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Results for 'Ecological civilization'
The Philosophical Foundations of Ecological Civilization: A Manifesto for the Future.Arran Gare - 2017 - London and New York: Routledge.details
The global ecological crisis is the greatest challenge humanity has ever had to confront, and humanity is failing. The triumph of the neo-liberal agenda, together with a debauched 'scientism', has reduced nature and people to nothing but raw materials, instruments and consumers to be efficiently managed in a global market dominated by corporate managers, media moguls and technocrats. The arts and the humanities have been devalued, genuine science has been crippled, and the quest for autonomy and democracy undermined. The (...) resultant trajectory towards global ecological destruction appears inexorable, and neither governments nor environmental movements have significantly altered this, or indeed, seem able to. The Philosophical Foundations of Ecological Civilization is a wide-ranging and scholarly analysis of this failure. This book reframes the dynamics of the debate beyond the discourses of economics, politics and techno-science. Reviving natural philosophy to align science with the humanities, it offers the categories required to reform our modes of existence and our institutions so that we augment, rather than undermine, the life of the ecosystems of which we are part. From this philosophical foundation, the author puts forth a manifesto for transforming our culture into one which could provide an effective global environmental movement and provide the foundations for a global ecological civilization. (shrink)
Toward an Ecological Civilization: The Science, Ethics, and Politics of Eco-Poiesis.Arran Gare - 2010 - Process Studies 39 (1):5-38.details
Chinese environmentalists have called for an ecological civilization. To promote this, ecology is defended as the core science embodying process metaphysics,and it is argued that as such ecology can serve as the foundation of such a civilization. Integrating hierarchy theory and Peircian semiotics into this science,it is shown how "community" and "communities of communities," in which communities are defined by their organization to promote the common good of theircomponents, have to be recognized as central concepts not only (...) of ecology, but of life itself. This perspective is used to defend Lovelock's "Gaia" hypothesis and the call of Prugh, Costanza, and Daly for strong democracy. An ethics and political philosophy is sketched based on "eco-poiesis" or "home-making," which is equated with augmenting the life of communities, both human and non-human. (shrink)
From 'Sustainable Development' to 'Ecological Civilization': Winning the War for Survival.Arran Gare - 2017 - Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 13 (3):130-153.details
The central place accorded the notion of 'sustainable development' among those attempting to overcome ecological problems could be one of the main reasons for their failure. 'Ecological civilization' is proposed and defended as an alternative. 'Ecological civilization' has behind it a significant proportion of the leadership of China who would be empowered if this notion were taken up in the West. It carries with it the potential to fundamentally rethink the basic goals of life and (...) to provide an alternative image of the future. It could both inspire people and provide the cultural foundations for the cultural, social and economic transformations necessary to create a new world order, a world order in which humans augment rather than undermine the ecosystems of which they are part. This paper explicates these implications. (shrink)
From Kant to Schelling to Process Metaphysics: On the Way to Ecological Civilization.Arran Gare - 2011 - Cosmos and History : The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 7 (2):26-69.details
The post-Kantians were inspired by Kant's Critique of Judgment to forge a new synthesis of natural philosophy, art and history that would overcome the dualisms and gulfs within Kant's philosophy. Focusing on biology and showing how Schelling reworked and transformed Kant's insights, it is argued that Schelling was largely successful in laying the foundations for this synthesis, although he was not always consistent in building on these foundations. To appreciate this achievement, it is argued that Schelling should not be interpreted (...) as an idealist but as a process metaphysician; as he claimed, overcoming the oppositions between idealism and realism, spiritualism and materialism. It is also argued that as a process metaphysician, Schelling not merely defended an organic view of nature but developed a theory of emergence and a new conception of life relevant to current theoretical and philosophical biology. This interpretation provides a defense of process metaphysics as the logical successor to Kant's critical philosophy and thereby as the most defensible tradition of philosophy up to the present. It provides the foundations for post-reductionist science, reconciling the sciences, the arts and the humanities, and provides the basis for a more satisfactory ethics and political philosophy. Most importantly, it overcomes the nihilism of European civilization, providing the foundations for a global ecological civilization. (shrink)
From Kant to Schelling to Process Metaphysics: On The Way to Ecological Civilization.Arran Gare - 2011 - Cosmos and History 7 (2):26-69.details
Deep Ecology, the Radical Enlightment, and Ecological Civilization.Arran Gare - 2014 - The Trumpeter 30 (2):184-205.details
With the early success of the deep ecology movement in attracting adherents and with the increasing threat of a global ecological catastrophe, one would have expected this movement to have triumphed. We should be in the process of radically transforming society to create a harmonious relationship between humans and the rest of nature. Instead, deep ecology has been marginalized. What has triumphed instead is an alliance of managerialism, transnational corporations and neo-liberalism committed to replacing communities with markets and transforming (...) every facet of nature and society into means for increasing the profitability of corporations and expanding GDP. This outcome is here explained by the failure of deep ecologists to understand the ideological, political and economic forces driving ecological destruction, and thereby what is required to overcome these. To regain the initiative, it is argued, it will be necessary to recover the whole project of the Radical Enlightenment upholding the Renaissance quest for liberty that was subverted by the scientific materialism and possessive individualism of the Moderate Enlightenment. Not only will it be necessary to transform science to develop a comprehensive alternative conception of nature and humanity and its destiny, it will be necessary to revive and develop the institutions of the Radical Enlightenment to subordinate markets to democratically organized communities at multiple levels, as communities of communities committed to augmenting the life of these communities, including the life of ecological communities. Doing so will involve reformulating the grand narrative of emancipation as a dialogic, polyphonic grand narrative to orient individuals, organizations and nations to create a global ecological civilization. -/- . (shrink)
Toward an Ecological Civilization - An Interview with Arran Gare.A. I. Kopytin & Arran Gare - 2020 - Ecopoiesis: Eco-Human Theory and Practice 1:1-10.details
This interview focuses on Arran Gare's thinking about ecological civilization and its relationship to a new theoretical ecology, strong democracy and political philosophy based on "ecopoiesis" or "home-making." Gare believes that it is possible to create a global ecological civilization that empowers people to augment their ecological communities. Complex transformations of the social and economic organization of societies and a radical upheaval of our conceptions of what it means to be human are required to bring (...) about this change to a new ecological (eco-human) culture. (shrink)
Law, Process Philosophy and Ecological Civilization.Arran Gare - 2011 - Chromatikon: Annales de la Philosophie En Procès / Yearbook of Philosophy in Process 7:133-160.details
The call by Chinese environmentalists for an ecological civilization to supersede industrial civilization, subsequently embraced by the Chinese government and now being promoted throughout the world, makes new demands on legal systems, national and international. If governments are going to prevent ecological destruction then law will be essential to this. The Chinese themselves have recognized grave deficiencies in their legal institutions. They are reassessing these and looking to Western traditions for guidance. Yet law as it has (...) developed in the West, particularly in Anglophone countries, which has crystallized as the tradition of 'liberal legalism', is in a state of crisis. Rather than being taken as a cause for despair at the legal traditions of East and West, this challenge could be taken as an opportunity to fundamentally rethink the basis of the law and its role in society and civilization. To overcome the deficiencies in the theory and practice of law in so-called 'liberal democracies' I will argue here that it will be necessary to revive and develop the philosophies of law associated with the 'Radical Enlightenment'. (shrink)
Philosophy, Civilization, and the Global Ecological Crisis: The Challenge of Process Metaphysics to Scientific Materialism.Arran Gare - 2000 - Philosophy Today 44 (3):283-294.details
Developing MacIntyre's metaphilosophy, Whitehead's contention that philosophy 'is the most effective of all the intellectual pursuits' is elucidated and defended. It is argued that the narratives through which philosophical ideas are evaluated can refigure the stories constituting societies. In this way philosophical ideas become practically effective and come to be embodied in institutions. This is illustrated by the challenge by process philosophy to scientific materialism in the face of an impending global ecological crisis. It is argued that to be (...) successful, process philosophy must be articulated into a grand narrative to challenge the dominant grand narrative of modernity. (shrink)
Barbarity, Civilization and Decadence.Arran Gare - 2009 - Chromatikon: Annales de la Philosophie En Procès / Yearbook of Philosophy in Process 5:167-189.details
