A table of contents, in lieu of abstract -/- Foreword by Aaron Ehasz -/- Introduction: “We are all one people, but we live as if divided” Helen De Cruz and Johan De Smedt -/- Part I The Universe of Avatar: The Last Airbender -/- 1 Native Philosophies and Relationality in ATLA: It’s (Lion) Turtles All the Way Down Miranda Belarde-Lewis and Clementine Bordeaux 2 Getting Elemental: How Many Elements Are There in Avatar: The Last Airbender? Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa 3 The Personalities (...) of Martial Arts in Avatar: The Last Airbender Zachary Isrow 4 The End of the World: Nationhood and Abolition in Avatar: The Last Airbender Nicholas Whittaker 5 The Bending World, a Bent World: Supernatural Power and Its Political Implications Yao Lin -/- Part II Water 6 Avatar: The Last Airbender and Anishinaabe Philosophy Brad Cloud 7 “Lemur!” – “Dinner!”: Human–Animal Relations in Avatar: The Last Airbender Daniel Wawrzyniak 8 On the Moral Neutrality of Bloodbending Johnathan Flowers 9 On the Ethics of Bloodbending: Why Is It So Wrong and Can It Ever Be Good? Mike Gregory 10 Mystical Rationality Isaac Wilhelm 11 “I will never, ever turn my back on people who need me”: Repairing the World Through Care Nicole Fice 12 Spirits, Visions, and Dreams: Native American Epistemology and the Aang Gang Justin Skirry and Samuel Skirry -/- Part III Earth 13 Time Is an Illusion: Time and Space in the Swamp Natalia Strok 14 There Is No Truth in Ba Sing Se: Bald-faced Lies and the Nature of Lying Nathan Kellen 15 The Rocky Terrain of Disability Gain in ATLA: Is Toph a Supercrip Stereotype or a Disability Pride Icon? Joseph A. Stramondo 16 The Earth King, Ignorance, and Responsibility Saba Fatima 17 The Middle Way and the Many Faces of Earth Thomas Arnold -/- Part IV Fire 18 The Battle Within: Confucianism and Legalism in the Nation, the Family, and the Soul Kody W. Cooper 19 Not Giving Up on Zuko: Relational Identity and the Stories We Tell Barrett Emerick and Audrey Yap 20 Uncle Iroh, from Fool to Sage – or Sage All Along? Eric Schwitzgebel and David Schwitzgebel 21 Being Bad at Being Good: Zuko’s Transformation and Residual Practical Identities Justin F. White 22 Compassion and Moral Responsibility in Avatar: The Last Airbender: “I was never angry; I was afraid that you had lost your way” Robert H. Wallace -/- Part V Air 23 The Fire Nation and the United States: Genocide as the Foundation for Empire Building Kerri J. Malloy 24 Anarchist Airbenders: On Anarchist Philosophy in ATLA Savriël Dillingh 25 A Buddhist Perspective on Energy Bending, Strength, and the Power of Aang's Spirit Nicholaos Jones and Holly Jones 26 Ahimsa and Aang’s Dilemma: “Everyone … [has] to be treated like they're worth giving a chance” James William Lincoln 27 The Avatar Meets the Karmapa: Interconnections, Friendship, and Moral Training Brett Patterson . (shrink)

As a gynecologic surgeon with a focus on infertility, I frequently hold complex discussions with patients, exploring with them the risks and benefits of surgical options. In the past, we physicians may have expected our patients to simply defer to our expertise and choose from the options we presented. In our contemporary era, however, patients frequently request options not favored by their physicians and even some they've found themselves online. In reproductive endocrinology and infertility, the range of options that may (...) be offered or that patients may themselves seek out is continuously widening. Physicians certainly seek to find the option that will result in the best outcome for their patients, but the information to guide us in achieving the best outcome can be vague or conflicting. Add to this the financial and emotional pressures bearing on patients seeking assisted reproduction. In this essay, I explore the extent to which clinicians in reproductive medicine should follow patient requests with which they disagree or instead try to persuade the patient to do something else or simply refuse outright to meet the request. And if persuasion is to be used, what would be legitimate methods? Clearly, coercion is unacceptable, but the line between persuasion and coercion can be elusive. At what point can or should clinicians resist such requests—and to what degree? (shrink)

