Are institutional principles of justice subject to a minimal realism constraint to the effect that, in order to be valid, they must not make wildly unrealistic demands? Most of us say “yes.” David Estlund says, “no.” However, while Estlund holds that 1) institutional principles of justice are not subject to a minimal realism constraint, he accepts that 2) institutional principles of justice are subject to an *attainability constraint* to the effect that, in order to be valid, they (...) must not make demands we are unable to meet; and 3) what he calls “institutional proposals” are subject to a minimal realism constraint. I argue that these three theses do not represent a plausible combination, at least given Estlund’s account of the principle/proposal distinction. Given this account, Estlund is either wrong to reject a minimal realism constraint on institutional principles of justice, or wrong to accept an attainability constraint on institutional principles of justice and/or a minimal realism constraint on institutional proposals. Either way, this has significant implications for the plausibility of his overall case against the minimal realism constraint on institutional principles of justice. (shrink)

Though many ethicists have the intuition that we should leave nature alone, Kyle Johannsen argues that we have a duty to research safe ways of providing large-scale assistance to wild animals. Using concepts from moral and political philosophy to analyze the issue of wild animal suffering (WAS), Johannsen explores how a collective, institutional obligation to assist wild animals should be understood. He claims that with enough research, genetic editing may one day give us the power to safely (...) intervene without perpetually interfering with wild animals’ liberties.---------------Questions addressed include: In what way is nature valuable and is interference compatible with that value? Is interference a requirement of justice? What are the implications of WAS for animal rights advocacy? What types of intervention are promising?---------------Expertly moving the debate about human relations with wild animals beyond its traditional confines, Wild Animal Ethics is essential reading for students and scholars of political philosophy and political theory studying animal ethics, environmental ethics, and environmental philosophy. (shrink)

Significant disagreement remains in ethics about the duties we have towards wild animals. This paper aims to mediate those disagreements by exploring how they are supported by, or diverge from, the common-sense ethical principles of non-maleficence, beneficence, autonomy and justice popular in medical ethics. We argue that these principles do not clearly justify traditional conservation or a ‘hands-off ’ approach to wild-animal welfare; instead, they support natural negative duties to reduce the harms that we cause as well (...) as natural positive duties to promote the welfare of wild animals. (shrink)

This book defends an account of justice to nonhuman beings – i.e., to animals, plants etc. – also known as ecological or interspecies justice, and which lies in the intersection of environmental political theory and environmental ethics. More specifically, against the background of the current extinction crisis this book defends a global non-ranking biocentric theory of distributive ecological/interspecies justice to wild nonhuman beings, because the extinction crisis does not only need practical solutions, but also an account (...) of how it is the outcome of large-scale injustice. This book not only provides a novel theoretical framework that supports such a claim, but it also develops the theoretical tools to find just compromises between the entitlements of intraspecies and intra-human global distributive justice to ecological space for the purpose of working towards a vision of just conservation. -/- Content: 1. Introducing Ecological Justice 2. Political Non-Ranking Biocentrism 3. The Community of Justice 4. The Currency of Distributive Justice 5. The Principles of Distributive Justice 6. Ecological Justice and the Capabilities Approach 7. Biodiversity Loss: An Injustice? 8. Who Owns the Earth? 9. Visions of Just Conservation 10. Outlook for Implementation . (shrink)

In this essay, I review one of my beloved fictional titles, Wild Wise Weird: The Kingfisher Story collection. The minimal sense of humor and satire in storytelling of Wild Wise Weird are sure to bring readers smiles, better yet, moments of quiet reflection, a much under-appreciated remedy in the world driven almost insane with the abundance of information co-created with AI technologies. I hope to deliver justice to the book.

This article examines and rejects the view that nonhuman animals cannot be recipients of justice, and argues that the main reasons in favor of universal human rights and global justice also apply in the case of the international protection of the interests of nonhuman animals. In any plausible theory of wellbeing, sentience matters; mere species membership or the place where an animal is born does not. This does not merely entail that regulations of the use of animals aimed (...) at reducing their suffering should be implemented. It actually supports the end of such use, as well as other positive steps to provide help and to promote what is good not only for domesticated animals, but also for those living in the wild. Another reason to bring the protection of animals' interests into the international arena is that it is at this level that numerous animal exploitation industries enjoy the protection of different agreements and institutions. It does not follow from this that changing international law should be animal advocates' first priority, but it does follow that they should conduct their work internationally and not limit it to their own countries. (shrink)

“Philosophy isn’t useful for changing the world,” parents of philosophy students and Karl Marx tell us (at least about non-Marxist philosophy). Cristina Bicchieri’s new book Norms in the Wild provides an impressive antidote against this worry. It stands to change of social practices as Che Guevara’s Guerrilla Warfare stands to political revolutions. Bicchieri combines hands-on advice on how to change social practices with compelling theoretical analyses of social norms. She draws heavily on her influential earlier work on norms, but (...) the book doesn’t presuppose familiarity with it. Many of her examples stem from her work with UNICEF and other NGOs; they include female genital cutting, open defecation, child marriage, and many more. I cannot do full justice to Bicchieri’s rich book here, but will instead focus on three points. 1. Bicchieri offers a detailed and helpful botanization of collective behavior. Purely behavioral definitions of the relevant categories are inadequate. We must look at preferences and beliefs in order to know, e.g., whether something is a social norm. 2. Intentionally changing social norms is a complex process that requires several steps and extensive diagnostics. Simple information campaigns or provision of resources are unlikely to be successful. 3. Trendsetters and scripts often play a crucial role in norm change. Any approach that doesn’t look at psychological mechanisms and variables that are unevenly distributed across the population is inadequate. (shrink)

