In this groundbreaking new study, Lowell Nissen explores the use of teleological language in the study of subjects such as behaviorism, negative feedback, and natural selection. He argues that all existing analyses fail to explain how teleological language can be used legitimately, and provides his own analysis in terms of intentionality.

The author starts from the traditional American notion that technology might offer a way to decrease the horror and suffering of warfare. He points out that historically this assumption is flawed in that past technological advances, from gunpowder weapons to bombers, have only made warfare more--not less--bloody. With a relentless logic, Colonel Dunlap takes to task those who say that the Revolution in Military Affairs has the potential to make war less bloody. He covers the technological landscape from precision-guided (...) munitions and Information Warfare to the use of space for military operations to raise issues that could pose difficult ethical, legal and moral problems for statesmen and soldiers. Some of these conundrums are so confounding that the author could claim that in all humility his only purpose was to raise these issues to prompt debate. But Colonel Dunlap takes the next step to outline several broad thematic avenues that may help us all address the difficult problems that lie ahead. (shrink)

What is the role of feelings (jō) in Dōgen’s Buddhist thought? Throughout the Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki, it is clear that Dōgen has a negative view of human feelings (ninjō), as he thinks they are born out of our ignorance. Nevertheless, Dōgen does not dismiss feelings per se, insofar as we can align our disposition and emotional responses according to the Buddha way. The key to this alignment is compassion: although Dōgen refers to human feelings as something negative, his elucidations are qualified (...) with references to compassion (jihi 慈悲) as the expression of enlightenment. Therefore, what is important in following and actualizing the Buddha way is not the dismissal of feelings altogether but the transformation of them in accordance with the Buddha way. In this chapter, I argue that proper compassionate feeling is important for Dōgen because it is indicative of one’s personal attunement to the impermanence of all, nonduality of all beings, and prevalence of Buddha-nature, which are crucial for realizational practice as an expression of enlightenment. (shrink)

Semantic Scholar extracted view of "Animal Welfare and Rights: V. Zoos and Zoological Parks" by J. Dunlap et al.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Zen Pathways by Bret W. DavisRika Dunlap (bio)Zen Pathways. By Bret W. Davis. New York: Oxford Unity Press, 2022. Pp. 455. Hardcover $110.00, isbn 978-0-19-757369-3.Bret Davis introduces Zen Pathways as his attempt to write "the book that I wish had been there for me to read more than thirty years ago, when I started down the parallel pathways of Zen and philosophy" (p. xi). Although much ink (...) has been spilled on the tradition that claims to be beyond words and letters, Davis thinks that this book "makes a unique contribution, one that will be welcomed especially by readers who are interested in both the philosophy and practice of Zen" (p. xi). Davis is right: Zen Pathways stands out as an excellent book of Zen for both philosophers and practitioners as well as for students who are interested in Mahāyāna Buddhism or modern Japanese philosophy of the Kyoto School. The scope of the book is quite comprehensive with twenty-four chapters that seamlessly flow to cover the fundamental teachings of Zen and the philosophical issues therein. While Davis does not divide these chapters with headings, some chapters can be group together under certain themes; the overview of Zen (chapters 1–2), practice of meditation (chapters 3–4), overview of Buddhism, especially Mahāyāna, from the perspective of Zen (chapters 5–7, 10), no self and enlightenment (chapters 8–9, 11), comparative analyses with Christianity (chapters 8–9, 12–16, 23), notable topics in Zen, such as language, art, no-mind, and nature (chapters 17–20), Zen and modern Japanese philosophy (chapters 21), different schools of Zen (chapters 22), and the oxherding pictures as the path of Zen (chapters 24). Readers can focus on one specific theme or read the whole book to get a good grasp of Zen Buddhist philosophy.One of the strengths of Zen Pathways is that it offers clear explanations and rigorous philosophical analyses of Zen teachings without becoming either a purely scholarly inquiry or an anti-intellectual apology for the impossibility of explaining enlightenment. In Chapter 1, "What Really Is Zen?", Davis explains the foundation of Zen in a nutshell: "Zen is neither a matter of subjective opinion nor a matter of objective doctrine; it is a matter of universal truths manifesting in ways and words appropriate to particular times and places" (p. 15). This characterization clarifies two important aspects of enlightenment in Zen Buddhism: there are universal truths or insights that practitioners are after, and once they learn them, they need to live by these insights and actualize [End Page 1] these truths in their own particular ways. Davis endeavors to balance these two aspects through the rigorous yet engaging ways in which he develops these chapters, offering clear philosophical explanations of teachings and kōans while supplying stories and examples from his own experiences of Zen practice. Thus, this book is not just on Zen but of Zen, negotiating these aspects to strike what he calls "the appropriate middle way between the unwholesome and unhelpful extremes of being 'stingy with the Buddha Dharma,' on the one hand, and spreading 'the stench of Zen' by flaunting [his] personal experience, on the other" (p. xix). Given that the intended primary audience is teachers and students in college courses on Asian and comparative philosophy and religion, this book, with the academic rigor of a scholar and the personal touch of a practitioner, is an outstanding resource to learn and teach these universal truths of Zen.The details of these truths are spelled out in chapters 5–11 in particular, as Davis offers philosophical explanations of Zen Buddhist teachings, such as the Four Noble Truths, Middle Way, anātman, nonduality of self and other, panentheism, and enlightenment as realizing one's true self or kenshō. Before plunging into these technical notions, Davis makes it clear that all of these are ultimately about self, that Zen is about realizing one's true self to discover within "an opening to the outside, an opening that in fact frees us from the rigid and absolute distinctions we are accustomed to making between inside and outside, self and other, and... (shrink)

