This paper addresses the question of the existence and transmission of Buddhism in British culture in the 1930s. It argues that Buddhism found channels of transmission through popular culture, such as James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon. Lost Horizon can be understood historically in relation to current Western ideas about Buddhism, and in response to the sense of historical crisis of Western modernity. This paper also shows that elements of a more genuine Buddhism are extracted from orientalist materials and deployed (...) by Hilton in ways that make the novel a carrier of quasi-Buddhist ideas. (shrink)

Various defenses of amodal symbol systems are addressed, including amodal symbols in sensory-motor areas, the causal theory of concepts, supramodal concepts, latent semantic analysis, and abstracted amodal symbols. Various aspects of perceptual symbol systems are clarified and developed, including perception, features, simulators, category structure, frames, analogy, introspection, situated action, and development. Particular attention is given to abstract concepts, language, and computational mechanisms.

The relationship between knowledge, belief, and ethics is an inaugural theme in philosophy; more recently, under the title “ethics of belief” philosophers have worked to develop the appropriate methodology for studying the nexus of epistemology, ethics, and psychology. The title “ethics of belief” comes from a 19th-century paper written by British philosopher and mathematician W.K. Clifford. Clifford argues that we are morally responsible for our beliefs because each belief that we form creates the cognitive circumstances for related beliefs to follow, (...) and we inevitably influence each other through those beliefs. This study argues that recent cognitive research supports Cliffordian insights regarding patterns of belief formation and social influence. From the confirmation offered by such research, it follows that informational accuracy holds serious ethical significance in public discourse. Although scientific and epistemological matters are not always thought to be linked to normative morality, this study builds on Clifford's initial insights to show their linkage is fundamental to inquiry itself. In turn, Clifford's ethical and epistemic outline can inform a framework grounded in “public reason” under which seemingly opposed science communication strategies are philosophically united. With public discourse on climate change as the key example, empirically informed and grounded strategies for science communication in the public sphere are considered. (shrink)

ETHICS: A PLURALISTIC APPROACH TO MORAL THEORY, FIFTH EDITION provides a comprehensive yet clear introduction to the main traditions in ethical thought, including virtue ethics, utilitarianism, and deontology. Additionally, the book presents a conceptual framework of ethical pluralism to help students understand the relationship among various theories. Lawrence Hinman, one of today's most respected and accomplished educators in ethics and philosophy education, presents a text that gives students plentiful opportunities to explore ethical theory and their own responses to them, (...) using fascinating features such as the Ethical Inventory sections that appear at the beginning and the end of the text. End-of-chapter discussion questions, and the use of current issues and movies help students retain what they've learned and truly comprehend the subject matter. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

This book is a succinct introduction to the orienting of attention.

I argue that hunting is not a sport, but a neo-traditional cultural trophic practice consistent with ecological ethics, including a meliorist concern for animal rights or welfare. Death by hunter is on average less painful than death in wild nature. Hunting achieves goods, including trophic responsibility, ecological expertise and a unique experience of animal inter-dependence. Hunting must then be not only permissible but morally good wherever: a) preservation of ecosystems or species requires hunting as a wildlife management tool; and/or b) (...) its animal deaths per unit of nutrition is lower than that caused by farming practices. Both conditions obtain at least some of the time. (shrink)

Fodor (1990) argues that the theory of evolution by natural selection will not help to save naturalistic accounts of representation from the disjunction problem. This is because, he claims, the context 'was selected for representing things as F' is transparent to the substitution of predicates coextensive with F. But, I respond, from an evolutionary perspective representational contexts cannot be transparent: only under particular descriptions will a representational state appear as a "solution" to a selection "problem" and so be adaptive. Only (...) when we construe representational states as opaque in this manner are the generalizations of branches of evolutionary theory, like foraging theory, possible. (shrink)

Developing a Center for Teaching Excellence: A Case Study Using the Integrated Readiness Matrix builds on the 2015 text, Integrating Pedagogy and Technology: Improving Teaching and Learning in Higher Education with a focus on teaching in higher education. Developing a Center for Teaching Excellence is premised on our contention in the first book that, while individual faculty members can independently begin to use the IRM to improve their pedagogical and technological skills in their content areas, an organizational structure is needed (...) to sustain ongoing improvement. In addition, while the first book provided a primer on learning theory as it relates to pedagogy, Developing a Center for Teaching Excellence plumbs this topic more deeply from the perspective of the college instructor. Further, the second book is dedicated to demonstrating how the IRM can be institutionalized as the foundation for providing the structure and support to faculty and how they can help shape centers for teaching excellence by becoming more familiar with relevant learning theories and related pedagogical and technological approaches. (shrink)

