Engineering the Climate: The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management is a wide-ranging and expert analysis of the ethics of the intentional management of solar radiation. This book will be a useful tool for policy-makers, a provocation for ethicists, and an eye-opening analysis for both the scientist and the general reader with interest in climate change.

This article introduces and defines the Health in All Policies concept and examines existing state legislation, with a focus on California. The article starts with an overview of HiAP and then analyzes the status of HiAP legislation, specifically addressing variations across states. Finally, the article describes California's HiAP approach and discusses how communities can apply a HiAP framework not only to improve health outcomes and advance health equity, but also to counteract existing laws and policies that contribute to health inequities.

Background: Lack of compassion is claimed to result in poor and sometimes harmful nursing care. Developing strategies to encourage compassionate caring behaviours are important because there is evidence to suggest a connection between having a moral orientation such as compassion and resulting caring behaviour in practice. Objective: This study aimed to articulate a clearer understanding of compassionate caring via nurse educators’ selection and use of published texts and film. Methodology: This study employed discourse analysis. Participants and research context: A total (...) of 41 nurse educators working in universities in the United Kingdom (n = 3), Ireland (n = 1) and Canada (n = 1) completed questionnaires on the narratives that shaped their understanding of care and compassion. Findings: The desire to understand others and how to care compassionately characterised educators’ choices. Most narratives were examples of kindness and compassion. A total of 17 emphasised the importance of connecting with others as a central component of compassionate caring, 10 identified the burden of caring, 24 identified themes of abandonment and of failure to see the suffering person and 15 narratives showed a discourse of only showing compassion to those ‘deserving’ often understood as the suffering person doing enough to help themselves. Discussion: These findings are mostly consistent with work in moral philosophy emphasising the particular or context and perception or vision as well as the necessity of emotions. The narratives themselves are used by nurse educators to help explicate examples of caring and compassion (or its lack). Conclusion: To feel cared about people need to feel ‘visible’ as though they matter. Nurses need to be alert to problems that may arise if their ‘moral vision’ is influenced by ideas of desert and how much the patient is doing to help himself or herself. (shrink)

The requirements of education at Lagos. 15 Apr. 1892.--Primary, elementary, secondary, and supplementary education. 22 Jan. 1902.--Christian marriage. 26 May 1909.--Religious instruction in church schools. 28 May 1909.--Education of women. 18 May 1911.--The Rt. Rev. Bishop James Johnson, M.A., D.D. 1918.--The problems of education in Southern Nigeria. 9 Nov. 1920.--Our religion and our social life. 2 Oct. 1923.--Moral character. 5 July 1924.--The truth about my background and my career. 1924.--Religion as the basis of education. 1934.--Overseas scholarships for deserving Nigerian youths. (...) 3 Dec. 1935. (shrink)

Metanormativists hold that moral uncertainty can affect how we ought, in some morally authoritative sense, to act. Many metanormativists aim to generalize expected utility theory for normative uncertainty. Such accounts face the “easy problem of intertheoretic comparisons”: the worry that distinct theories’ assessments of choiceworthiness are incomparable. The easy problem may well be resolvable, but another problem looms: while some moral theories assign cardinal degrees of choiceworthiness, other theories’ choiceworthiness assignments are merely ordinal. Expected choiceworthiness over such theories is undefined. (...) Call this the “hard problem of intertheoretic comparisons.” This paper argues that to solve the hard problem, we should model moral theories with imprecise choiceworthiness. Imprecise choiceworthiness assignments can model incomplete cardinal information about choiceworthiness, with precise cardinal choiceworthiness and merely ordinal choiceworthiness as limiting cases. Generalizing familiar decision theories for imprecise choiceworthiness to the case of moral uncertainty generates puzzles, however: natural generalizations seem to require reifying parts of the model that don’t correspond to anything in normative reality. I discuss three ways of addressing this problem: by demystifying the reified elements by using them as promiscuously as possible; by constructing alternative decision theories that don’t require the troublesome elements; and by employing an alternative model of metanormative decision problems, and of moral uncertainty generally. (shrink)

As is the case with most pre‐modern philosophers of India, very little historical information is available about Bhartṛ‐hari. There are many interesting legends, some turned into extensive plays and poems, current about him. However, it is impossible to determine on their basis even whether there was only one philosopher called Bhartṛ‐hari. The appellation “philosopher” could unquestionably be applied to the author or authors of at least two Sanskrit works that are commonly ascribed to Bhartṛ‐hari.

