ABSTRACT Global biodiversity declines are increasingly recognized as profound ecological and social crises. In areas subject to colonialization, these declines have advanced in lockstep with settler colonialism and imposition of centralized resource management by settler states. Many have suggested that resurgent Indigenous-led governance systems could help arrest these trends while advancing effective and socially just approaches to environmental interactions that benefit people and places alike. However, how dominant management and conservation approaches might be decolonized (i.e., how their underlying colonial structure (...) might be addressed, transformed, and replaced) is not always clear. Here, we describe a ‘Decolonial Model of Environmental Management and Conservation’ as an alternative paradigm to dominant approaches of conservation and management. The tenets of the model describe characteristics that might be expected of decolonized management, contrasted with those of dominant state-led approaches such as those embedded in the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. The model does not prescribe how Indigenous governments or communities ought to govern their own territories, but instead offers insights into how external management and conservation agencies and practitioners might support (or stop impeding) Indigenous-led governance. We illustrate the model with a conservation ‘bright spot’: grizzly bear stewardship in the area now referred to as the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia, Canada, with a focus on work led by or in collaboration with, and within the territories of, the Haíɫzaqv, Kitasoo/xai’xais, Nuxalk, and Wuikinuxv First Nations. While acknowledging the important context-specific variability among place-based management and conservation applications, we also discuss the model’s broader applicability. (shrink)

Everyone interested in Arabic and Persian literature, in Islam and in comparative religion, regrets the death of Arthur J. Arberry, Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge. Arberry combined rare human qualities and exceptional professional attainment, and this enabled him to make a unique contribution both to learning and to mutual understanding between East and West. He had a deep sense of vocation, which he brought to his unremitting labours as a skilled editor of texts, especially (...) in the field of Islamic mysticism, and as an imaginative translator of these texts of the Koran and of Arabic and Persian poetry, and as a sympathetic interpreter of Sūfism. (shrink)

J. O. Urmson; VIII*—A Defence of Intuitionism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 75, Issue 1, 1 June 1975, Pages 111–120, https://doi.org/10.1093/.

In this second of two essays responding to critical discussion of my " Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason," I show how an ' accommodationist ' strategy can be used to defuse objections that were not exposed as irrelevant by the first essay. This strategy involves showing that the dominant concern of reasons for divine withdrawal can be met or accommodated within the framework of divine - human relationship envisaged by the hiddenness argument. I conclude that critical discussion leaves the argument (...) very much alive and kicking, and indeed strengthened as it moves into its second decade of life. (shrink)

In 'Belief-In and Belief in God' ("Religious Studies", 28, 1992), J. N. Williams suggests that belief in God cannot be rational unless one has rational beliefs that God exists. While agreeing with his conclusion (though not with his statement of it), I disagree at almost every step with his method of arriving at it. In particular I suggest that Williams goes astray concerning the dual aspect of belief in, the nature of performatives, the arousal of belief states, and the correct (...) account of belief in God. (shrink)

J. L. Ackrill; VIII*—Aristotle's Definitions of Psuche, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 73, Issue 1, 1 June 1973, Pages 119–134, https://doi.org.

One of the purposes of this paper is to explore a number of questions which-to judge from what he assumes–Aristotle might well have asked, but which he apparently did not ask. It is often informative in the history of philosophy to point out the questions which are not raised; it sets those which are raised in a more precise frame.It can be argued that Aristotle implies that it is possible to look like a human being–and indeed be called a human (...) being–without “really” or “fully” being one. Leaving aside the status of females (who for Aristotle are males manques, analogous to the blind or deaf, and of children, we cannot be certain that all adult males of the class whose members look like men “really” are men. (shrink)

The suggestion here is that casting the project of feminist ethics in confrontational language, rooted in a rebellion picture of moral epistemology, impedes the further development of that very project. Four commonplace examples are offered to make this suggestion plausible. I urge instead a pluralistic approach to styles of moral thinking and propose that the project of feminist ethics would be better served by casting it in the language of reconciliation.

Discusssion of passages 243 et. seq. of Wittgenstein's Philosophical lnvestigations tends to concentrate on the argument supporting the thesis that a logically private language is impossible. When the discussion becomes broader, the presumption is generally that this thesis is one premifs of an argument against solipsism. I believe that the passages will support a valid argument that might, at first glance, give comfort to someone in the egocentric predicament, but that this comfort would quickly grow cold on closer examination. I (...) do not mean to suggest that Wittgenstein offers no escape from the predicament, only that the escape will not be a consequence of the pluralism necessary to the existence of language, but rather a byproduct of his discussion of the logic of mental discourse. In this paper, I state an alternative to the contra-solipsist reading of the passages, taking Wittgenstein there to be reflecting a three part dispute, the other participants of which are a skeptic and a philosopher I'll call ‘the Realist'. (shrink)

