Sustainable Land Management

Philosophy

Journal of Environmental Protection, 2016, 7, 502-506 Published Online March 2016 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/jep http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jep.2016.74045 How to cite this paper: Alemu, M.M. (2016) Sustainable Land Management. Journal of Environmental Protection, 7, 502506 . http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jep.2016.74045 Sustainable Land Management Molla Mekonnen Alemu United Nations Development Programme, Freetown, Sierra Leone Received 15 January 2016; accepted 11 March 2016; published 15 March 2016 Copyright © 2016 by author and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Abstract In one way or another, one out of three people are being affected by land degradation. It is estimated that, about every year, 75 billion tonnes of soil material are being lost worldwide as a result of land degradation. Recent findings also showed that about 2 billion hectares of land were severely degraded, in some cases in an irreversible way, all these caused a severe damage to local ecologies as well as contributed a lot for climate change and its associated effects on the wellbeing of humanity. Apart from this, the major portion of most developing countries population are still dependent on the un-mechanized and primitive forms agriculture, livestock production, forestry and fishery, and their livelihood and options for economic development are directly linked to the quality of the land and its resources. The objective of this article is to reaffirm the role of Sustainable Land Management in the process of agricultural development, the main source of livelihood in the developing countries. The paper initially explored the basic concept and principles of sustainable management. Causes of land degradation, the prime challenge of sustainable land management and development are also dealt in detail. Keywords Sustainable, Land, Management 1. Introduction The concept of Sustainable Land Management can be defined as the use of land resources such as soils, water, animals and plants for the production of goods to meet changing human needs while assuring the long-term productive potential of these resources and the maintenance of their environmental functions. Sustainable land management is the foundation of sustainable agriculture and a strategic component of sustainable development and poverty alleviation [1]-[3]. It is a general fact that agricultural productivity and production must be increased and intensified on land, which is already brought under cultivation. Apart from this, the major portion of most developing countries population are still involved in the un-mechanized and primitive forms agriculture, livestock production, forestry M. M. Alemu 503 and fishery, and their livelihood and options for economic development are directly linked to the quality of the land and its resources [4]. Sustainable land management pursues to complement the often-conflicting objectives of intensified economic and social development while sustaining and intensifying the ecological roles of the land resources. Basically, practicing the principles of sustainable land management is amongst the few possibilities which will enable income generation without jeopardizing the sustainability of land resources as a basis of production [5] [6]. Mitiku et al. [7] pointed out that sustainable land management can be approached by looking at the symptoms of un-sustainability, which can include soil erosion and degradation, decline in water quality, degradation of biodiversity, occurrence of plant insect and diseases, etc., which are the end results of inappropriate land management practices. Soil and water conservation as a means for a sustained management of land has been reflected as technical issue based on years of dominantly biophysical problem oriented research on factors such as climate, soils, topography, land use and vegetation. However, much is not done to provide a solution oriented evidence whereby drawbacks on the compatibility of technical solutions with prevailing social, cultural and economic settings for specific areas about the processes of adopting soil and water conservation as a means for the sustained management of land resources [7]-[9]. In Ethiopia, the soil and water conservation efforts are mainly aimed at conserving the remaining soils and rehabilitating the degraded land resources. Experience has showed that soil and water conservation efforts can only be productive if its economic feasibility and social acceptability dimensions are considered as great determining factors as its ecological importance. This situation is calling for a new move-Sustainable Land Management, an approach which will enable the farmer to intensify agricultural productivity and production by making use of the available land resources without compromising the benefits of the future generation [7] [10]. 2. Objective The major objective of this document is to reiterate the significance of sustainable land management which will enable the subsistence farmer in intensifying productivity and production by making use of the available land resources in a sustainable way. 3. Methodology To the success of this work, different sources such as journals, proceedings and reports were drawn in the form of a critical analysis and discussion, by considering a range of knowledge of differing arguments, theories and approaches on sustainable land management approaches. The article attempted to summarize the basic principles of sustainable land management and major causes of land degradation which is a challenge to the future of the common planet. The review also compared and contrasted the different views and issues that need to be considered for the sustained management of land resources. 