Port of Culture is a showcase of the images from a three year photographic project undertaken by photographer Pete Carr to capture the city of Liverpool in a different light. Award-winning photographer Carr is a specialist in HDR a technique that enables photographers to record a greater range of tonal detail than any camera could capture in a single photo, producing a 'painting-like' quality to the image. The end result is an incredible dynamic range of images capturing the (...) many moods of the city - from scenes of protests at the arrival of Condoleezza Rice, to local architecture old and new. Visually stunning, Port of Culture reveals the astonishing creativity of this young photographer while providing a wholly refreshing and entrancing take on a city evolving in front of our eyes. (shrink)

McDowell’s “Avoiding the Myth of the Given” (2008, 2009) attempts to reconcile two claims: 1) what we most fundamentally experience is a fundamental level of invariable simple objects and their sensible properties; experience of these objects and properties is the ultimate ground of our knowledge of the world; 2) experience is through-and-through conceptually structured. This leads McDowell to endorsing the incoherent notion of intuitional content – necessary and thus irrevisable basic empirical conceptually structured contents or empirical categories. The notion requires (...) the necessity and irrevisability of purely formal concepts and the on-going responsiveness to experience of empirical concepts. This reveals a dilemma: If the fundamental objects of experience are invariable then they cannot have empirically conceptual form; for revisability is a mark of the empirically conceptual. But purely formal concepts cannot give us the fundamental empirical structure of the world. The dilemma forces us to choose between claiming that the fundamental objects of experience are invariable and claiming that they are conceptually formed. I conclude by briefly describing how Kant successfully faces the challenge of accounting for the most fundamental invariable level of objects of experience without yielding to the myth of the given. (shrink)

Gene therapy is the modification of the human genetic code to prevent disease or cure illness. This technology is in its infancy and remains confined to experimental clinical trials. Once the present barriers are overcome, gene therapy will confront humanity with a host of ethical challenges. Therapies targeted to the genes of germ-line cells will introduce permanent changes to the human gene pool. Furthermore, nonmedical gene modifications have the potential to introduce a new form of eugenics into our society by (...) which some members attempt to become inherently superior to others and humanity is re-engineered to man-made specifications. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.1 (Spring 2010): 45–50. (shrink)

McDowell’s “Avoiding the Myth of the Given” (2008, 2009) attempts to reconcile two claims: 1) what we most fundamentally experience is a fundamental level of invariable simple objects and their sensible properties; experience of these objects and properties is the ultimate ground of our knowledge of the world; 2) experience is through-and-through conceptually structured. This leads McDowell to endorsing the incoherent notion of intuitional content – necessary and thus irrevisable basic empirical conceptually structured contents or empirical categories. The notion requires (...) the necessity and irrevisability of purely formal concepts and the on-going responsiveness to experience of empirical concepts. This reveals a dilemma: If the fundamental objects of experience are invariable then they cannot have empirically conceptual form; for revisability is a mark of the empirically conceptual. But purely formal concepts cannot give us the fundamental empirical structure of the world. The dilemma forces us to choose between claiming that the fundamental objects of experience are invariable and claiming that they are conceptually formed. I conclude by briefly describing how Kant successfully faces the challenge of accounting for the most fundamental invariable level of objects of experience without yielding to the myth of the given. (shrink)

Anthropology of Consciousness, EarlyView.

Thinking About Judaism: Philosophical Reflections on Jewish Thought examines the light shed by philosophy upon significant areas of Jewish life and academic studies, including Jewish history, Jewish ethics, Jewish law, and Jewish aesthetics. As the author clearly illustrates, the teachings of leading theorists on the subjects of general history, ethics, law, and aesthetics inspire us to think about corresponding subjects related to Judaica.

Obsessive doubt and commitment phobia are relationship wreckers. Written by an anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) expert, Relationship OCD offers an evidence-based, cognitive-behavioral approach to finding relief from chronic relationship anxiety. Readers will learn to challenge the intrusive thoughts and worries that trigger harmful emotions, embrace the uncertainty inherent in all human connections, and discover a deeper sense of intimacy and trust.

