There is growing political pressure for farmers to use more sustainable agricultural practices to protect people and the planet. The farming press could encourage farmers to adopt sustainable practices through its ability to manipulate discourse and spread awareness by changing the salience of issues or framing topics in specific ways. We sought to understand how the UK farming press framed sustainable agricultural practices and how the salience of these practices changed over time. We combined a media content analysis of the (...) farming press alongside 60 qualitative interviews with farmers and agricultural advisors to understand whether the farming press influenced farmers to try more sustainable practices. Salience of sustainable agricultural practices grew between 2009 and 2020. Many of the practices studied were framed by the press around economic and agronomic aspects, and farmer respondents said the most common reasons for trying sustainable agricultural practices were for economic and agronomic reasons. The farming press tended to use more positive rather than negative tones when covering sustainable agricultural practices. Respondents used the farming press as a source of information, though many did not fully trust these outlets as they believed the farming press were mouthpieces for agribusinesses. Whilst a minority of farmers stated they were motivated to try a new sustainable agricultural practice after learning about it in the farming press, this was rare. Instead, the farming press was used by respondents to raise their awareness about wider agricultural topics. We reflect on the role and power given to agribusinesses by the farming press and what this means for agricultural sustainability. (shrink)

Issues of interest, identity and values intertwine in environmental conflicts, creating challenges that cannot generally be overcome using rationalities grounded in generalised argumentation and abstraction. To address the growing need to engage interests and identities along with plural values in the conservation of biodiversity and ecological systems, we introduce the concept of ‘appropriateness of actions’ and ground it in a relational understanding of environmental ethics. A determination of appropriateness for actions comes from combining outputs from value elicitation with those of (...) interest and identity negotiation in ways that are salient to specific people and their relationships to specific places. Drawing on the Blue Mountain Forest Partnership in the Pacific Northwest, we propose factors of success for supporting appropriate actions: 1) understanding context and identifying key stakeholders; 2) surfacing a diversity of interests and building system-level trust; 3) building empathy for different identities grounded in specific places; 4) eliciting diverse values and seeking to understand their links to worldviews and knowledge systems and; 5) seeking out appropriate actions. (shrink)

Although recent epistemology has been marked by several prominent disagreements – e.g., between foundationalists and coherentists, internalists and externalists – there has been widespread agreement that some form of fallibilism must be correct. According to a rough formulation of this view, it is possible for a subject to have knowledge even in cases where the justification or grounding for the knowledge is compatible with the subject’s being mistaken. In this paper, I examine the motivation for fallibilism before providing a fully (...) general account of the view. I conclude by looking at the two major difficulties for fallibilism: the Gettier problem and the lottery paradox. (shrink)

Isaiah Berlin's (1909-97) standing in twentieth-century intellectual history rests primarily upon his post-Second World War writings in political theory and the history of ideas. Berlin's investigations into the antagonistic traditions of Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment thought, and his advocacy of liberal responses to the conflicts between values, which, he believed, were an unavoidable feature of the human condition, have been the subject of extensive discussion. Less has been written, however, about Berlin's formative experiences of analytic philosophy during the 1930s and late (...) 1940s. It is often assumed that Berlin 'abandoned' philosophy after the war in favour of the history of ideas. As such, there is a tendency in much of the existing literature to underestimate the influence of Berlin's early analytical work on his later historical and political writings. Indeed, Berlin's work is regularly thought to be marked by a fracture at which point the study of philosophy is relinquished for that of history and political theory. The present article will aim to challenge this reading of Berlin's work. The article will advance two main claims. Firstly, it will be argued that not only is Berlin's early work in analytic philosophy of interest to those concerned with the development of his thought as a whole but also that it is highly edifying for any understanding of the nature of the outlook contained in his later writings. Secondly, the article will maintain that there exists a degree of continuity in Berlin's thought that connects his earlier and later work in a manner reflecting a greater level of coherence than is generally assumed. The main theme of continuity emphasized in the article is represented by Berlin's critique of what he terms the 'fallacy of reduction'. (shrink)

Essential to the doctrine of double effect is the idea that agents are prohibited from intending evil as a means to a good end. I argue in this paper that some recent accounts of intention from proponents of double effect cannot sustain this prohibition on harmful means. I outline two ways to gerrymander intention that mark these accounts. First, intention is construed in such a way that an agent intends only those states of affairs that she cares about or (...) finds motivating for their own sake. Second, intention is construed in such a way that what counts as intended is determined sufficiently by the agent’s beliefs. (shrink)

