Understanding attitudes towards the environment is important because they often determine behaviour that either increases or decreases environmental quality. In this article we investigate the environmental worldview of the young people from Kosovo. The New Revised Environmental Paradigm Scale or New Ecological Paradigm Scale, known as NEP Scale (Dunlap et al., 2000) was used. The study involved 330 young people age 18-20. 150 young people are from secondary schools, and other (180) are from some different faculties at the State University (...) in Mitrovica. The mean score for the full NEP scale in this study was 3.48, which indicates a low endorsement of the NEP among the sample of Kosovo young people. The averages of the sub-dimensions varied between 3.08 (“Limits to growth”) and 3.73 (“Eco-crisis”). Like as others non-industrialized societies, young people from Kosovo tend to believe in the profound connection between humanity and nature, or there are no clear differences between pro-NEP and pro-DSP views. This study confirms the thesis that environmental worldviews differ across cultures. The mean value of the NEP Scale can be feasibly associated with various variables concerning general environmental attitudes. In order to discover the factors that create a pro-ecological orientation of young people in this country, additional researches are needed. (shrink)

I maintain that intrinsic value is the fundamental concept of axiology. Many contemporary philosophers disagree; they say the proper object of value theory is final value. I examine three accounts of the nature of final value: the first claims that final value is non‐instrumental value; the second claims that final value is the value a thing has as an end; the third claims that final value is ultimate or non‐derivative value. In each case, I argue that the concept of final (...) value described is either identical with the classical notion of intrinsic value or is not a plausible candidate for the primary concept of axiology. (shrink)

Conditionalists say that the value something has as an end—its final value—may be conditional on its extrinsic features. They support this claim by appealing to examples: Kagan points to Abraham Lincoln’s pen, Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen to Lady Diana’s dress, and Korsgaard to a mink coat. They contend that these things may have final value in virtue of their historical or societal roles. These three examples have become familiar: many now merely mention them to establish the conditionalist position. But the widespread (...) faith in such cases is, I believe, unjustified. This is because, surprisingly, the pen, the dress, and the coat cannot have final value. I argue that the problem is internal: these cases are ruled out by every conditionalist account of final value. Further, the problem with these well-known cases applies to most other supposed examples of extrinsic, final goods. Thus nearly all cases given to support the conditionalist view cannot succeed. I suggest a kind of diagnosis: I claim that these examples are best seen as instances of sentimental value, rather than final value. I close by providing a brief account of sentimental value and explain how it relates to instrumental, intrinsic, and final goodness. (shrink)

The importation of computational methods into biology is generating novel methodological strategies for managing complexity which philosophers are only just starting to explore and elaborate. This paper aims to enrich our understanding of methodology in integrative systems biology, which is developing novel epistemic and cognitive strategies for managing complex problem-solving tasks. We illustrate this through developing a case study of a bimodal researcher from our ethnographic investigation of two systems biology research labs. The researcher constructed models of metabolic and cell-signaling (...) pathways by conducting her own wet-lab experimentation while building simulation models. We show how this coupling of experiment and simulation enabled her to build and validate her models and also triangulate and localize errors and uncertainties in them. This method can be contrasted with the unimodal modeling strategy in systems biology which relies more on mathematical or algorithmic methods to reduce complexity. We discuss the relative affordances and limitations of these strategies, which represent distinct opinions in the field about how to handle the investigation of complex biological systems. (shrink)