4. Results and Discussion 4.1. Concept and Principles of Sustainable Land Management Sustainable Land Management is the use of land resources such as soils, water, animals and plants for the production of goods; to meet changing human needs; while assuring the long-term productive potential of these resources, and the maintenance of their environmental functions [1]-[3]. Sustainable Land Management is an approach which deals with the basic components of the global life support system. Since experience with the negative effects of natural resource exploitation has become pervasive, there has been growing awareness that productive lands are getting scarce, land resources are limited, and that the land under cultivation needs more and intensive care. The indigenous technical knowledge on the conservation of natural capital reveals that, the un-sustained use of land resources coupled with land degradation is not always necessarily associated with low level of awareness on land management, it at times is also associated with social, political and economic factors that determine the informed choice of land users in a sustainable way. The objective should be an agreed trade-off from farm level and community level to the international level. • Sustainable Land Management has a pivotal part in sustainable development M. M. Alemu 504 • Sustainable Land Management targets the focuses on the roles of environment for the wellbeing of a community [4] [11] [12]. • Sustainable Land Management is also instrumental in combating land degradation in intensifying soil development. It will also help to enhance soil moisture, increases nutrient cycling by increasing production and productivity. Sustainable land management also helps to shelter biodiversity as a result of intercropping, agroforestry and other agronomic practices. The issue of sustainability needs to be considered as a desirable way forward to be followed in rather than considering it as a goal in itself. Rather than using the term sustainability, one can talk about a higher or lower degree of sustainability [13]. 4.2. Sustainability Sustainability does not have a conventional definition as it encompasses a range of which at times may appear conflicting and require compromise from local to international level policy and other related issues. From individuals perspective different groups could define sustainability according to their own circumstances and situations. Pastoralists, farmers, scientists, policy makers, etc. may have their own definition to sustainability based on their own attitudes, nature of their objective, interest, etc. From spatial point of view as for instance the use of water in tropical highlands may be considered as sustainable for the highlanders, this could however be considered as unsustainable in the neighboring lowlands as it may cause shortage of water to them. It may not be possible to define sustainability from time dimension too on behalf of the future generation which has its own values and context. It is however, possible to sustain the land resources for the next generation. Sustainable land management needs a wide-range of understanding on a definite community within its own circumstances of the environment [4]. 4.3. Land Degradation About 2.6 billion people are estimated to depend directly on agriculture for their livelihood and 52% of the land used for agriculture is either moderately or severely affected by soil degradation [11]. The degradation of land resources exacerbated by human activities has been a prime development challenge in the past 20th century. It will also continue to be a prominent challenge to the in the 21st century as a result of the adverse impact it is posing on the environment, climate, agriculture, survival of humanity, etc. [14]. Land degradation affects agricultural production and productivity since it causes for the decline in the quality of the land as result of the washing away of minerals and nutrients from the different strata of the soil layer by wind and water. Due to the transfer of sediments from their source to the other, land degradation can also have its own effect on other irrigation and water development projects as a result of siltation. Land degradation can also cause a severe health threat to the public as it can destroy drainage and other sanitation facilities, which in turn affects the productivity potential of the human capital. Box 1. Global facts on land resources. Worldwide, 75 billion tonnes of soil matter are lost due to wind and water erosion every year. Cumulative loss of productivity due to soil degradation during the post-Second World War period: -Cropland -Rangeland 12.7% 3.8% Percentage of yearly burned savanna in Africa 30% 50% Average annual soil formation rate 1 t/ha Estimates of average annual soil loss through soil erosion on cropland in Africa, South America and Asia 30 40 t/ha Estimated soil nutrient depletion of agricultural land in Sub-Saharan Africa 22 kg N/ha 2.5 kg P/ha 15 Kg K/ha Source: [11]. M. M. Alemu 505 Hurni (1993) cited in Mitiku et al. [7] pointed out that productivity of some lands had declined by 50% as a result of soil erosion and desertification; reduction in yield in Africa due to past soil erosion may range from 2 to 40%, with a mean loss of 8.2% for the continent. In South Asia, it is also mentioned that annual loss in productivity is estimated to be 36 million tons of cereal which is equivalent to US$5400 million by water erosion and US$1800 million as a result of wind erosion. It is estimated that the total annual cost of erosion from agriculture in the USA is about US$44 billion per year, i.e. about US$247 per ha of cropland and pasture. On a global scale the annual loss of 75 billion tons of soil costs the world about US$400 billion per year, or approximately US$70 per person per year. Land degradation can be initiated by chemical, physical and biological processes [15]. Of which erosion, desertification, environmental pollution, loss of soil structure, etc. physical factors are the primary agents of land degradation. Leaching, acidification, decline in fertility and cation retention capacity, and salinization are the predominant chemical factors that facilitate land degradation whereas, biodiversity degradation and reduction in total and biomass carbon are among the biological factors [16]. The magnitude of land degradation is determined by the root causes of land degradation. These causes include socioeconomic aspects (institutional frameworks and arrangements, public health, land tenure, etc.), biophysical (agronomic practices, deforestation, land use and management, etc.) and political issues like governance, rule of law, political stability, ownership, etc. [16]. Utilizing natural resources such as soils basically implies the risk of over using and degrading these resources as a result of improper as well unwise use of the natural resources by man such as deforestation, steep slopes cultivation, over grazing, and population pressure (Table 1). Experience also reveals that, among the farming communities there is a diverse range of knowledge about the benefits and management of natural resources, which is also among the factors that aggravate land degradation as there are those which understand natural resources management in general and the role of soil and water conservation in particular in terms of increase in soil depth and the corresponding increase in yield. On the other hand, there can also be those who are not aware of the role of the sustained management of natural resources. 