ABSTRACT In this article, I argue that an essential part of our obligation as teachers and scholars of philosophy is to insist that the ultimate point of criticism is to foster the development of increasingly better explanations of natural and social phenomena. Doing so, moreover, requires that we cultivate in ourselves and our students a sense of gratitude for the very possibility of human flourishing and scientific advance. I illustrate these claims by showing how Dewey's analysis in Human Nature and (...) Conduct is the sine qua non of a good explanation. (shrink)

The contemporary industrialized global food system has sustained an onslaught of criticism from diverse parties—academic and popular, scientists and social justice advocates, activists and intellectuals—criticism that has only intensified in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Feminist voices have made substantial contributions to these critiques, calling attention to the cultural politics of food and health ; to the impact of the corporatization of agriculture on food quality, the environment, and the people of the Global South, especially women ; and (...) to the complicated relationship among cooking, eating, and gender, including how food.. (shrink)

Paul B. Thompson’s agrarian ethic aims to unite the core agricultural value of providing sustenance for people with the environmental value of preserving nature into the future. His recently revise...

Environmental pragmatists are committed to analyzing questions of environmental policy. Bryan Norton's pragmatic critique of environmental decision-making shows how an implicit commitment to the fact/value distinction has hindered productive environmental action. Nonetheless, Norton, as well as the majority of environmental ethicists, have devoted more attention to theorizing value disagreements as a primary cause of controversy than to examining epistemic structures. A case study demonstrates why and how Norton's procedural account may be supplemented with sensitive attention to the construction of epistemic (...) authority in environmental disputes. I recommend supporting the development of local knowledges and just distributions of epistemic authority. (shrink)