We live in an age defined in large part by various facets of neoliberalism. In particular, the market world has impinged on virtually every aspect of food and agriculture. Moreover, most nation-states and many international governance bodies incorporate aspects of neoliberal perspectives. Multi-stakeholder initiatives, with their own standards, certifications, and accreditations are evidence of both the continuing hegemony of neoliberalism as well as various responses to it. Importantly, to date even attempts to limit neoliberal hegemony through MSIs have been largely (...) within the parameters established by those same neoliberal agendas. However, neoliberalism is itself in crisis as a result of climate change, the continuing financial crisis, and rising food prices. The founding myths of neoliberalism are still widely held, having the effect of closing off alternative paths to the future. Yet, this need not be the case. Alternatives to the current MSIs that promote justice, democracy, and equality can still be constructed. (shrink)

I critically explore various forms of the language of thought (LOT) hypothesis. Many considerations, including the complexity of representational content and the systematicity of language understanding, support the view that some, but not all, of our mental representations occur in a language. I examine several arguments concerning sententialism and the propositional attitudes, Fodor's arguments concerning infant and animal thought, and Fodor's argument for radical concept nativism and show that none of these considerations require us to postulate a LOT that is (...) innate or otherwise distinct from spoken languages. Instead, I suggest that we maintain the more conservative hypothesis, supported by introspection, that some of our thoughts occur in the languages that we speak. (shrink)

In the last decade the systems approach to agricultural research has begun to subsume the older reductionist approaches. However, proponents of the systems approach often accept without critical examination a number of features that were inherited from previously accepted approaches. In particular, supporters of the systems approach frequently ignore the ironies and tragedies that are a part of all human endeavors. They may also fail to consider that all actual systems are temporally and spatially bounded. By incorporating such features into (...) a systems perspective, it becomes possible to consider them as involving the manipulation of things, the reconstruction of institutions, and the reformulation of policies in accordance with democratic goals and objectives as part of a single web of interrelationships. (shrink)

Selection pressure from health risk is hypothesized to have shaped adaptations motivating individuals to attempt to become valued by other individuals by generously and recurrently providing beneficial goods and/or services to them because this strategy encouraged beneficiaries to provide costly health care to their benefactors when the latter were sick or injured. Additionally, adaptations are hypothesized to have co-evolved that motivate individuals to attend to and value those who recurrently provide them with important benefits so they are willing in turn (...) to provide costly care when a valued person is disabled or in dire need. Individuals in egalitarian foraging bands can provide a number of valuable benefits, such as defense, diplomacy, food, healing, information, technical skill, or trading savvy. We therefore expect that humans have evolved psychological mechanisms motivating the pursuit and cultivation of a difficult-to-replace social role based on the provisioning of a benefit that confers a fitness advantage on its recipients. We call this phenomenon social niche specialization. One such niche that has been well-documented is meat-sharing. Here we present cross-cultural evidence that individuals cultivate two other niches, information and tool production, that serve (among other things) to buffer health risk. (shrink)

Now available in an updated addition: ""Integrating concepts of time derived from the physical sciences and world religions, "The Becoming of Time" examines ...

Wikipedia has challenged traditional notions about the roles of experts in the Internet Age. Section 1 sets up a paradox. Wikipedia is a striking popular success, and yet its success can be attributed to the fact that it is wide open and bottom-up. How can such a successful knowledge project disdain expertise? Section 2 discusses the thesis that if Wikipedia could be shown by an excellent survey of experts to be fantastically reliable, then experts would not need to be granted (...) positions of special authority. But, among other problems, this thesis is self-stultifying. Section 3 explores a couple ways in which egalitarian online communities might challenge the occupational roles or the epistemic leadership roles of experts. There is little support for the notion that the distinctive occupations that require expertise are being undermined. It is also implausible that Wikipedia and its like might take over the epistemic leadership roles of experts. Section 4 argues that a main reason that Wikipedia’s articles are as good as they are is that they are edited by knowledgeable people to whom deference is paid, although voluntarily. But some Wikipedia articles suffer because so many aggressive people drive off people more knowledgeable than they are; so there is no reason to think that Wikipedia’s articles will continually improve. Moreover, Wikipedia’s commitment to anonymity further drives off good contributors. Generally, some decisionmaking role for experts is not just consistent with online knowledge communities being open and bottom-up, it is recommended as well. (shrink)

The Clash of Economic Ideas interweaves the economic history of the last hundred years with the history of economic doctrines to understand how contrasting economic ideas have originated and developed over time to take their present forms. It traces the connections running from historical events to debates among economists, and from the ideas of academic writers to major experiments in economic policy. The treatment offers fresh perspectives on laissez faire, socialism and fascism; the Roaring Twenties, business cycle theories and the (...) Great Depression; Institutionalism and the New Deal; the Keynesian Revolution; and war, nationalization and central planning. After 1945, the work explores the postwar revival of invisible-hand ideas; economic development and growth, with special attention to contrasting policies and thought in Germany and India; the gold standard, the interwar gold-exchange standard, the postwar Bretton Woods system and the Great Inflation; public goods and public choice; free trade versus protectionism; and finally fiscal policy and public debt. (shrink)

Various authors insist that some body of natural phenomena are legitimately describable or explainable only on one level of description, and would disqualify any description not confined to that level. None offers an acceptable definition explicitly. I extract such a definition I find implicit in the work of two such authors, J.J. Gibson and Hubert Dreyfus, and modify the result to render it more defensible philosophically. I also criticize the definition Shaw and Turvey offer, demonstrate some applications of my definition, (...) and try to forestall certain misunderstandings of those presuppositions and that definition. (shrink)

A research professor of nuclear physics explores the mysterious essence of time in its two aspects---one of accurate measurement, the other of human sensation-- ...