Using life history narratives, the present study investigates processes of agency and consciousness among 14 women who identified themselves as tomboys. Most informants shared two “moments” of consciousness—a rejection of femininity and a choice of masculinity. Participants also revealed two forms of agency—active gender resistance and conformity. Implications for building agentic understandings of gender identity are discussed. While agency appears to be an important factor in gender identification, it tends to be overlooked by individuals themselves, perhaps through a process of (...) “naturalized embodiment.” In addition, gender consciousness appears to be critical in understanding agency in identification processes. (shrink)

Ideal epistemologists investigate the nature of pure epistemic rationality, abstracting away from human cognitive limitations. Non-ideal epistemologists investigate epistemic norms that are satisfiable by most humans, most of the time. Ideal epistemology faces a number of challenges, aimed at both its substantive commitments and its philosophical worth. This paper explains the relation between ideal and non-ideal epistemology, with the aim of justifying ideal epistemology. Its approach is meta-epistemological, focusing on the meaning and purpose of epistemic evaluations. I provide an account (...) on which the fundamental difference between ideal and non-ideal epistemic evaluations is that only the non-ideal epistemic ‘ought’ implies any substantive ‘can’. I argue that only ideal epistemic evaluations are ‘normatively robust’: they are neither conventional nor seriously context-sensitive. Non-ideal epistemic evaluations are normatively non-robust, exhibiting both conventionality and serious context-sensitivity from an interesting variety of distinct sources. For this reason, non-ideal epistemic evaluations won’t characterize the fundamental nature of epistemic rationality. Non-ideal epistemic rationality depends, not merely on what’s epistemically valuable, but also on modally contingent epistemic conventions and contextually contingent constraints on epistemic options. If we want a normatively robust theory of epistemic rationality, ideal epistemology is the only game in town. (shrink)

In the context of the recent revival of virtue ethics, the notion of character formation under the rational guidance of Aristotle's notion of phronesis, or practical wisdom, has been exalted as the principal aim of moral education. However, this is not unproblematic insofar as the promotion of Aristotelian phronesis seems to operate on rather different levels or to be ambivalent between the two rather different (and demonstrably separable) aims or goals of fostering reasonably sound deliberation and judgment concerning “right” or (...) good (moral or other) agency or action and the allegedly optimal (empirical) psychological ordering of cognition and affect to the end of good or commendable human character. In this paper, David Carr argues that while the first of these aims is by and large educationally acceptable and defensible, the second is neither a desirable nor coherent educational goal. (shrink)

Since its first publication in 1961 E.H. Carr's What is History? has established itself as the classic introduction to the subject. Ranging across topics such as historical objectivity, society and the individual, the nature of causation, and the possibility of progress, Carr delivered an incisive text that still has power to provoke debate today. For this fortieth anniversary reissue, Richard J. Evans has written an extensive new introduction that discusses the origins and the impact of the book, and (...) assesses its relevance in the age of the 21st century postmodernism and epistemological anxiety. (shrink)

On an attractive, naturalistically respectable theory of intentionality, mental contents are a form of measurement system for representing behavioral and psychological dispositions. This chapter argues that a consequence of this view is that the content/attitude distinction is measurement system relative. As a result, there is substantial arbitrariness in the content/attitude distinction. Whether some measurement of mental states counts as characterizing the content of mental states or the attitude is not a question of empirical discovery but of theoretical utility. If correct, (...) this observation has ramifications in the theory of rationality. Some epistemologists and decision theorists have argued that imprecise credences are rationally impermissible, while others have argued that precise credences are rationally impermissible. If the measure theory of mental content is correct, however, then neither imprecise credences nor precise credences can be rationally impermissible. (shrink)