In 1984 scientists in the former Soviet Union called for an ecological civilization. This idea was taken up in 1987 in China by Ye Qianji. Subsequently the notion of ecological civilization was promoted by the deputy director of China's State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), Pan Yue, incorporated into the Central Commission Report to the Communist Party's 17th Convention in November, 2007, and embraced as one of the key elements in its political guidelines. Characterized as the successor (...) to agricultural and industrial civilization, it is now being promoted as a goal for the whole of humanity in order to avert a global ecological disaster. The success or failure of this project to create an ecological civilization could determine whether humanity survives. But what does it mean to create an ecological civilization? What does 'civilization' mean, and then what would it mean to create an 'ecological' civilization? This essay seeks to answer this question. (shrink)
Global Climate Destabilization and the Crisis of Civilization.Arran Gare - 2010 - Chromatikon: Annales de la Philosophie En Procès / Yearbook of Philosophy in Process 6:11-24.details
James Hansen, the world's leading climate scientist, argues that global climate destabilization could totally destroy the conditions for life on Earth, and further, that politicians are not taking effective action. Instead, they are using their power to cripple science. This situation is explained in this paper as the outcome of the successful alliance between a global class of predators and people who must be recognized as idiots taking over the institutions of government, research and education and transforming governments into governments (...) of occupation. The predators are either indifferent to the suffering they will cause, or have an agenda to use the effects of global warming to cull the world's human population. In either case, their views are legitimated by social Darwinism. By revealing their true nature, this alliance has exposed a rift in the civilization of modernity, revealing the suppressed tradition and trajectory of the Radical Enlightenment. With its roots in the Renaissance, the Radical Enlightenment is opposed to reductionist materialism and committed to truth, liberty, justice and democracy. To revive the grand narrative of the Radical Enlightenment it will be necessary to reemplot this grand narrative as a project for creating an Ecological Civilization. This will be a civilization based on process metaphysics and a fusion of science and the humanities in human ecology. The goal projected by this narrative should be to save life on Earth from this alliance of predators and idiots. (shrink)
Consciousness, Mind and Spirit.Arran Gare - 2019 - Cosmos and History 15 (2):236-264.details
The explosion of interest in consciousness among scientists in recent decades has led to a revival of interest in the work of Whitehead. This has been associated with the challenge of biophysics to molecular biology in efforts to understand the nature of life. Some claim that it is only through quantum field theory that consciousness will be made intelligible. Most, although not all work in this area, focusses on the brain and how it could give rise to consciousness. In this (...) paper, I will support this challenge, but I will suggest that the focus of work in this area reflects the failure to fully overcome the assumptions of Cartesian thought, associated above all with a defective understanding of consciousness as a 'thinking substance'. Firstly, as Bergson, Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty argued, consciousness is embodied. Secondly, as Jacob von Uexküll argued, consciousness is only comprehensible in relation to the organism's world defined as such by the organism. Thirdly, in the case of humans, this is a 'with-world', a world shared with others. The consequent social nature of human consciousness is better captured by the German word for mind: Geist, which also translates as 'Spirit'. And as Hegel argued, along with Subjective Spirit, there is also Objective Spirit, the realm of institutions, and Absolute Spirit, the realm of culture, with Subjective, Objective and Absolute Spirit being conditions, and even components, of each other. My argument is that this broader notion of mind as Spirit should be embraced, but without abandoning the work in biophysics. What is required is a further expansion of the notion of mind and Spirit as humanity comes to appreciate that it is part of nature and that it is through the development of institutions and culture that nature, through human subjects, is becoming conscious of itself and its significance. The development of process philosophy inspired by Whitehead, associated with the development of the concepts of field and ecology, should be seen as a development of the semiosphere and the advance of the Spirit of Gaia, essential for the creation of a global civilization able to augment the life of the current regime of the global ecosystem of which we are part. It is to orient humanity to create an ecologically sustainable civilization; an ecological civilization. (shrink)
The Case for Speculative Naturalism.Arran Gare - 2017 - In Arran Gare & Wayne Hudson (eds.), For a New Naturalism. Candor, New York, USA: Telos Press. pp. 9-32.details
C.D. Broad pointed out that philosophy in the Twentieth Century radically reduced its scope by contracting the methods it deployed. While traditionally philosophers had used analysis, synopsis and synthesis to reveal and overcome the inconsistencies of culture, critical philosophers reduced the role accorded to synopsis and eliminated any role for synthesis. This, it is argued, was a disastrous wrong turn that has led philosophers to embrace scientism, equated with naturalism, which has marginalized and reduced to irrelevance not only most of (...) philosophy, but most of the humanities. Showing how such philosophy evolved from one branch of neo-Kantian philosophy, it is argued there was no reason to constrict philosophy in this way. An alternative, more fruitful but largely misrepresented and submerged tradition of philosophical naturalism deriving from Kant is identified, a tradition which can best be characterized as "speculative naturalism". This tradition, unlike the tradition of analytic philosophy, has made major contributions to science, and is allying science and the humanities. As Michail Epstein pointed out, while the practical outcome of natural science is technology, the practical outcome of the humanities is the transformation of culture, and ourselves. It is central to the creation of the future. Philosophy associated with speculative naturalism promises to play a major role in the transformation of culture required to overcome the current global ecological crisis. It could provide the foundation for a new "ecological civilization". (shrink)
Ethics, Philosophy and the Environment.Arran Gare - 2018 - Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 14 (3):219-240.details
Educated people everywhere now acknowledge that ecological destruction is threatening the future of civilization. While philosophers have concerned themselves with environmental problems, they appear to offer little to deal with this crisis. Despite this, I will argue that philosophy, and ethics, are absolutely crucial to overcoming this crisis. Philosophy has to recover its grand ambitions to achieve a comprehensive understanding of nature and the place of humanity within it, and ethics needs to be centrally concerned with the virtues (...) required to create and then sustain economic, social and political formations that augment the life of ecological communities. Achieving these ends will involve reviving speculative philosophy and its quest to forge a synthesis of natural philosophy, history and art to enable humanity to redefine its place in the world, both collectively and as individuals, in very practical ways. Such a synthesis is required to oppose the corrosion of democracy and to revive the virtues of citizenship and the sense of responsibility citizenship entails, but more fundamentally and intimately related to such citizenship, to oppose managerialism and the proletarianization of the workforce and to revive workmanship and professionalism as the foundations of not only economic life, but social and political life. (shrink)
The Grand Narrative of the Age of Re-Embodiments: Beyond Modernism and Postmodernism.Arran Gare - 2013 - Cosmos and History : The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 9 (1):327-357.details
The delusory quest for disembodiment, against which the quest for re-embodiment is reacting, is characteristic of macroparasites who live off the work, products and lives of others. The quest for disembodiment that characterizes modernism and postmodernism, it is argued, echoes in a more extreme form the delusions on which medieval civilization was based where the military aristocracy and the clergy, defining themselves through the ideal forms of Neo-Platonic Christianity, despised nature, the peasantry and in the case of the clergy, (...) women. This argument is used to expose and reveal the oppressive and ecologically destructive drive underlying the aspirations of the dominant classes in the modern/postmodern world to disembodiment, whether this be seen as the quest to be unbounded by time and place, to be free of dependence on labour and natural resources, to be free of the humdrum of everyday life by entering 'virtual' worlds, or, as with post-humanists, to overcome the limits of the body by fusing with technology. These modern and postmodern forms of the quest for disembodiment, it is suggested, now threaten civilization, the future of humanity and most terrestrial life. This analysis is used to clarify the liberating mission of the grand narrative for re-embodiment, exemplified by the quest for Inclusive Democracy, Earth Democracy, Ecological Civilization, or for an Ecozoic Age. The grand narrative of the Age of Re-embodiments is shown to be inseparable from the struggle for truth, justice and liberty as central to real democracy empowering people to augment rather than undermine the conditions for life. (shrink)
Creating a New Mathematics.Arran Gare - 2016 - In Ronny Desmet (ed.), Intuition in Mathematics and Physics. Anoka, MN, USA: pp. 146-164.details
The focus of this chapter is on efforts to create a new mathematics, with my prime interest being the role of mathematics in comprehending a world consisting first and foremost of processes, and examining what developments in mathematics are required for this. I am particularly interested in developments in mathematics able to do justice to the reality of life. Such mathematics could provide the basis for advancing ecology, human ecology and ecological economics and thereby assist in the transformation of (...) society and civilization so that we augment life rather than undermining the conditions for our existence. It was in the process of grappling with these problems that I was drawn to investigate the tradition of intuitionism in mathematics and the role of intuition in mathematics, science and philosophy, and then to consider Whitehead's work on mathematics and its philosophy in relation to these. (shrink)
Philosophical Anthropology, Ethics and Political Philosophy in an Age of Impending Catastrophe.Arran Gare - 2009 - Cosmos and History : The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 5 (2):264-286.details