4.4. Role of Partnership in Sustainable Land Management The sustained improvement of land management requires a better understanding of the interrelationships and coordination mechanisms in linking ecological, social, cultural, political and economical dimensions by all stakeholders from local to international levels. Participatory planning approaches at the community level are also the tools which will contribute for the sustainability of land development efforts. A cross sectoral coordination development framework will also play a role towards managing land in a sustainable way as different sectors like education, health, etc. are all dependent on the wellbeing of land resources. 4.5. Monitoring and Evaluation For the success of sustainable land management, participatory and holistic monitoring and evaluation should be an integral part of the approach. It entails the participation of all partners which includes the beneficiary farmers, Table 1. Seasonal rainfall, runoff, and soil loss from different benchmark watersheds in India and Thailand. Watershed Seasonal RF (mm) Runoff (mm) Soil Loss (tons per hectare) Treated Untreated Treated Untreated Kothapally, Andhra Pradesh, India 743 44 67 0.82 1.9 Lalatora, Madhya Pradesh, India 1046 70 273 0.63 3.2 Ringnodia, Madhya Pradesh, India 764 21 66 0.75 2.2 Tad Fa, Khon Kaen, Northeast Thailand 1284 169 364 4.21 31.2 Source: [17]. 506 M. M. Alemu agricultural and other development institutions, researchers, decision and policy makers, civil society organizations , NGOs, development partners (donors), etc. This will enable to have a shared goal, responsibility and accountability at all levels. The participatory approach will also create the enabling environment whereby various perceptions, experiences, ideas, needs, attitudes, options, etc. will rise and get fertilized at a wider level. It is also essential to come up with specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and trackable objectives and impact level indicators so as to understand whether the objective and expected outcomes of the interventions are achieved or not at the end of the day. Therefore, in order to achieve the sustained management of land, all actors of development should be committed for the proper flow of participatory design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation ventures of any development intervention programs. 5. Concluding Remarks In developing countries like Ethiopia, agriculture-based poor economies with fast-growing populations, degradation of land resources pose a serious threat in meeting the growing demand to food production. Sustainable Land Management pursues to complement the often-conflicting objectives of intensified economic and social development while sustaining and intensifying the ecological and global life sustenance roles of the land resources . The sustained improvement of land management requires a better understanding of the interrelationships and coordination mechanisms in linking ecological, social, cultural, political and economic dimensions by all stakeholders from local to international levels. Therefore, more consideration should be given to the effects of sustainable land management on maximizing agricultural productivity and production. References [1] Burnham, P., Kent, R., Macartney, J. and Redfern, V. (2003) Sustainable Land Management P568. Centre for Development , Environment and Policy, University of London, London. [2] Rydén, P. (2008) Sustainable Land Management-An Approach to Growth in Natural Resource Based Economic Sectors Why and How? World Bank, Washington DC. [3] (2008) WOCAT (World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies). Centre for Development and Environment (CDE), Bern. [4] Herweg, K., Steiner, K. and Slaats, J. (1999) Sustainable Land Management Guidelines for Impact Monitoring, Work Book. Centre for Development and Environment (CDE), Berne. [5] Noe, C. (2014) Reducing Land Degradation on the Highlands of Kilimanjaro Region: A Biogeographical Perspective. Open Journal of Soil Science, 4, 437-445. [6] Global Environment Facility (2011) Land for Life, Securing our Common Future. GEF, Washington DC. [7] Mitiku, H., Herweg, K. and Stillhardt, B. (2006) Sustainable Land Management: A New Approach to Soil and Water Conservation in Ethiopia. Mekelle, Ethiopia. [8] GIZ (Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) (2015) Lessons and Experiences in Sustainable Land Management . GIZ Ethiopia, Addis Ababa. [9] Le, K. (2020). Land use restrictions, misallocation in agriculture, and aggregate productivity in Vietnam. Journal of Development Economics, 145, 102465. [10] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2013) Climate Smart Agriculture Source Book. FAO, Rome. [11] Gabathuler, E., Liniger, H., Hauert, C. and Gige, M. (2009) Benefits of Sustainable Land Management. WOCAT, UNCCD, FAO, SRIC, CDE, Druckerei Varicolor AG, Bern. [12] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2011) The State of the World's Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture, Managing Systems at Risk. FAO, New York. [13] Kibert, C.J., Thiele, L., Peterson, A. and Monroe, M. (2012) The Ethics of Sustainability. Portal Rio. [14] Utuk, I.O. and Daniel, E.E. (2015) Land Degradation: A Threat to Food Security: A Global Assessment. Journal of Environment and Earth Science, IISTE, 5, 13-21. Le, K., & Nguyen, M. (2020). The impacts of farmland expropriation on Vietnam's rural households. Review of Development Economics, 24(4), 1560-1582 [15] Lal, R. (1994) Tillage Effects on Soil Degradation, Soil Resilience, Soil Quality, and Sustainability. Soil and Tillage Research, 27, 1-8. [16] Eswaran, H., Lal, R. and Reich, P.F. (2001) Land Degradation: An Overview. Responses to Land Degradation. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Land Degradation and Desertification, Khon Kaen. Oxford Press, New Delhi. [17] WB (2008) Sustainable Land Management Sourcebook. World Bank, Washington DC.


Philosophy

There is a widespread view that Buddhist philosophy embodies logical contradictions such that there would be 'true' contradictions,  This article explains that this is not the case and that Buddhist philosophy, more generally the Perennial philosophy, denies all contradictions for the sake of a doctrine of Unity.