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 2.5 license. This book offers a devastating look at deeply flawed development processes driven by international finance, African governments and the global consulting industry. It examines major river basin development underway in the semi-arid borderlands of Ethiopia, Kenya and South Sudan and its disastrous human rights consequences for a half-million indigenous people. The volume traces the historical origins of Gibe III megadam construction along the Omo River in Ethiopia-in turn, enabling irrigation (...) for commercial-scale agricultural development and causing radical reduction of downstream Omo and (Kenya's) Lake Turkana waters. Presenting case studies of indigenous Dasanech and northernmost Turkana livelihood systems and Gibe III linked impacts on them, the author predicts agropastoral and fishing economic collapse, region-wide hunger with exposure to disease epidemics, irreversible natural resource destruction and cross-border interethnic armed conflict spilling into South Sudan. The book identifies fundamental failings of government and development bank impact assessments, including their distortion or omission of mandated transboundary assessment, cumulative effects of the Gibe III dam and its linked Ethiopia-Kenya energy transmission 'highway' project, key hydrologic and human ecological characteristics, major earthquake threat in the dam region and widespread expropriation and political repression. Violations of internationally recognized human rights, especially by the Ethiopian government but also the Kenyan government, are extensive and on the increase-with collaboration by the development banks, in breach of their own internal operational procedures. A policy crossroads has now emerged. The author presents the alternative to the present looming catastrophe-consideration of development suspension in order to undertake genuinely independent transboundary assessment and a plan for continued development action within a human rights framework-forging a sustainable future for the indigenous peoples now directly threatened and for their respective eastern Africa states. Claudia Carr's book is a treasure of detailed information gathered over many years concerning river basin development of the Omo River in Ethiopia and its impact on the peoples of the lower Omo Basin and the Lake Turkana region in Kenya. It contains numerous maps, charts, and photographs not previously available to the public. The book is highly critical of the environmental and human rights implications of the Omo River hydropower projects on both the local ethnic communities in Ethiopia and on the downstream Turkana in Kenya. David Shinn Former Ambassador to Ethiopia and to Burkina Faso Adjust Professor of International Affairs, The George Washington University, Washington D.C. (shrink)

In this paper I look at narrative as a mode of explanation and at various ways in which the explanatory value of narrative has been criticized. I begin with the roots of narrative explanation in everyday action, experience, and discourse, illustrating it with the help of a simple example. I try to show how narrative explanation is transformed and complicated by circumstances that take us beyond the everyday into such realms as jurisprudence, journalism, and history. I give an account of (...) why narrative explanation normally satisfies us, and how or in what sense it actually explains. Then I consider how narrative is challenged and rejected as a mode of explanation in many scientific and other contexts and why attempts are made to replace it with something else. I try to evaluate the nature and sources of these challenges, and I describe this controversy over narrative against the historical background of its emergence. My paper ends with a pragmatic defense of narrative explanation against these challenges. (shrink)

This book explores recent developments in ethics of virtue. While acknowledging the Aristotelian roots of modern virtue ethics – with its emphasis on the moral importance of character – this collection recognizes that more recent accounts of virtue have been shaped by many other influences, such as Aquinas, Hume, Nietzsche, Hegel and Marx, Confucius and Lao-tzu. The authors also examine the bearing of virtue ethics on other disciplines such as psychology, sociology and theology, as well as attending to some wider (...) public, professional and educational implications of the ethics of virtue. This pioneering book will be invaluable to researchers and students concerned with the many contemporary varieties and applications of virtue ethics. (shrink)

Epistemology should take seriously the possibility of rationally evaluable changes in conceptual resources. Epistemic decision theory compares belief states in terms of epistemic value. But it's standardly restricted to belief states that don't differ in their conceptual resources. I argue that epistemic decision theory should be generalized to make belief states with differing concepts comparable. I characterize some possible constraints on epistemic utility functions. Traditionally, the epistemic utility of a total belief state has been understood as a function of the (...) epistemic utility of individual (partial) beliefs. The most natural ways of generalizing this account generate a kind of repugnant conclusion. I characterize some possible alternatives, reflecting different epistemic norms. (shrink)

Aristotelian virtue ethics invests emotions and feelings with much moral significance. However, the moral and other conflicts that inevitably beset human life often give rise to states of emotional division and ambivalence with problematic implications for any understanding of virtue as complete psychic unity of character and conduct. For one thing, any admission that the virtuous are prey to conflicting passions and desires may seem to threaten the crucial virtue ethical distinction between the virtuous and the continent. One recent attempt (...) to sustain this distinction -- considered in this paper -- maintains that the contrary-to-virtue emotions and desires of the virtuous (by contrast with those of the continent) must relinquish their motive power as reasons for action. Following some attention to the psychological status of feelings and emotions -- in particular their complex relations with cognition and reason -- this paper rejects this solution in favour of a more constructive view of emotional conflict. (shrink)