In this paper it is argued that philosophical anthropology is central to ethics and politics. The denial of this has facilitated the triumph of debased notions of humans developed by Hobbes which has facilitated the enslavement of people to the logic of the global market, a logic which is now destroying the ecological conditions for civilization and most life on Earth. Reviving the classical understanding of the central place of philosophical anthropology to ethics and politics, the early work (...) of Hegel and Marx is explicated, defended and further developed by interpreting this through developments in post-mechanistic science. Overcoming the opposition between the sciences and the humanities, it is suggested that the conception of humans developed in this way can orient people in their struggle for the liberty to avert a global ecological catastrophe. (shrink)
Narratives and the Ethics and Politics of Environmentalism: The Transformative Power of Stories.Arran Gare - 2001 - Theory and Science 2 (1):1-10.details
By revealing the centrality of stories to action, to social life and to inquiry together with the implicit assumptions in polyphonic stories about the nature of humans, of life and of physical reality, this paper examines the potential of stories to transform civilization. Focussing on the failure of environmentalists so far in the face of the global ecological crisis, it is shown how ethics and political philosophy could be reconceived and radical ecology reformulated and reinvigorated by appreciating and (...) exploiting the potential of stories. This could enable radical ecologists to effect the major social and economic changes necessary to meet the global ecological crisis. What we need, it is argued, is a new, polyphonic grand narrative. (shrink)
How Destructive Are the Rich, or is J.K. Rowling More Evil Than Me?Michael Starks - 2018 - In Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century : Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization- Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd revised Edition. Las Vegas, Nevada, USA: Reality Press. pp. 202-207.details
How about a different take on the rich and famous? First the obvious—the Harry Potter novels are primitive superstition that encourages children to believe in fantasy rather than take responsibility for the world-- the norm of course. JKR is just as clueless about herself and the world as all the other monkeys, but about 200 times as destructive as the average American and about 800 times more than the average Chinese. She has been responsible for the destruction of maybe 30,000 (...) hectares of forest to produce these trash novels and all the erosion ensuing (not trivial as its ca. 12 tons/year soil into the ocean for everyone on earth or maybe 100 tons per American, and so about 5000 tons/year for Rowling's books and movies and her destructive brood of 3 children). Then there is the huge amount of fuel burned and waste made to make and distribute the books and films, plastic dolls etc. She shows her lack of social responsibility by producing children rather than using her millions to encourage family planning or buy up the rain forest, and by promoting the conventional liberal stupidity of 3rd world supremacy that is destroying Britain, America, the world and her descendant's future. Of course, she's not that different from the other 7.7 billion clueless-just noisier and more destructive. -/- It is the no free lunch problem writ large. The mob just can't see that there is no such thing as helping one person without harming others. Rights or privileges given to new entrants into an overcrowded world can only diminish those of others. In spite of the massive ecological disasters happening in front of them everywhere everyday, they can't pin them to the unrestrained motherhood of "the diverse", which accounts for most of the population increase of the last century and all of that in this one. They lack some combination of intelligence, education, experience and sanity required to extrapolate the daily assaults on the resources and functioning of society to the eventual collapse of industrial civilization. Each meal, each trip by car or bus, each pair of shoes is another nail in the earth's coffin. -/- Not only the rich and famous, but nearly any public figure at all, including virtually all teachers, are pressured to be politically correct, which in the Western Democracies, now means social democratic (diluted communist) third world supremacists working for the destruction of their own societies and their own descendants. So, those whose lack of free speech (and basic common sense), which should prohibit them from making any public statements at all, totally dominate all the media, creating the impression that the intelligent and civilized must favor democracy, diversity and equality, while the truth is that these are the problems and not the solutions, and that they themselves are the prime enemies of civilization. -/- Those who want a broader framework may see my essay 'Suicide by Democracy' or my book 'Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century- Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization-Articles and Reviews 2006-2017'. -/- All of my papers and books have now been published in revised versions both in ebooks and in printed books. -/- Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071HVC7YP. -/- The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071P1RP1B. -/- Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0711R5LGX . (shrink)
Is JK Rowling More Evil Than Me? (Revised 2019).Michael Starks - 2019 - In Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century -- Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization -- Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 4th Edition Michael Starks. Las Vegas, NV USA: Reality Press. pp. 194-199.details
How about a different take on the rich and famous? First the obvious—the Harry Potter novels are primitive superstition that encourages children to believe in fantasy rather than take responsibility for the world-- the norm of course. JKR is just as clueless about herself and the world as most people, but about 200 times as destructive as the average American and about 800 times more than the average Chinese. She has been responsible for the destruction of maybe 30,000 hectares of (...) forest to produce these trash novels and all the erosion ensuing (not trivial as it's at least 6 and maybe 12 tons/year soil into the ocean for everyone on earth or maybe 100 tons per American, and so about 5000 tons/year for Rowling's books and movies and her 3 children). The earth loses at least 1% of its topsoil every year, so as it nears 2100, most of its food growing capacity will be gone. Then there is the huge amount of fuel burned and waste made to make and distribute the books and films, plastic dolls etc. She shows her lack of social responsibility by producing children rather than using her millions to encourage family planning or buy up the rain forest, and by promoting the conventional liberal stupidity of 3rd world supremacy that is destroying Britain, America, the world and her descendant's future. Of course, she's not that different from the other 7.8 billion clueless - just noisier and more destructive. -/- It is the no free lunch problem writ large. The mob just can't see that there is no such thing as helping one person without harming others. Rights or privileges given to new entrants into an overcrowded world can only diminish those of others. In spite of the massive ecological disasters happening in front of them everywhere everyday, they can't pin them to the unrestrained motherhood of "the diverse", which accounts for most of the population increase of the last century and all of that in this one. They lack some combination of intelligence, education, experience and sanity required to extrapolate the daily assaults on the resources and functioning of society to the eventual collapse of industrial civilization. Each meal, each trip by car or bus, each pair of shoes is another nail in the earth's coffin. It has likely never crossed her mind that one seat on a plane from London to San Francisco produces about one ton of carbon which melts about 3 square meters of sea ice and as one of the overprivileged she has probably flown hundreds of such flights. -/- Not only the rich and famous, but nearly any public figure at all, including virtually all teachers, are pressured to be politically correct, which in the Western Democracies, now means social democratic (Neomarxist—i.e., diluted communist) third world supremacists working for the destruction of their own societies and their own descendants. So, those whose lack of education, experience, intelligence (and basic common sense), which should prohibit them from making any public statements at all, totally dominate all the media, creating the impression that the intelligent and civilized must favor democracy, diversity and equality, while the truth is that these are the problems and not the solutions, and that they themselves are the prime enemies of civilization. See my Suicide by Democracy 2nd ed (2019). -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book 'The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle' 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see 'Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)
The Concept of Health and Wholeness in Traditional African Religion and Social Medicine.Onah Gregory Ajima & Eyong Usang Ubana - 2018 - Arts and Social Sciences Journal 9 (4).details
African Traditional Religion and medicine are integral parts of life and culture of the Africans and have greatly influenced their conceptions about human health and wholeness. Their many realities that Africans have not been able to abandon, in spite of the allurements of western civilization, Christianity, Islam and the advances in the biomedical sciences. The aim of this paper is to highlight the meaning of health and wholeness as central issues of concern in African Traditional Religion and Medicine. The (...) misconception, abuse and derogatory attitudes even from some notable Africans towards alternative medicine, as well as the all need of integrating both the alternative and orthodox medicine to bring about total wholeness, serves as the research problem. This paper argued that the biopsycho-socio-ecological model of health and wholeness is fundamental to the African Traditional Religion and Medicine. This model brings together the different aspects of human life and treats the human person as an integral and harmonious whole in perpetual relationship with the sacred, the human community and the environment. This paper therefore recommends that first, Africa has to open to modern medical discoveries and practices and secondly, African Traditional Religion and Medicine concern should be mainstreamed into the medical practice in health care services in contemporary Nigeria. It finally conclude that the alternative medicine despite the arrays of it inadequacies, objections and misconceptions, the practice has come to stay. (shrink)