On the basis of a distinction between suffering and punishment, I maintain that divine punishment is suffering understood against the backdrop of an ultimate or divine morality. Suffering can in some cases be a retributively just desert even where there is an obvious absence of distributive justice. After reconciliation with God the suffering may continue unabated, but the suffering loses its status as punishment. An innocent or forgiven person cannot be punished no matter how much s/he is made to suffer. (...) Divine punishment is an ultimate moral concept, an interpretation placed on suffering by a person of morally good will. (shrink)

I argue that Kripke’s construal of the distinction between speaker’s reference and semantic reference, in ‘Speaker’s reference and semantic reference’ (Kripke in Midwest Stud Philos 2:255–276, 1977), in conjunction with an intuitive view of the nature of conventions, implies a theory of semantic reference that is distinct from his causal theory. On this theory, semantic reference is conventionalized speaker’s reference. The argument concerning Kripke has two general implications. First, any theory that features a notion of speaker’s reference will have great (...) difficulty in avoiding the view that semantic reference is conventionalized speaker’s reference. Second, theories that deny that there is a viable notion of speaker’s reference, and thereby deny that semantic reference is conventionalized speaker’s reference, will face an uphill battle in meeting certain general constraints originating in the theory of conventions. (shrink)

What is the relation between things and theories, the material world and its scientific representations? This is a staple philosophical problem that rarely counts as historically legitimate or fruitful. In the following dialogue, the interlocutors do not argue for or against realism. Instead, they explore changing relations between theories and things, between contested objects of knowledge and less contested, more everyday things. Widely seen as the life sciences' first general theory, the cell theory underwent dramatic changes during the nineteenth century. (...) The dialogue establishes that each successive version of the cell theory was formulated -- each identity of the object cell was formed -- around a different material : cork, cartilage, eggs in cleavage, muscle. Such things thus serve as exemplary materials, in ways not described by standard concepts like induction, theory -testing, theory -laden observation, and construction. Still, how can theories and perspective possibly be honed on things if these are apprehended differently by different observers according to their interests, training, culture, or indeed theories? The second part of the dialogue addresses this problem, partly through the verbal and visual schemata that were used by nineteenth-century microscopists and that are comparable to schemata in the visual arts. The third part of the dialogue considers the exemplary materials as a historical sequence, itself needing explanation. Theoretical change devolved partly from wider histories and geographies of the prevalence, availability, or scientific and cultural status of materials such as plants, animals, and muscle. (shrink)

This dialogue turns into a discussion between three people. The interlocutors are Socrates, Jeito and finally also Plato. The dimensions of Time, Space and Person are occasionally transgressed. The conclusion is that information seems to be unidirectional concerning life and death.

(1979). Some Observations on the Problems of Grading Examinations with Several Components: a reply to P. J. Squire. Educational Studies: Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 225-230.

Held at Philadelphia for promoting useful knowledge.

This work addresses scientism and relativism, two false philosophies that divorce science from culture in general and from tradition in particular. It helps break the isolation of science from the rest of culture by promoting popular science and reasonable history of science. It provides examples of the value of science to culture, discussions of items of the general culture, practical strategies and tools, and case studies. It is for practising professionals, political scientists and science policy students and administrators.

Amazon Book Review Series of “Wild Wise Weird”.

The explicit goal of most major AI labs is to create artificial general intelligence (AGI): machines that can assist us across a wide range of tasks. Additionally, they all want to build systems that are safe, fair and beneficial to their users – machines that are good. But, building machines that are both generally intelligent and good requires building machines that can “think” about what’s good, that make their own moral judgments. And this raises both philosophical and technical questions that (...) we have barely started to address. (shrink)

Diogenes Laertius reports that Xenophanes of Colophon said that τὰ πολλὰ ἥσσω νοῦ εἶναι— on one defensible translation: that ‘many things are weaker than mind.’ The remark has been interpreted in various ways, none of them entirely convincing. However, a review of the relevant fragments and ancient testimonia will provide the basis for a credible interpretation. Ultimately, it will emerge that the remark reflects Xenophanes’ understanding of the relationship between the divine mind and the cosmos.

In this penetrating book J. Kerby Anderson asks just how much we modern Christians can embrace emrging scientific and technological discoveries and still be true to our Lord. Kerby frames biblical answers in the light of Christ's lordship.h.

The past thirty years have been marked by an energetic renewal of traditional just war theory. Now changes in relations among nations and changes in military technology may require a recasting of the just war ethic comparable to its recasting by Vitoria and Suarez in the six-teenth century. After reviewing the way the just war tradition met the practical tests posed by Vietnam, nuclear deterrence, and the Gulf War, I will argue that the erosion of the Westphalia legacy and the (...) collapse of the cold war press two questions upon us: Can any modern war be defended as just? Are there resources in the just war tradition for assessing what constitutes morally defensible, even morally required, intervention by one state in the affairs of another? (shrink)