Shelter Theology offers insight into the worlds of the invisible: individuals experiencing homelessness and those living in extreme poverty. Based on over ten years of chaplaincy in a homeless shelter, Dunlap shares the nuanced theology of people in harsh circumstances and outlines how their beliefs and practices enable survival and resistance.

An accessible introduction to Zen Buddhist moral philosophy.

Eleven primary social needs are defined, which if attained, fulfil the generic needs of all societies. Balanced attention to all these needs is the key to sustainability. Based on an analysis of constitutions, media content, citizen surveys, and participant observation, such balance is compared in 28 countries. The dangers of prioritization in China (economic opportunity), Japan (economic opportunity), the former Soviet Union (collective security), and the United States (individual freedom/individual security) are explored in great detail. Finally, homeostatic social mechanisms designed (...) to allocate attention to the full range of needs are discussed. (shrink)

Semantic role is the actual role a participant plays in some real or imagined situation, apart from the linguistic encoding of those situations. Semantic roles, also known as thematic roles, are one of the oldest classes of constructs in linguistic theory. Semantic roles are used to indicate the role played by each entity in a sentence and are ranging from very specific to very general. Also, semantic roles are useful in natural language processing. They have proved attractive because they provide (...) a way of representing commonalities across different uses of the same predicate or across uses of distinct but semantically related predicates that may be obscured because arguments with certain semantic roles may have various syntactic realisations. Thus they provide a level of abstraction for the statement of generalisations concerning a variety of linguistic phenomena. In particular, argument realisation generalisations are often stated over a thematic hierarchy, a ranking of semantic roles. However, semantic roles have not lived up to their initial promise. It has proved impossible to find a small set of roles that can be applied across all verbs in a language, let alone across languages. Advances in Research on Semantic Roles provide more sustained discussion of the notion of semantic role. It often traces the development of the notion, as well as its place within current linguistic theory. In addition, it introduces several approaches to semantic role inventories, highlighting the similarities and differences among them, and discusses the limitations both of particular approaches and of semantic role approaches in general. Semantic roles continue to be useful in stating linguistic generalisations, and so descriptive, if not theoretical, uses of semantic role labels persist across subfields, including language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics. (shrink)

This article is the first in a series that looks at the technological transformation of Des Moines Public Schools (DMPS). It concentrates on the costs, some financial but mostly human and organizational, that are emerging as the district begins to implement its plans for dramatically increasing computer technology use. The conclusion reached here is that not only ave the costs been greatly underestimated, they may even force a gradual shift of control over the learning environment.