Near the Omega point: Anthropological-epistemological essay on the COVID-19 pandemic.Valentin Cheshko - 2020 - Practical Philosophy 76 (2):53-62.details
Summary. The prerequisites of this study have three interwoven sources, the natural sciences and philosophical and socio-political ones. They are trends in the way of being of a modern, technogenic civilization. The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant damage to the image of the omnipotent techno-science that has developed in the mentality of this sociocultural type.Our goal was to study the co-evolutionary nature of this phenomenon as a natural consequence of the nature of the evolutionary strategy of our biological species. Technological (...) civilization as a cultural-civilizational type is one of the evolutionary options of Homo sapiens, the ontological basis of which is a stable evolutionary strategy (SESH). The latter is capable to spontaneous development and is consisting from biological, sociocultural, and techno-rationalistic modules. Evolutionary risks inextricably linked with it. At present, humankind has entered an era when its existence should be ensured by the meta-system engineering of its own cultural and ecological niche. By such artificially created elements, it implies the design and implementation of ecological systems of various levels of complexity, from the design of elements of such systems (which are biological individuals, populations and species) to the design of a global ecological system (biosphere). At the same time, there is a sharp jump in the value of anthropogenic and technological risk due to a sharp increase in the instability of the structure of ecological systems. We are witnessing a third wave of breaking and reconstruction of the existing relations between the elements of such systems after the Neolithic revolution and great geographical discoveries. Technological innovations led to sharp violations of normal social ecodynamics, leading to outbreaks of new infections, in particular. Theuncontested development of all sectors of controlled evolution technology is the way out of the last such crisis and the prevention of similar ones in the future. There are global nature of the organization of modern technological civilization and the transformation of the biosphere not so much into the noosphere (according to Vernadsky) but into the technosphere that determines the effect of a cascade reaction: any local co-adaptive conflict between elements of a cultural, socio-ecological niche tends to turnglobal and systemic problems. Humanity is constantly forced to make a choice between the stability and adaptability of the technosphere. (shrink)
Ecological Psychology is Radical Enough: A Reply to Radical Enactivists.Miguel Segundo-Ortin, Manuel Heras-Escribano & Vicente Raja - 2019 - Philosophical Psychology 32 (7):1001-1023.details
Ecological psychology is one of the most influential theories of perception in the embodied, anti-representational, and situated cognitive sciences. However, radical enactivists claim that Gibsonians tend to describe ecological information and its 'pick up' in ways that make ecological psychology close to representational theories of perception and cognition. Motivated by worries about the tenability of classical views of informational content and its processing, these authors claim that ecological psychology needs to be "RECtified" so as to explicitly (...) resist representational readings. In this paper, we argue against this call for RECtification. To do so, we offer a detailed analysis of the notion of perceptual information and other related notions such as specificity and meaning, as they are presented in the specialized ecological literature. We defend that these notions, if properly understood, remain free of any representational commitment. Ecological psychology, we conclude, does not need to be RECtified. (shrink)
On the Fundamental Worldview of the Integral Culture: Integrating Science, Religion, and Art: Part Two.Attila Grandpierre - 2003 - World Futures 59 (7):535-556.details
In the present essay I suggest that the main reason why history failed to develop societies in harmony with Nature, including our internal nature as well, is that we failed to evaluate the exact basis of the factor ultimately governing our thoughts. We failed to realise that it is the worldview that ultimately governs our thoughts and through our thoughts, our actions. In this work I consider the ultimate foundations of philosophy, science, religion, and art, pointing out that they were (...) and can be again in harmony with each other if their ultimate tasks are specified. I specify here the first task of philosophy as considering the philosophical significance of the ultimate principles of physics, biology and man/society. These ultimate principles are in direct connection with the ultimate questions of religion. I show that the fundamental nature of art makes it able to perceive the ultimate destination of mankind and the Universe, the world-to-be. I propose that philosophy, religion and art together are able to supply us with an inter-subjective picture of the world-process, including the inter-subjective picture of the future of mankind and the Universe. Care is taken to enlighten the possible role of values in founding scientific research in the frame of present wide-ranging discussions. The result is found that universal values of respect for existence, life and reason represent the inevitable basis of science. The exact foundations of a new, integral worldview are outlined, involving the worldprocess-picture, Nature-picture, images of man, society, self, history and manipulation. A list of our common tasks for founding the Integral Culture is proposed. (shrink)
Ecological Innovation: Biomimicry as a New Way of Thinking and Acting Ecologically.Vincent Blok & Bart Gremmen - 2016 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 29 (2):203-217.details
In this article, we critically reflect on the concept of biomimicry. On the basis of an analysis of the concept of biomimicry in the literature and its philosophical origin, we distinguish between a strong and a weaker concept of biomimicry. The strength of the strong concept of biomimicry is that nature is seen as a measure by which to judge the ethical rightness of our technological innovations, but its weakness is found in questionable presuppositions. These presuppositions are addressed by the (...) weaker concept of biomimicry, but at the price that it is no longer possible to distinguish between exploitative and ecological types of technological innovations. We compare both concepts of biomimicry by critically reflecting on four dimensions of the concept of biomimicry: mimesis, technology, nature, and ethics. (shrink)
Making Ecological Values Make Sense: Toward More Operationalizable Ecological Legislation.Justin Donhauser - 2016 - Ethics and the Environment 21 (2):1-25.details
Value claims about ecological entities, their functionality, and properties take center stage in so-called "ecological" ethical and aesthetic theories. For example, the claim that the biodiversity in an old-growth forest imbues it with "value in and for itself" is an explicit value claim about an ecological property. And the claim that one can study "the aesthetics of nature, including natural objects...such as ecosystems" presupposes that natural instances of a type of ecological entity exist and can be (...) regarded as more or less aesthetically valuable. My discussion below will bear wide implications for how claims like... (shrink)
An Enactive-Ecological Approach to Information and Uncertainty.Eros Moreira de Carvalho & Giovanni Rolla - 2020 - Frontiers in Psychology 11:1-11.details
Information is a central notion for cognitive sciences and neurosciences, but there is no agreement on what it means for a cognitive system to acquire information about its surroundings. In this paper, we approximate three influential views on information: the one at play in ecological psychology, which is sometimes called information for action; the notion of information as covariance as developed by some enactivists, and the idea of information as minimization of uncertainty as presented by Shannon. Our main thesis (...) is that information for action can be construed as covariant information, and that learning to perceive covariant information is a matter of minimizing uncertainty through skilled performance. We argue that the agent's cognitive system conveys information for acting in an environment by minimizing uncertainty about how to achieve her intended goals in that environment. We conclude by reviewing empirical findings that support our view and by showing how direct learning, seen as instance of ecological rationality at work, is how mere possibilities for action are turned into embodied know-how. Finally, we indicate the affinity between direct learning and sense-making activity. (shrink)
Virtues, Ecological Momentary Assessment/Intervention and Smartphone Technology.Jason D. Runyan & Ellen G. Steinke - 2015 - Frontiers in Psychology:1-24.details
Virtues, broadly understood as stable and robust dispositions for certain responses across morally relevant situations, have been a growing topic of interest in psychology. A central topic of discussion has been whether studies showing that situations can strongly influence our responses provide evidence against the existence of virtues (as a kind of stable and robust disposition). In this review, we examine reasons for thinking that the prevailing methods for examining situational influences are limited in their ability to test dispositional stability (...) and robustness; or, then, whether virtues exist. We make the case that these limitations can be addressed by aggregating repeated, cross-situational assessments of environmental, psychological and physiological variables within everyday life—a form of assessment often called ecological momentary assessment (EMA, or experience sampling). We, then, examine how advances in smartphone application (app) technology, and their mass adoption, make these mobile devices an unprecedented vehicle for EMA and, thus, the psychological study of virtue. We, additionally, examine how smartphones might be used for virtue development by promoting changes in thought and behavior within daily life; a technique often called ecological momentary intervention (EMI). While EMA/I have become widely employed since the 1980s for the purposes of understanding and promoting change amongst clinical populations, few EMA/I studies have been devoted to understanding or promoting virtues within non-clinical populations. Further, most EMA/I studies have relied on journaling, PDAs, phone calls and/or text messaging systems. We explore how smartphone app technology provides a means of making EMA a more robust psychological method, EMI a more robust way of promoting positive change, and, as a result, opens up new possibilities for studying and promoting virtues. (shrink)