This is a critique of Peirce, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Buchler, Derrida, and Rorty as anti-realists, showing that each of these philosophers affirms some form of self-undermining relativism that cannot account for itself.

This essay investigates the indeterminacy thesis - roughly the claim that the content of authoritative legal materials (such as the texts of constitutions, statutes, cases, rules, and regulations) does not determine the outcome of particular legal disputes. The indeterminacy thesis can be formulated as either "strong" or weak." The strong version of the indeterminacy thesis is demonstrably false, but several weak versions of the thesis are true but lack the radical implications of strong indeterminacy.The strong indeterminacy thesis is the claim (...) that all cases are "hard" cases - or that in any case any conceivable result can be derived from existing legal doctrine. Strong indeterminacy does not hold if there are easy cases - cases in which some outcomes cannot be legally correct. For example, if it were the case that the first paragraph of this abstract did not slander Gore Vidal, then there would be at least one easy case, and strong indeterminacy would be false.Weak versions of the indeterminacy thesis include the claim that important cases are indeterminate, that the law does not necessarily determine outcomes, or that every case could become indeterminate if political conditions supported indeterminacy. These weaker claims may be true, but they lack the critical bite associated with strong indeterminacy.The essay also distinguishes between "determinacy," "indeterminacy," and "underdeterminacy." The law is "determinate" with respect ot a given case if and only if the set of results that can be squared with the legal materials contains only one member. The law is "indeterminate" with respect to a given case if and only if the set of results that can be squared with the legal materials is identical with the set of all imaginable results. The law is "underdeterminate" with respect to a given case if and only if the set of results that can be squared with the legal materials is a nonidentical subset of the set of all imaginable results.This article was first published in 1987, and some of the author's views have been revised in interim. (shrink)

The work of justus buchler is used to critique and to suggest a reformulation of certain ideas in jurgen habermas's "theory of communicative action", Most especially his analysis of modernity in terms of the conflict between "lifeworld" and "system." the difficulties of this dualistic analysis are examined. A buchlerian "pluralistic" alternative is suggested, For which the pathologies of modernity are attributed, Not to the dominance of the system, But to the condition of dominance "per se", That is, The reduction of (...) effective plurality. (shrink)

Paisley Livingston here addresses contemporary controversies over the role of "theory" within the humanistic disciplines. In the process, he suggests ways in which significant modern texts in the philosophy of science relate to the study of literature. Livingston first surveys prevalent views of theory, and then proposes an alternative: theory, an indispensable element in the study of literature, should be understood as a Cogently argued and informed in its judgments, this book points the way to a fuller understanding of the (...) special contribution that literary knowledge may make within the human sciences. (shrink)

Justus Buchler’s 1966 Metaphysics of Natural Complexes seems so unique as to be sui generis. In it he declares that everything discriminable in any way is a “natural complex,” including every fact, substance, particular, process, universal, experience, property, mind, etc., even the concept of a natural complex itself. Every natural complex obtains in multiple orders of relations to other complexes, so each complex has indefinitely many “integrities,” each its function in some order. No complex is any more or less real (...) than any other; witches and whales are equally real, one in an order of historical fiction, another in the order of zoology. The totality of complexes is not a... (shrink)

It has been argued that there is a problem oftemporary intrinsics, the problem of explaininghow it is possible for things to possesssuccessively contrary properties, if a certaintheory about time, ``eternalism'', is true. Inthis paper, I consider whether there really issuch a problem and survey some standardsolutions to it. I argue for one of them, onewhich has been offered by Mark Johnston andPeter van Inwagen, and which I call the``exemplification-solution''''. I consider avariant on that solution offered by E.J. Lowe(and Sally Haslanger), (...) and I argue that thisvariant should be rejected. (shrink)

This article confronts growing conservative opposition to abortion based on the claim that abortion is morally equivalent to infanticide. By examining the relationship between moral skepticism and precautionary ethics the article promotes a completely permissive position on abortion from conception to birth while consistently rejecting the possibility that such a position entails permissive implications for infanticide. The article introduces and traces the implicit relationship between moral skepticism, the precautionary principle and political liberalism.

In order to understand the animal rights movement as it exists today in American society, it is necessary to explore the ways in which the beliefs of those who support the movement differ from the beliefs of their adversaries. Societal views generally determine the perceived differences and similarities between people and animals, and the issues surrounding these differences are fundamental to the animal rights controversy.