Challenging clich's of Japanism as a feminine taste, Bachelor Japanists argues that Japanese aesthetics were central to contests over the meanings of masculinity in the West. Christopher Reed draws attention to the queerness of Japanist communities of writers, collectors, curators, and artists in the tumultuous century between the 1860s and the 1960s. Reed combines extensive archival research; analysis of art, architecture, and literature; the insights of queer theory; and an appreciation of irony to explore the East-West encounter through (...) three revealing artistic milieus: the Goncourt brothers and other japonistes of late-nineteenth-century Paris; collectors and curators in turn-of-the-century Boston; and the mid-twentieth-century circles of artists associated with Seattle's Mark Tobey. The result is a groundbreaking integration of well-known and forgotten episodes and personalities that illuminates how Japanese aesthetics were used to challenge Western gender conventions. These disruptive effects are sustained in Reed's analysis, which undermines conventional scholarly investments in the heroism of avant-garde accomplishment and ideals of cultural authenticity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Death of Osiris in Aeneid 12.458Joseph D. ReedAs aeneas ranges the battlefield in search of Turnus and the Aeneid storms toward its close, an odd note sounds. A Trojan named Thymbraeus slays a Rutulian named Osiris. Neither is mentioned before or again. Even when one considers the diversity in this poem of names of Italian warriors, which Virgil takes not just from Italian traditions but from all over (...) the Mediterranean world,1 Osiris is surprising. Why does the name of an Egyptian god intrude into a primeval scene of Roman origins? The reader cannot ignore this provocation, especially on recollecting the rich patterns of meaning that such a contemporary of Virgil as Tibullus works into his elegy on Messalla’s birthday through an invocation of Osiris.2 So unexpected is the name that Bergk emended Osirim to Osinim, recalling the Italian king Osinius mentioned at 10.655.3 But emendation is misguided: as this paper will argue, the suggestiveness of the name is satisfied on the levels of history, ideology, religion, and literary influence, all major domains of Virgil’s epic. And the slaying of Osiris by Thymbraeus can be shown to emblematize both the whole mission of Aeneas and the achievement of Augustus.Aeneas, cured of the wound on his thigh, arms himself and, with some final words of instruction to his son, goes into battle seeking Turnus. In a memorable simile, he is compared to a storm that brings horror to farmers and ruin to their crops. His example rouses his fellow Trojans against the Italians: ferit ense gravem Thymbraeus Osirim, Arcetium Mnestheus, Epulonem obtruncat Achates Ufentemque Gyas; cadit ipse Tolumnius augur, primus in adversos telum qui torserat hostis.(12.458–61)[End Page 399]With his sword Thymbraeus smites the gravem Osiris. The adjective is equivalent to fortis, according to Servius Auctus; Forbiger prefers a denotation of towering size, comparing gravis as epithet of the boxer Entellus at 5.437 and 447.4 “Massive” might capture the sense in English. The effect here is to highlight Thymbraeus’ prowess. Like Osiris, two of the other Italian victims, Arcetius and Epulo, are unknown except for this passage. (The important Ufens received six lines at 7.744–49, in the catalogue of Latin allies,5 and Tolumnius, as line 461 reminds us, began this phase of the battle at 12.257–67.)6 But both their names etiologize some ancestral Italic or Roman institution: Epulo suggests a prototype of the college of epulones, priests of Jupiter Epulo;7 Arcetius invites a connection with the Italian gens Arquitia.8 In this they are like their enemy Mnestheus, supposed eponym of the gens Memmia (5.117). Osiris stands alone among his compatriots in his nomenclatural irrelevance to anything Roman. But Thymbraeus shares the isolation of his victim: he is the only one of the Trojans here who is mentioned nowhere else; not only that, but Mnestheus, Achates, and Gyas are indeed famous, leaders of the Trojans throughout the poem, receiving notice during the introductory storm scene in book 1, the departure from Carthage in book 4, the games in honor of Anchises in book 5, and elsewhere. The catalogue here is introduced by a pair of unknown warriors.The two belong together and give each other meaning. If the name of Osiris applied to a follower of Turnus reduces the critic to perplexity and silence, we can approach its significance through that of the name of Thymbraeus, which has obvious relevance to the whole drift of the epic. Thymbraeus reprises a Thymbraeus killed by Diomedes in Iliad 11.320–21, also mentioned only once. Virgil has revived the obscure Trojan, as it were, to permit him the victory at last; the fact that each Thymbraeus is hapax legomenos in his epic reinforces the reference, especially for such learned readers as Virgil himself was and expected in [End Page 400] his audience.9 The name itself, “the Thymbraean man,” comes from the town Thymbra near Troy (first attested in Il. 10.430),10 and so unmistakably marks the first warrior in Virgil’s catalogue as a representative survivor of the fallen city. In fact, the mythological tradition preserves... (shrink)