Ecological Hierarchy and Biodiversity.Christopher Lean & Kim Sterelny - 2016 - In Justin Garson, Anya Plutynski & Sahotra Sarkar (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Biodiversity. London: Routledge. pp. 56 - 68.details
An Ecological Approach to Cognitive Science.John T. Sanders - 1996 - Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy 1996 (Spring).details
Cognitive science is ready for a major reconceptualization. This is not at all because efforts by its practitioners have failed, but rather because so much progress has been made. The need for reconceptualization arises from the fact that this progress has come at greater cost than necessary, largely because of more or less philosophical (at least metatheoretical) straightjackets still worn - whether wittingly or not - by those doing the work. These bonds are extremely hard to break. Even some of (...) those who have directed powerful arguments against them have failed entirely to shake them off. The bonds are often attributed to the work of René Descartes, but they are really much older than that. If even in the present effort, I fail entirely to remove the straightjacket myself (even though I am making every attempt to get it off), this will testify to its tight grip. The straightjacket I am thinking about, of course, is the vague picture of the human situation that imagines centralized, internal minds in control of bodily machines. While almost no one in the contemporary cognitive science arena imagines minds to be the kind of thing Descartes took them to be - instantiations of a unique, fully non-material substance - there is nevertheless a deep resistance, even among the most fervent professed "materialists," to giving up this picture. In what follows, I shall try to offer an approach which on the one hand capitalizes on the excellent progress that has been made in cognitive science in the last few decades, and which on the other hand offers a general approach that may help at some level in the attempt to shake "Cartesian" bonds. The approach, as the alert reader already knows from the title of the essay, is an "ecological" approach. (shrink)
Ecological Models for Gene Therapy. II. Niche Construction, Nongenetic Inheritance, and Ecosystem Perturbations.Arnaud Pocheville, Maël Montévil & Régis Ferrière - 2014 - Biological Theory 9 (4):414-422.details
In this paper, we apply the perspective of intra-organismal ecology by investigating a family of ecological models suitable to describe a gene therapy to a particular metabolic disorder, the adenosine deaminase deficiency (ADA-SCID). The gene therapy is modeled as the prospective ecological invasion of an organ (here, bone marrow) by genetically modified stem cells, which then operate niche construction in the cellular environment by releasing an enzyme they synthesize. We show that depending on the chosen order (a choice (...) that cannot be made on \textit{a priori} assumptions), different kinds of dynamics are expected, possibly leading to different therapeutic strategies. This drives us to discuss several features of the extension of ecology to intra-organismal ecology. (shrink)
Distinguishing Ecological From Evolutionary Approaches to Transposable Elements.Stefan Linquist, Brent Saylor, Karl Cottenie, Tyler A. Elliott, Stefan C. Kremer & T. Ryan Gregory - 2013 - Biological Reviews 88 (3):573- 584.details
Considerable variation exists not only in the kinds of transposable elements (TEs) occurring within the genomes of different species, but also in their abundance and distribution. Noting a similarity to the assortment of organisms among ecosystems, some researchers have called for an ecological approach to the study of transposon dynamics. However, there are several ways to adopt such an approach, and it is sometimes unclear what an ecological perspective will add to the existing co-evolutionary framework for explaining transposon-host (...) interactions. This review aims to clarify the conceptual foundations of transposon ecology in order to evaluate its explanatory prospects. We begin by identifying three unanswered questions regarding the abundance and distribution of TEs that potentially call for an ecological explanation. We then offer an operational distinction between evolutionary and ecological approaches to these questions. By determining the amount of variance in transposon abundance and distribution that is explained by ecological and evolutionary factors, respectively, it is possible empirically to assess the prospects for each of these explanatory frameworks. To illustrate how this methodology applies to a concrete example, we analyzed whole-genome data for one set of distantly related mammals and another more closely related group of arthropods. Our expectation was that ecological factors are most informative for explaining differences among individual TE lineages, rather than TE families, and for explaining their distribution among closely related as opposed to distantly related host genomes. We found that, in these data sets, ecological factors do in fact explain most of the variation in TE abundance and distribution among TE lineages across less distantly related host organisms. Evolutionary factors were not significant at these levels. However, the explanatory roles of evolution and ecology become inverted at the level of TE families or among more distantly related genomes. Not only does this example demonstrate the utility of our distinction between ecological and evolutionary perspectives, it further suggests an appropriate explanatory domain for the burgeoning discipline of transposon ecology. The fact that ecological processes appear to be impacting TE lineages over relatively short time scales further raises the possibility that transposons might serve as useful model systems for testing more general hypotheses in ecology. (shrink)
Ecological Imagination.Steven Fesmire - 2010 - Environmental Ethics 32 (2):183-203.details
Environmental thinkers recognize that ecological thinking has a vital role to play in many wise choices and policies; yet, little theoretical attention has been given to developing an adequate philosophical psychology of the imaginative nature of such thinking. Ecological imagination is an outgrowth of our more general deliberative capacity to perceive, in light of possibilities for thinking and acting, the relationships that constitute any object. Such imagination is of a specifically ecological sort when key metaphors, images, symbols, (...) and the like used in the ecologies shape the mental simulations we use to deliberate—i.e., when these interpretive structures shape what John Dewey calls our "dramatic rehearsals." There is an urgent practical need to cultivate ecological imagination, and an equally practical need to make theoretical sense of the imaginative dimension of ecological reflection. (shrink)
Ecological Models for Gene Therapy. I. Models for Intraorganismal Ecology.Arnaud Pocheville & Maël Montévil - 2014 - Biological Theory 9 (4):401-413.details
In this paper, we discuss the perspective of intra-organismal ecology by investigating a family of ecological models. We consider two types of models. First order models describe the population dynamics as being directly affected by ecological factors (here understood as nutrients, space, etc). They might be thought of as analogous to Aristotelian physics. Second order models describe the population dynamics as being indirectly affected, the ecological factors now affecting the derivative of the growth rate (that is, the (...) population acceleration), possibly through an impact on non-genetically inherited factors. Second order models might be thought of as analogous to Galilean physics. In the joint paper, we apply these ideas to a situation of gene therapy. (shrink)
Ecological Dominance and the Final Sprint in Hominid Evolution.Pouwel Slurink - 1993 - Human Evolution.details
In contrast to many other models of human evolution the "balance of power" theory of Alexander has a clear answer to the question why a runaway selection process for unique social and moral capacities occurred in our ancestry only and not in other species: "ecological dominance" is hypothesized to have diminished the effects of "extrinsic" forces of natural selection such that within-species, intergroup competition increased (Alexander, 1989). Alexander seems to be wrong, however, in his claim that already the common (...) HUCHIBO (Humans, Chimps, Bonobo's)-ancestor has crossed the ecological dominance barrier. In this paper an adapted version of Alexander's model is presented and several different ways are proposed to make this adapted version testable. A preliminary survey of the available paleontological and paleoecological data suggests that there is some evidence of a less vulnerable position towards predators in early Homo and that there are clear signs related to a crossing of the ecological dominance barrier in Homo sapiens sapiens. (shrink)
Ecological Imagination in Moral Education, East and West.Steven Fesmire - 2012 - Contemporary Pragmatism 9 (1):205-222.details
Relational philosophies developed in classical American pragmatism and the Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy suggest aims for greater ecological responsiveness in moral education. To better guide education, we need to know how ecological perception becomes relevant to our deliberations. Our deliberations enlist imagination of a specifically ecological sort when the imaginative structures we use to understand ecosystemic relationships shape our mental simulations and rehearsals. Enriched through cross-cultural dialogue, a finely aware ecological imagination can make the (...) deliberations of the coming generation more trustworthy. (shrink)
Indexically Structured Ecological Communities.Christopher Lean - 2018 - Philosophy of Science 85 (3):501-522.details
Ecological communities are seldom, if ever, biological individuals. They lack causal boundaries as the populations that constitute communities are not congruent and rarely have persistent functional roles regulating the communities' higher-level properties. Instead we should represent ecological communities indexically, by identifying ecological communities via the network of weak causal interactions between populations that unfurl from a starting set of populations. This precisification of ecological communities helps identify how community properties remain invariant, and why they have robust (...) characteristics. This respects the diversity and aggregational nature of these complex systems while still vindicating them as units worthy of investigation. (shrink)
The Ecological Approach to Information Processing.Barry Smith - 2003 - In Kristóf Nyíri (ed.), Mobile Learning: Essays on Philosophy, Psychology and Education. Passagen Verlag. pp. 17--24.details