Beginning with the idea that digital storytelling can be a useful tool for moral sensemaking and development for undergraduates, the paper reviews the process of digital storytelling and details how the lead author incorporated a digital storytelling project into a course on leadership ethics. The paper provides a theoretical basis for the project in Gentile’s (2010, 2011) work on Giving Voice to Values, and in perspectives from aesthetics, phenomenology, and personal narrative. This is followed by two autoethnographic narratives of the (...) experience: one from the course designer and professor who discusses his motivation for the project and the moral dilemma he faced in assigning it, and another from one of the students in the class who investigates the challenges she faced in engaging a deeply-felt moral dilemma in a public way. Finally, the paper discusses the implications for this approach with respect to leadership development and research. (shrink)

Kant’s aim in the Transcendental Deduction is to prove that the a priori categories of the understanding necessarily apply to objects of experience. He claims that he will do this simply by explaining how they could so apply. But the idea that a mere explanation of this possibility should provide a defence of the categories’ actual (let alone necessary) applicability is surprising. We argue that it can be understood by attending to the source of the scepticism that the Critique’s Analytic (...) is supposed to overcome: Hume’s inability to explain causal knowledge in the Enquiry. (shrink)

The volume is dedicated to Berthold of Moosburg’s commentary on Proclus’ _Elements of Theology_. This overlooked work from the 14th century proposed, as an alternative to the prevailing Aristotelian metaphysics, a superior wisdom of the Good articulated within the Platonic tradition, both pagan and Christian.

This text argues that dress is a more persuasive means of uncovering the character of aesthetics in contemporary life than traditional examinations employing fine art. Traditionally, fine art was the most widely used means to illustrate and amplify the guise of aesthetics, and yet, despite this rich level of attention, the literature is generally disappointing and beset by confusion and criticism.

Die ATB ist die traditionsreichste Editionsreihe der germanistischen Mediävistik. Begründet 1881 von Hermann Paul, wurde sie von führenden Fachvertretern, Georg Baesecke, Hugo Kuhn, Burghart Wachinger, betreut. Seit 2001 liegt die Verantwortung in den Händen von Christian Kiening. Die mittlerweile etwa 120 Bände verknüpfen exemplarisch Handschriftennähe und Lesbarkeit, wissenschaftliche Arbeit am Text und Blick auf die akademische Lehre. Sie umfassen anerkannte, zum Teil kommentierte Ausgaben 'klassischer' Autoren der Zeit um 1200, aber auch veritable Werkausgaben (Notker der Deutsche) und anspruchsvolle Neueditionen (Eckenlied, (...) Heinrich von dem Türlin). (shrink)

In the context of recent debate about whether “Reformed Catholics” and Protestants, more generally, should accept Augustine’s totus Christus Christological ecclesiology, I illustrate the notion of an asymmetric aligning union. This is a metaphysically real union, but not a substantial union. I suggest that Reformed catholic theology would be better served by deploying the notion of an asymmetric aligning union. It preserves the Reformation solas and is compatible with the notion of the mystical body of Christ, without the disadvantages of (...) the totus Christus notion, if that is taken to involve a substantial union. This form of union should be of wider ecumenical interest. (shrink)

This paper will attempt to integrate (1) some new reflections on the implications for ontology of Monistic interpretations of formulae in quantification theory, with (2) a review of earlier material that I have published on such implications, and with (3) a sketch of several points made by others which bear on related issues. I hope that a review of these moves and issues might indirectly help the reader in dealing with two strange questions. (A) Does the development of modern quantification (...) theory with its ways of systematically formalising relational inferences throwany light on Ontology, on the question of What There Is for scientists and applied mathematicians to study? (B) Are there any analogies between Monist interpretations of quantification theory and the attraction of holding down the number of basic entities in physics by viewing some as mere modes of other more ‘really basic’ ones? More directly I try to throw sympathetic light on more traditional philosophers of science like Leibniz and Spinoza. (shrink)

The two works under review attempt to describe the outlines of a post-positivist social science of the future. Against objectivist approaches, these books emphasize the importance of hermeneutics and the cultural turn to the social sciences. Social sciences must recognize collective understandings and human agency. However, while affirming the importance of an interpretivist approach, both of these works also suggest that objective institutional reality must be recognized by social scientists today. Meaningful human agency and objective structure must be encompassed by (...) the social sciences. To this end, critical realism, originally promoted by Roy Bhaskar, figures prominently in both these books precisely because it is a theory which seems to be able to account for both agency and structure simultaneously. In fact, as both these books sometimes demonstrate, the dualistic approach represented by critical realism is flawed. By contrast, the hermeneutic approach advocated by Keith Topper and by some of the contributors to Steinmetz’s collection provides an adequate explanation of institutional social reality in and of itself. Consequently, these books can be interpreted as pointing toward a hermeneutic social science of the future. (shrink)

