The ‘Lima Call for Climate Action’ decision marked the conclusion of the 20th session of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It expresses how the 196 UNFCCC Parties intend to negotiate the elements of a new agreement to be opened for signature in Paris at COP21. This ‘Paris Agreement’ would govern Parties starting in 2020, when the Kyoto Protocol's second commitment period ends. The new agreement would also move Parties beyond the Kyoto Protocol's (...) focus on mitigation to include adaptation, finance, technology development and transfer, and capacity building requirements. At COP20, Party delegates struggled to find consensus on how to act on the UNFCCC's core principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capacities’ when drafting the Call for Climate Action. In this article, we provide a detailed account of the evolution of the COP20 decision, to show how both its overall structure and specific language shifted in.. (shrink)

This paper explains how recent changes in the ways we study other animals to better understand the human faculty of language are indicative of changing narratives concerning the intelligence of other animals. Uexküll’s concept of Umwelt as a species-specific model of the world is essential to understanding the semiotic abilities of all organisms, including humans. From this follows the view that human language is primarily a cognitive tool for making models of the world. This view is consistent with the basic (...) premises of cognitive linguistics. The rejection of behaviorism in linguistics represents a turning point in the history of animal studies. The resulting criticism of long-term studies with primates illustrates this shift concerning the study of wild animals within the language sciences and beyond. New insights in dog cognition and research on the processing of human language in canines are reflective of a change in focus away from anthropocentrism towards the species-specific semiotic abilities of animals in the twenty-first century. This new orientation away from comparing animal sign-systems to human language and the importance of studying intelligent wild animals in the wild instead of in captivity have lead to an important re-evaluation of our relationship with other animals and our views of their cognitive and semiotic profiles. This leads to questions such as what role non-human organisms can play in the language sciences, and what our limitations are of studying the sign systems of other animals. Recent research on the signifying abilities of wild dolphins, for instance, has identified a new set of characteristics by which to study intelligence in other species. (shrink)

In Cohen’s vision of the just society, there would be no need for unequalizing incentives so as to benefit the least well-off; instead, people would be motivated by an egalitarian ethos to work hard and in the most socially productive jobs. As such, Cohen appears to offer a way to mitigate the trade-off of equality for efficiency that often characterizes theorizing about distributive justice. This article presents an egalitarian challenge to Cohen’s vision of the just society. I argue that a (...) society where all internalized the egalitarian ethos would be one lacking equal respect among its members, in which certain groups lacked the grounds of self-respect. Section 1 defends equal respect and a form of equality of self-respect as values with broad-based appeal to egalitarians, and argues that a particular form of hierarchy would undermine both equal respect and the grounds of self-respect. Sections 2 and 3 reveal that just such a hierarchy would emerge in a society in which all had internalized the egalitarian ethos, in the case of both carers and the untalented. Thus, Cohen’s proposed society is shown to fail to unite equality and efficiency. Instead, Cohen’s society would be characterized by a lack of equality. (shrink)

The dominant theory of the evolution of moral cognition across a variety of fields is that moral cognition is a biological adaptation to foster social cooperation. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that moral cognition is likely an evolutionary exaptation: a form of cognition where neurobiological capacities selected for in our evolutionary history for a variety of different reasons—many unrelated to social cooperation—were put to a new, prosocial use after the fact through individual rationality, learning, and the development and transmission (...) of social norms. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the emerging behavioral neuroscience of moral cognition. It then outlines a novel theory of moral cognition that I have previously argued explains these findings better than alternatives. Finally, it shows how the evidence for this theory of moral cognition and human evolutionary history together suggest that moral cognition is likely not a biological adaptation. Instead, like reading sheet music or riding a bicycle, moral cognition is something that individuals learn to do—in this case, in response to sociocultural norms created in our ancestral history and passed down through the ages to enable cooperative living. (shrink)

No shield can protect scientific realism from dealing with the quantum measurement problem. One may be able to erect barriers around the observable or classical, preserving a realism about tables, chairs and the like, but there is no safety zone within the quantum realm, the domain of our best physical theory. The upshot is not necessarily that scientific realism is in trouble. That conclusion demands further arguments. The lesson instead may be that scientific realists ought to stake their case on (...) particular interpretations of quantum theory. In any case, the realist can’t ignore the interpretational issues plaguing quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Charles Stein discovered a paradox in 1955 that many statisticians think is of fundamental importance. Here we explore its philosophical implications. We outline the nature of Stein’s result and of subsequent work on shrinkage estimators; then we describe how these results are related to Bayesianism and to model selection criteria like AIC. We also discuss their bearing on scientific realism and instrumentalism. We argue that results concerning shrinkage estimators underwrite a surprising form of holistic pragmatism.