Breaking with the orthodoxy, Compassionate Conservationists have taken issue with the way that individual wild animals are routinely sacrificed for the sake of species preservation or for the good of the ecosystem. Though explicitly aligning themselves with virtue ethics, there has been some confusion about what this means in practice. How is the perfectly compassionate person to act when the choice is between intentionally harming animals and protecting biodiversity? And what if the choice is between direct and indirect harm (...) to animals? Some critics suggest that when faced with these kinds of conflicts of value, Compassionate Conservationists will invariably base their choices either on the arbitrary feelings an action elicits in them, or else revert back to the decision-making procedures that characterize Traditional Conservation. In response, I argue (first) that these critics fail to appre- ciate that compassion often plays an essential role in moral deliberation. Second, that being compassionate matters even if it does not end up having a discernable effect on what one chooses to do. When one is faced with a tragic predicament in which harming individual animals is unavoidable, for instance, it matters here that one respond with an appropriate compassion. Third, that even when a situa- tion’s difficulty requires one to appeal to the impersonal norms of justice, here too it is required that one proceed with compassion. I end by illustrating these points through the close consideration of a case study: New Zealand’s controversial preda- tor extermination campaign. (shrink)

Anslem raised a puzzle about mercy: How can anyone (God, say, or a judge) be both just and merciful at the same time? For it seemed to Anselm that justice requires giving people what they deserve, while being merciful involves treating people less harshly than they deserve. This puzzle has led to a number of analyses of mercy. But a strange thing emerges from discussions of this topic: people seem to have wildly divergent intuitions about putative cases of mercy. (...) Examples that are taken by some to be paradigm cases of mercy are seen by others to be clear instances of non-mercy. This phenomenon gives rise to a new puzzle: Why is it that people seem to have such wildly divergent intuitions about putative examples of mercy? This paper proposes a new analysis of mercy that provides solutions to both of these puzzles about mercy. (shrink)

This paper is a philosophical discussion about the link between utopianism and responsibility. It argues that our time demands a strong practice of political responsibility in both organizations and society based on what has been called ‘real utopianism’. It takes as a starting point Hans Jonas’ critique of utopianism. Keeping in mind the horrors of the Second World War this Jewish thinker disconnected the principle of responsibility from the idea of utopianism, and connected it to a ‘heuristics of fear’ – (...) we should be careful with ‘wild’ new technologies, but also with new utopian perspectives. In a second step Jonas’ predecessors and utopian thinkers Martin Buber, Ernst Bloch and Ernest Callenbach are revisited. They show that a fully conceptualized idea of utopianism includes at least three dimensions of responsibility: subsistence, justice and spirituality. I then argue that if one digs deeper into the work of Jonas, it seems that the concept of responsibility in fact implies the courage to overcome a heuristics of fear. This paper therefore argues that there is no need to radically disjunct responsibility from utopianism and that the concept of responsibility actually opens a path to ‘real utopianism’. Such a concept of responsibility can best be supported by a confessionally neutral but nonetheless spiritual eco-humanist worldview that develops a new attitude towards nature, in which (eco)asceticism, morality and spirituality become intertwined. (shrink)

Comparative religion scholar Thomas Berry’s influential concept of “Earth jurisprudence” has been helpfully elaborated in three principal books. My first section identifies four of their common themes, deriving therefrom an implicit narrative: (1) the basis of ecology is autopoiesis, which (2) originally generated human communities and Indigenous vernacular laws, which were (3) later reasserted by forest defenders who fought to create the Magna Carta’s “Charter of the Forest,” which is (4) now championed globally by the Indian physicist and eco-activist Vandana (...) Shiva’s Earth Democracy movement. My next three sections identify mutually exclusive elements of the three books, deriving the following alternative narrative: self-conscious new dancing rituals (Cullinan) could empower an historically informed reconstruction of private property (Burdon) via commons-based vernacular law (Weston and Bollier). And my conclusion offers one template for such a strategy, namely a new environmental variation on my dancing-poetic conception of legal justice, christened “emerald star-law.”. (shrink)