Imagine a 5-stone weakling whose brain has been loaded with all the knowledge of a champion tennis player. He goes to serve in his first match – Wham! – His arm falls off. The 5-stone weakling just doesn't have the bone structure or muscular development to serve that hard. There are, clearly, different types of knowledge/ability/skill, only some of which are a matter of what can be transferred simply by passing signals down a wire from one brain (or computer) to (...) another. Sometimes it is the body (the hardware) which knows. (shrink)
A Phenomenological Theory of Ecological Responsibility and Its Implications for Moral Agency in Climate Change.Robert Scott - 2018 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 31 (6):645-659.details
In a recent article appearing in this journal, Theresa Scavenius compellingly argues that the traditional "rational-individualistic" conception of responsibility is ill-suited to accounting for the sense in which moral agents share in responsibility for both contributing to the causes and, proactively, working towards solutions for climate change. Lacking an effective moral framework through which to make sense of individual moral responsibility for climate change, many who have good intentions and the means to contribute to solutions for climate change tend to (...) dismiss or put off addressing the root causes. With this tendency arises the practical problem that climate change calls for urgent global collective action, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation, in order to prevent global temperature rise from exceeding 2C and avoid worst case climate scenarios. In this paper, I develop a phenomenological theory of ecological responsibility which addresses the conceptual problem Scavenius brings out and contributes to clarifying the sense in which moral agents share responsibility for both the causes and solutions for climate change. To develop this theory, I draw from, combine, and transform insights from the late work of Husserl on open horizons, transcendental intersubjectivity, and genetic phenomenology with breakthroughs from Emmanuel Levinas in articulating an original, asymmetrical theory of unlimited, diachronic responsibility. In drawing from Husserl, I show how what Levinas describes as the source of a demand for unlimited, diachronic responsibility can be phenomenologically reinterpreted in terms of a horizon of indeterminacy. I then show how horizons of indeterminacy arise in phenomenological descriptions of both human and nonhuman entities in such a way that discloses the demand for responsibility as a broad-ranging demand for unlimited, diachronic ecological responsibility. An important implication of this phenomenological theory of ecological responsibility is that it contributes to clarifying the sense in which individual moral agents share in responsibility for long range collective moral problems such as climate change. (shrink)
Confirmation of Ecological and Evolutionary Models.Elisabeth A. Lloyd - 1987 - Biology and Philosophy 2 (3):277-293.details
In this paper I distinguish various ways in which empirical claims about evolutionary and ecological models can be supported by data. I describe three basic factors bearing on confirmation of empirical claims: fit of the model to data; independent testing of various aspects of the model, and variety of evident. A brief description of the kinds of confirmation is followed by examples of each kind, drawn from a range of evolutionary and ecological theories. I conclude that the greater (...) complexity and precision of my approach, as compared to, for instance, a Popperian approach, can facilitate detailed analysis and comparison of empirical claims. (shrink)
A Biosemiotic and Ecological Approach to Music Cognition: Event Perception Between Auditory Listening and Cognitive Economy. [REVIEW]Mark Reybrouck - 2005 - Axiomathes. An International Journal in Ontology and Cognitive Systems. 15 (2):229-266.details
This paper addresses the question whether we can conceive of music cognition in ecosemiotic terms. It claims that music knowledge must be generated as a tool for adaptation to the sonic world and calls forth a shift from a structural description of music as an artifact to a process-like approach to dealing with music. As listeners, we are observers who construct and organize our knowledge and bring with us our observational tools. What matters is not merely the sonic world in (...) its objective qualities, but the world as perceived. In order to make these claims operational we can rely on the ecological concept of coping with the sonic world and the cybernetic concepts of artificial and adaptive devices. Listeners, on this view, are able to change their semantic relations with the sonic world through functional adaptations at the level of sensing, acting and coordinating between action and perception. This allows us to understand music in functional terms of what it affords to us and not merely in terms of its acoustic qualities. There are, however, degrees of freedom and constraints which shape the semiotization of the sonic world. As such we must consider the role of event perception and cognitive economy: listeners do not perceive the acoustical environment in terms of phenomenological descriptions but as ecological events. (shrink)
Aldo Leopold and the Ecological Imaginary: The Balance, the Pyramid, and the Round River.Henry Dicks - 2014 - Environmental Philosophy 11 (2):175-209.details
Aldo Leopold accorded great significance to the images he used to describe both the land and humankind's relation to it. Focusing on three key images of Leopold's "ecological imaginary"—the balance, the pyramid, and the round river—this article argues that the most profound of these is the round river. Contrasting this image with James Lovelock's portrayal of the earth as Gaia, it further argues that Leopold's round river can be interpreted as a contemporary, ecological reworking of the primordial, Homeric (...) experience of Being, according to which the foundation of the world is a round river, Oceanus. (shrink)
Agency From a Radical Embodied Standpoint: An Ecological-Enactive Proposal.Miguel Segundo-Ortin - 2020 - Frontiers in Psychology 11 (1319).details
Explaining agency is a significant challenge for those who are interested in the sciences of the mind, and non-representationalists are no exception to this. Even though both ecological psychologists and enactivists agree that agency is to be explained by focusing on the relation between the organism and the environment, they have approached it by focusing on different aspects of the organism-environment relation. In this paper, I offer a suggestion for a radical embodied account of agency that combines ecological (...) psychology with recent trends in enactive cognitive science. According to this proposal, while enactivism focuses primarily on describing how our acquired sensorimotor schemes and habits mutually equilibrate, affecting our tendency to act upon some affordances instead of others, ecological psychology focuses on studying how perceptual information contributes to the actualization of the sensorimotor schemes and habits without mediating representations, inferences, and computations. The paper concludes by briefly exploring how this ecological-enactive theory of agency can account for how socio-cultural norms shape human agency. (shrink)
Nudging and the Ecological and Social Roots of Human Agency.Nicolae Morar & Daniel Kelly - 2016 - American Journal of Bioethics 16 (11):15-17.details
A Biosemiotic and Ecological Approach to Music Cognition: Event Perception Between Auditory Listening and Cognitive Economy.Mark Reybrouck - 2005 - Axiomathes 15 (2):229-266.details
Naturalizing Peirce's Semiotics: Ecological Psychology's Solution to the Problem of Creative Abduction.Alex Kirlik & Peter Storkerson - 2010 - In W. Carnielli L. Magnani (ed.), Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology. pp. 31--50.details
"It is difficult not to notice a curious unrest in the philosophic atmosphere of the time, a loosening of old landmarks, a softening of oppositions, a mutual borrowing from one another on the part of systems anciently closed, and an interest in new suggestions, however vague, as if the one thing sure were the inadequacy of extant school-solutions. The dissatisfactions with these seems due for the most part to a feeling that they are too abstract and academic. Life is confused (...) and superabundant, and what the younger generation appears to crave is more of the temperament of life in its philosophy, even though it were at some cost of logical rigor and formal purity." - William James (1904). -/- Abstract: The study of model-based reasoning (MBR) is one of the most interesting recent developments at the intersection of psychology and the philosophy of science. Although a broad and eclectic area of inquiry, one central axis by which MBR connects these disciplines is anchored at one end in theories of internal reasoning (in cognitive science), and at the other, in C.S. Peirce's semiotics (in philosophy). In this paper, we attempt to show that Peirce's semiotics actually has more natural affinity on the psychological side with ecological psychology, as originated by James J. Gibson and especially Egon Brunswik, than it does with non-interactionist approaches to cognitive science. In particular, we highlight the strong ties we believe to exist between the triarchic structure of semiotics as conceived by Peirce, and the similar triarchic stucture of Brunswik's lens model of organismic achievement in irreducibly uncertain ecologies. The lens model, considered as a theory of creative abduction, provides a concrete instantiation of at least one, albeit limited, interpretation of Peirce's semiotics, one that we believe could be quite fruitful in future theoretical and empirical investigations of MBR in both science an philosophy. (shrink)
Some Questions for Ecological Aesthetics.Arnold Berleant - 2016 - Environmental Philosophy 13 (1):123-135.details
Ecology has become a popular conceptual model in numerous fields of inquiry and it seems especially appropriate for environmental philosophy. Apart from its literal employment in biology, ecology has served as a useful metaphor that captures the interdependence of factors in a field of research. At the same time as ecology is suggestive, it cannot be followed literally or blindly. This paper considers the appropriateness of the uses to which ecology has been put in some recent discussions of architectural and (...) environmental aesthetics, and develops a critique of the differing ecological aesthetics of Jusuck Koh and Xiangzhan Cheng. (shrink)
Toward an Ecological Bioethics.Nicolae Morar & Joshua August Skorburg - 2016 - American Journal of Bioethics 16 (5):35-37.details
Peer commentary on: Blumenthal-Barby, J. S. (2016). Biases and heuristics in decision making and their impact on autonomy. The American Journal of Bioethics, 16(5), 5-15.