The elections of Harold Washington and Wilson Goode, along with the near election of Mel King, have generated new speculations about black urban adminstrations. The tacit assumptions here concern the significance of these administrations for racial democracy in the U.S. The fact that a black or Hispanic candidate is elected mayor is taken as evidence of “progress.” Presumably, if an electorate selects a candidate, that candidate must have been able to transcend previously insurmountable boundaries to galvanize a winning coalition. This (...) view, of course, does not account for the fact that blacks tend overwhelmingly — unless black candidates are woefully pock-marked politically — to vote black and whites are just as likely to vote white. (shrink)

Marshall and O’Leary’s thoughtful response to our article suggests that dismissal policies are ethically justifiable because they might induce parents to immunize their children. This outcome is conceivable, but we have only anecdotes about how often it occurs. Such evidence became the thin reed on which the American Academy of Pediatrics rested its new policy of tolerating the practice of dismissing vaccine-hesitant parents. It seems likely that relatively few parents would agree to vaccinate because they were threatened with dismissal. (...) Other heavy-handed interventions have failed to move most such parents. When Washington state made nonmedical exemptions more difficult to obtain, nearly two-thirds of vaccine refusers were unmoved and their children remained unvaccinated. Even if dismissal threats led some parents to accept vaccines, this alone would not justify a dismissal policy. The benefits would still have to be weighed against the risks of dismissing those families who do not change their minds. (shrink)

This article takes up Winch’s exploration of a certain dialectic in philosophical accounts of social inquiry, the poles of which I refer to as the under-laborer and over-laborer conceptions of philosophy. I argue that these conceptions, shown in Risjord and Reed, respectively, are caught in a dialectic of treating philosophy’s roles as either modestly clarifying or broadly determining the claims of social science. A third conception of philosophy, the therapeutic conception, is exemplified by Read et al.’s “New Wittgensteinian” interpretation (...) of Winch’s work as a way out of the dialectic. Discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the latter, I conclude that a stronger development of the therapeutic approach is needed to move past the dialectic. (shrink)