The results of two experiments are analyzed to find out how artistic expertise influences visual search. Experiment I comprised survey data of 1,065 students on self-reported visual memory skills and their ability to find three targets in four images of artwork. Experiment II comprised eye movement data of 50 Visual Literacy experts and non-experts whose eye movements during visual search were analyzed for nine images of artwork as an external validation of the assessment tasks performed in Sample I. No time (...) constraint was set for completion of the visual search task. A latent profile analysis revealed four typical solution patterns for the students in Sample I, including a mainstream group, a group that completes easy images fast and difficult images slowly, a fast and erroneous group, and a slow working student group, depending on task completion time and on the probability of finding all three targets. Eidetic memory, performance in art education and visual imagination as self-reported visual skills have significant impact on latent class membership probability. We present a hidden Markov model approach to uncover underlying regions of attraction that result from visual search eye-movement behavior in Experiment II. VL experts and non-experts did not significantly differ in task time and number of targets found but they did differ in their visual search process: compared to non-experts, experts showed greater precision in fixating specific prime and target regions, assessed through hidden state fixation overlap. Exploratory analysis of HMMs revealed differences between experts and non-experts in image locations of attraction. Experts seem to focus their attention on smaller image parts whereas non-experts used wider parts of the image during their search. Differences between experts and non-experts depend on the relative saliency of targets embedded in images. HMMs can determine the effect of expertise on exploratory eye movements executed during visual search tasks. Further research on HMMs and art expertise is required to confirm exploratory results. (shrink)

I argue that relaxed moral realists are not ontologically committed to moral properties. Regardless of whether we tie ontological commitment to quantification, entailment, or truthmaking, if moral properties are not explanatory (as relaxed realists claim), then moral truths do not require moral properties. This permits a nominalist form of relaxed realism that is both simpler and more ecumenical than extant formulations. The possibility of such a position places pressure on the ontology of competing views—and helps focus attention on the critical (...) and underexplored explanatory element of the relaxed realist’s program. (shrink)

Integrative systems biology is an emerging field that attempts to integrate computation, applied mathematics, engineering concepts and methods, and biological experimentation in order to model large-scale complex biochemical networks. The field is thus an important contemporary instance of an interdisciplinary approach to solving complex problems. Interdisciplinary science is a recent topic in the philosophy of science. Determining what is philosophically important and distinct about interdisciplinary practices requires detailed accounts of problem-solving practices that attempt to understand how specific practices address the (...) challenges and constraints of interdisciplinary research in different contexts. In this paper we draw from our 5-year empirical ethnographic study of two systems biology labs and their collaborations with experimental biologists to analyze a significant problem-solving approach in ISB, which we call adaptive problem solving. ISB lacks much of the methodological and theoretical resources usually found in disciplines in the natural sciences, such as methodological frameworks that prescribe reliable model-building processes. Researchers in our labs compensate for the lack of these and for the complexity of their problems by using a range of heuristics and experimenting with multiple methods and concepts from the background fields available to them. Using these resources researchers search out good techniques and practices for transforming intractable problems into potentially solvable ones. The relative freedom lab directors grant their researchers to explore methodological options and find good practices that suit their problems is not only a response to the complex interdisciplinary nature of the specific problem, but also provides the field itself with an opportunity to discover more general methodological approaches and develop theories of biological systems. Such developments in turn can help to establish the field as an identifiably distinct and successful approach to understanding biological systems. (shrink)

Research on interdisciplinary science has for the most part concentrated on the institutional obstacles that discourage or hamper interdisciplinary work, with the expectation that interdisciplinary interaction can be improved through institutional reform strategies such as through reform of peer review systems. However institutional obstacles are not the only ones that confront interdisciplinary work. The design of policy strategies would benefit from more detailed investigation into the particular cognitive constraints, including the methodological and conceptual barriers, which also confront attempts to work (...) across disciplinary boundaries. Lessons from cognitive science and anthropological studies of labs in sociology of science suggest that scientific practices may be very domain specific, where domain specificity is an essential aspect of science that enables researchers to solve complex problems in a cognitively manageable way. The limit or extent of domain specificity in scientific practice, and how it constrains interdisciplinary research, is not yet fully understood, which attests to an important role for philosophers of science in the study of interdisciplinary science. This paper draws upon two cases of interdisciplinary collaboration; those between ecologists and economists, and those between molecular biologists and systems biologists, to illustrate some of the cognitive barriers which have contributed to failures and difficulties of interactions between these fields. Each exemplify some aspect of domain specificity in scientific practice and show how such specificity may constrain interdisciplinary work. (shrink)