Can Evolution Get Us Off the Hook? Evaluating the Ecological Defence of Human Rationality.Maarten Boudry, Michael Vlerick & Ryan McKay - 2015 - Consciousness and Cognition 33:524-535.details
This paper discusses the ecological case for epistemic innocence: does biased cognition have evolutionary benefits, and if so, does that exculpate human reasoners from irrationality? Proponents of 'ecological rationality' have challenged the bleak view of human reasoning emerging from research on biases and fallacies. If we approach the human mind as an adaptive toolbox, tailored to the structure of the environment, many alleged biases and fallacies turn out to be artefacts of narrow norms and artificial set-ups. However, we (...) argue that putative demonstrations of ecological rationality involve subtle locus shifts in attributions of rationality, conflating the adaptive rationale of heuristics with our own epistemic credentials. By contrast, other cases also involve an ecological reframing of human reason, but do not involve such problematic locus shifts. We discuss the difference between these cases, bringing clarity to the rationality debate. (shrink)
Precise Worlds for Certain Minds: An Ecological Perspective on the Relational Self in Autism.Axel Constant, Jo Bervoets, Kristien Hens & Sander Van de Cruys - 2018 - Topoi:1-12.details
Autism Spectrum Condition presents a challenge to social and relational accounts of the self, precisely because it is broadly seen as a disorder impacting social relationships. Many influential theories argue that social deficits and impairments of the self are the core problems in ASC. Predictive processing approaches address these based on general purpose neurocognitive mechanisms that are expressed atypically. Here we use the High, Inflexible Precision of Prediction Errors in Autism approach in the context of cultural niche construction to explain (...) atypicalities of the relational self, specifically its minimal, extended, and intersubjective aspects. We contend that the social self in ASC should not be seen as impaired, but rather as an outcome of atypical niche construction. We unpack the scientific, ethical, and practical consequences of this view, and discuss implications for how the challenges that autistic persons face should be approached. (shrink)
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ThankBookFor Podcasts
Welcome, oh welcome weary listener. Rest up, for here you have found what you were looking for.
You are now in the midst of the ThankBookFor podcast collection.
(16 Episodes)
Our first series, full of imperfections, mistakes, excellence and love.
1. G.X. Todd
2. Liz Tipping
3. Chris Stanley
4. Cath Hancox
5. Mark Newbold
6. Lee Powell
7. Phoebe Morgan
8. Julia Jarman
9. Richie Wall
10. Gilly McAllister
11. Steve Aryan
12. SouthCart Books
13. Kerry Fisher
14. Ann-Marie Howell
15. Kim Nash
16. Mike Gayle
The very, very first podcast from ThankBookFor, though admittedly it was about the 75th attempt at doing it. Contained within: the thoughts and musings of librarian and (at the time) soon to be published author G. X. Todd.
Parental Caution Advised (There be mild swearing)
Author Liz Tipping joins us for our second TBF podcast. She discusses why she loves Joey Essex, why she hates the term guilty pleasure, and how much she loves Marian Keyes.
Liz is the lady who designed our awesome logo. Cheers Liz.
Episode 3 and we're in Worcester interviewing former librarian and current writer Chris Stanley. Chris tells us about his love of George Orwell, hints at his obsession with the Manic Street Preachers, and gives us a teaser of the novel he's currently working on, The Sad Club.
In this special, feature length episode, we talk to Mark Newbold, writer and co owner of www.JediNews.co.uk, the biggest Star Wars news site in the United Kingdom. Here at ThankBookFor we're all about stories, and there can be no doubting the impact that the story of Star Wars has had on modern society.
Episode 4 brings us back closer to home with fellow librarian, Cath Hancox. From Sir Terry Pratchett to Stephen Fry to Frankenstein, take a peek inside the mind of another ThankBookFor member.
6. Dr Lee Powell
How did a Doctor from Burntwood come to be involved in a bloody revolution in Nepal? To find out, we asked a Doctor from Burntwood that was involved in a bloody revolution in Nepal.
We also asked him about books, because he's a Home Library Officer and he works with us.
In episode 7 we speak to editor, author and all round good egg Phoebe Morgan. Find out how she got an agent, how long she's been making books, and whether or not things randomly fall off her wall during podcast interviews.
Richie 'Call me Richard or Sharpe' Wall gets the TBF Podcast treatment in this week's release. Richie was a stand up comedan for over 7 years, and now works for a charity helping people with liver problems lead a normal life.
Fantasy author Stephen Aryan joins us for a chat about books, agents and writing styles. He also tells us whether he's an architect or a gardener, and how to kill Robocop.
Join us as we interview celebrated children's author Julia Jarman in between performances at the Bournville Bookfest. Due to time constraints there isn't a longer version of the podcast available. Luckily, what we did have time for is podcast gold!
Episode 10 and we are with Gilly McAllister, succesful solicitor and soon to be published by Penguin author. Gilly had just heard about the Penguin deal at the time of recording so as well as finding out about Gilly's literary loves and hates we also get an insight into how it feels to take 'the call'.
For this episode we head to Southcart Books in Walsall to chat to owners Scott Southey and Amy Carter. We also get very jealous. They own a bookshop! Booket* list complete.
*Pun intended
Originally recorded in March as our first ever Skype podcast, we speak to author Kerry Fisher about her literary likes and dislikes. We also find out a bit about her new book, After the Lie.
The penultimate episode of the series sees Bookouture's Publicity and Social Media Manager Kim Nash join us to talk about her love of books, snooker halls, and how she got her ideal job.
It's our third Skype podcast and this week it's the lovely Ann-Marie Howell. A public sector worker by day, we talk to Ann-Marie about her writing, her agent and about a certain writing course that she'd highly recommend.
The final episode of the series is here and this week we're at Harborne Library to welcome best selling author Mike Gayle to the podcast. We chat about Mike's time in the biz, how things have changed, and find out exactly what he thinks of The Martian.
Our second series, which is also full of imperfections, mistakes, excellence and love.
1. Sara Pascoe
2. Claire North
3. Rachel Wheeley
4. Ella Bowman
5. Ben Davis
6. Paul Savage
7. Suzie81
8. Marcus Berkmann
9. Sarah Mitton
10. Theakston Crime
11. Fantasy Podcast
12. Robert Hazel
13. Brian Dakin
14. Solihull Writers
15. Ghost Hunt
16. Doug Johnstone
17. Jen Beardsmore
18. BJ Edwards
19. Steve Hermon
20. Maria Lewis
We jump into our second series by interviewing award winning comedian Sara Pascoe.
Sara had a last minute gig to get to so it's not a long one, but we did discuss her new book, Animal, and her dinner party, which might need a referee.
For this week's podcast, with fellow podcaster and comedian Rachel Wheeley, we visited her at work. She gave us a tour of the building (unofficial; the best kind) then we sat down to record. And had a great time doing so.
Oh, she works at Broadcasting House by the way, the home of the BBC.
ThankBookFor took a trip to London to do some very exciting podcasts. First up was the very exciting, and hugely talented, Catherine Webb.
As well as being a first class author, Catherine is also a purveyor of fine pseudonyms. Big thanks to Islington Library for letting us record there.
Ella Bowman works at Little, Brown, an imprint of Ha-Chet-Taaaaay (Hachette).
Ella kindly invited us in to Little, Brown to record the podcast in one of their fairly stunning meeting rooms. Ella clearly loves her books and we thoroughly enjoyed chatting to her about them.
Ben Davis is a children's author from Tamworth. He's also a bloody good sport.
Waterstones in Sutton Coldfield were kind enough to give us some space to interview Ben. Indeed, the interview was so good, we did some bits of it three times....
Winner of the Best Overall Blog Award 2016 at the Annual Bloggers Bash Awards, Suzie started her blog just 3 years ago.
Find out more about how she's achieved that success, and who inspired her to write in the first place, in the podcast.
The lovely Sarah Mitton braved the ThankBookFor podcast this week, taking her turn on 'the other side of the mic'. Listen as Sarah, a member of TBF, talks about her lvoe of Alice in Wonderland, the influence To Kill a Mockingbird, and waiting in line to offend Stephen Fry.
This episode also contains the very first TBF bleeped out swear word. As well as several that weren't.
Paul rushed back from a stay in South America to be on the podcast. And by rushed I mean stayed there till his funds were low then came back home.
He was good enough to come to Tom's house for the interview, where he revealed a shocking truth about Roald Dahl.
As well as being a journalist and author, Marcus was the pop music columnist for The Spectator magazine for over 28 years.
His latest book, Set Phasers to Stun: 50 Years of Star Trek, is all about...well, Star Trek.
Co-host duties this week fell to Mark Newbold, he of Series 1, Episode 5 fame
10. Theakston Crime Writing Festival
This week's podcast is actually 3 podcasts surgically tethered together via the medium of editing. Originally they were going to be released individually, however interest in being a guest on a podcast is quite high so we decided to make this a 'Special' instead.
So, now that the 'blowing our own trumpet' bit is over, let's get to it. We've put the timings of each podcast next to the name so if, for some weird reason, you don't want to hear the entire podcast, you can skip to the bits you do want to hear.
We recorded this week's podcast back in July at Waterstones, in Birmingham. As you'll find out in the intro, Steve Aryan mentioned that he knew a few fantasy authors who were doing an event in Birmingham, and that they might be up for a podcast. Happily, they were.
WARNING: A lot of the sound on this podcast is laughter, because we were having a really good time. If you're not a fan of laughter, do not listen.