Bad philosophy is responsible for the climate and nature crises, and other global problems too that threaten our future. That sounds mad, but it is true. A philosophy of science, or of theatre or life is a view about what are, or ought to be, the aims and methods of science, theatre or life. It is in this entirely legitimate sense of “philosophy” that bad philosophy is responsible for the crises we face. First, and in a blatantly obvious way, those (...) institutions, organizations, corporations, businesses, endeavours, and activities of humanity that cause the crises and global problems we face, do so because of the aims they pursue (profit perhaps, or power, or heat and light for homes), and the methods adopted in pursuit of those aims – the philosophy in other words, built into the institution, organization, business, human activities, or whatever it may be. It is the philosophy of these institutions, organizations and activities that we need to change to put a stop to, or at least lessen the severity of, the crises we face, the global problems that confront us, above all the climate and nature crises. One institution has an especially crucial role in this respect: our universities. They are dominated in a multitude of ways by a particularly disastrous philosophy, a philosophy of inquiry which may be called knowledge-inquiry. This holds that the basic aim of the university is to acquire and apply knowledge. First, knowledge is to be acquired; once acquired, it can be applied to help solve social problems. But this philosophy of knowledge-inquiry is an intellectual disaster. As a result, universities are, in devastating and almost entirely unrecognized ways, humanitarian disasters too. Judged from the standpoint of helping to promote human welfare, the university shaped by the philosophy of knowledge-inquiry violates THREE of the four most elementary rules of rational problem solving conceivable in a wholesale, structural fashion, and it is this gross, wholesale, structural irrationality of the university, unnoticed by all but a few scientists and scholars, that is in part responsible for the creation of our grave global problems, and our current incapacity to learn how to solve them. The pursuit of knowledge, conducted in universities, within the framework of knowledge-inquiry over the decades and centuries, has produced much of great benefit to humanity. It has made the modern world possible. It has led to modern power production, modern industry and armaments, modern agriculture, modern hygiene and medicine, modern travel and communications, and the internet. But these very successes have also created many of our most serious current global problems: the climate crisis; the destruction of natural habitats, the catastrophic loss of wild life, and impending mass extinction of species (the nature crisis); the lethal character of modern war; the impact on the natural world of the rapid growth of the human population; the menace posed by nuclear weapons; pollution of earth, sea and air; threats to democracy caused in part by the internet and social media. All these grave global problems have been made possible by modern science and technology, pursued largely in universities within the framework of knowledge-inquiry. Nevertheless, it is not science and technology as such that are the problem, but science pursued in a way that is dissociated from a more fundamental task of the university to help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, so that progress may be made to a better world. Science and technology, pursued within the framework of knowledge-inquiry, create for some of us the power to act, but not the power to act wisely – not the power to learn how to resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways. For that, we need our institutions of learning, above all our universities, to take as their primary task to help humanity learn how to do it. In order to do that, the philosophy of inquiry put into practice by universities needs to be dramatically transformed. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in the overall aims and methods of academic inquiry – a revolution in the philosophy of the university, all around the world, wherever possible, so that the basic aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom, construed to be the capacity, active endeavour, and perhaps desire, to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, wisdom in this sense including knowledge, understanding and technological know-how, but much else besides, methods being dramatically modified too so as to help achieve the new academic aim. The basic task of the university would be, not to solve problems of knowledge, but rather to help people in the social world beyond the university to resolve conflicts and problems of living so that what is of value in life may be realized by everyone, insofar as that is possible. The pursuit of knowledge would be vital, but not intellectually fundamental. The intellectual and institutional revolution we so urgently need in our universities would affect every discipline and aspect of the university; it would dramatically affect both research and education, and the whole way the university is related to the rest of the social world. The revolution, from knowledge-inquiry to wisdom-inquiry would dramatically enhance the intellectual integrity and rationality of natural science, social inquiry, the humanities and technology, the character of these disciplines and the relationships they have with one another. University education throughout the university would be dramatically improved. And academic inquiry as a whole would do what, on the whole, it fails to do at present: it would help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational and, as a result, increasingly successful ways, progress at last being made to a genuinely good, civilized world – a world in which there is peace, justice, liberal democracy, individual freedom, education, reasonable equality, sustainable prosperity and worthwhile opportunities in life, all of these for everyone, insofar as this is possible. Why, it may be asked, has academic philosophy not noticed that we urgently need to transform the current bad philosophy of inquiry of knowledge-inquiry into the far more intellectually rigorous and humanly valuable philosophy of wisdom-inquiry, so that we can begin to do what so far we have failed to do so lamentably: learn how to avoid impending disasters, and even make progress to a better world, something that seems at present almost unthinkable given the horrors of war, poverty, political enslavement of the 20th century, and the horrors of this century so far too? The answer is that academic philosophy is in a particularly pitiful state, as philosophers themselves, are just beginning to realize and lament. That is why academic philosophers are blind to the intellectual and humanitarian disaster of the bad philosophy that dominates universities today, and inconceivable to them to them that they might have, as a disciplinary task, to ensure academic inquiry implements a good philosophy of inquiry, and advocate and argue for change if it does not. Once upon a time, in Europe at least, philosophy was an intellectual power in the world. In the 17th century it created modern science which massively increased and improved our knowledge and understanding of the world, which in turn led to the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, and the modern world. Philosophy was once so intellectually powerful and influential that it changed the course of history. But philosophy also made in the past three disastrous intellectual blunders: the post-Cartesian blunder, the post-Newtonian blunder, and the Enlightenment blunder. Never acknowledged and corrected by subsequent philosophy right down to the present, these unrecognized intellectual blunders rendered academic philosophy the esoteric, pathetic, and powerless discipline it is today, so that throughout the last century and, so far, throughout this one, academic philosophy has remained blind to the intellectual disaster of knowledge-inquiry, and thus failed entirely to take up its proper disciplinary task of warning fellow academics of the structural irrationality of the philosophy that prevails in the university, and of proposing what steps need to be taken to put things right. Instead of performing such an urgently needed philosophical task, so-called analytic philosophy was reduced to analysing the meaning of words. Since then, there has been hardly any discernible improvement, even if analysis of concepts no longer dominates the scene. Bad academic philosophy is indeed responsible for intellectual and humanitarian failures of the university. What the three past intellectual blunders of philosophy are, why their persistence so dramatically reduces academic philosophy to a triviality, and why, furthermore, this results in the failure of scientists and scholars to see what is so blatantly bad about the philosophy prevailing in universities around the world – the failure to see what so urgently needs to be done to put right what has been wrong for so long: all this is made clear in this book. A new kind of philosophy emerges during the course of the argument, critical fundamentalism, which has as its task to keep alive imaginative and critical – that is rational – thinking about our fundamental problem: How can our human world, the world we experience and live in – the world of living things, people, consciousness, free will, meaning and value – how can all of this exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical universe? That problem encompasses all others of life, science and thought. Critical fundamentalism tries to improve answers to aspects of this problem; but it also seeks to encourage everyone to think about the problem, from time to time, and think about how it interacts, in both directions, with more urgent particular and specialized problems of life and thought. Critical fundamentalism sets out to help improve bad philosophy wherever it is to be found: in social, political, commercial, legal, financial, and international life; and especially in academia, in institutions of learning, so that they become devoted to enhancing the capacity of people to learn how to achieve what is of genuine value in this brief life of a few decades if we are fortunate. Critical fundamentalism does everything it can to bring about the revolution in our universities we so urgently need. If taken up by mainstream philosophy, it might really have an impact, and begin to transform universities for the better, in both intellectual and humanitarian terms, and thus, enable humanity to learn how, after the grim failures and horrors of the last century and this one, to make progress to a better world. -/- . (shrink)

