Since its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of concerned men and women to the shocking abuse of animals everywhere--inspiring a worldwide movement to eliminate much of the cruel and unnecessary laboratory animal experimentation of years past. In this newly revised and expanded edition, author Peter Singer exposes the chilling realities of today's "factory farms" and product-testing procedures--offering sound, humane solutions to what has become a profound environmental and social as well as moral issue. An important (...) and persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency and justice, Animal Liberation is essential reading for the supporter and the skeptic alike.--From publisher description. (shrink)

Persistence through time is like extension through space. A road has spatial parts in the subregions of the region of space it occupies; likewise, an object that exists in time has temporal parts in the various subregions of the total region of time it occupies. This view — known variously as four dimensionalism, the doctrine of temporal parts, and the theory that objects “perdure” — is opposed to “three dimensionalism”, the doctrine that things “endure”, or are “wholly present”.1 I will (...) attempt to resolve this dispute in favor of four dimensionalism by means of a novel argument based on considerations of vagueness. But before argument in this area can be productive, I believe we must become much clearer than is customary about exactly what the dispute is, for the usual ways of formulating the dispute are flawed, especially where three dimensionalism is concerned. (shrink)

Does natural selection act primarily on individual organisms, on groups, on genes, or on whole species? The question of levels of selection - on which biologists and philosophers have long disagreed - is central to evolutionary theory and to the philosophy of biology. Samir Okasha's comprehensive analysis gives a clear account of the philosophical issues at stake in the current debate.

Why is the future so different from the past? Why does the past affect the future and not the other way round? The universe began with the Big Bang - will it end with a `Big Crunch'? Now in paperback, this book presents an innovative and controversial view of time and contemporary physics. Price urges physicists, philosophers, and anyone who has ever pondered the paradoxes of time to look at the world from a fresh perspective, and throws fascinating new light (...) on some of the great mysteries of the universe. (shrink)

Two of the most important political movements of the late twentieth century are those of environmentalism and feminism. In this book, Val Plumwood argues that feminist theory has an important opportunity to make a major contribution to the debates in political ecology and environmental philosophy. _Feminism and the Mastery of Nature_ explains the relation between ecofeminism, or ecological feminism, and other feminist theories including radical green theories such as deep ecology. Val Plumwood provides a philosophically informed account of the relation (...) of women and nature, and shows how relating male domination to the domination of nature is important and yet remains a dilemma for women. (shrink)

Biophilia is Edward O. Wilson's most personal book, an evocation of his own response to nature and an eloquent statement of the conservation ethic. Wilson argues that our natural affinity for life―biophilia―is the very essence of our humanity and binds us to all other living species.

They are correct that punctuated equilibria apply to sexually reproducing organisms and that morphological evolutionary change is regarded as largely (if not exclusively) correlated with speciation events. However, they err in suggesting that we attribute stasis strictly to "developmental constraints," which represent only one of a set of possible mechanisms that we have suggested for the causes of stasis. Others include habitat tracking and the internal structure of species themselves [for example, (2)].

Ernst Mayr has argued that Darwinian theory discredited essentialist modes of thought and replaced them with what he has called "population thinking". In this paper, I characterize essentialism as embodying a certain conception of how variation in nature is to be explained, and show how this conception was undermined by evolutionary theory. The Darwinian doctrine of evolutionary gradualism makes it impossible to say exactly where one species ends and another begins; such line-drawing problems are often taken to be the decisive (...) reason for thinking that essentialism is untenable. However, according to the view of essentialism I suggest, this familiar objection is not fatal to essentialism. It is rather the essentialist's use of what I call the natural state model for explaining variation which clashes with evolutionary theory. This model implemented the essentialist's requirement that properties of populations be defined in terms of properties of member organisms. Requiring such constituent definitions is reductionistic in spirit; additionally, evolutionary theory shows that such definitions are not available, and, moreover, that they are not needed to legitimize population-level concepts. Population thinking involves the thesis that population concepts may be legitimized by showing their connections with each other, even when they are not reducible to concepts applying at lower levels of organization. In the paper, I develop these points by describing Aristotle's ideas on the origins of biological variation; they are a classic formulation of the natural state model. I also describe how the development of statistical ideas in the 19th century involved an abandoning of the natural state model. (shrink)