British writers of the eighteenth century such as Shaftesbury and Hutcheson are widely thought to have used the notion of disinterestedness to distinguish an aesthetic mode of perception from all other kinds. This historical view originates in the work of Jerome Stolnitz. Through a re-examination of the texts cited by Stolnitz, I argue that none of the writers in question possessed the notion of disinterestedness that has been used in later aesthetic theory, but only the ordinary, non-technical concept, and that (...) they did not use this notion to define a specifically aesthetic mode of perception or a specifically aesthetic mode of anything else. The nearest thing that they had to the Stolnitzian conception of “the aesthetic” was their conception of taste, which differs from the former in some essential respects. (shrink)

As our interactions with nature occur increasingly within urban landscapes, there is a need to consider how ‘mundane nature’ can be valued as a route for people to connect to nature. The content of a three good things in nature intervention, written by 65 participants each day for five days is analysed. Content analysis produced themes related to sensations, temporal change, active wildlife, beauty, weather, colour, good feelings and specific aspects of nature. The themes describe the everyday good things in (...) nature, providing direction for those seeking to frame engaging conservation messages, plan urban spaces and connect people with nearby nature. (shrink)

I develop and defend a maximizing theory of moral motivation: I claim that consequentialists should recommend only those desires, emotions, and dispositions that will make the outcome best. I advance a conservative account of the motives that are possible for us; I say that a motive is an alternative if and only if it is in our psychological control. The resulting theory is less demanding than its competitors. It also permits us to maintain many of the motivations that we value (...) most, including our love for those most important to us. I conclude that we are closer to meeting morality’s demands on our character than has been appreciated. (shrink)

Peter Geach’s distinction between logically predicative and logically attributive adjectives has gained a certain currency in philosophy. For all that, no satisfactory explanation of what an attributive adjective is has yet been provided. We argue that Geach’s discussion suggests two different ways of understanding the notion. According to one, an adjective is attributive just in case predications of it in combination with a noun fail to behave in inferences like a logical conjunction of two separate predications. According to the other, (...) an adjective is attributive just in case it cannot be applied in a truth-value-yielding fashion unless combined with a noun. The latter way of understanding the notion has been largely neglected by Geach’s critics, but we argue that taking account of it shows the misguided nature of some of their objections, and also yields a more satisfactory explanation of attributivity than does the other. (shrink)

I argue that there are two distinct views called ‘value pluralism’ in contemporary axiology, but that these positions have not been properly distinguished. The first kind of pluralism, weak pluralism, is the view philosophers have in mind when they say that there are many things that are valuable. It is also the kind of pluralism that philosophers like Moore, Brentano and Chisholm were interested in. The second kind of pluralism, strong pluralism, is the view philosophers have in mind when they (...) say there are many values, or many kinds of value. It is also the kind of pluralism that philosophers like Stocker, Kekes and Nussbaum have advanced. I separate and elucidate these views, and show how the distinction between them affects the contemporary debate about value pluralism. (shrink)

Against interpretations of Kant that would assimilate the universality claim in judgments of taste either to moral demands or to theoretical assertions, I argue that it is for Kant a normative requirement shared with ordinary empirical judgments. This raises the question of why the universal agreement required by a judgment of taste should consist in the sharing of a feeling, rather than simply in the sharing of a thought. Kant’s answer is that in a judgment of taste, a feeling assumes (...) the role of predicate. Such a solution presents a problem as serious as the one it purports to solve. (shrink)

Kant’s argument in § 38 of the *Critique of Judgment* is subject to a dilemma: if the subjective condition of cognition is the sufficient condition of the pleasure of taste, then every object of experience must produce that pleasure; if not, then the universal communicability of cognition does not entail the universal communicability of the pleasure. Kant’s use of an additional premise in § 21 may get him out of this difficulty, but the premises themselves hang in the air and (...) have no independent plausibility. What Kant offers as a proof of our right to make judgments of taste is more charitably construed as an indirect argument for the adequacy of a speculative explanation of a *presumed* right to make judgments of taste. (shrink)