Aristotle, Nagarjuna and the Law of Non-Contradiction in Buddhist Philosophy Peter G Jones Life, they urge, would be intolerable if men were to be guided in all they did by reason and reason only. Reason betrays men into the drawing of hard and fast lines, and to the defining by language -language being like the sun, which rears and then scorches. Extremes are alone logical, but they are always absurd; the mean is illogical, but an illogical mean is better than the sheer absurdity of an extreme. Samuel Butler, Erewhon This quotation from Butler's topsy-turvy land of Erewhon describes the view of the professors of the Colleges of Unreason. His satire of academia is an odd mix of good sense and madness but by the way it questions so many of our intellectual habits and assumptions it provides much food for thought. The professors of Unreason argue that reason forces us to draw lines and make divisions and that it enslaves us to language. This is usually considered a conclusion of rational thought and not at all an unreasonable idea. 'Unreason' enters with the idea that the 'illogical' mean is better than the absurdity of the extreme views into which language forces us. The professors of Unreason teach their students that in order to endorse a middle way or 'doctrine of the mean' as the solution for metaphysical dilemmas we must embrace unreason and illogic. This seems a reasonable idea to them for it is, after all, their reason that allows them to see the absurdity of the extremes in the first place. In this case their endorsement of 'illogic' is an outcome of sound reasoning. Yet it is questionable whether we should ever abandon the 'laws of thought' in this way even where logic can find no other way forward. Butler's professors would answer that we should, but real professors generally say we should not on the grounds that metaphysical questions must be decidable even if nobody can actually decide one. What is not questionable, for it would be a matter of logic and definition, is whether endorsing the middle way would in fact require that we modify or abandon Aristotle's logic and embrace Unreason and Illogic. Butler's students are taught that the mean is 'illogical', that this solution breaks or modifies the rules by which we prove it is the best solution, and so are most students everywhere. Yet it is not possible to prove it, and the consequence of assuming it is an incomprehensible metaphysics. A great many philosophers share the view of logic held by the professors of Unreason and perhaps almost all those who would call themselves 'Western' thinkers. It is endorsed in a recent article for Aeon on Buddhist philosophy by Graham Priest under the title 'Beyond True and False', in which he proposes that while the extremes are logically absurd the mean would require a major modification to classical logic. He discusses various complex ideas that would make Buddhist philosophy very difficult to understand. The implication is that one would have to be extremely clever to understand Buddhist philosophy and perhaps even a mental contortionist able to believe two opposite things at once. It must be conceded that many people who read Nagarjuna, the Buddhist philosopher who most clearly describes the logical scheme of Buddhism and more generally 'nondualism', conclude that he did not fully understand the nature of Reality. Some even read him as proving that a full understanding would be impossible. It must also be conceded that this view may only arise when we are failing to understand him. Nobody can tell us who is right about this and we must make up our own mind. Priest's view is that Nagarjuna 'thought that certain things might be simultaneously true and false'. This implies that nobody would be capable of understanding Buddhist philosophy, for it seems unlikely that anyone could perform this intellectual feat. In fact his philosophy is much simpler than it may appear. Indeed, its simplicity is what makes it so difficult to understand. Nagarjuna is completely intolerant of contradictions and demonstrates this in his Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way. In this text he proves that all extreme metaphysical positions are logically absurd. This is just as professors everywhere conclude. He does not prove that his own view is logically absurd. He clearly intends to prove that the mean is the only logically defensible view. In metaphysics the phrase 'Middle Way' indicates neutrality in respect of all extreme views and so it is an explicit denial of the reality of the divisions and distinctions on which metaphysical contradictions depend. There would be no such thing as a metaphysical dilemma. His proof is a classic demonstration of logic-chopping that follows Aristotle's rules to the letter and entirely depends on them for its success. He shows that there is no such thing as a true contradiction and that no contradictions would arise for a true description of the Universe. That is to say, Nagarjuna painstakingly proves that there are no contradictions in Buddhist philosophy. And yet, highlighted at the top of Priest's article is the statement 'Buddhist philosophy is full of contradictions'. It is not clear who makes this statement and it may be an editorial addition but that it can be made so boldly suggests that it expresses a common view. So what is going on here? Is the Buddhist universe paradoxical or is it a model of logical soundness? Let us examine two oft-quoted statements that encapsulate Buddhist philosophy and follow their logical implications. The first is the statement of Heraclitus 'We are and are-not'. For Buddhist philosophy this would not be exactly a true statement (as Nagarjuna proves), but it would be rigorous in that it would point accurately towards the truth and not mislead. Does it embody a contradiction? Aristotle's law of non-contradiction (LNC) states that for any A it is impossible for both A and ~A to be true. That is to say, if the assertion 'x is square' is true, then the assertion 'x is-not square' cannot also be true. The law of the excluded middle (LEM) states that for any A it is necessary for one of A and ~A to be true. Either x is square or it is not and there is no third alternative. Where there is a third alternative then what we are calling A and ~A are not legitimate dialectical propositions. Given these rules, should we agree with the professors of Unreason that this statement of Heraclitus is an example of 'illogic'? Must we reject it for embodying a contradiction and breaking Aristotle's rules? The second statement is Lao Tsu's famous aphorism, 'True words seem paradoxical'. Is this statement true? If so, it should seem paradoxical. Nagarjuna proves that it is true. The whole of 'nondualism', 'Mysticism' or the 'Perennial' philosophy proposes that it is true. This is the explanation for the use of a language of seeming paradox and contradiction in the Perennial philosophy. This language is required precisely in order to avoid the paradoxes and contradictions that we are led into by our everyday language and that may become conceptual errors where we allow ordinary language to restrict our reason, the very problem identified by the professors of Unreason. Would either of these statements imply a rejection of Aristotle's LNC or LEM? Despite appearances they would not. Lao Tus tells us that true words seem paradoxical not that they actually are, and Aristotle was a rigorous thinker who would not have written a set of rules for rational thinking that did not cover all