Southern Appalachia is unique among agroecological regions of the American South because of the diverse environmental conditions caused by its mountain ecology, the geographic and commercial isolation of the region, and the relative cultural autonomy of the people that live there. Those three criteria, combined with a rich agricultural history and the continuance of the homegardening tradition, make southern Appalachia an area of relatively high crop biodiversity in America. This study investigated the history and survival of traditional heirloom vegetable crops (...) in western North Carolina and documented 134 heirloom varieties that were still being grown. I conducted interviews with 26 individuals from 12 counties in western North Carolina. I used a snowball sampling method to identify individuals or communities that maintained heirloom vegetable varieties, and used the “memory banking” of farmers’ knowledge as a strategy to complement the gathering of seed specimens. Most of the varieties were grown and saved by homegardeners; beans were the most numerous. Results indicate that usually only one or two individuals in a community maintained significant numbers of heirloom varieties and that many communities have lost their heirloom vegetable heritage altogether. The decline of the farming population combined with a lack of cultural continuance in family seed-saving traditions threatens the ability of communities to maintain crop biodiversity. Some of the cultivars may represent the last (small) populations of endangered varieties. (shrink)

In _Leviathan_, Thomas Hobbes's landmark work on political philosophy, James Martel argues that although Hobbes pays lip service to the superior interpretive authority of the sovereign, he consistently subverts this authority throughout the book by returning it to the reader. Martel demonstrates that Hobbes's radical method of reading not only undermines his own authority in the text, but, by extension, the authority of the sovereign as well. To make his point, Martel looks closely at Hobbes's understanding of religious and (...) rhetorical representation. In _Leviathan_, idolatry is not just a matter of worshipping images but also a consequence of bad reading. Hobbes speaks of the "error of separated essences," in which a sign takes precedence over the idea or object it represents, and warns that when the sign is given such agency, it becomes a disembodied fantasy leading to a "kingdom of darkness." To combat such idolatry, Hobbes offers a method of reading in which one resists the rhetorical manipulation of figures and tropes and recognizes the codes and structures of language for what they are-the only way to convey a fundamental inability to ever know "the thing itself." Making the leap to politics, Martel suggests that following Hobbes's argument, the sovereign can also be seen as idolatrous—a separated essence—a figure who supplants the people it purportedly represents, and that learning to be better readers enables us to challenge, if not defeat, the authority of the sovereign. (shrink)

The issue of Scientology and the media is in some ways an extension of the discussion of Scientology and controversy, and in other ways not. James R. Lewis’s “Scientology vs. the Media” surveys the larger question. In some ways, the Church of Scientology is but a case study of the larger media controversy surrounding new religions in general. From another perspective, Scientology’s Guardians Office was a uniquely vicious agency that, in the name of protecting the Church, ended up providing (...) the basis for yet harsher criticisms. For many years, the Church of Scientology kept up a sustained attack against hostile outsiders. But it was with the emergence of the Internet that the Church of Scientology finally met its Waterloo. (shrink)

Actual Ethics offers a moral defense of the 'classical liberal' political tradition and applies it to several of today's vexing moral and political issues. James Otteson argues that a Kantian conception of personhood and an Aristotelian conception of judgment are compatible and even complementary. He shows why they are morally attractive, and perhaps most controversially, when combined, they imply a limited, classical liberal political state. Otteson then addresses several contemporary problems - wealth and poverty, public education, animal welfare, and (...) affirmative action - and shows how each can be plausibly addressed within the Kantian, Aristotelian and classical liberal framework. Written in clear, engaging, and jargon-free prose, Actual Ethics will give students and general audiences an overview of a powerful and rich moral and political tradition that they might not otherwise consider. (shrink)