We use the primitive ontology framework of Allori et al. to analyze the quantum information-theoretic interpretation of Bub and Pitowsky. There are interesting parallels between the two approaches, which differentiate them both from the more standard realist interpretations of quantum theory. Where they differ, however, is in terms of their commitments to an underlying ontology on which the manifest image of the world supervenes. Employing the primitive ontology framework in this way makes perspicuous the differences between the quantum information-theoretic interpretation, (...) and the various realist interpretations of quantum theory. It also allows us to identify a sense in which the commitments of quantum information-theoretic interpretation are underspecified. Several possible ways of completing the interpretation are presented, and it is suggested that the most likely strategy would leave the information-theoretic interpretation such that it would fail to qualify as a theory, according to the primitive ontology approach. (shrink)

Public participation in scientific research has gained prominence in many scientific fields, but the theory of participatory research is still limited. In this paper, we suggest that the divergence of values and goals between academic researchers and public participants in research is key to analyzing the different forms this research takes. We examine two existing characterizations of participatory research: one in terms of public participants' role in the research, the other in terms of the virtues of the research. In our (...) view, each of these captures an important feature of participatory research but is, on its own, limited in what features it takes into account. We introduce an expanded conception of norms of collaboration that extends to both academic researchers and public participants. We suggest that satisfying these norms requires consideration of the two groups' possibly divergent values and goals, and that a broad characterization of participatory research that starts from participants' values and goals can motivate both public participants’ role in the research and the virtues of the research. The resulting framework clarifies the similarities and differences among participatory projects and can help guide the responsible design of such projects. (shrink)

I argue that Deutsch’s model for the behavior of systems traveling around closed timelike curves relies implicitly on a substantive metaphysical assumption. Deutsch is employing a version of quantum theory with a significantly supplemented ontology of parallel existent worlds, which differ in kind from the many worlds of the Everett interpretation. Standard Everett does not support the existence of multiple identical copies of the world, which the D-CTC model requires. This has been obscured because he often refers to the branching (...) structure of Everett as a “multiverse”, and describes quantum interference by reference to parallel interacting definite worlds. But he admits that this is only an approximation to Everett. The D-CTC model, however, relies crucially on the existence of a multiverse of parallel interacting worlds. Since his model is supplemented by structures that go significantly beyond quantum theory, and play an ineliminable role in its predictions and explanations, it does not represent a quantum solution to the paradoxes of time travel. (shrink)

The American conservative movement is a force of anti-reflexivity insofar as it attacks two key elements of reflexive modernization: the environmental movement and environmental impact science. Learning from its mistakes in overtly attacking environmental regulations in the early 1980s, this counter-movement has subsequently exercised a more subtle form of power characterized by non-decision-making. We examine the conservative movement’s efforts to undermine climate science and policy in the USA over the last two decades by using this second dimension of power. The (...) conservative movement has employed four non-decision-making techniques to challenge the legitimacy of climate science and prevent progress in policy-making. We argue that reflexive modernization scholars should focus more attention on similar forces of anti-reflexivity that continue to shape the overall direction of our social, political and economic order, and the life chances of many citizens. Indeed, better understanding of the forces and effectiveness of anti-reflexivity may very well be crucial for societal resilience and adaptation, especially in the face of global environmental problems like climate change. (shrink)

Abstract:This article conducts a close textual analysis of "A Painting of a Rice Cake (Gabyō)," a key fascicle in the Shōbōgenzō that reveals the significance of artistic creation as a metaphor for realizational practice. By analyzing the multiple meanings of "gabyō," it is shown that artistic creation can clarify the nonduality of practice and enlightenment in Dōgen's thought, inasmuch as enlightenment is a constant practice as if making an evanescent and cocreative painting of enlightenment with the entire world as Buddha-nature. (...) For Dōgen, enlightenment involves a deeply personal attunement to and a concrete actualization of the dharma that is not reducible to the purely theoretical understanding of Buddhist texts, and the metaphor of "painting rice cakes" demonstrates the importance of expressive activities in manifesting one's understanding of the dharma. (shrink)

The Propertian speaker's private erotic gaze evolves into Foucault's "panoptic" gaze of state control, illustrating in the process the early and formative years of Augustan social ideology and its relation to urban renewal. Composed almost a decade before the passage of social legislation in 18 B.C.E. ( leges Iuliae ), Propertius 2.31—the ecphrasis of the temple to Apollo on the Palatine—and its companion piece 2.32 anticipate the radical redefinition of imperial power under Augustus, the encroachment of the state into the (...) private domains of family and sexuality, and the eventual use of such legislation as a "strategy of surveillance.". (shrink)