Human rights theory and practice have long been stuck in a rut. Although disagreement is the norm in philosophy and social-political practice, the sheer depth and breadth of disagreement about human rights is truly unusual. Human rights theorists and practitioners disagree – wildly in many cases – over just about every issue: what human rights are, what they are for, how many of them there are, how they are justified, what human interests or capacities they are supposed to protect, what (...) they require of persons and institutions, etc. Disagreement about human rights is so profound, in fact, that several prominent theorists have remarked that the very concept of a “human right” appears nearly criterionless. In my 2012 article, “Reconceptualizing Human Rights”, I diagnosed the root cause of these problems. Theorists and practitioners have falsely supposed that the concept of “human right” picks out a single, unified class of moral entitlements. However, the concept actually refers to two fundamentally different types of moral entitlements: (A) international human rights, which are universal human moral entitlements to coercive international protections, and (B) domestic human rights, which are universal human moral entitlements to coercive domestic protections. Accordingly, I argue, an adequate “theory of human rights” must be a dual theory. The present paper provides the first such theory. First, I show that almost every justificatory ground given for “human rights” in the literature – such as the notion of a “minimally decent human life”, “urgent human interests”, and “human needs” – faces at least one of two fatal problems. Second, I show that after some revisions, James Griffin’s conception of “personhood” provides a compelling justificatory ground for international human rights. Third, I show that the account entails that there are very few international human rights – far fewer than existing human rights theories and practices suggest. Fourth, I show that there are reasons to find my very short list of international human rights compelling: “human rights justifications” for coercive international and foreign policy actions over the past several decades have consistently overstepped what can be morally justified, and my account reveals precisely how existing human rights theories and practices have failed to adequately grapple with these moral hazards. Finally, I outline an account of domestic human rights which fits well with many existing human rights beliefs and practices, vindicating those beliefs and practices, but only at a domestic level. (shrink)

The creation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1973 has significantly altered the dynamics of trade in fauna and flora. Despite this effort, curbing of criminal trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora has remained a key challenge for some countries. The objective of this study was to identify and establish the trafficking routes of illegal wildlife and forest products, analyzing the patterns and trends of wildlife (...) and forest crime including their drivers, actors and modus operandi, and assessing the criminal justice response including the legislative, enforcement, prosecutorial and judicial systems. The analysis was based on the methodologies and principles embedded in African environmental ethics. It was concluded that African ethics allows for ‘sustainable poaching’ under the framework of Eco-Afrocentricism; but condemns poaching done for trafficking purposes. Five canons of sustainability were developed to guide ‘sustainable poaching’. African capitalism thesis was used to support the analysis from political and economic perspectives. (shrink)

What do we mean by ‘reality’? Merging philosophical insights with contemporary art, Tine Wilde lets us consider and contemplate who and what we ‘really’ are. Working on artists’ book Zero Point, the article presents a brief overview of her thoughts, relating a spatial-geometrical perspective to the quest for self-knowledge, and subsequently extrapolating the findings to the notion of unknown knowledge.