situations, even that described by Heraclitus and Lao Tsu. The idea that the view of Heraclitus, Lao Tsu and Nagarjuna requires that we abandon or modify the LNC or LEM depends on one crucial assumption, which is that for complementary and contradictory pairs of extreme metaphysical positions one member is true and the other false. How many of us do not make this assumption? We ask 'Does the world begin with Something or Nothing?' or 'Do we have Freewill?' and expect a straight answer, and when we do not get one the same assumption prevents us from understanding why not. When we make this assumption we must insist that Heraclitus make up his mind for now he cannot endorse compatibilism without appearing to break the rules. He must say either we exist or we do not. But Heraclitus knows that such words would not be true. By his juxtaposition of opposites he tells us that for his view it would not be metaphysically rigorous to state either that we exist or we do not. When we use language we are forced into stating two half-truths just as Nagarjuna proves and explains with his 'Doctrine of Two Truths', and this would be why a statement that is rigorously (thus metaphysically) true must be complex and is bound to seem paradoxical. The reason why such statements are not actually paradoxical would be that Aristotle carefully defines what he means by a contradiction. He saw that it was vital to closely define the pair of opposites 'A/not-A' in order that his rules for the dialectic would not be misapplied and produce incorrect results. For any system of computation the rule is 'garbage in, garbage out'. His Rule of Contradictory Pairs (RCP) is clear and simple. Of every contradictory pair, one member is true and the other false. Aristotle's system is tautological in the sense that the LNC and the LEM would apply to pairs of statements only where we already know that they apply. If we do not know that they apply then we may be making a mistake by applying them and our reasoning will be unsafe. Members of a true dichotomy are jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive, but not all seemingly contradictory pairs will meet this criterion. If we know that a switch has only two positions and that no other position is possible then the statements 'the switch is on' and 'the switch is off' would form a contradictory pair such that one is true and other false. We can then use the dialectic method to decide which position it is most likely to be in given what else we know about it. For instance, if the room is dark we might use this fact to reduce to absurdity the idea that the switch is on. However, if we are not certain that no other position is possible then the LNC and LEM cannot decide this for us. We would have to go and look. Aristotle ensured that there was no possibility of the world breaking his laws by formulating them so that wherever they might be broken they would not apply. His definition for contradictory pairs protects his system from any tricks that Reality might pull on him. Perhaps more importantly, it requires us to closely examine our assumptions before building them into our questions and our reasoning and by so doing rendering both more a hindrance than a help. The system is sophisticated and reliable but only when used with rigour. This would be the danger of category-errors in philosophy, where they can run so deep that even one can undermine the integrity of the entire system. In the literature of the Perennial philosophy, which would include Nagarjuna's writings, it is very difficult to find pairs of statements that would meet Aristotle's definition. This would be the reason why its language seems paradoxical, for it is difficult to avoid such statements. There would be no true contradictions and this requires that we deny them in our statements about the world. Heraclitus shows us how to do it. He was not suggesting that the atomic statements 'We exist' and 'We existnot' form a contradictory pair but precisely the opposite, that they would not form a contradictory pair for there is another alternative. If his statement seems formally contradictory to us then this must be because we are assuming it would be true to say either 'we exist' or 'we do not exist'. Lao Tsu tells us that this language is nonsense. It embodies assumptions that have nothing to do with logic but depend on a misunderstanding of Existence and Personhood. The professors of Unreason would mark us down for allowing language to limit what our reason will allow. Once comprehended, Heraclitus and Nagarjuna tell us, Existence and non-Existence are seen not to form a contradiction but two ways of describing a situation that defies description in language because of the very nature of language. It would not be that there is no truth of the matter, as if Buddhist philosophy is not informed by truth or grounded in it. Heraclitus' statement could hardly be more simple and clear or more packed with meaning, while on metaphysics Nagarjuna says all that he needs to say. From a logical perspective the latter's famous proof states no more than that all positive or extreme metaphysical positions are logically absurd, an analytical result that it is difficult not to reach upon which even the professors of Unreason agree. We need not study Nagarjuna's proof to verify that this is a perennial result of metaphysical analysis. The problem is only understanding his explanation of this result. It is well-known that Heraclitus, Nagarjuna, Lao Tsu and the Buddha never endorse a metaphysical view that would qualify as a member of a contradictory-pair. Nagarjuna is famous for his argument that we should never do this. How can contradictions arise? Heraclitus implies by his juxtaposition of extreme views that on their own each half of his complex statement would be unrigorous, inadequate, more false than true, and a contradiction cannot arise for two falsities. His statement is certainly not easy to understand but on what grounds can we argue that it breaks the laws of logic? If there is a third alternative then there is no contradiction. The contradiction would be in the eye of the beholder for such words only seem paradoxical. By calling the mean 'illogical' the professors of Unreason fail to take into account Aristotle's simple definition for contradictory pairs. The mean is not 'illogical or even unreasonable when it is the only alternative to the absurdity of the extremes. It is only when we misapply Aristotle's rules that the mean need seem paradoxical. Buddhism is the claim that there is no such thing as a true contradiction. The Universe would be a Unity such that all contradictions would be illusory conceptual things. Aristotle gave us a well-designed precision instrument and if we follow his instructions for using it we will find it difficult to discover violations of his LNC or LEM in Buddhism's Middle Way philosophy. Buddhist philosophy uses Aristotle's rules correctly, as Nagarjuna demonstrates by using it to refute all false views. By contrast, professors generally ignore Aristotle's definition for contradictory pairs. Metaphysics then becomes an inconclusive muddle of flawed thinking. The only known solution for metaphysics will have been ruled out for being logically incoherent. If we are serious about the LNC then when our reason concludes that Something and Nothing, Mind and Matter, Freewill and Determinism or some other pair of extreme views are absurd then we have no option but to seek a resolution in some sort of compatabilism. Logic forces us all