Abstractionists claim that the only bearers of intrinsic value are abstract, necessarily existing states of affairs. I argue that abstractionism cannot succeed. Though we can model concrete goods such as lives, projects, and outcomes with abstract states, conflating models of goods with the goods themselves has surprising and unattractive consequences. I suggest that concrete states of affairs or facts are the only bearers of intrinsic value. I show how this proposal can overcome the concerns lodged against abstractionism and, in the (...) process, reconnect us with the good. (shrink)

The key points in Meynell's argument seem to me to be as follows: It is logically absurd to say of an action or of a state of affairs that it is good unless at least some or other of the qualities w, x, y, z, etc. are present. Similarly it is logically absurd to talk of human flourishing unless some or other specifiable features are present in a person's life. The Heimler questionnaire shows us the sorts of ways in which (...) the notion of human flourishing might be ‘unpacked’, viz, in terms of satisfaction through friendship, etc. I am in full agreement with him over and I shall simply add some further comments on the notion of ‘evaluating’; but as far as is concerned I shall voice some doubts and reservations. (shrink)

Moore's moral programme is increasingly unpopular. Judith Jarvis Thomson's attack has been especially influential; she says the Moorean project fails because ‘there is no such thing as goodness’. I argue that her objection does not succeed: while Thomson is correct that the kind of generic goodness she targets is incoherent, it is not, I believe, the kind of goodness central to the Principia. Still, Moore's critics will resist. Some reply that we cannot understand Moorean goodness without generic goodness. Others claim (...) that even if Moore does not need Thomson's concept, he still requires the objectionable notion of absolute goodness. I undermine both these replies. I first show that we may dispense with generic goodness without losing Moorean intrinsic goodness. Then, I argue that though intrinsic goodness is indeed a kind of absolute goodness, the objections marshalled against the concept are unsound. (shrink)

In this reflexive, full-length essay on Ludwig Wittgenstein's life and thought, Miles Hollingworth explores Wittgenstein's ellusive religious mysticism.

According to Kant, the singular judgement ‘This rose is beautiful’ is, or may be, aesthetic, while the general judgement ‘Roses in general are beautiful’ is not. What, then, is the logical relation between the two judgements? I argue that there is none, and that one cannot allow there to be any if one agrees with Kant that the judgement ‘This rose is beautiful’ cannot be made on the basis of testimony. The appearance of a logical relation between the two judgements (...) can, however, be explained in terms of what one does in making a judgement of taste. Finally, I describe an analogy between Kant's treatment of judgements of taste and J. L. Austin's treatment of explicit performative utterances, which I attribute to a deeper affinity between their respective projects. (shrink)

Mooreans claim that intrinsic goodness is a conceptual primitive. Fitting-attitude theorists object: they say that goodness should be defined in terms of what it is fitting for us to value. The Moorean view is often considered a relic; the fitting-attitude view is increasingly popular. I think this unfortunate. Though the fitting-attitude analysis is powerful, the Moorean view is still attractive. I dedicate myself to the influential arguments marshaled against Moore’s program, including those advanced by Scanlon, Stratton-Lake and Hooker, and Jacobson; (...) I argue that they do not succeed. (shrink)

