In this account of his mature thinking, Peter Marshall develops a dynamic and organic philosophy for the coming millennium which he calls liberation ecology. Liberation ecology is holistic in viewing the world as a harmonious whole and all beings and things as interwoven threads in nature's web. It is intuitive in recognizing intuition as the main source of knowledge and the imagination as the great organ of morality. It is ecological in seeing human beings as fellow voyagers with other (...) species in the magnificent odyssey of evolution. Above all, it is libertarian in seeking to release humanity, society and nature from their existing burdens so that they can unfurl and realize together their full potential. Exploring our strengths and possibilities, this book presents the ideas and values needed to ride the winds of change at this crucial stage in our development and in the history of the world. It provides a new philosophy for a new era, an uplifting and inspired vision which combines ancient wisdom and modern insights, reason and feeling, science and poetry, myth and the marvellous. It offers a guide for the future on how to rive in the most fulfilling way and how to create a genuinely free and sustainable society in harmony with nature. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that moral philosophers need to incorporate into their teaching and writing a number of empirical findings on ethical practices. Principal among these is clearer guidelines on speaking out against wrongdoing, as well as the development of codes of ethics that have been proven to work. The adoption of the critical thinking and the analytical methodology of other disciplines is also suggested. Several benefits will result. The most noticeable will be a strengthening of ethical practices and (...) behavior in the institutions and organizations with which we live and work. A second benefit will be the education and employment of a body of people—graduates in moral philosophy—with the skills and knowledge to bring about, and further strengthen, this enhanced ethical environment. A third benefit will be the matching of the claims of philosophical thought with actual reality. (shrink)

Examining a variety of texts ranging from the Ancient Near East to the nineteenth century, this book deals with the inevitable presence of both fact and fiction ...

Peter Spirtes, Richard Scheines and Clark Glymour. Simulated Studies of the Reliability of Computer-Aided Model Specification Using the TETRAD, EQS and LISREL Programs.

In three exemplary essays, author Peter Bornedal promotes Deconstruction as a cogent analytical method whose distinctive critical object is foundational knowledge. In this, he wants to restore Deconstruction as a rational discourse, while continuing to emphasize it as a critique of metaphysics.

The global financial crisis of 2008 brought the risk involved in the international banking business to everybody’s attention. It made clear that risk, despite the claims of banks, cannot be hedged away. The risk inherent in the banking business has been realised. It was realised to a larger extent and in different dimensions than assumed by risk management, quantitatively and qualitatively, and it had more severe effects than imagined before. This paper takes this event as an opportunity to reconsider the (...) term ‘risk’ itself from an unusual perspective. Aspects from the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, his considerations of the event, the im-possible or the horizon are used to interrogate the term ‘risk’ and to propose a ‘risk to come’. (shrink)

I recently read through the most recent 24 issues of Environmental Health Perspectives—the National Institutes of Health journal of, among other issues, scientific research into how environmental contaminants impact animal and human health. It is a catalog of horrors from a public health perspective. Fish and frogs with their sex scrambled; deformed frogs with altered hormone levels in their blood; a nearly threefold increase in birth defects among Minnesota farm children exposed to pesticides; 2,4-D exposure reducing hormone levels in men; (...) insignificant levels of four environmental chemicals adding up to a significant dose; a third study reconfirming a 50% sperm decline in U.S. men, 1934–1996; phthalates elevated in the blood of Puerto Rican girls developing breasts before they are 8; some 6,000 chemicals declared candidates for study as hormone disrupters ; children living near incinerators having delayed sexual development; hypospadias linked to organochlorine levels in the blood of mink, otter, and polar bears; and “No living organism may be considered DDT-free.” Nothing definitive, but it all suggests that things are tending in a direction that is perfectly awful. (shrink)

Both of the companion target articles place considerable performance on music performance ability, with specific attention paid to singing in harmony for the music and social bonding hypothesis proposed by Savage and colleagues. In this commentary, I evaluate results from recent research on singing accuracy in light of their implications for the MSB hypothesis.

Presents Nietzsche's critical reflections directed at traditional metaphysical categories such as the external world, substance, causation, and self. Targeted theories include the doctrine of substance qua substratum for properties; the Lockean ontology of powers inherent in external objects; the construal of the self as either mental substance or transcendental subjects; atomism; and the belief in the explanatory powers of Newtonian force. It is argued that there is a pervasive general line of scepticism in Nietzsche's later thought concerning the possibility of (...) knowledge as rationally justified true belief. The chapter concludes with a defence of Nietzsche's general scepticism against a variety of countervailing arguments. (shrink)

This book attempts to link ecology, philosophy, and theology through an exploration of a new model of intercultural dialogue. Case studies provide practical and theoretical applications, which lead to a deeper understanding of not only environmental guardianships but also the fundamental relationship between human beings and nature's being.

The new arguments in the cited paper are shown to be as unsatisfactory as the old.

This book is a devastating and anomalous critique of analytic philosophy. It is devastating, because of its detailed exposition of analytic philosophy as a failed project. It is anomalous, because the exposition involves writing a detailed history of the analytic movement, an activity that analysts have scrupulously avoided. According to Capaldi, while analytic philosophy pretends to express a timeless explanation about everything, the movement has always sought to justify its existence by ultimate appeal to a progressive historical account, and rests (...) on the presumption that science is the final historical form of a timeless truth, thereby subsuming the history of…. (shrink)