Although it was, until recently, unfashionable in certain circles to say this, Marx was not a philosopher in any interesting sense. He was a social theorist. As social theory, I am thinking primarily of two areas : the methodology of social inquiry, and its metaphysical presuppositions, and normative philosophy.

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As we near a time when robots may serve a vital function by becoming caregivers, it is important to examine the ethical implications of this development. By applying the capabilities approach as a guide to both the design and use of robot caregivers, we hope that this will maximize opportunities to preserve or expand freedom for care recipients. We think the use of the capabilities approach will be especially valuable for improving the ability of impaired persons to interface more effectively (...) with their physical and social environments. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 3, pp 441 - 456 Several kinds of historical alternatives are distinguished. Different kinds of historical alternatives are valuable to the practice of history for different reasons. Important uses for historical alternatives include representing different sides of historical disputes; distributing chances of different outcomes over alternatives; and offering explanations of why various alternatives did _not_ in fact happen. Consideration of counterfactuals about what would have happened had things been different in particular ways plays particularly useful (...) roles in reasoning about historical analogues of current conditions; reasoning about causal claims; and in evaluating historical explanations. When evaluating the role of alternative histories in historical thinking, we should keep in mind the uses of historical alternatives that go well beyond the long-term and specific scenarios that are the focus of so-called “counterfactual history”. (shrink)

In this article I propose a new interpretation of David Hume’s position on social contract theory. First, and acknowledging Hume’s critical stance on contractualism, I reject the reasons usually adduced to explain his position: empiricist methodology and utilitarianism. Instead, I argue that to fully understand Hume’s position on contractualism, one must take into account both a psychological methodology and a normative outlook. Second, I highlight Hume’s constructive proposals on the origin and foundation of government and justice, as well as the (...) philosophical approach that he suggested when discussing politics, i.e., mediating between parties. As I argue in this article, these latter aspects of Hume’s political philosophy, often disregarded when examining his reasons against contractualism, are nevertheless essential to understand his views on social contract theory. (shrink)

Inspired by a new teaching initiative that involved a redesign of conventional classroom spaces at the University of Auckland’s Epsom Campus, this article considers the relationship between architecture, the built environment and education. It characterises the teaching space of the Epsom Campus as the embodiment of educational policy following its inception in the early 1970s. Heralded as a modernist work of architecture juxtaposing material and textural combinations, the Epsom Campus emerged as a metaphorical vanguard of teaching pedagogy that stood as (...) a symbol of a more progressive and culturally inclusive style of education. With consideration for a different kind of architectural space and pedagogy at the city-based business school, the article extends an understanding of spatiality and learning, and argues the structural architectonics of the teaching space and the built environment confer their own pedagogical value. By drawing on the critical stance of Nietzsche’s genealogical methodology for reading history, strands of historical discourse and ‘vibrant materialities’ are considered so that the ‘built pedagogy’ of both contexts can be activated and explored. (shrink)

This second companion volume on engineering studies considers engineering practice including contextual analyses of engineering identity, epistemologies and values. Key overlapping questions examine such issues as an engineering identity, engineering self-understandings enacted in the professional world, distinctive characters of engineering knowledge and how engineering science and engineering design interact in practice. -/- Authors bring with them perspectives from their institutional homes in Europe, North America, Australia\ and Asia. The volume includes 24 contributions by more than 30 authors from engineering, the (...) social sciences and the humanities. Additional issues the chapters scrutinize include prominent norms of engineering, how they interact with the values of efficiency or environmental sustainability. A concluding set of articles considers the meaning of context more generally by asking if engineers create their own contexts or are they created by contexts. -/- Taken as a whole, this collection of original scholarly work is unique in its broad, multidisciplinary consideration of the changing character of engineering practice. (shrink)