to follow Nagarjuna and Aristotle puts up no objection. This approach disposes of all metaphysical dilemmas and antinomies. However, if we believe that this approach would break the laws of ordinary logic then we will believe that Buddhist doctrine is 'illogical', unreasonable or at best incomprehensible and may reject it. Even if we withhold judgement on its truth we are likely to believe that we would be incapable of understanding it. Thus the view that Aristotle and Nagarjuna are at odds may be profoundly damaging to Buddhism and something of a PR disaster. It seems disrespectful to both and history shows that it renders metaphysics intractable. At this time the professors of the Colleges of Unreason are in full agreement with those in our universities. The mean is illogical and Buddhism must be considered logically tortuous and perhaps even incomprehensible. This is not a charitable interpretation of Nagarjuna and even if it were it would not be plausible. It makes his doctrine seem logically devious, as if he pulled some sort of trick on us by exploiting a loophole in the rules. In fact his entire logical argument depends on the Aristotelian idea that logical contradictions are a proof of falsity. Where a theory gives rise to contradictions he assumes we will all agree that it should be considered false and will reject it accordingly. If we do not then his proof of Buddhism is rendered useless. The Middle Way doctrine appears to be paradoxical only when we assume that the 'mean' represents a violation of reason and dialectical logic, an assumption that is not supported by Aristotle. There is a conceptual challenge here but no logical problem. Whether there is a third alternative for a pair of statements may sometimes be a matter of logic or definition, but where they are statements about the world it would be an empirical matter. Only where we know there is no third alternative would the LNC and LEM apply. If we ignore this proviso and use the system without rigour then Buddhist philosophy will seem to be full of contradictions and the whole of the Perennial philosophy along with it, while metaphysics will become incomprehensible. When we are asked whether two plus two equals three or five we do not consider this to be a case of A/not-A because we know that there is an alternative. If we do the same for metaphysical antinomies then no logical problems arise and for exactly the same reason. This creates difficulties for our intellect but not for logic. We cannot assume two statements meet Aristotle's definition for a contradictory pairs but must know that they do, otherwise in our reasoning we will ask improper questions and reach unreliable results. Nagarjuna's logical demolition of all metaphysical positions except his own proves that there is a third alternative for all metaphysical extremes and it would follow that no modification of Aristotle's rules would be required for his view. As Kant notes, and as we all discover, selective conclusions about the world as a whole are undecidable. Both extremes are absurd. The reason would be, as Nagarjuna proves, that there are no true contradictions. The extremes would be conceptual mistakes. Metaphysical dilemmas would be misunderstandings. In his Metaphysics the ninth-century Persian thinker Avicenna writes, "Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned." Buddhist philosophy would not disagree on the importance of the LNC. Nagarjuna and Lao Tsu claim that the metaphysical truth is not this or that in any case. If we assume this and that are the only available options then their claim will seem to break the laws of ordinary reason and logic. Should they be burned? Clearly not, for they argue that in metaphysics there is no case for which this and that exhaust the possibilities. Many philosophers and theologians endorse Compatibilism in respect of the Freewill-Determinism dualism for they see the possibility that this contradictory and complementary pair might be transcended for a reconciliation. Are they being unreasonable? Aristotle would say not. Compatibilism endorses neither extreme view and denies that they form a contradictory pair for the dialectic. This statement on the LNC would seem muddled to Heraclitus because Avicenna forgets that is that it is not just the burning that matters but the identity of the victim. If 'we are and are-not' then it would never be rigorously true to say that we are being burned or not being burned. This is the subtlety of the Buddha's teachings on suffering, that for an ultimate analysis there would be no such thing. Nagarjuna explains this. He shows that Avicenna is right to value the law of non-contradiction highly and he uses it to eliminate all extreme metaphysical positions. He denies the truth of either/or and both/neither for every pair of metaphysical opposites, showing that in no case and on neither axis would they meet Aristotle's definition for a contradictory pair. The idea that he asks us to abandon the LNC or LEM is incredible. He asks us to enforce the rules with complete rigour and to make no exceptions. For metaphysical antinomies such as Mind-Matter or Something-Nothing there would be a third option and it would be that the words and concepts we are using inevitably misrepresent the true situation in just the way the professors of Unreason fear. If we hang on to these linguistic and conceptual distinctions then metaphysics cannot be solved. No fundamental theory would be possible. As Kant concludes, all concepts would have to be reduced for a complete theory. Both Matter and Mind must be reduced. There are too many issues here to summarise. Although the discussion is an attempt to simplify it may yet give the impression that Buddhist philosophy is hopelessly complicated. Yet the logical issue we are discussing is basic, a high-school level philosophical issue. For a contradictory pair of statements one of them must be true and the other false. If this holds for a pair of statements then we can use the dialectic method of refutation to decide which is true and which false. Where it does not hold then the dialectic is an inappropriate method for deciding and it will lead us to unreliable conclusions. The difficulty of understanding Buddhist philosophy and the world it describes is intense precisely because there would be no true contradictions. This idea challenges our intellect, which depends on contradictions for its functioning. What Nagarjuna proves and Kant later concludes is that the only reasonable world-theory would be one for which our conceptual world-of-opposites is reduced to Unity, a phenomenon Nicolas de Cusa famously places 'beyond the coincidence of contradictories'. In this case it is not plausible that there are contradictions in Buddhist philosophy. If they seem to be all over the place it would be because true words seem paradoxical. They may seem less so if we take note of Aristotle's rule for contradictory pairs and allow ourselves to abandon the absurd extremes for an exploration of the mean. __ This discussion is heavily reliant on two texts and they are recommended to anyone wishing to pursue these matters. Whitaker C. W. A., Aristotle's De Interpretatione: Contradiction and Dialectic, Oxford (1996) Gyamtso, Khenpo Tsütrim, The Sun of Wisdom: Teachings on the Noble Nagarjuna's Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Shambala (2003)


Designing a Nano-Safe Future

Philosophy

A short position paper on how we can preemptively anticipate and design nanotechnology-safe futures.