Reports of not feeling understood are frequent in testimonies of psychological trauma. I argue that these feelings are not a matter of a cognitive failure but rather an expression of the absence of a more pervasive background feeling of belonging. Contemporary accounts of we-intentionality promise but ultimately fall short in explaining this sense of belonging. Gerda Walther offers an alternative account of communal experiences. Her notion of “habitual unification” can explain the background feelings of belonging that are woven through the (...) individual’s everyday experience of being in a shared world. Having unified with another person, the world feels different. It is now experienced in light of a “we.” This is not only the case in actual, singular person-to-person encounters. Unification with others becomes habitual: it retreats into the background of the individual’s awareness, colouring their experience of the world. Thus sedimented, it forms a background sense of belonging to a shared world. Unification is enabled by experiencing others as being similar in a significant way, such as having the same experiences, values, or basic attitude: in Walther’s words, as being a “human, who also....” This, I shall argue, is impacted through traumatizing experiences. Trauma survivors struggle to experience others as “humans, who also...,” resulting in a failure of unification and thus impeding feelings of belonging. Trauma testimonies also suggest that actively seeking out recognition of similarities and shared aspects of experience may once again enable experiencing others as “humans, who also...,” thus enabling unification and re-establishing a sense of belonging. (shrink)

Publication Zero Point shows the results of a four-years inquiry into the concept of 'measurability'. The book encompasses thirty-eight pictureworks and a philosophical thought experiment. It invites the reader to contemplate and compile their personal 'zero point' as a portrait of God. -/- Measurability appears to be a problematic concept. The boundaries between fixed and fluid; between sharp and vague; between coloured and non-coloured; between love and hate. When does one state of affairs turn into the other? When is something (...) still measurable? And: is it essential for something to be measurable at all? -/- A single drinking glass was the starting point for transformational processes of photographic images into multi-layered pictureworks. Pictorial spaces that are variable and subject to chance in an experimental, unconscious method of choice, chance, inspiration, and demolition. The results of split, remodel, and repeat invite you to explore and contemplate the notions of space and time as a dimension, in which meaning remains something definitely unfinished, but in which measurability is crucial. After all, when there is nothing to hold on to, you have to choose a point of departure from which you can reorganise your life. -/- There are several ways to leaf through the book and engage in its content. Each of the thirty-eight pictureworks is accompanied by a philosophical caption. These captions are part of a larger philosophical deliberation of three countenances which together make a portrait of God. Each caption can be read separately next to the picturework. Each picturework can be enjoyed next to a specific caption. Another way to work with the captions is to read them within their larger con text: unfold the last page of the book, reflect, and search for cross-references next to any particular picturework. (shrink)

How do the pictures Wittgenstein and his relatives took during his life relate to his philosophical work? The exhibition at the Leopold Museum in Vienna in 2021 demonstrated a complex network of resemblances, overlaps, and cross-references between Wittgenstein’s way of working and the pictures he collected. In this essay, the network is used as an example to argue that a combination of philosophy and artistic sensibility might be a fruitful enrichment for a philosophical practise.

How does a coloured bird end up on a TUGboat? This is the story of an artist who studied philosophy and combined her skills in a PhD at the University of Amsterdam (NL). In order to write her dissertation, she had to learn the LaTeX typesetting programme. Many years later, she still makes art and still writes down her thoughts in LaTeX, with the Memoir class and XeLaTeX as first choice. Always trying to stretch the limits of the programme to (...) her convenience. -/- This essay is not a technical article written by a developer conjuring up ingenious innovations to the LaTeX programme. By contrast, it discusses the relationship between LaTeX, art (photography) and the concept of 'measurability' from the perspective of a philosophising artist. (shrink)

Violence turns hope and expectation into guilt and shame. This publication discusses the outcome of a philosophical and artistic investigation into complex patterns of behaviour. Negative connotations and positive aspects of guilt and shame are connected convincingly to the artistic process which is used by the artist to produce new work. As a consequence, a different light is shed on the concepts of guilt and shame. The author shows in an intriguing way how adapting an artistic attitude can help us (...) think in a more peaceful and independent manner. Over Schuld en Schaamte (On Guilt and Shame) thus offers a new surprising insight how violence can be transformed into hope and more rewarding practices. (shrink)

We are living in an increasingly complex world. How are we able to cope with this complexity and the difficulties that arise from it? Can philosophy and art, classified as the two utmost useless and pointless disciplines, have any (positive) influence on the urgent and pressing problems at hand? And, related to this, if the two have more than just their uselessness in common, how, then, are philosophy and art related? In this article, I will argue that although ‘useless’ disciplines (...) such as philosophy and art have no direct influence on our complex world, they are nonetheless the most important ones, because those working within them practice their insights in an indirect way. Indirect influence may take a little longer, but the impact is much stronger, affecting our thinking and our attitudes from within, as it were. This indirect approach has everything to do with the sort of questions philosophers and artists occupy themselves with. I will show how both address, albeit each in their own way, fundamental questions, and thereby make use of thought experiments. Intuition and imagination play a decisive part in the creative processes that are involved in thought experiments and thinking. It is argued that we all are able to learn a ‘delayed unconscious thinking’ that leads to an artistic attitude; one that will activate an artistic turn. (shrink)