This research draws on complexity theory to provide an alternative conceptualization of issue management. We use six dynamics of complexity drawn from complex adaptive systems—equipoise, turbulence, sensitive conditions, bifurcation, attractor emergence, and symmetry breaking—to develop a metaphorical framework that describes what occurs during various periods of issue activity and what propels issues from one period of activity to another. We illustrate the framework with a case study of the pharmaceutical industry response to the HIV/aids pandemic in Sub-Saharan Africa. The article (...) concludes with a discussion of the additional affordances this framework provides to extend and compliment issue life cycle models. (shrink)

Charles Peirce had significant interests in economics. He reworked the mathematical economic models of Cournot and Jevons in the 1870s. He conceived of the transitive axiom of consumer preferences in 1874. Peirce also developed a thesis of the cognitive efficiency of the human mind, abduction. He criticized Newcomb's economic writings. These forays into economics affected the six essays on pragmatism. These interests in economics are integrated with the meaning of the pragmatic maxim in Peirce's 1903 Harvard Lectures.

Th e present article reports a series of experiments designed to extend the empirical investigation of folk metaethical intuitions by examining how different kinds of ethical disagreement can impact attributions of objectivity to ethical claims.

It is easy to envision marked progress in biological and physiological approaches to emotion, due to technological advances in imaging and other recording techniques. The future of social-constructionism appears more hazy: Progress will likely depend as much on new ideas as on new empirical discoveries. The most fruitful breeding ground for new ideas is where disciplines meet. Hence, the contributors to this special section represent diverse disciplines: biology, computer science, and the arts, as well as areas more traditionally associated with (...) the social construction of emotion, for example, interpersonal relations, cultural influence, and individual development. (shrink)

From August 2000 to February 2001, I conducted an online survey of what eventually became 140 self-identified Satanists. A report detailing my findings from that questionnaire research was published in the Marburg Journal of Religion under the title “Who Serves Satan? A Demographic and Ideological Profile.” Eight years later, from June through December of 2009, a comparable online survey of 300 Satanists was conducted. However, because of certain problems with the second questionnaire, a third online survey was launched in 2011 (...) – a third survey which, as this article went to press, was still in process. The present paper compares findings from the first survey with the second, using preliminary statistics from the third survey to counterbalance inadequacies in certain of the statistics from the second. Comparing results from the first with results from the second, the average age of respondents rose from twenty-five to twenty-nine. Partly as a consequence of higher average age, the new sample exhibited more diversity – in terms of respondents having a broader range of educational backgrounds, an increased likelihood of being a parent, and the like. Similarly, while the majority of respondents to the new survey were still broadly within the LaVeyan tradition,a far greater percentage than in the old survey professed some variety of theistic or esoteric Satanism. (shrink)

Adam Smith studied under Francis Hutcheson at the University of Glasgow, befriended David Hume while lecturing on rhetoric and jurisprudence in Edinburgh, was elected Professor of Logic, Professor of Moral Philosophy, Vice-rector, and eventually Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, and, along with Hutcheson, Hume, and a few others, went on to become one of the chief figures of the astonishing period of learning known as the Scottish Enlightenment.He is the author of two books: The Theory of Moral Sentiments (...) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. TMS brought Smith considerable acclaim during his lifetime and was quickly considered one of the great works of moral theory. It deeply impressed Immanuel Kant, for example, who called Smith his ‘ Liebling ' or ‘favourite', and Charles Darwin, who in his Descent of Man endorsed and accepted several of Smith's ‘striking' conclusions. TMS went through fully six revised editions during Smith's lifetime.Since the nineteenth century, Smith's fame has largely rested on his Wealth of Nations, which must be considered one of the most important works of the millennium: its argument for free trade, its explanation of the price mechanism and the division of labor, its qualified defense of market economies, and its powerful criticisms of mercantilist economic theories are now standard fare in economics courses, not to mention the basis of a large portion of today's worldwide economic policy. And its account of human nature is now classic.Both The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations reveal Smith's impressively broad learning, but he wrote and lectured on a number of other subjects as well. This anthology collects, for the first time in one volume, not only generous selections from each of Smith's books but also substantial selections from his other work, including his lectures on jurisprudence, his history and philosophy of science, his criticism and belles lettres, and his philosophy of language. It also includes two important letters from Hume, as well as Smith's account of Hume's death.James R. Otteson is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Alabama. He has published on Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment, political philosophy, and the history of early modern philosophy. (shrink)