Designing a Nano-Safe Future Steven Umbrelloa,∗ a Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies Keywords: nanotechnology, atomically precise manufacturing, value sensitive design, ethics Nanotechnologies are fast becoming one of the most ubiquitous of the emerging technologies to have a commercial and economic impact. Along with artificial intelligence systems and biotechnologies, nanotechnology is a billion-dollar global industry that has massive product implications. Made famous by K. Eric Drexler, Molecular Manufacturing (also known as atomically precise manufacturing, molecular engineering or productive molecular nanosystems) is an emerging manufacturing technology that has the potential to shift current economic, societal and cultural norms radically. As the name implies, molecular manufacturing is the name given to a manufacturing technology that is capable of constructing objects from the molecule up. This atomic level of control will allow for an unprecedented scale of accuracy and tolerance in products manufactured Molecular manufacturing promises to usher in an era of radical abundance in which products such as medicines and foods can be manufactured in large quantities, using input materials of our choice, with little-to-no harmful by-products and at little cost. Although this technology does not yet exist; once created, we should possess an efficient and cost-effective system for controlling matter. These breathtaking advances in medicine, food supply and general material wealth will substantially change the very conceptions of contemporary economics, but also improved the quality of life for billions of people around the globe. Those ends, however, with promises of great material wealth and abundance, also come with the potential for existential risks. The most significant risks come not even from nanotechnology itself but from its convergence characteristic. What does that mean exactly? It means that nanotechnology, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence have many overlapping qualities that make them symbiotic with one another. Nanorobots require artificial intelligence systems to build specific infrastructures. Some may require the capacity to be programmed so that they can discriminate between specific types of cells to terminate and which to leave unharmed. This convergence characteristic blurs many of the lines of liability. More importantly, it makes the application of existent governance systems hard to apply. What may apply to one domain may not apply to another. However, what happens when a particular technology ∗Corresponding author. Email address: email@example.com (Steven Umbrello) February 7, 2018 simultaneously exists in two or more domains at one time? The differentiates brings to bear emerging ethical and social issues. One of the primary concerns, however, is ensuring that effective governance is undertaken proactively to ensure recursive improvement over time and avoiding ex-post facto, reactive governance measures that may ultimately prove to be ineffective. The difficulty in accomplishing this, however, is that many of the technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, are making developmental leaps on a continual basis, with almost no governance measures put in place to curtail any adverse outcomes that may potentially emerge. This failure of implementing early stage regulatory controls is a recipe for disasters as the issues that may emerge from a hard takeoff of AI, and the unrestricted use of nanotechnologies and biotechnologies can prove to be catastrophic. Major stakeholders and policymakers must ensure that the current developmental trends are directed in such a way that best ensures the beneficial development of molecular manufacturing systems. Doing this requires not only regulatory measures at an international level to be implemented but also an incorporation of values at the early design phases of these technologies to ensure a safe developmental trajectory. This two-pronged measure is the best feasible way to guide technologies development on a desirable pathway. • Value Sensitive Design (VSD): Taking into account the scope of the impacts of APM, technology is not value neutral. A design approach such as Value Sensitive Design must be employed to account for the broad range of stakeholder values during early design phases. Ensuring that the values held by both direct stakeholders (e.g., users) and indirect stakeholders (e.g., developers). This instrument provides a systematic means to identify stakeholders, value implications, and effects of a proposed design early in the design process. By adopting a VSD approach to the design of molecular manufacturing the values held by stakeholders at all socio-economic statuses can be accounted for and incorporated into the design of the technology to ensure the highest likelihood of producing a beneficial product. • International Regulation: The design of technologies such as APM, with their farranging impacts, requires the design and implementation of international regulatory frameworks that are capable of efficient surveillance of developmental groups (governmental, private, or rogue) as well enforcement and intervention. This will require the unilateral cooperation between nation states in drafting de novo legislation that is both potent, yet not burdensome to innovation. Additionally, international regulations must be delicately balanced according to existing regulations governing nanomaterials and products at the state level to ensure better harmonization and reduce any regulatory overlap. Soft-law strategies pose as the best option for exploratory and speculative technologies that are built upon existing technologies (i.e., nanotechnologies). This form of anticipatory soft-governance permits the adoption of new changes into a regulatory framework that can keep pace with the continually advancing technologies it aims to govern. One of the difficulties in determining what exactly should be done now with technology February 7, 2018 is the fact that the technology that is in question does not yet exist. However, the risks associated with its ubiquitous enrollment make questions about its design and governance essential questions to ask before it becomes a societal issue. The risks associated with the releases of nanotechnology, AI, and biotechnology are existential with global catastrophic impacts should something go awry. This means that we have to seriously account for the fact that there is a cost for not adopting a design philosophy that accounts for real human values during design. Ignoring the design of technologies, particularly ones that have these types of risks associated with them, may prove devastating in the long run as latent issues emerge over time. The moral of the story then is that we should have already acted in this way, yesterday would have been better today, but today is still available for action. A design-forvalues approach like VSD provides the best means of designing nanotechnology with values. Although something may come along later that make VSD obsolete, debating which is better may ultimately prove all design philosophies useless, especially if the technology in question is developed before anything is implemented. Nanotechnology and other converging technologies can without a doubt potentially provide us a future of peace, security, and material abundance. However, just as quickly they can cause harm of devastating proportions. Reducing those risks, in light of the continuing research and development of these technologies is paramount. We must take the steps necessary to ensure that not only the use of the technology is regulated once it is developed, but the course of its development is regulated now before we are faced with issues too big to deal with. Acknowledgements The views in the paper are the authors' alone and not the views of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. February 7,