Some years ago I reviewed a collection of papers called African Philosophy: The Essential Readings , edited by Serequeberhan. My last comment in that review was the expression of the hope for collections of papers that would give an insight into what's going on in African philosophy, rather than into the debate over the existence and nature of African philosophy. My concern is echoed by the last line of a letter printed in the present volume of readings: "Hitherto most of (...) us have been talking about African philosophy, instead of doing African philosophy." (p.xlii) So when I received this book for review, I naturally hoped that it was what I'd been waiting for. I'm afraid that it isn't. (shrink)

IN THIS PAPER, I observe a set of symmetries exposed by examining cases of excused blameworthiness and mitigated praiseworthiness, and argue that a prominent contemporary approach to explaining moral responsibility is ill-suited to explaining why the symmetry obtains. The view I have in mind has a distinctive explanatory strategy: an agent S’s being responsible, on this view, is to be explained in terms of the appropriateness of holding S responsible. This explanatory strategy, whatever its other merits, cannot adequately explain the (...) symmetry. In light of my arguments here, this view faces a challenge: it can either give up its distinctive explanatory strategy, or else fail to capture the symmetry. While failure to accommodate the symmetrical observation is not grounds for rejecting this view, it does count as a significant cost, one that ought to be recognized and addressed. (shrink)

The value scenario is a useful tool in the sheaf of methods within value sensitive design. When envisioning new technology, this tool supports the designer in speculatively considering relevant stakeholders, values expressed or rebuffed by an artifact’s design, and tensions that may exist between those values. This paper explores how science fiction stories can serve as value scenarios to supplement traditional historical methods, especially when informants are no longer accessible.

Three distinct explanatory models are described which underpin the relationship between the cultural authority of science and public trust. This essay describes how current discourses framed around how the enterprise of science is undertaken; damage these models, diminishing knowledge–attitudes, alienating the public while reducing the cultural meaning of science.

phers] to be a demonstration of the fact that the human species (and in every case the species of all generable and corruptible individuals) began to exist at a time when previously it had not existed at all, a question is raised: whether, following the Philosopher’s method, the human species (and in every case any given species of generable and corruptible [individuals]) began to exist at a time when previously it had not existed at all.

Following Milward and Moravcsik’s injunction that the analysis of European integration requires evidence-based empirical observation, this article focuses on one area of state activity - the armed forces - to illustrate the current trajectory of state transformation in Europe. The article argues that European armed forces are becoming ‘transnational’. They are undergoing a process of concentration and transnationalization. Budgets and resources are focusing on specialist military units, organized into joint rapid reaction forces, which are co-operating at an increasingly lower level (...) with other similarly concentrated units in other states. The article concludes by suggesting that the transnationalization of the armed forces reflects the wider transformation of states; across a range of activities, states are contracting to concentrate on their core functions and co-operating ever more closely with each other to fulfil them. (shrink)

Misunderstanding of the word mine and its shifting relations to 'pro-attitudes' inspired much of Aristotle's attack on collectivism at Politics 1261B 15ff. Similar misunderstandings contribute to certain criticisms leveled by modern conservatives like Goldwater against 'welfarism', they presuppose confused psychological and ethical doctrines. Thus semantically necessary truths may be misconstrued as entailing contingent propositions about political and economic arrangements. Different confusions about mine and 'pro-attitudes' lend a correspondingly specious aura of certainty to some Platonic and Marxist claims. The ownership model (...) of mine impedes our understanding of men. (shrink)

I take "philosophy" to be an English word referring to a certain kind of thinking, a certain kind of approach to a certain kind of problem. To explain those "certain kind of"s would take a book; perhaps the best I can do here is gesture at what it is that English-language philosophers do.

The Global Burden of Disease project quantifies the impact of different health conditions by combining information about morbidity and premature mortality within a single metric, the Disability Adjusted Life Year. One important goal for the GBD project has been to inform decisions about global health priorities. A number of recent studies have used GBD data to argue that global health funding fails to align with the GBD. We argue that these studies’ shared assumption that global health resources should ‘align’ with (...) the burden of disease is unfounded and has troubling implications. First, since the allocation of resources involves difficult trade-offs between different, potentially competing goals, any ‘misalignment’ of allocation and disease burdens need not necessarily indicate that the allocation of funds fails to meet recipient countries’ needs or interests. Second, using alignment as a baseline implicitly makes controversial assumptions about how harms of different magnitudes affecting different numbers of individuals should be aggregated. We discuss two alternative ways in which GBD data could help inform decisions about resource allocation, neither of which gives more than a limited role to GBD data. (shrink)