The point of Wittgenstein’s remarks on colour concerns, not so much colours as such, as well as our ability to see [that implies both seeing ánd thinking] and our capacity to imagine something. This can be seen from the fact that Wittgenstein relates the notion of ‘seeing aspects’ on the one hand to the colour octahedron in PB, and on the other hand to the colour puzzles as discussed in ROC. This connection between Wittgenstein’s remarks on colour, on seeing aspects (...) and on certainty makes clear that these investigations of Wittgenstein direct us towards a reflective dynamics of his ideas. (shrink)

In this paper I first discuss the colour-octahedron and the position of this model as an idealized system with respect to the remarks on colour-concepts in Remarks on Colour (RC). The next part examines the notion of aspect seeing in the light of the colour-octahedron and RC. From there a connection is made with On Certainty (OC). By linking the remarks on colour, seeing aspects and certainty, it may become clear that the investigations of Wittgenstein concerning colour and certainty direct (...) us towards a reflective dynamics and an anthropological interpretation of his ideas. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the notion of aspect seeing is a substantial tool to shed light on the question whether rule-following is something necessary individual or social and on how this issue is connected to novelty. Bloor's (1997) insights will be used as representative of the social primacy of rule-following and Luntley (2003) will be taken up in order to examine an example of the individual stance. Weighing pros and cons and taking the notion of aspect seeing into (...) account, these insights will lead us to the conclusion not only that the individual and the social are merely constructs, created by us for practical purposes, but also that we tend to overlook our most basic ties with the world, exactly because of these constructs and conventions. If we adopt an artistic meta-view and make use of the philosopher’s reflection, Wittgenstein's emphasis on the importance of ‘everyday life’, also in philosophy, takes on a new meaning. (shrink)

Een onderzoek naar de relatie tussen filosofie en installatiekunst met betrekking tot de vraag naar betekenis.

Remodel[l]ing Reality is an inquiry into Wittgenstein's notion of übersichtliche Darstellung and the phenomenon of installation in visual art. In a sense, both provide a perspicuous overview of a particular part of our complex world, but the nature of the overview differs. Although both generate knowledge, philosophy via the übersichtliche Darstellung gives us a view of how things stand for us, while the installation shows an unexpected, exiting point of view. The obvious we tend to forget and the ambiguity of (...) reality are related to each other in a dynamic way. It is in this reflexive dynamics that we constantly remodel our reality. Tools we use are our creative abilities and our powers of imagination. In our choices and solutions we show which aspects of reality we find important and how we communicate these values. The outcome of this investigation is a new perspective on the art of installation and a new insight in Wittgenstein's notion of übersichtliche Darstellung. Because of this combination, the book is itself an artwork: an InstallationPackage. The book is distributed by Ideabooks Amsterdam, Isbn 978 90 804240 3 6. Remodel[l]ing Reality is included in Special Collections, Allard Pierson Museum Amsterdam. (shrink)

When many people think of bioethics, they think of gripping issues in clinical medicine such as end-of-life decision-making, controversies in biomedical research such as that over work with stem cells, or issues in allocating scarce health-care resources such as organs or money. The term “bioethics” may evoke images of moral controversies being discussed on news programs and talk shows. But this “controversy of the day” focus often treats ethical issues in medicine superficially, for it addresses them as if they could (...) be examined and discussed in isolation from the context in which they are situated. Such a focus on the latest controversies fails to take into account that medicine is a social institution and that the controversies in bioethics often reflect deeper social and moral issues that transcend the boundaries of medicine and ethics. If one moves beyond the issue-of-the-day approach to bioethics, one can see that the field must address these deeper issues. (shrink)

Traumatic experiences do not merely impact on the individual’s body and psyche, they alter the way we experience others, our interpersonal relationships, and how we make sense of the world. In my dissertation, I integrate work in phenomenology, psychopathology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychiatry, and trauma studies, and draw on trauma testimonies ob- tained in an online questionnaire. I engage analytically with the question of what constitutes a trauma, whether psychological trauma is necessarily pathological, and what the causal and (...) im- plicatory relations between traumatising and post-traumatic experiences are. Informed by these preliminary elaborations, I focus on the intersubjective dimension of trauma, drawing on a qualitative study I conducted in 2020. I show that empathic abilities may be altered but are not necessarily diminished through traumatising experiences; I suggest a framework for under- standing feelings of alienation in the aftermath of trauma; and I demonstrate how feelings of belonging may be re-established. My dissertation is exemplary of how phenomenological frameworks can contribute to a better understanding of psychological trauma and that engaging with trauma can, in turn, inform and enrich philosophical thinking. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that Mill’s classification of names as nonconnotative terms is incompatible with Frege’s thesis that names have senses. However, Milldescribed the senses of nonconnotative terms—without being aware that he was doing so. These are the senses for names that were sought in vain by Frege. When Mill’s and Frege’s doctrines are understood as complementary, they constitute a fully satisfactory theory of names.