Challenging prevailing interpretations of the development of modern philosophy, this book proposes a reinterpretation of the transcendental tradition, as represented primarily by Kant and Husserl, and counters Heidegger's influential reading of these philosophers. Author David Carr defends their subtle and complex transcendental investigations of the self and the life of subjectivity, and seeks to revive an understanding of what Husserl calls "the paradox of subjectivity"--an appreciation for the rich and sometimes contradictory character of experience.

In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle distinguishes fairly sharply between the practical deliberation of moral virtue and the epistemic reflection of theoretical or truth-focused enquiry. However, drawing on insights from Plato and Iris Murdoch, the present paper seeks a more robust epistemic foundation for virtuous deliberation as primarily grounded in clear or correct perception of the world and human association, character and conduct. While such perception may not be sufficient for moral virtue, it is here argued that it is necessary. Murdoch's (...) view that literature may afford especially effective correction of moral misperception is also supported by appeal to literary examples. (shrink)

Does rationality require imprecise credences? Many hold that it does: imprecise evidence requires correspondingly imprecise credences. I argue that this is false. The imprecise view faces the same arbitrariness worries that were meant to motivate it in the first place. It faces these worries because it incorporates a certain idealization. But doing away with this idealization effectively collapses the imprecise view into a particular kind of precise view. On this alternative, our attitudes should reflect a kind of normative uncertainty: uncertainty (...) about what to believe. This view refutes the claim that precise credences are inappropriately informative or committal. Some argue that indeterminate evidential support requires imprecise credences; but I argue that indeterminate evidential support instead places indeterminate requirements on credences, and is compatible with the claim that rational credences may always be precise. (shrink)

What are we doing to our climate? Emissions from fossil fuel burning have raised carbon dioxide concentrations 35 percent higher than in the past millions of years. This increase is warming our planet via the greenhouse effect. What is climate change doing to and for us? Dry regions are drier and wet ones wetter. Wildfires have increased threefold, hurricanes more violent, floods setting record heights, glaciers melting, and seas rising. Parts of Earth are increasingly uninhabitable. Climate change requires us to (...) act as a global community. Climate justice enjoins emitters to pay the social‐environmental costs of fossil fuel burning. This would expedite green solar, wind, and next‐generation nuclear energy sources. Individuals should conserve resources, waste less food, and eat a plant‐rich diet. (shrink)

Quand il s'agit de rendre compte, par-delà les calculs intéressés de l'homo oeconomicus, de la manière dont tiennent les sociétés humaines, donner et reconnaître apparaissent comme deux dimensions constitutives de l'agir social. Mais du don et de la reconnaissance, il convient aussi, avant d'en appeler à leur syncrétisme, d'en interroger les proximités et les distances, ainsi que leurs consistances respectives. Par exemple, dira-t-on d'un don sans retour ou d'une reconnaissance sans réciprocité qu'ils sont encore dignes de ces noms? Les activités (...) de don et de reconnaissance se confrontent alors à une tierce dimension qui les taraude de l'intérieur : la domination. Cet ouvrage propose d'examiner plus précisément la façon dont se répondent et s'entremêlent les trois modèles du don, de la reconnaissance et de la domination, sur des enjeux contemporains situés au croisement de plusieurs horizons théoriques (la théorie critique, l'anthropologie, la phénoménologie sociale, la psychanalyse)."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Introspection, or looking inward to observe one's experience, is inherent in many methods used to study feelings, the experiential component of emotion. Challenges of introspection make faithful, high-fidelity descriptions of feelings difficult to attain. A method that (1) cleaves to a specific moment, (2) cleaves to pristine inner experience, (3) brackets presuppositions, and (4) utilizes an iterative process may be particularly well suited to this task. We review some contemporary introspective methods from the perspective of these four methodological constraints, finding (...) that Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) addresses the constraints most fully. We present DES findings on feelings to highlight the unique contributions careful introspective methods make to emotion science. High-fidelity descriptions of feelings are necessary for a complete understanding of emotion. (shrink)