In Canada, there is growing recognition that women play an increasingly important role in the working world. Management training programs for women have been considered as a route to prepare women to be more effective managers. This paper highlights some of the major issues and concerns being discussed outside Canada by those engaged in management education and training for women — objectives and content of programs, nature of participants, training methods, choice of trainers, organization and evaluation of programs. References are (...) made to a few international programs to illustrate how some of these concerns have been addressed. Implications for training programs in Canada, from both practical as well as research points of view, are discussed. (shrink)

John Martin Fischer’s charge that Molinism does not offer a unique answer to the dilemma of divine foreknowledge and human freedom can be seen as a criticism of middle knowledge for begging the question of FF -compatibilism. In this paper, I seek to answer this criticism in two ways. First, I demonstrate that most of the chief arguments against middle knowledge are guilty of begging the question of FF-incompatibilism and conclude that the simple charge of begging the question cannot be (...) as problematic as some suggest. Determinists and open theists incorporate FF-incompatibilist notions into their respective versions of the grounding objection, their conceptions of risk and libertarian freedom, and their requirements for divine foreknowledge. Thus, while I admit that Molinism does rely upon Ockhamist and Augustinian principles in its approach to the dilemma and is guilty of presupposing FF-compatibilism, I deny that this undermines its strength as a model of providence. Second, I argue that, although all models are guilty of question-begging moves, they are not all on par with one another. Molinism offers a more orthodox and robust approach to providence than open theism and process theology, and it handles empirical data better than all of its competitors. (shrink)

Current assumptions and values with respect to management training for women are examined. A number of suggestions for change are made. The thrust of the changes will move us toward ensuring that education for women does not remain education for frustration, that is, education which gives women the desire for change in a world that remains the same.Many women have paid their dues, even a premium, for a chance at a top position, only to find a glass ceiling between them (...) and their goal. The glass ceiling is not simply a barrier for an individual, based on the person's inability to handle a higher-level job. Rather, the glass ceiling applies to women as a group who are kept from advancing higher because they are women. (Morrison, White and Velsor, 1987, p. 13). (shrink)

Employing an adapted Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis method, the experience of practicing Clinical Psychologists entering academia is explored. The article explores the recursive process between individual and institution as professional and academic identities develop in the context of a multiplicity of trajectories emerging at the intersection of professional and personal boundaries of identity, rhetoric and reality. The three authors, all of whom are practicing Clinical Psychologists new to academia and who constitute the focus of this study, engaged in a hermeneutic discussion (...) regarding their experience. Exploration of the data gathered from this discussion using the adapted IPA methodology evidenced three central themes, namely: The ‘nuts and bolts’ of academia; Surviving versus thriving; and It’s always personal. These themes are discussed in the context of contemporary literature exploring the experiences of new academics in general and Clinical Psychologists entering academia in particular. The pharmakon that carts the Clinical Psychologists interviewed in the study from professional practice to academia is positioned in the context of an emergent meta-theme where the questions are asked: “What is good and what is not good?” and “who will teach us these things?” In the process of contextualizing, exploring and analyzing the emergent themes, the researchers/participants gradually evidence a response that is less of an answer to the conundrum than it is a koan whereby the questions lose meaning as growth in identity has taken them to the point of the rhetorical response: “Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”. (shrink)

James Rachels argued against the possibility of finding some moral capacity in humans that confers upon them a unique dignity. His argument contends that Darwinism challenges such attempts, because Darwinism predicts that any morally valuable capacity able to bestow a unique dignity is likely present to a degree within both humans and non-human animals alike. I make the case, however, that some of Darwin's own thoughts regarding the nature of conscience provide a springboard for criticising Rachels's claim here. Using Darwin's (...) thoughts regarding conscience, I begin the project of grounding a revised account of human dignity in the human tendency to enshrine products of conscience within institutions. Specifically, I argue that this new account of human dignity is partly contingent upon humans creating institutions morally respectful of the values present within non-human nature. (shrink)