Internationally, governments, health and exercise practitioners are struggling with the threat posed by physical inactivity leading to worsening outcomes in health and life expectancy and the associated high economic costs. To meet this challenge it is important to enhance the quality, and quantity, of participation in sports and physical activity throughout the life course to sustain healthy and active lifestyles. This paper supports the need to develop a physically literate population, who meaningfully engage in play and physical activity through the (...) development of functional movement skills in enriched environments. This is a shift away from reductionist approaches to physical activity engagement and maintenance to an ecological dynamics approach that focuses on enrichment to support functional movement skill learning and development. This is an embedded approach to physical literacy that allows learners the space and time to “explore–discover” within environments that will lead to a concomitant self-organization of highly intricate network of co-dependent sub-systems resulting in functional movement solutions for the performance task and enduring positive adaptations to subsystems supporting the physical literacy journey across the life course. “Explore-discover adapt” is at the heart of two contemporary learner-centered pedagogies: Non-linear Pedagogy and the Athletic Skills Model. Both emphasize the importance of enrichment experiences from an early age, and throughout life course, and both appreciate the inherent complexity involved in the learning process and the importance of designing a rich and varied range of athletic, participatory experiences that will support the embedded development of physical literacy leading to ongoing physical activity for all. The final part of this paper will demonstrate the potential of an ecological dynamics approach for supporting the concept of physical literacy by providing a roadmap for a reliable and valid measurement of physical literacy when considered from both an ecological dynamics perspective and the phenomenology understanding of physical literacy. (shrink)

In _Anarchist Prophets_ James R. Martel juxtaposes anarchism with what he calls archism in order to theorize the potential for a radical democratic politics. He shows how archism—a centralized and hierarchical political form that is a secularization of ancient Greek and Hebrew prophetic traditions—dominates contemporary politics through a prophet’s promises of peace and prosperity or the threat of violence. Archism is met by anarchism, in which a community shares a collective form of judgment and vision. Martel focuses on the (...) figure of the anarchist prophet, who leads efforts to regain the authority for the community that archism has stolen. The goal of anarchist prophets is to render themselves obsolete and to cede power back to the collective so as to not become archist themselves. Martel locates anarchist prophets in a range of philosophical, literary, and historical examples, from Hobbes and Nietzsche to Mary Shelley and Octavia Butler to Kurdish resistance in Syria and the Spanish Revolution. In so doing, Martel highlights how anarchist forms of collective vision and action can provide the means to overthrow archist authority. (shrink)

By virtue of the originality and depth of its thought, Emmanuel Levinas’s masterpiece, _Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, _is destined to endure as one of the great works of philosophy. It is an essential text for understanding Levinas’s discussion of “the Other,” yet it is known as a “difficult” book. Modeled after Norman Kemp Smith’s commentary on _Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Levinas’s Existential Analytic _guides both new and experienced readers through Levinas’s text. James R. Mensch explicates (...) Levinas’s arguments and shows their historical referents, particularly with regard to Heidegger, Husserl, and Derrida. Students using this book alongside _Totality and Infinity _will be able to follow its arguments and grasp the subtle phenomenological analyses that fill it. (shrink)

Every year in this country, some 10,000 college and university courses are taught in applied ethics. And many professional organizations now have their own codes of ethics. Yet social science has had little impact upon applied ethics. This book promises to change that trend by illustrating how social science can make a contribution to applied ethics. The text reports psychological studies relevant to applied ethics for many professionals, including accountants, college students and teachers, counselors, dentists, doctors, journalists, nurses, school teachers, (...) athletes, and veterinarians. Each chapter begins with the research base of the cognitive-developmental approach--especially linked to Kohlberg and Rest's Defining Issues Test. Finally, the book summarizes recent research on the following issues: * moral judgment scores within and between professions, * pre- and post-test evaluations of ethics education programs, * moral judgment and moral behavior, * models of professional ethicseducation, and * models for developing new assessment tools. Researchers in different professional fields investigate different questions, develop different research strategies, and report different findings. Typically researchers of one professional field are not aware of research in other fields. An important aim of the present book is to bring this diverse research together so that cross-fertilization can occur and ideas from one field can transfer to another. (shrink)