I defend a view of the species category, pluralistic realism, which is designed to do justice to the insights of many different groups of systematists. After arguing that species are sets and not individuals, I proceed to outline briefly some defects of the biological species concept. I draw the general moral that similar shortcomings arise for other popular views of the nature of species. These shortcomings arise because the legitimate interests of biology are diverse, and these diverse interests are reflected (...) in different legitimate approaches to the classification of organisms. In the final section, I show briefly how the pluralistic approach can help to illuminate some areas of biological and philosophical dispute. (shrink)

To hold an environmental ethic is to hold that non-human beings and states of affairs in the natural world have intrinsic value. This seemingly straightforward claim has been the focus of much recent philosophical discussion of environmental issues. Its clarity is, however, illusory. The term ‘intrinsic value’ has a variety of senses and many arguments on environmental ethics suffer from a conflation of these different senses: specimen hunters for the fallacy of equivocation will find rich pickings in the area. This (...) paper is largely the work of the underlabourer. I distinguish different senses of the concept of intrinsic value, and, relatedly, of the claim that non-human beings in the natural world have intrinsic value; I exhibit the logical relations between these claims and examine the distinct motivations for holding them. The paper is not however merely an exercise in conceptual underlabouring. It also defends one substantive thesis: that while it is the case that natural entities have intrinsic value in the strongest sense of the term, i.e., in the sense of value that exists independently of human valuations, such value does not as such entail any obligations on the part of human beings. The defender of nature’s intrinsic value still needs to show that such value contributes to the well-being of human agents. (shrink)

In recent years a number of oppressed groups have campaigned vigorously for equality. The classic instance is the Black Liberation movement, which demands an end to the prejudice and discrimination that has made blacks second-class citizens. The immediate appeal of the black liberation movement and its initial, if limited, success made it a model for other oppressed groups to follow. We became familiar with liberation movements for Spanish-Americans, gay people, and a variety of other minorities. When a majority group—women—began their (...) campaign, some thought we had come to the end of the road. Discrimination on the basis of sex, it has been said, is the last universally accepted form of discrimination, practiced without secrecy or pretense even in those liberal circles that have long prided themselves on their freedom from prejudice against racial minorities. (shrink)

In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy brings into a single volume J. Baird Callicott’s decade-long effort to articulate, defend, and extend the seminal environmental philosophy of Aldo Leopold. A leading voice in this new field, Callicott sounds the depths of the proverbial iceberg, the tip of which is “The Land Ethic.” “The Land Ethic,” Callicott argues, is traceable to the moral psychology of David Hume and Charles Darwin’s classical account of the origin and evolution of Hume’s (...) moral sentiments. Leopold adds an ecological vision of organic nature to these foundations. How can an evolutionary and ecological environmental ethic bridge the gap between is and ought? How may wholes—species, ecosystems, and the biosphere itself—be the direct objects of moral concern? How may the intrinsic value of nonhuman natural entities and nature as a whole be justified? In addition to confronting and resolving these distinctly philosophical queries, Callicott engages in lively debate with proponents of animal liberation and rights—finally to achieve an integrated theory of animal welfare and environmental ethics. He critically discusses the land ethic that is alleged to have prevailed among traditional American Indian peoples and points toward a new and equally revolutionary environmental aesthetic. (shrink)