Phenomenological psychology has emphasized that experience as it is immediately "given" to the experiencing individual is an appropriate subject matter for psychological investigation. Consideration of the methodological implications of this stance suggests that certain text analytic and cluster analytic methods could be used to discern the identifying properties of different types of experience. We present results of a study in which textual analysis was used to identify recurrent properties of participants' verbal accounts of their experience, cluster analysis was used to (...) classify participants' accounts according to the similarity of their profiles of properties, and the resulting clusters were examined for their more or less characteristic prpoerties. Using these methods, three distinct types of experience of a Renaissance painting were identified and described. This demonstration of numerically aided phenomenological methods indicates the compatibility of rigorous and sensitive descriptions of experiential accounts. (shrink)

Amazon Book Review Series of “Wild Wise Weird”.

Frege’s claim that proper names have senses has come to seem untenable following Kripke’s argument that names are rigid designators. It is commonly thought that if names had senses, their referents would vary with circumstances of evaluation. The article defends Frege’s claim by arguing that names have word-reflexive senses. This analysis of names’ senses does not violate Kripke’s noncircularity condition, and it differs crucially from related views of Bach and Katz. That names have reflexive senses confirms Frege’s own solution to (...) his puzzle about the content of identity sentences, solves Kripke’s Pierre and Peter puzzles about belief ascription, and entails that bearerless names have meanings. Furthermore, names’ having reflexive senses explains why they designate rigidly. (shrink)

Das Konzept der Abwägung wird in der praktischen Philosophie ebenso ubiquitär verwendet wie in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften und im Recht. Es ist jedoch voraussetzungsvoller und umstrittener als zumeist angenommen. „Abwägung“ bezeichnet einen Vorgang praktischen Überlegens, in den mehrere Aspekte in vergleichender Weise eingehen. Die Skepsis gegen das Konzept gründet darin, dass sich die Metapher nicht auf beliebige Gegenstände anwenden lässt. Insbesondere müssen die Wertzuschreibungen, die das Gewicht der Gegenstände bestimmen, in ihren normativen Grundlagen widerspruchsfrei sein und sie müssen ähnlich wie die (...) Gewichtskräfte, mit denen Körper auf die Schalen einer Balkenwaage einwirken, eine gewisse Kontextinvarianz aufweisen. Das setzt Unabhängigkeitsannahmen voraus, deren Gültigkeit im Falle normativer Bewertungen nicht trivial ist. Der Band dient dem Zweck, diese Zusammenhänge durchsichtiger zu machen. Er entstand auf der Basis einer mehrjährigen Zusammenarbeit von Autor:innen aus den Fächern Philosophie, Jurisprudenz und Ökonomie. (shrink)

All that philosophical “theories” of truth do is to demonstrate what is entailed by assuming our common uses and common understandings of the concept of truth. But our common understanding of what truth is is only a part of how truth functions. If we only look at that, we are missing the rest of the picture, namely how truth functions as the foundation for all human communication. I propose that truth functions a lot like morality, in the sense that both (...) truth and morality are normative systems that regulate human behaviour. To best understand this we need to imagine why truth was needed in the first place, and what role it plays in human communication as a whole. Here the philosophical approach of defining the “State of Nature” comes into play, and we obtain an account starting with drawing the relevant distinction between humans and non-human animals, and then showing how a crisis could have arisen from the initial development of language and how collective acknowledgement of truth as a default notion could have solved it, in the same way that collective acknowledgement of a moral system solved the problem of cheats and free riders. To do this, I utilize the idea of common pool resource management, as outlined in the work of the Institutional Economist Elinor Ostrom. (shrink)

This paper summarizes (in German) recent tendencies in the philosophy of the life sciences.

Wild Wise Weird represents the latest updated version of The Kingfisher Story Collection, first published in 2022. When first released on September 21, 2022, The Kingfisher Story Collection had a total of 21 stories. Today, Wild Wise Weird has grown to house 42 stories in total. -/- Although The Kingfisher Story Collection has been updated to include all the new stories, I still want to post this version with a shorter title Wild Wise Weird, to mark its (...) second anniversary. -/- Quan-Hoang Vuong -/- September 28, 2024 -/- Hanoi, Vietnam. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to respond to the thoughtful commentaries contained in the 'Wild Animal Ethics' book symposium.

Wild Wise Weird emerges as a distinctive work that merges humor, satire, and social critique into a collection of 42 fables featuring birds, especially the character Mr. Kingfisher, as guides to explore themes of wisdom, human behavior, and environmental awareness. Set in a whimsical bird village, the book offers readers a satirical reflection on society, encouraging contemplation on contemporary issues such as environmental sustainability and human-nature relationships. With wit and depth, Vuong’s storytelling demonstrates remarkable versatility, making Wild Wise (...) Weird a potential classic for readers interested in literary fiction and social allegory, reminiscent of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and Aziz Nesin’s Laugh or lament? (shrink)

This paper explores spatial justice in urban environments through immersive art and design, focusing on Amsterdam and Houston. It presents a case study from the Venice Biennale 2023, showcasing art's potential in fostering inclusive urban spaces. The study delves into the socio-political complexities of urban areas, highlighting often-ignored liminal spaces and their tensions and possibilities. Immersive art emerges as a transformative medium, capable of challenging and reshaping perceptions of space, and addressing systemic socio-economic disparities. Adopting a transdisciplinary approach, the (...) research combines insights from various fields to enrich discussions on spatial justice and inspire urban transformations. (shrink)

Wild Wise Weird: The Kingfisher Story Collection is an imaginative anthology that blends whimsical, wise, and strange tales. Filled with adventures, life lessons, and unique insights, it offers engaging and thought-provoking stories for readers of all ages. Perfect for fans of fantasy and the surreal, this collection captivates and inspires.