Bringing about desirable collisions (making interceptions) and avoiding unwanted collisions are critically important sensorimotor skills, which appear to require us to estimate the time remaining before collision occurs (time-to-collision). Until recently the theoretical approach to understanding time-to-collision estimation has been dominated by the tau-hypothesis, which has its origins in J.J. Gibson’s ecological approach to perception. The hypothesis proposes that a quantity (tau), present in the visual stimulus, provides the necessary time-to-collision information. Empirical results and formal analyses have now accumulated to (...) demonstrate conclusively that the tau-hypothesis is false. This article describes an alternative approach that is based on recent data showing that the information used in judging time-to-collision is task- and situation-dependent, is of many different origins (of which tau is just one) and is influenced by the information-processing constraints of the nervous system. (shrink)

You have heard of the Seven Deadly Sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. Each is a natural human weakness that impedes happiness. In addition to these vices, however, there are economic sins as well. And they, too, wreak havoc on our lives and in society. They can seem intuitively compelling, yet they lead to waste, loss, and forgone prosperity. In this thoughtful and compelling book, James Otteson tells the story of seven central economic fallacies, explaining why (...) they are fallacies, why believing in them leads to mistakes and loss, and how exorcizing them from our thinking can help us avoid costly errors and enable us to live in peace and prosperity. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that while Christians should share Engelhardt’s disappointment in how bioethics functions in the world, they should not share his exasperation. I begin by outlining the general argument in After God, its understanding of secularism, and of how such secularism has impacted bioethics. Next, I suggest that Englehardt appears to lean toward disengagement or at least an extremely suspicious sectarianism. Rather, I claim that it is possible for Christians to morally engage in a useful way with (...) others and still base their own moral activity on proper life telos. Such cooperation is not to serve a commonly-held ultimate purpose, but shared proximate ends. That said, the moral discourse with those outside the Church may be necessarily limited by shallow moral acquaintanceship. I argue that the concept of “middle axioms” can be used as a mechanism for engagement with others in this society. Importantly, this approach does not require abandoning distinctive Christian commitments and foundational assumptions. (shrink)

difficulty is that the gods neither need nor depend on our sacrifices (13c). What benefit could the..

Economics is one of the disciplines of inquiry that interested C. S. Peirce throughout his life. As is well known, Peirce dabbled in mathematical economics in the 1870s. In 1903 Peirce offered one more instance of a mathematical economic model in his Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism. A model of the profit-maximizing insurance firm is found in the very first lecture where it is offered as his most elaborate example of the pragmatic maxim. Peirce’s reasons for including a mathematical economic model (...) of the insurance firm in this lecture have never been fully explored. The economic model also seems odd given that the audience mostly would have been students and faculty interested in psychology and philosophy. Here it will be argued that there are two main argumentative functions of the economic model. One is to underscore Peirce’s more mathematical and non-psychological conception of pragmatism as compared to that of his benefactor and host, William James. The other is to illustrate a role for mathematical models that is consistent with his conception of pragmatism. (shrink)

We report the results of a study that investigated the views of researchers working in seven scientific disciplines and in history and philosophy of science in regard to four hypothesized dimensions of scientific realism. Among other things, we found that natural scientists tended to express more strongly realist views than social scientists, that history and philosophy of science scholars tended to express more antirealist views than natural scientists, that van Fraassen’s characterization of scientific realism failed to cluster with more standard (...) characterizations, and that those who endorsed the pessimistic induction were no more or less likely to endorse antirealism. (shrink)