At the start of Convention (1969) Lewis says that it is "a platitude that language is ruled by convention" and that he proposes to give us "an analysis of convention in its full generality, including tacit convention not created by agreement." Almost no clause, however, of Lewis's analysis has withstood the barrage of counter examples over the years,1 and a glance at the big dictionary suggests why, for there are a dozen different senses listed there. Left unfettered, convention wanders freely (...) from conventional wisdom through conventional medicine, conventions of art and "conventions of morality" to conventions of bidding in bridge.2 Surely it is unwise to try to fell these all with a single stone. Lewis's original goal, however, pursued further in (Lewis 1975), was to describe the conventionality of language, and this may be a more reasonable target. (shrink)

Though short in physical stature, Dr. J. Allen Hynek is the towering figure in the study of unidentified flying objects, an enterprise that has attracted an astounding amount of public interest and in part responsive attendant effort and investigation by governments worldwide over the last 70 years. Yet the lack of recognition accorded Hynek beyond that of his name and a few associated phrases is merely one of the many contradictions in the life and work of the man. From 1948 (...) to 1970 he was the U.S. Air Force’s top consultant to its public Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) program, studied thousands of its cases, and figured in many of its controversies. Hynek’s The UFO Experience is arguably the best book written on the subject,[1] and he left an enduring legacy by founding the Center for UFO Studies in 1973, its publications setting a high standard for work on the subject and fostering a number of disciples and other researchers who have interacted with them over the years. Hynek’s matrix for evaluating UFO reports by “strangeness” and witness credibility allowed a determination of the probative value of those reports; his basic six-category system of reported UFO phenomena has dominated the discussion since its first publication in 1972; and the “Close Encounters” subset of that system has, along with Hynek’s rather unfortunate “swamp gas” statement, for better or worse become part of the popular lexicon. Those interested in UFOs will remember Hynek mostly as the consultant to Project Blue Book who turned his back on the USAF attempts to whitewash the subject, coming to advocate serious study of unidentified flying objects. A smaller group of academics and technical people know of the scientist Hynek, highly regarded both for tangible accomplishments in astronomy, but also as champion of interpersonal techniques and changed attitudes as to how the astronomical community conducted its efforts. Numerous university graduates will remember Hynek the teacher and administrator. (shrink)

UFO studies are stuck in a rut. Mark Rodeghier, the Director of CUFOs (The Center for UFO Studies) states that “the field has been stagnating and has run afoul on the rocks of abductions, government coverups/disclosure, and the lack of quality sightings.” UFOs: Reframing the Debate is an anthology of fourteen essays edited by Robbie Graham, and an attempt to respond to that morass by creating a radical new perspective on UFOs. The very first essay, by Canadian science writer Chris (...) Rutkowski, states the dilemma precisely: “UFO belief becomes cultlike when adherents become closed to any interpretation of UFOs as conventional phenomena, and become something closer to religious zealots.” Unfortunately, that insight characterizes most of rest of the essays in this book. Religious zealots there are, in abundance. UFOs: Reframing the Debate shoots at a high target – the wholesale revisioning of how to approach UFO studies. The contributors intend to alter fundamentally the way we approach the subject. To that end, Graham collects diverse perspectives ranging from a Marxist critique to likening UFO encounters to poltergeist activity. Some of the speculation in these essays is provocative and suggestive. I paused now and again to consider some interesting insights. So the collection does sometimes wing the target – the target being, how to best approach UFO phenomena as a significant field of inquiry, while not locking in to an interpretation of UFO phenomena as physical craft – the “nuts-and-bolts interpretation"? But there are no real bulls-eyes. Lapses in logic, imprecise language, and arguments directed mostly at an ETH (extra-terrestrial hypothesis) or nuts-and-bolts bogeyman undermine the intentions of these highly speculative ruminations. Rejection of materialism results in a never-never land of pure thought. I wanted to reach for a balloon full of dried peas to bang them on the heads as Jonathan Swift suggested we do to bring people back to earth. That lack of grounding undermines the seriousness of this undertaking. (shrink)

Economic Theory normally assumes the so-called homo economicus, a consequential model of rationality. We highlight the main features of this model in opposition to deontology: axiological homogeneity, maximization and agent neutrality. Amartya Sen’s criticism of standard consequentialism copes to those features, and includes commitment and duty in the economic rationality. We analyze his concept of preference to ascertain how far economic rationality can thus go in the direction of deontology. We conclude that, though diminished, the difference between them still remains.