For nearly two thousand years Buddhism has mystified and captivated both lay people and scholars alike. Seen alternately as a path to spiritual enlightenment, an system of ethical and moral rubrics, a cultural tradition, or simply a graceful philosophy of life, Buddhism has produced impassioned followers the world over. The Buddhist saint Nagarjuna, who lived in South India in approximately the first century CE, is undoubtedly the most important, influential, and widely studied Mahayana Buddhist philosopher. His many works include texts (...) addressed to lay audiences, letters of advice to kings, and a set of penetrating metaphysical and epistemological treatises. His greatest philosophical work, the Mulamadhyamikakarika--read and studied by philosophers in all major Buddhist schools of Tibet, China, Japan, and Korea--is one of the most influential works in the history of Indian philosophy. Now, in The Foundations of the Philosophy of the Middle Way, Jay L. Garfield provides a clear and and eminently readable translation of Nagarjuna's seminal work, offering those with little of no prior knowledge of Buddhist philosophy a view into the profound logic of the Mulamadhyamikakarika. Translated from the Tibetan, the tradition through which Nagarjuna's philosophical influence has largely been transmitted, Garfield presents a superb translation of Mulamadhyamikakarika in its entirety. Illuminating the systematic character of Nagarjuna's reasoning, as well as the works profundity, Garfield shows how Nagarjuna develops his doctrine that all phenomena are empty of inherent existence and essenceless. But, he argues, phenomena nonetheless exist conventionaly, and that indeed conventional existence and ultimate emptiness are in fact the same thing. This represents the radical understanding of the Buddhist doctrine of the two truths, or two levels of reality. Nagarjuna reinterprets all of Buddhist metaphysics and epistemology through this analytical framework--"a systematic and beautifully elegant philosophical dissection of reality." In turn, Garfield goes on to offer the only verse-by-verse commentary based upon the Indo-Tibetan Prasangika-Madhyamika reading of Nagarjuna, the school most influential in the development of Mahayana philosophy in Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan. Written specifically for the Western reader, the commentary explains Nagarjuna's positions and arguments in the language of Western metaphysics and epistemology, and connects Nagarjuna's concerns tho those of Western philosophers such as Sextus, Hume, and Wittgenstein. A fascinating and accessible translation of the foundational text for all Mahayana Buddhism text, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way will enlighten all those in search of the essence of reality. (shrink)

This book initiates a conversation between the two traditions showing how concepts and tools drawn from one philosophical tradition can help solve problems ...

The article defends the doctrine that Linnaean taxa, including species, have essences that are, at least partly, underlying intrinsic, mostly genetic, properties. The consensus among philosophers of biology is that such essentialism is deeply wrong, indeed incompatible with Darwinism. I argue that biological generalizations about the morphology, physiology, and behavior of species require structural explanations that must advert to these essential properties. The objection that, according to current “species concepts,” species are relational is rejected. These concepts are primarily concerned with (...) what it is for a kind to be a species and throw little light on the essentialist issue of what it is for an organism to be a member of a particular kind. Finally, the article argues that this essentialism can accommodate features of Darwinism associated with variation and change. (shrink)

The Indian philosopher Acarya Nagarjuna (c. 150-250 CE) was the founder of the Madhyamaka (Middle Path) school of Mahayana Buddhism and arguably the most influential Buddhist thinker after Buddha himself. Indeed, in the Tibetan and East Asian traditions, Nagarjuna is often referred to as the "second Buddha." This book presents a survey of the whole of Nagarjuna's philosophy based on his key philosophical writings. His primary contribution to Buddhist thought lies in the further development of the concept of sunyata or (...) "emptiness." For Nagarjuna, all phenomena are without any svabhava, literally "own-nature" or "self-nature," and thus without any underlying substance. Particular emphasis is put on discussing Nagarjuna's thinking as philosophy. The present discussion shows how his thoughts on metaphysics, epistemology, the self, language, and truth present a unified theory of reality with considerable systematic appeal. The book offers a systematic account of Nagarjuna's philosophical position. It reads Nagarjuna in his own philosophical context, but also shows that the issues of Indian and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy have at least family resemblances to issues in European philosophy. (shrink)

Foreword -- Preface -- Introductory -- What is Gaia? -- Exploring Daisyworld -- The Archean -- The middle ages -- Modern times -- The contemporary environment -- The second home -- God and Gaia -- Gaia since 1988 -- Epilog -- References -- Further Reading -- Index.