Preface: help! my brainchild's been kidnapped! -- Intellectual misconduct: backwards, forward, and sideways -- The world of scholarship: rituals and rewards, norms and departures -- Structural and organizational causes of scholarly misconduct -- Cultural causes of scholarly misconduct -- Individual and situational causes of scholarly misconduct -- Scholarly misconduct as crime -- Criminological theory and scholarly crime -- Implications for theory and research -- Preventing and controlling scholarly crime -- Afterword: against all odds, a code is born.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rembrandt’s Art: A Paradigm for Critical Thinking and AestheticsMark S. Conn (bio)IntroductionThe purpose of art is to lay bare the questions, which have been hidden by the answers.—James BaldwinPhilosophers have asked, How do we know the world? Over centuries, many visual artists have responded to this question by provoking us to see the world differently—through their own eyes. Rembrandt, by no small measure, is one of those artists. While (...) many people have attempted to understand and interpret the art of this quintessential master, few have used his art as a tool to teach critical thinking. The challenge, then, is to set forth a paradigm, using Rembrandt’s art as the vehicle, to teach critical thinking skills. These skills can be applied across the curriculum without losing an appreciation for the aesthetic characteristics of his art.Several sections in this article begin with a foundational discussion of the connection between art and the general curriculum, including how the effectiveness of that curriculum may then be measured. Continuing with a working definition of critical thinking, I demonstrate how Rembrandt’s work relates particularly well to the social studies curriculum. Definitions of critical thinking skills are discussed just prior to introducing the paradigm. A discussion of the paradigm’s relationship to aesthetics and necessary concepts is followed by the conclusion, which contains the graphic illustration of the paradigm. [End Page 68]Foundational DiscussionIn order to create a paradigm that encompasses Rembrandt’s art, critical thinking, and aesthetics, it is important to understand the connection that art has to the curriculum. By examining the way in which this relationship has evolved and is measured, we discover its foundation. It also produces a rationale for the paradigm.For decades the educational community has debated the validity of including arts in the curriculum. There are those who believe that in order to justify inclusion in the curriculum, there needs to be evidence that art has a quantifiable impact upon learning. Others believe that there is a need to teach art for art’s sake.1 Elliot Eisner stated, “More often than we would like, arts educators receive requests to justify their professional existence or existence of the arts in our schools on the basis of their contribution to non-art outcomes.”2 According to Eisner’s research, there have been no studies that show a statistically significant relationship between the arts and academic success.3 Additionally, in their final report evaluators from Transforming Education Through the Arts Challenge (TETAC) concluded that “Analysis of site-specific data found no significant relationship between program implementation and performance on reading and math tests.”4 There are many sources that can be cited that report the same findings. In assessing these kinds of findings we find the conclusions to be approximately the same.If we look at the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress, which each year releases “The Nation’s Report Card,” we find a tremendous amount of data.5 However, most of what we find is data that is analyzed scientifically, with a long but incomplete list of incomplete variables. Therefore, it is difficult to come to any consensus about which programs, in which states, are successful and why. All we actually see is who is supposedly doing better in various curriculum areas based upon standardized tests that vary from state to state. Consider an example of current thinking regarding curriculum and testing from an article by Diane Ravitch, former assistant U.S. secretary of education, and Deborah Meir, senior scholar at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education:Both of us acknowledged that our choices involve risks. A national curriculum might be unwieldy and superficial (“a mile wide and an inch deep—ironically the charge directed at our current incoherent and fragmented curriculum”) as well as politically compromised, while a local one might reflect the low expectations of the local community as local foolishness and local biases (some schools, for example, might teach intelligent design). We agreed that the measurement of “results”—what constitutes intellectual achievement—has been badly distorted by current local and state tests, which undermine high-quality tasks and make... (shrink)

ABSTRACT William Blake's poem Jerusalem, like all Perennial utopias, achieves a dialectical synthesis of the ideal and the actual through the narrative focalization of a religious experience at the level of character, one that is at once transhistorical and universal. By reading the poem through the lens of the Perennial paradigm, we discover that the temporal aspects of Jerusalem are intimately tied to the religious dimensions of Blake's utopian vision. In addition to giving us a new way to understand the (...) well-documented distinctiveness of Blake's religious message, the Perennial paradigm shows Blake's soteriology in Jerusalem to be utopian rather than salvationist. Because of the ultimately subjective nature of apprehension of the Divine Vision, Blake's utopian thought is not “clearly a forward-directed anticipatory and visionary concept,” as Magnus Ankarsjö has recently argued. Blake does not rally the reader towards some “ensuing peaceful millennium” but rather to find enlightenment in the eternal moment. In light of Blake's suspicion of ratiocination, combined with his deliberate use of narrative focalization of Albion's religious vision, reading Jerusalem as a Rational utopia grounded in Judeo-Christian of notions of Apocalypse is to miss Blake's core religious message. (shrink)

Despite his enormous bibliography of written works, Ricoeur has never devoted an entire tome to either moral philosophy or ethics per se. Three chapters of one work, Oneself as Another, do, however, encompass what he calls summarily his “little ethics.” To understand Ricoeur’s ethical project, it is important to see its genesis in his earlier anthropological studies and to follow its evolving nature into a hermeneutical poetics. Ricoeur’s ethical orientation is teleological. He makes a strong distinction between ethics and morality, (...) with ethics being comprised of three inseparable components: the “good life,” the other, and justice. The essential hermeneutical nature of his ethics becomes fully apparent in his discussion of practical wisdom. (shrink)

_Translated from the French, this book analyzes the paradoxes that fundamentally characterize Nietzsche’s philosophy and texts._.

The article by Wiggins and Wilbanks in this issue (2019) provides an important overview of the some of the forms and challenges of citizen involvement in health and biomedical research. Many such r...

