosophy is considered both in Hickman’s work and in this paper’s review of what Dewey called the “Supreme Intellectual Obligation.” Dewey’s insights highlight crucial tasks necessary and called for with respect to education to value and appreciate the sciences and what they can do to serve humanity. (...) At the same time, a significant cultural effort is needed to ensure that schools are empowered to do this vital work and that the public is informed and enabled to demand the leadership and initiatives that democracy needs to safeguard against threats to it. (shrink)

This article argues that studies of late-development should be altered in two respects: the unit of analysis should increasingly be the subnational economy, and an understanding of economic outcomes should be sector specific. Variation in the developmental outcomes of particular sectors can be best understood by analyzing the fit between local institutions and firms within a particular sector. The specific development needs of firms vary across sectors, and the institutional structures required to meet firm-level needs are local more often than (...) national. The importance of regional and sectoral variation is demonstrated by comparing Beijing and Shanghai in two sectors. (shrink)

There is an increasing awareness of the importance of food security, of which the UN’s Millennium Development Goals are the best measure. Although some progress has been made in some regions, much progress still needs to be made in Sub-Saharan Africa, where agriculture largely remains subsistence and personal savings extremely low, and where population growth outstrips economic growth.Thus, there has been a renewed effort to bring these problems back on the development agenda. Food insecurity is a major manifestation of poverty, (...) and hence agricultural development is the most effective way out of rural poverty.The ethical imperative is to bring about the political will to effect such development. Institutions must be built that focus on smallholder development as an engine of economic growth. Along with classic issues of development , the rural poor, who respond well to market-based development and are thus good micro-credit risks, must be given access to markets and finances.The drive to bring the rural poor into the market is frustrated, however, by the subsidies that the Northern nations use to prop up their own markets and farmers. One of the most pressing ethical questions, then, remains how the North can continue to support its subsidy system, while, at the same time, contributing to development work. (shrink)

In this essay, I review the writings of three philosophers whose work converges on the insight that we must attend to and reconstruct culture for the sake of justice. John Rawls, John Dewey, and Richard Rorty help show some of the ways in which culture can enable or undermine the pursuit of justice. They also offer resources for identifying tools for addressing the cultural challenges impeding justice. I reveal insights and challenges in Rawls’s philosophy as well as tools and solutions (...) for building on and addressing them in Dewey’s and Rorty’s philosophy. (shrink)

The last 50 years of research has taught us that conditionals are non-monotonic in the antecedent. That is, they invalidate Antecedent Strengthening. Many accounts have been developed for such conditionals, starting with Stalnaker and Lewis. These accounts converge roughly to Burgess’ conditional logic $${{\,\mathrm{\textsf{B}}\,}}$$ B or the non-monotonic reasoning system $$\textbf{P}$$ P. The latter two have Cautious Monotonicity as a weak replacement for Antecedent Strengthening. Lewis weakest conditional logic $${{\,\mathrm{\textsf{V}}\,}}$$ V or system $$\textbf{R}$$ R are obtained by adding a stronger (...) proxi for Antecedent Strengthening – the law of Rational Monotonicity. I argue that Rational Monotonicity is too much while Cautious Monotonicity is not enough monotonicity. I investigate two other monotonicity postulates, which are jointly weaker than Rational Monotonicity. This gives rise to three logics in between $${{\,\mathrm{\textsf{B}}\,}}$$ B and $${{\,\mathrm{\textsf{V}}\,}}$$ V and three other logics in between $${{\,\mathrm{\textsf{BN}}\,}}$$ BN and $${{\,\mathrm{\textsf{VN}}\,}}$$ VN obtained by strengthening $${{\,\mathrm{\textsf{B}}\,}}$$ B and $${{\,\mathrm{\textsf{V}}\,}}$$ V by a consistency axiom. In the first part of the paper, I proved soundness, completeness and decidability results for these logics, using set-selection semantics. In the present second part of the paper, I investigate five other semantics for the new logics: order semantics, a new closeness semantics, alternative ranking semantics inspired by Spohn, Huber and Raidl, and two new versions of similarity semantics inspired from Lewis and Burgess. Establishing truth preserving maps between these semantics, the soundness and completeness results from set-selection semantics can be transferred. Overall, the different new semantics provide new insights into why Rational Monotonicity fails. (shrink)

I reply here to Bishop and Persyzk’s “Varieties of Religious Naturalism.” I am sympathetic to their euteleology but I do not think their approach to religious naturalism serves their own position very well. Instead I propose a Pagan religious naturalism which fits better with both religious naturalism and their euteleology.

This article examines contemporary educational practices within the rapidly evolving landscape of Artificial Intelligence. We do so by analysing the relationship between artificiality and naturalness in education. Education, often characterized as a human and thus natural-historical phenomenon, now appears increasingly shaped by artificial processes that seek to develop knowledge and skills as the building blocks for new generations’ social and professional success. Our concern lies in the convergence between recent pedagogical approaches and AI training processes, both of which emphasize data (...) interpretation and decision-making skills. To critically examine these trends, we analyse two fictional works that offer insight into current and future educational practices: Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian novel Never Let Me Go and Asimov’s short story Reason. Through these fictional narratives and the insights of contemporary philosophers of education, we aim to draw critical lessons about the philosophical implications of the relationship between naturalness and artificiality in education. Specifically, we advocate for the role of the teacher and the value of educational practices often overlooked in competency-based and learning-centred models. As well as reflecting on how works of fiction can, by questioning and challenging current educational practices, improve our understanding of them. (shrink)

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) et Elizabeth Simcoe (1762-1850) ont écrit des récits de voyage, récits influencés par la théorie du pittoresque, en particulier telle qu’elle a été formulée par William Gilpin. Wollstonecraft a publié ses Lettres écrites pendant une courte résidence en Suède, en Norvège et au Danemark en 1796 ; Simcoe, une artiste douée, a tenu un journal écrit et visuel de son séjour dans le Bas et le Haut-Canada entre 1791 et 1796, alors qu’elle était l’épouse du premier lieutenant-gouverneur (...) du Haut-Canada, John Graves Simcoe (1752-1806). Wollstonecraft et Simcoe ont emmené avec eux de jeunes enfants – Wollstonecraft, sa fille Frances (née 14 mai 1794), Simcoe, sa fille Sophia (née 25 octobre 1789) et son fils Francis (né 6 juin 1791). Le programme esthétique de Gilpin favorise la dissymétrie, la variation et le marginal ; Wollstonecraft et Simcoe, qui différaient d’opinions politiques, adaptent la pratique de Gilpin et inventent des modalités de la sensibilité pittoresque propres à leur rôle de mère. Dans la représentation de la vie de tous les jours, on s’attend à ce que les enfants soient présents ; le fait de les situer dans les régions sauvages et aux frontières modifie leur rôle – et celui de leur mère. Le récit par Wollstonecraft d’une visite aux chutes de Sarp en Norvège et les visions de Simcoe de Niagara (et de la rivière Don) révèlent respectivement la sensibilité d’apocalypse de Wollstonecraft et la sensibilité progressiste de Simcoe. Wollstonecraft projette la présence de sa fille Frances dans le paysage scandinave, s’inspirant de la féérie de Shakespeare pour introduire des dimensions surnaturelles dans un récit empirique. Simcoe présente son fils Francis comme un médiateur entre l’empire britannique auquel elle croit et les peuples autochtones qu’elle reconnaît comme essentiels à la défense, à la consolidation et à l’avenir de la province que son époux dirige. (shrink)