The ethical foundations of the “animal liberation” movement are compared with those of Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic,” which is taken as the paradigm for environmental ethics in general. Notwithstanding certain superficial similarities, more profound practical and theoretical differences are exposed. While only sentient animals are moraIly considerable according to the humane ethic, the land ethic includes within its purview plants as weIl as animals and even soils and waters. Nor does the land ethic prohibit the hunting, killing, and eating ofcertain (...) animal species, in sharp contrast to the humane ethic. The humane ethic rests upon Benthamic foundations: pain is taken to be the ultimate evil and it is reductive or atomistic in its moral focus. The land ethic, on the other hand, is holistic in the sense that theintegrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community is its summum bonum. A classical antecedent of some of the formal characteristics of the land ethic is found in Plato’s moral philosophy. Special consideration is given to the differing moral status of domestic and wild animals in the humane and land ethics and to the question of moral vegetarianism. (shrink)

I present the foundational structure for a life-centered theory of environmental ethics. The structure consists of three interrelated components. First is the adopting of a certain ultimate moral attitude toward nature, which I call “respect for nature.” Second is a belief system that constitutes a way of conceiving of the natural world and of our place in it. This belief system underlies and supports the attitude in a way that makes it an appropriate attitude to take toward the Earth’s natural (...) ecosystems and their life communities. Third is a system of moral rules and standards for guiding our treatment of those ecosystems and life communities, a set of normative principles which give concrete embodiment or expression to the attitude of respect for nature. The theory set forth and defended here is, I hold, structurally symmetrical with a theory of human ethics based on the principle of respect for persons. (shrink)

Biologists and philosophers of biology typically regard essentialism about speciesas incompatible with modern Darwinian theory. Analytic metaphysicians such asKripke, Putnam and Wiggins, on the other hand, believe that their essentialist thesesare applicable to biological kinds. I explore this tension. I show that standard anti-essentialist considerations only show that species do not have intrinsic essential properties. I argue that while Putnam and Kripke do make assumptions that contradict received biological opinion, their model of natural kinds, suitably modified, is partially applicable to (...) biological species. However, Wiggins'' thesis that organisms belong essentially to their species is untenable, given modern species concepts. I suggest that Putnam''s, Kripke''s and Wiggins'' errors stem from adopting an account of the point of scientific classification which implies that relationally-defined kinds are likely to be of little value, an account which is inapplicable to biology. (shrink)

Environmental Ethics is a systematic account of values carried by the natural world, coupled with an inquiry into duties toward animals, plants, species, and ecosystems. A comprehensive philosophy of nature is illustrated by and integrated with numerous actual examples of ethical decisions made in encounters with fauna and flora, endangered species, and threatened ecosystems. The ethics developed is informed throughout by ecological science and evolutionary biology, with attention to the logic of moving from what is in nature to what ought (...) to be. The ethical theory is applied in detail to social, public, and business policy. Written in an engaging style, using diagrams and figures as well as numerous case studies, Environmental Ethics prods the reader into concrete application and invites reader participation in the ethical discussions. The ethics concludes by exploring the historical experiences of personal residence in a surrounding environment. Here is an adventure into what it means to live as responsible human beings in the community of life on Earth. In the series Ethics and Action, edited by Tom Regan. (shrink)

Buddhism enthusiasts that the tathAgatagarbha sources were themselves aware of the criticism that they simply taught an Atman in the same way that non- Buddhists did, and they rejected this accusation and defended themselves against the ...

Within a year of each other, three one-volume general dictionaries of philosophy have recently appeared; when our future colleagues in philosophy look back on the 1990s they may well think of it as the decade of reference works. But however productive these years may prove to be in this genre, clearly visible somewhere around the top of the heap will be this handy, useful, entertaining, and instructive contribution from Simon Blackburn. Its two immediate competitors are the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, (...) edited by Robert Audi, and the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, edited by Ted Honderich. No detailed comparison will be attempted here, but two points stand out as obviously giving Blackburn’s dictionary a rather different use and flavor from the others: while containing a closely comparable number of entries, it is distinctly shorter and handier in format; and it has all been written by a single author. (shrink)

In this book I advance an argument concerning the nature of the deep ecology approach to ecophilosophy. In order to advance this argument in as thorough a manner as possible, I present it within the context of a comprehensive overview of the writings on deep ecology.

This classic work is reissued with a new preface by the author. Written for non-scientists the idea is put forward that life on Earth functions as a single organism.