This article explores ten models for thinking critically about tech­nology’s place in our lives, which have been proposed in some form by vari­ous modern philosophers and theologians, including Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The author first provides a definition of technology and then analyzes the models. He concludes with a consideration of what he calls a moral “partnering” of man with technology and some thoughts on the role that technology plays in the mission of the Church and in (...) her efforts to evangelize. (shrink)

Prologue, invitation to thinking about God In the Hebrew Bible? -- Part I, questions about God? -- Why does God in the Bible have a body? -- What do God's body parts in the Bible mean? -- Why is God angry in the Bible? -- Does God in the Bible have gender or sexuality? -- Part II, questions about God in the world? -- What can creation tell us about God? -- Who-or what-is the Satan? -- Why do people suffer (...) according to the Hebrew Bible? -- Epilogue, God in the Bible and beyond. (shrink)

Languages and writing systems result from satisfying multiple constraints related to learning, comprehension, production, and their biological bases. Orthographies are not optimal because these constraints often conflict, with further deviations due to accidents of history and geography. Things tend to even out because writing systems and the languages they represent exhibit systematic trade-offs between orthographic depth and morphological complexity.

Questions of whether, how, and why non-Muslims, whose infidel religious practice necessitates ongoing disregard for the Prophet Muḥammad, should be punished for the crime of insulting the Prophet prompted lively debate among Muslims in the eleventh century, especially Shāfiʿīs. This article presents the history and development of the law, and demonstrates that while two of its most draconian interpretations, that of Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ and Ibn Taymiyya, eclipsed more nuanced discussions that took place among Shāfiʿīs and Ḥanafīs, some late Ḥanafī ulama (...) viewed this as a bad development and sought to mine the tradition to reclaim and render normative a more lenient interpretation of the law. (shrink)

A basic thrust behind Alvin Plantinga's position that belief in God is properly basic is an analogy between certain non-religious beliefs such as ‘I see a tree’ and theistic beliefs such as ‘God made this flower’. Each kind of belief is justified for a believer, argues Plantinga, when she finds herself in a certain set of conditions. Richard Grigg challenges this claim by arguing that while the non-religious beliefs are confirmed, beliefs about God are not. I wish to explore this (...) challenge, clarify it and suggest that on one understanding it is irrelevant and on another it is false. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines the contemporary phenomenon of imagining a world from which people have been removed. Such a trend speaks to a utopian impulse, but one that is not comparable to traditional utopian ideas. What does the popularity of books like The World without Us or documentaries such as The Future is Wild, Aftermath: Population Zero, and Life after People say about the current status of utopian ideals, environmental thought, and our cultural understanding of humanity's place in the nature (...) order? (shrink)

As nanotechnology emerges as an important public policy issue, the FDA's relationship with society is about to be tested. Most would agree that fostering public input will be critical to developing effective public policy for nanotechnology. Yet, it will not be easy. Low public confidence in the FDA, the general lack of knowledge about nanotechnology among ordinary Americans, and the way in which the “average” citizen obtains and evaluates knowledge about a public policy issue all pose serious challenges to any (...) public outreach by the FDA. It will be necessary for the FDA to be attentive to not only its own public messages, but also to who is listening and how those messages are being perceived. (shrink)

[ I ] Introduction: Paradigms, Theism, and the Parity Thesis Few claims are more controversial than that beliefs about God are rational. ...

At best, silence is a slippery topic. On the surface, silence might be easily explained as merely the absence of noise or the cessation of speech. Yet, these are only the dispositions for the experience of silence. Where silence can express itself in a solitary walk, the sadness of death, or in the calm of a serious argument, we are able to attribute various layers of meaning to the experience of silence as well as distinguish its presence qualitatively by employing (...) such terms as deep silence, true silence, or open silence. (shrink)

Through their psalms, the pilgrims of ancient Israel created a view of the world and of God that today remains central to the faith and life of the church.

This essay offers a reading of Rousseau and Durkheim against the background of the current debate between those labeled liberals and those labeled communitarians. I show how the present false option of the debate (defend "the individual" or protect "the community") deflects our thought from a more promising direction that attempts to relate--not merely juxtapose--liberalism to communitarianism. Both Rousseau and Durkheim offer a middle way between liberalism and communitarianism, thereby rescuing us from the forced option. Durkheim's middle way, however, unlike (...) Rousseau's, fails to address the contingent yet seemingly irradicable tension between the private and public in liberal society. I conclude by championing Rousseau over Durkheim precisely because Rousseau is willing to entertain such friction. (shrink)