The enchanting cover of “Wild Wise Weird: The Kingfisher Story Collection” immediately drew me in, the vivid image of the kingfisher beckoning me into a world filled with rich stories. And rich they truly are. Author Quan-Hoang Vuong has masterfully crafted a collection of captivating fables, each with its own unique charm and moral lesson. -/- Like ancient tales passed down through generations, Vuong’s stories evoke a sense of wonder and connection to our collective cultural heritage. They utilize symbolism, (...) humor, and cleverly crafted animal characters to deliver timeless truths in ways that resonate deeply, no matter your age. While some might see the genre as outdated, the power of these fables lies in their ability to hold a mirror to human behavior and explore universal themes that transcend time and culture. (shrink)

This paper is a summary of my book 'Wild Animal Ethics'.

Historically, laws and policies to criminalize drug use or possession were rooted in explicit racism, and they continue to wreak havoc on certain racialized communities. We are a group of bioethicists, drug experts, legal scholars, criminal justice researchers, sociologists, psychologists, and other allied professionals who have come together in support of a policy proposal that is evidence-based and ethically recommended. We call for the immediate decriminalization of all so-called recreational drugs and, ultimately, for their timely and appropriate legal regulation. (...) We also call for criminal convictions for nonviolent offenses pertaining to the use or possession of small quantities of such drugs to be expunged, and for those currently serving time for these offenses to be released. In effect, we call for an end to the “war on drugs.”. (shrink)

In a recent study published in Scientific Reports, the researchers documented the first wild animal seen using a plant with known medicinal properties to heal a wound.

This book further develops the interventionist literature on wild animal suffering using different theoretical frameworks, including some that have never previously been used to ground our positive duties to wild animals.------------Though we’ve always known that the wild is a nasty place where predators lethally attack prey, only recently have most animal ethicists come to realize that most wild animals fail to flourish. In fact, what we know about wild animal reproduction suggests that the majority of (...) sentient beings born into the world may not even live lives worth living. It’s not unreasonable for one to initially respond to the above with a sense of depressed resignation, but a growing number of ethicists believe that we both can and should intervene. The purpose of this book is to further develop the interventionist literature by bringing together philosophers who agree that we have significant duties to help wild animals, but who use different theoretical frameworks, or who disagree about the details, e.g., about the reasons that ground our obligations to help wild animals, about how those obligations should be classified, about the content of our obligations, about the means we should use to fulfill our obligations, etc.------------This book will be an invaluable resource for scholars, researchers and students of animal ethics, animal welfare, environmental ethics, philosophy, and sustainability. It was originally published as a special issue of the journal Ethics, Policy & Environment. (shrink)

This paper is the introduction to a collection I guest-edited called Positive Duties to Wild Animals. The collection contains single-authored contributions from Catia Faria, Josh Milburn, Eze Paez, and Jeff Sebo; and co-authored contributions from Mara-Daria Cojocaru and Alasdair Cochrane, and Oscar Horta and Dayrón Terán. It was published as a special issue of Ethics, Policy and Environment.

What is a duty of justice? And how is it different from a duty of beneficence? We need a clear account of the contrast. Unfortunately, there is no consensus in the philosophical literature as to how to characterize it. Different articulations of it have been provided, but it is hard to identify a common core that is invariant across them. In this paper, I propose an account of how to understand duties of justice, explain how it contrasts with (...) several proposals as to how to distinguish justice and beneficence, respond to some objections and suggest further elaborations of it. The conceptual exploration pursued in this paper has practical stakes. A central aim is to propose and defend a capacious concept of justice that makes a direct discussion of important demands of justice (domestic and global) possible. Duties of justice can be positive besides negative, they can be imperfect as well as perfect, they can range over personal besides institutional contexts, they can include multiple associative reasons such us non-domination, non-exploitation and reciprocity, and they can even go beyond existing national, political, and economic associative frameworks to embrace strictly universal humanist concerns. We should reject ideological abridgments of the concept of justice that render these possibilities, and the important human interests and claims they may foster, invisible. (shrink)

Many suggest that we should look backward and measure the differences among various parties' past emissions of greenhouse gases to allocate moral responsibility to remedy climate change. Such backward-looking approaches face two key objections: that previous emitters were unaware of the consequences of their actions, and that the emitters who should be held responsible have disappeared. I assess several arguments that try to counter these objections: the argument from strict liability, arguments that the beneficiary of harmful or unjust emissions should (...) pay, and arguments from distributive justice. I argue that none of these successfully justify a backward-looking approach to the temporally remote portion of the climate burden. (shrink)