This is the first book-length treatment of the metaphysical foundations of ecological ethics. The author seeks to provide a metaphysical illumination of the fundamental ecological intuitions that we are in some sense `one with' nature and that everything is connected with everything else. Drawing on contemporary cosmology, systems theory and the history of philosophy, Freya Mathews elaborates a new metaphysics of `interconnectedness'. She offers an inspiring vision of the spiritual implications of ecology, which leads to a deepening of our conception (...) of conservation. (shrink)

A philosophy of shared creative experience.--What metaphysics is.--Present prospects for metaphysics.--Abstraction: the question of nominalism.--Some principles of method.--A logic of ultimate contrasts.--Wittgenstein and Tillich: reflections on metaphysics and language.--Non-restrictive existential statements.--Events, individuals and predication: a defence of event pluralism--The prejudice in favor of symmetry.--The principle of dual transcendence and its basis in ordinary language.--Can there be a priori knowledge of what exists?--Ideas of God: an exhaustive division.--Six theistic proofs.--Sensory qualities and ordinary language.--The aesthetic matrix of value.

Emptiness means that all entities are empty of, or lack, inherent existence - entities have a merely conceptual, constructed existence. Though Nagarjuna advocates the Middle Way, his philosophy of emptiness nevertheless entails nihilism, and his critiques of the Nyaya theory of knowledge are shown to be unconvincing.

The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed a growing interest in Buddhism, and it continues to capture the imagination of many in the West who see it as either an alternative or a supplement to their own religious beliefs. Numerous introductory books have appeared in recent years to cater to this growing interest, but almost none devotes attention to the specifically ethical dimensions of the tradition. For various complex cultural and historical reasons, ethics has not received as much attention (...) in traditional Buddhist thought as it has in the West. Written by Damien Keown, one of the few experts worldwide who specializes in the area, Buddhist Ethics illustrates how Buddhism might approach a range of contemporary morals ranging from abortion to euthanasia, sexuality to cloning, and even war and economics. (shrink)

This study in cross-cultural hermeneutics examines the role that modern, Western philosophy has played in the interpretation of Nagarjuna's Madhyamikakarika, a second-century Indian-Buddhist text. Tuck locates a structure of distinct phases or "styles" in modern, philosophical history. These phases, Tuck shows, exhibit discontinuous interpretive biases, as well as continuity of hermeneutic intention. Discovering in each philosophical era a chaacteristic attitude towards the text--whether privilege, objectivity, or neutrality--Tuck argues that the continual reinterpretation of earlier scholarly readings is in fact at the (...) core of fruitful hermeneutic pursuit. (shrink)

This paper provides a philosophical analysis of the ongoing controversy surrounding R.A. Fisher's famous ‘fundamental theorem’ of natural selection. The difference between the ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ interpretations of the theorem is explained. I argue that proponents of the modern interpretation have captured Fisher's intended meaning correctly and shown that the theorem is mathematically correct, pace the traditional consensus. However, whether the theorem has any real biological significance remains an unresolved issue. I argue that the answer depends on whether we accept (...) Fisher's non-standard notion of environmental change, on which the theorem rests; arguments for and against this notion are explored. I suggest that there is a close link between Fisher's fundamental theorem and the modern ‘gene's eye’ view of evolution. Introduction What Does the Fundamental Theorem Say? Key Concepts Explained Alleged Significance of the FTNS Traditional versus Modern Interpretations of the FTNS The Modern Interpretation Illustrated Fisher's Concept of ‘Environmental Change’ Causality and the Modern Interpretation The Significance of the FTNS Re-considered Appendix CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Cognitive definitions cannot accommodate fear as it occurs in species incapable of sophisticated cognition. Some think that fear must, therefore, be noncognitive. This paper explores another option, arguably more in line with evolutionary theory: that like other "biological universals" fear admits of variation across and within species. A paradigm case of such universals is species: it is argued that they can be defined by ostension in the manner of Putnam and Kripke without implying that they must have an invariable essence. (...) Emotions can be defined in this way too, in principle, but the theoretical understanding of homology necessary to do so is lacking at present. (shrink)