This thesis defends a hedonistic theory of value consisting of two main components. Part 1 offers a theory of pleasure. Pleasures are experiences distinguished by a distinct phenomenological quality. This quality is attitudinal in nature: it is the feeling of liking. The pleasure experience is also an object of this attitude: when feeling pleasure, we like what we feel, and part of how it feels is how this liking feels: Pleasures are Internally Liked Experiences. Pleasure plays a central role in (...) the motivational system such that pleasure tends to influence, and in turn be influenced by, other motivational, dispositional and evaluative states of the agent. While this connection is strong, it is often indirect and contingent - the necessary attitudinal connection is a matter of how pleasure feels, not of how it functions. -/- Part 2 is concerned with the nature of value. What kind of problem is it that value poses, and what ought a theory of value to do? In face of the fundamental disagreements that persist over these questions, we try to gather and systemize what we can agree upon about value, and then develop a theory that accounts for (enough of) those things. Meta-ethical naturalism, as developed here, is the view that value is a natural property, identified via the role “value” plays according to the best systematization of moral and evaluative thought. The theory engaging meta-ethics with the scientific investigation of matters relevant to value: we need to understand the causal processes behind our beliefs in order to make an informed decision about which of the competing theories offers the best explanation of value. Finally, the argument is made that the nature and function of pleasure shows it to play the kind of explanatory role necessary for a sound naturalistic reduction of value: it makes many of our beliefs about value true, and it is causally responsible for most of our attributions and beliefs about value. (shrink)

My purpose in the researching and the writing of this thesis has been to investigate, and to try to explain, Frank Ankersmit's curious shift from his well expressed and firmly held narrativist position of "Narrative Logic", to an arguably contradictory, yet passionately held counter belief in the plausibility of a form of direct historical experience - an authentic unmediated relationship with the past. I am, accordingly, presenting here what I believe to be the most adequate explanatory account of/for Ankersmit's intellectual (...) journey. A journey which, in essence, constituted a substitution of his earlier representational, language centred philosophy of history for what might be taken as a new and mystical non-representational theory. This alternative theory of Ankersmit' s, lacking cognitive foundations, works on the basis of sensations, moods, feelings and therefore a consciousness deemed to be received directly from the past itself, and therein - for this thesis - lies its fatal weakness as a historical theory. Belief in the mystical may be all right at some level, if this is what is wanted, but a mystical experience itself cannot produce a historical re-presentation which is the only way that the past can be presented historically. Thus, I argue that Ankersmit's journey from language to experience - the latter phenomenon being more appropriately situated within the field of sociology/social theory and memory studies - is, in the end, a lost historical cause. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychology is a science in the making, working toward the goal of showing how psychological adaptation underlies much human behavior. The knee-jerk reaction that sociobiology is unscientific because it tells “just-so stories” has become a common charge against evolutionary psychology as well. My main positive thesis is that inference to the best explanation is a proper method for evolutionary analyses, and it supplies a new perspective on the issues raised in Schlinger's (1996) just-so story critique. My main negative thesis (...) is that, like many nonevolutionist critics, Schlinger's objections arise from misunderstandings of the evolutionary approach.Evolutionary psychology has progressed beyond telling just-so stories. It has found a host of ingenious special techniques to test hypotheses about the adaptive significance and proximate mechanisms of behavior. Naturalistic data using the comparative method combined with controlled tests using statistical analyses of data provide good evidence for a variety of hypotheses about behavioral control mechanisms — whether in nonhumans or in humans. For instance, the work of Gangestad and Thornhill on evolved mate preferences and fluctuating asymmetry of body type (FA) is a model of success. As the quantity and quality of evidence increase, we are entitled not just to regard such evolutionary hypotheses as preferable, but also as true. Such studies combine to show that the best explanation of “the psychic unity of humankind” — common patterns across societies, history, and cultures exposed by evolutionists — is the gendered, adapted, evolved species-typical design of the mind. (shrink)