The metamorphosis of human beings into wolves is well known in mythology, legend, and scripture, and has been extensively surveyed in history, theology, and literature. Werewolf cases have attracted the attention of both ancient and modern physicians, particularly during the development of modern psychiatry and behavioral neurology. Some writers have suggested that lycanthropes suffered from schizophrenia or had intentionally or involuntarily ingested hallucinogens. Hysteria and affective disorder, either mania or intense depression, could also be invoked as causes. Lycanthropy has often (...) been linked with, and sometimes treated by, henbane and nightshade, and its manifestations could be explained in terms of atropinic delirium. Discoloration of teeth and urine, bizarre behavior, nocturnal wandering, and episodic skin and facial changes have suggested a role for porphyria in the werewolf transformation. Through many historical periods and cultures, persons believed to be werewolves have reportedly exhibited alterations in consciousness, depersonalization and derealization, acute anxiety and agitation, preoccupation with demonic possession, and compulsive or perseverative behavior, sometimes of a violent, sexually deviant or impulsive nature. Such features of werewolf behavior might also be explained by ictal and interictal manifestations of complex partial seizures, or as symptoms of the episodic dyscontrol syndrome associated with frontal lobe or limbic system disease or injury. Lycanthropy was often considered a manifestation of demonic possession or a consequence or indication of participation in necromancy. As such, self-proclaimed or suspected werewolves were often persecuted along with other practitioners of the black arts. It is generally believed that such persecution represented the last efflorescence of medieval demonology, but it has also been suggested that clinical description of illnesses of diabolical origin was part of the evolution of Renaissance medicine from the Galenic past toward the scientifically-based future. (shrink)

In this paper I shall examine a variety of situations in which human agents make use of force. Section I will be concerned with the use of force in medical contexts, Section Ii with the use of force in defence of property, and Section in with the use of force in resolving international disputes. I shall argue that the boundary between what is and is not morally permissible needs to be, drawn more stringently than is commonly supposed. While agreeing that (...) in some medical contexts and in some situations where defence of property is involved the use of force may be necessary and even morally required, I shall suggest that in the absence of any suitably constituted world court the use of force in attempting to resolve international disputes creates a morally different situation. (shrink)

Résistance(s) réunit un ensemble de contributions scientifiques originales émanant de chercheurs en sciences humaines et sociales et consacré à la ou aux résistance(s). La résistance décrit les capacités de refus, d'évitement et d'adaptation développées par les acteurs lorsqu'ils sont confrontés à une imposition externe ou à une injonction institutionnelle. Elle se présente comme une interprétation des refus, des éventuelles ruses voire des conflits ouverts qui s'expriment dans une telle situation ; cette interprétation diffère cependant de sa simple manifestation dans la (...) mesure où elle recadre la rationalité et le bien-fondé de l'action ou de la réaction. Il n'est plus question d'y voir l'immaturité d'une population ou le sous-développement d'une nation incapable d'offrir une réponse adéquate à une tension du monde ou à une décision dont elles seraient l'objet. Au contraire, cette réponse est analysée comme pertinente dans le cadre précis de cette population ou de cette nation: ramener l'interaction à son cadre, intégrer dans sa perception les logiques endogènes qui ont présidé à son élaboration, affirmer la simple présence de telles logiques, c'est-à-dire d'une telle cohérence, revient à accepter l'idée même de cette résistance qui, intrinsèquement, exprime ainsi l'existence et la reconnaissance d'une réelle diversité."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

After outlining sceptical theism (ST) and the fine-tuning argument (FTA), I demonstrate how arguments for the former undercut the latter. I then consider and reject three recent proposals for ameliorating the conflict: positive ST, considerations about normative superiors, and appeal to theistic metaethics. I contend, however, that Kirk Durston’s complexity argument for ST does not undercut the FTA but in fact supports it. In defending that thesis, I respond to Climenhaga’s contention that ST undermines all warrant for theistic belief, the (...) FTA included. (shrink)

Interdisciplinarity is widely considered necessary to solving many contemporary problems, and new funding structures and instruments have been created to encourage interdisciplinary research at universities. In this article, we study a small technical university specializing in green technology which implemented a strategy aimed at promoting and developing interdisciplinary collaboration. It did so by reallocating its internal research funds for at least five years to “research platforms” that required researchers from at least two of the three schools within the university to (...) participate. Using data from semi-structured interviews from researchers in three of these platforms, we identify specific tensions that the strategy has generated in this case: in the allocation of platform resources, in the division of labor and disciplinary relations, in choices over scientific output and academic careers. We further show how the particular platform format exacerbates the identified tensions in our case. We suggest that certain features of the current platform policy incentivize shallow interdisciplinary interactions, highlighting potential limits on the value of attempting to push for interdisciplinarity through internal funding. (shrink)