13. Dr Brian Dakin
Originally set to be released as part of the ThankBookFor Black Country Festival Series, Brian's podcast was recorded in Glebefields Library, Tipton.
As well as being a proper Black Country 'Mon', Brian has published several books, recorded several CDs (both as Brian, and his alter ego Billy) and written a novel. He has his own radio show on Black Country Radio (102.5 FM & DAB & online) and also regularly contributes to Connections, The Black Countryman and The Bugle.
15. Halloween Special
For this year's Halloween Special we made our way to The Station Hotel in Dudley. Well known locally as a source of paranormal activity, TBF braved the dark and went down into the cellars where, according to legend, a previous landlord of the hotel had murdered and stored the body of a young barmaid he'd been having an affair with.
Luckily for us we were not alone. Simone Taylor and David Ball, Paranormal researchers for nearly 15 years, were there with us.
This week it's Tipton Library manager Robert Hazel's turn to tell us which books influenced him. As this podcast was originally recorded to be part of the Black Country Festival series, we also chat about what the Black Country means to him.
A man who, in his own words, 'likes a bit of saftness', we discuss his love of a certain Rock 'N' Roll band and how he came to have a couple of tattoos later in life.
14. Solihull Writer's Group
The Pub Club writing group, based in Solihull, were kind enough to invite ThankBookFor to two of their meetings. The first one took place in a pub and we went along to get to know them a little and find about more about how they operate. Then for the second meeting, during which we recorded the podcast you're about to hear, we went to author Deborah Install's house where it was a little bit quieter.
We had a great time and met some lovely people in the process.
We interviewed Doug via Skype a few weeks ago, and he's great. Not only is he an author, a journalist, a musician, a former designer of radars and resident writer with William Purves Funeral Directors (more of that in the podcast), he's also a huge Iain M. Banks fan.
Find out about his many roles, his love of psychological thrillers and his hatred of The Hobbit, plus a lot more about THAT residency position.
Today's guest on the ThankBookFor podcast is Jen Beardsmore. Jen very kindly agreed to be interviewed earlier in the year, as part of our Black Country Festival series.
Head of Libraries and Archives in Dudley, Jen has been around libraries, and books, for pretty much all her life. Find out what makes her tick, and which books she goes back to time and again.
We also asked her whether or not she likes Marmite...
This week we interviewed former English teacher, author, poet, playwright and stage director BJ Edwards.
BJ has been writing for a number of years, but since completely losing his sight in 2012 he's released Stalking the Shadows, the first book in his Ancient Desstiny series, and more recently, Tesserae, a book of poetry.
We interviewed BJ in his home near Wolverhampton.
Steve Hermon is a BBC Radio WM journalist from The Black Country. He's worked for a number of radio stations, at both a local and national level, and is a keen fan of wrestling. So much so in fact, that he has his own wrestling podcast, which you can find on iTunes, called TheBuzzardsPod.
We interviewed Steve in a wonderful building called The Red House Glass Cone, in Stourbridge. There's a special bonus section on the end with the manager of The Glass Cone, Sarah Hall, telling us a bit more about it.
Maria Lewis is an author and journalist based in Australia. She has contributed to many well known publications, including Empire, The New York Times and BuzzFeed.
We interviewed Maria in Birmingham Waterstones, whilst she was over here touring her first book, Who's Afraid. Her press officer, and all round lovely person Nazia Khatun was also present.
We were running a little short on time for the interview as Maria had to give a talk, but the time we did have was used very constructively.
Our third series, full of imperfections, mistakes, excellence, love and half the calories of other podcasts.
1. Beth Lewis
2. Michael G. Manning
3. J. M. Gulvin
4. James Carol
5. Joanne Harris
6. Kat French
7. Alexandra Oliva
8. Emma Newman
9. Jason Arnopp
10. Adrian Tchaikovsky
11. RJ Barker
12. Lewis Coleman
It's the opener for Series 3, so we went big. Beth Lewis is an author (debut novel The Wolf Road is EPIC), an editor (Titan Books), an oath maker (though not breaker(listen to find out more)) and a former Fire Eater.
I want to allay any concerns you may have right now, yes, of course I asked about the fire eating.
I spoke to Beth a couple of months ago, and part of this podcast was featured on my radio show.
For the second episode in the series we went all the way to Texas to speak to Fantasy author Michael G. Manning.
Unfortunately an actual trip was decided against, primarily due to cost, time, cost and budget, but a phone call was made and the interview went ahead regardless.
As well as a great discussion about books, Michael told us about his former life in the pharmaceutical industry and his love of climbing trees.
It's episode 3 and this time we went all the way to Sedgley, via Wales.
Author Jeff Gulvin is a Black Country lad, if somewhat removed at the moment and residing in Wales. Well, you would, wouldn't you?
As well as discussing the inspiration behind the main character in his latest series books, John Q, we spoke about New Orleans, Charley Boorman, and THAT petrol station scene in the film No Country For Old Men.
It's already episode 4 of the third series and this time it's Faber & Faber author James Carol speaking to us about, amongst other things, Hannibal Lecter, Stephen King and former FBI profiler, Jefferson Winter.
If you listen to the radio show, Bissell on Books (check Listen Again on www.wcrfm.com) then you'll have already heard part of this interview, but don't worry, we kept the best bits back for the podcast.
It's episode 5 and this time me and Gemma were in for a treat as we sat down and spoke with author extraordinaire, Joanne Harris.
We had to travel all the way over to Moseley (it isn't far), to get to the Pow Wow Festival of Writing at the Prince of Wales pub, where Joanne was the headline act.
We spoke to her about the benefits of social media, Les Misérables and Marmite.
For this week's episode I was lucky enough to speak to Wolverhampton based romance author Kat French.
In readiness for the launch of her new book, The Bed and Breakfast on the Beach, Kat came into the studio to speak to me about My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, how great it is to be able to do her job in her pyjamas, and her favourite author, Marian Keyes. Oh, and her alter ego, the rather rude author, Kitty French.
Series 3, Episode 7
Back in April I was lucky enough to interview Alexandra, author of the amazing novel 'The Last One'.
Part of this interview went out on the radio show at the beginning of May, but there's plenty I didn't have the time to fit in.
Based in Seattle, Ali was happy to talk about all sorts of things with me, including her experiences at the Boulder Outdoor Survival School, Yale, and Sea Lion feeding at The Prospect Park Zoo.
For today's podcast we travelled to the Edge Lit festival in Derby. One of four recorded at the festival, in this episode we chat to the eminently endearing author, audio narrator and Hugo award winning podcaster, Emma Newman.
We cover Lord of the Rings (and those sequels), Ray Bradbury, accents, Live Action Roleplay and how to record an orgasm for an audio book.
Emma was wonderful company and we honestly could have chatted to her for hours.
For this podcast we're taking you all the way back to May, and to the MGM London Comic Con at the Excel Arena.
Jason was one of a number of authors appearing there, and we were lucky enough to grab 45 minutes with him in his hotel room. I mention his hotel room because in his excellent novel, The Last Days of Jack Sparks, there's a few particularly scary scenes involving one of them!
You should read it. Ron Howard did, and now they're turning it into a film.
Series 3, Episode 10
Recorded at the Derby Edge Lit event in July this year, this podcast features award winning fantasy and science fiction author Adrian Tchaikovsky.
With success in both the Fantasy and Science Fiction field, including the excellent Shadows of the Apt series and the Arthur C. Clarke award winning Children of Time, we obviously asked Adrian to choose between the two.
In a ThankBookFor first, we also spoke about entomology.
Another podcast recorded at the Derby Edge Lit event in July earlier this year, welcome to the world of the amazing RJ Barker.
RJ is quite special. He's at once the most softly spoken individual in the room, and the loudest. When he was offered a list of the questions we'd be asking him before the interview, so he could prepare, he declined, saying that was cheating.
Join us for a huge Lord of the Rings reveal, namely that of Gollum's first name, and discover Pokemon characters you never knew existed.
Lewis Coleman
For today's podcast I'm delighted to introduce you all to Mr Lewis Coleman. I've known Lewis for quite a long time, though before this recording I hadn't seen him in a number of years. Lewis is…pretty amazing. He's an author (as we discuss), a playwright, an actor, he set up a theatre production company in Burnham-on-Sea, he's a carer for people with autism, he's travelled extensively, with more travelling planned, and he's a recovering alcoholic.
© 2016 ThankBookFor

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Under the guiding hands of his former boss Jeffrey Dungan, Tommy served as the project architect for this six-bedroom, nine-bath Alabama house. A large addition-renovation project that demolished the neighboring property and consumed its footprint, the stone and cedar shake house was designed and built over two years. Doug Davis of Hannon Douglas designed and furnished the interiors.