In the science fiction novel Quarantine, Greg Egan imagines a universe where interactions with human observers collapse quantum wavefunctions. Aliens, unable to collapse wavefunctions, tire of being slaughtered by these collapses. In response they erect an impenetrable shield around the solar system, protecting the rest of the universe from human interference and locking humanity into a starless Bubble. When confronting scientific realism and the quantum, many philosophers try to do the theoretical counterpart of this fictional practical strategy. Quantum mechanics is (...) beset with many hard-to-resolve interpretational challenges. Philosophers — appealing to decoherence and coarse-graining — try to put these in a bubble and hope that they can go about their philosophizing as before. My chapter aims to burst this Bubble. (shrink)

The banking sector has been under public scrutiny since the credit crisis of 2007/8, and a range of diagnoses and cures have been offered, particularly in terms of regulatory and financial structures. In the public media, much comment has been made about ethics in the sector, but this has provoked surprisingly little response from academic researchers. This thesis explores the crisis in banking as a moral one, taking Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of virtue ethics as a framework for understanding the careers (...) of Scottish banking leaders. The method used for the study is narrative, and depends both on MacIntyre’s philosophy of tradition-constituted enquiry, and on Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics. Conversations were held with ten leaders of Scottish banking whose careers typically span between 25 and 40 years, and the record of those conversations forms the primary data set for the research. The resulting narratives are frank, rich descriptions of deeply felt changes in a particular mode of working life. This was a way of life characterised up until the 1980s by a well-defined status within local communities, professional expertise and a well-ordered tradition. The deregulation of banking and subsequent structural and technological changes to retail banking services eroded that professional tradition, and replaced it with new modes of work dominated by institutional priorities of sales, profit and growth, rather than by an ethic of professional expertise and customer service. The thesis finds that there are structural barriers to the recovery of a professional ethic in banking. It offers new perspectives on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, particularly in the application of his idea of traditions to mainstream economic activity. It also explores common ground between Gadamer and MacIntyre, proposing ways in which both philosophers can enhance our pursuit of qualitative empirical research. (shrink)

The thesis contrasts two hostile and divergent intellectual paradigms in social sciences: rational choice and critical theory. Both rational choice and critical theory offer contrasting perspectives on the structures of social interaction. However, both critical theory and rational choice theory share overlapping concerns ie., both are preoccupied with determining what rational can mean in the realm of social and political interaction. In the case of rational choice paradigm, instrumental reason forms the cornerstone of the theoretical edifice. Ever since the publication (...) of Jurgen Habermas' The lhemy qf Communicative Action Vol. / and Vol. II instrumental reason has come under severe attack. His critique anchors on a theory of communicative reason. What makes Habermas' work distinctive is that he does not regard instrumental reason as the single inevitable concomitant of modernity. Habermas sees in modernity an alternative way of conceptualising social interaction in terms of communication rather than strategy. So in a way, his work is a challenge to the defenders of modernity aiming to build a unified social science Jurgen Habermas advances the notion of communicative reason as the centerpiece of a social theory as opposed to instrumental reason. By providing a systematic grounding of the concept of reason in human language, he hopes to establish normative basis of critical theory. This model of reaching agreement or consent constitutes a process of dialogue in which reasons are exchanged between participants. This process is perceived to be a joint search for consensus. Such a dialogic concept of collective choice would necessarily work not with fixed preferences to be amalgamated but with preferences that are altered or modified as competing reasons are advanced in the course of discussion. In rational discussion, the only thing supposed to count is the power of better argument. Both rational choice and critical theory conceptualise politics in different ways. Rational choice theories critique democratic mechanisms failing to generate general will. Consequently, the political prescriptions offered are limited government or market. On the contrary, the political implications of Habermas' theory of deliberative democracy is anchored in the notion of liberal public sphere envisaging a cognitivist, rationalist vision in which discourse forms a critical normative basis for evaluating the political and moral principles. (shrink)