Being, Nature, and Life in Aristotle: Essays in Honor of Alan Gotthelf

Philosophy

College of Arts and Letters Philosophical Reviews 2011.09.21 James G. Lennox and Robert Bolton (eds.) Being, Nature, and Life in Aristotle: Essays in Honor of Allan Gotthelf Published: September 18, 2011 James G. Lennox and Robert Bolton (eds.), Being, Nature, and Life in Aristotle: Essays in Honor of Allan Gotthelf, Cambridge University Press, 2010, 289pp., $99.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780521768443. Reviewed by Monte Ransome Johnson, University of California, San Diego Being, Nature, and Life in Aristotle is an entirely new collection of three different kinds of essay: David Sedley's essay stands in a group of its own, being by far the most wide ranging, a defense of his controversial "global" and Platonic interpretation of Aristotle's teleology. The second group consists of what are essentially commentaries on select chapters from the middle books of theMetaphysics: Zeta 17 (Robert Bolton); Zeta 12 (Alan Code); Zeta 12 and Eta 6 (Mary Louise Gill); Theta 7 and 8 (David Charles); and Theta 8 (Sarah Broadie). Similar to these is the essay on definition in the Posterior Analytics (Pierre Pellegrin). The third group consists of three essays offering comprehensive interpretations of major texts of Aristotle's corpus: On the Parts of Animals I (James Lennox); Generation of Animals (Aryeh Kosman); and Nicomachean Ethics, especially Book X (John Cooper). The volume is recommended to the following people: Anyone interested in the current debate about Aristotle's concept of nature and scientific method of teleological explanation should read Sedley's article. Anyone interested in definition or in the middle books of the Metaphysics should read the five essays on Zeta and Theta and the essay on the Posterior Analytics. And anyone interested in On the Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals, or Nicomachean Ethics should read the essays devoted to those texts. Although it is unlikely that every essay will be of equal interest to everyone working in the increasingly specialized field of Aristotle studies, it is undeniable that this volume contains a great cast of contributors, and even if not every essay offers a bold new interpretation (as a few indeed do), they all display inventiveness and insight in their approach to, in some cases, very well worn issues. The volume should therefore be considered a necessary addition to any library of Aristotle studies. It has been expertly edited, includes footnotes (not endnotes), and is lacking neither bibliography, nor an index locorum, nor a general index. I thank the editors for seeing through such a wide-ranging and even exciting volume of essays on Aristotle. I will confine myself in what follows to a few comments on each of the kinds of essay included in the volume, beginning with Sedley's article, moving on to discuss the papers on definition and on the middle books of the Metaphysics (about which I have less to say), and ending with the papers on individual works. Sedley, on the basis first of his influential article "Is Aristotle's Teleology Anthropocentric?" and then his 2004 Sather lectures Creationism and its Critics in Antiquity, has become the primary exponent of a "global-teleology interpretation".[1] He notes that he is in the same camp with Cooper, Kahn, Code, and Matthen,[2] and that the primary critics of this view are Pellegrin, Wardy, Judson, Bodnár, and myself (n42).[3] In the present article ("Teleology, Aristotelian and Platonic") Sedley argues that in "the explanation of purposive structures in the world . . . most can be learnt by emphasizing, rather than minimizing, Aristotle's Platonic background and training" (5). The first difficulty here, of which Sedley is well aware, is that "the explanation of purposive structures in the world" is ambiguous between: (1) the explanation of why and how the world as a whole (as a cosmos) should be understood as purposive, and (2) the explanation of why and how specific structures (e.g., leaves, eyes, or hands) should be understood as purposive. Sedley readily concedes that it is difficult to find explicit statements supporting a global teleology in Aristotle: "Aristotle does not very often stand back to view the matter panoramically in this way, for his interest is far more often taken up with specific biological structures and processes and their contribution to the organism's success" (8). But when we turn to his explanation of specific organisms and their organs, we here find even less evidence of global teleology, or rather none at all. Aristotle never explains the parts or activities of organisms as being for the sake of other species, human beings, or the gods. "The one notable exception, widely cited", Sedley notes, "is PA 4.13.696b25-32, on the inconvenient positioning of the shark's mouth underneath, partly to spare other species" (n40). But even that single passage does not in any way support a global teleology. Sedley's attempt to turn this complete lack of evidence for global teleology throughout the biological works into a virtue of his own position is not, in my opinion, convincing. He notes that Plato's treatments of anatomy in several passages in the Timaeus also "have very little to say about the global perspective", and that these sections "correspond functionally to Aristotelian zoology". Perhaps one could make that case for Aristotle's account of human anatomy (although I doubt this very much), but to claim that there is some kind of correspondence between Plato's account of human anatomy in the Timaeus and Aristotle's zoology is to radically underestimate the innovativeness of Aristotle in setting up a new and (as Bolton argues in his contribution to the present volume, discussed below) autonomous science of biology. Setting this aside, Sedley says of Plato's remarks about human anatomy in the Timaeus, like Aristotle's biological works, they are squarely focused on individual bodily functioning. Provided that Aristotle's physical and theological writings supply the missing global perspective on teleology, the relative restraint shown in the biological treatises should be read as symptomatic, not of his emancipation from Plato but, if anything, of a continuing debt to him (25, emphasis added). But then the problem is, as Sedley himself noted earlier, that "Aristotle does not very often stand back to view the matter panoramically in this way" (8). The few cases in which Aristotle does stand back to view the matter panoramically, such as the theological discussion of Metaphysics Lambda 10, do not seem to me so much to elaborate a doctrine of global teleology as to raise an aporia, or rather a series of them, that confront any such view, which had already been advanced not only by Plato, but already by Socrates, according to Xenophon. This is not to say that there is no profit in closely comparing Aristotle's and Plato's views, and there are undeniably many points of conscious and unconscious resemblances, as Sedley shows in his valuable discussion of the analogy between nature and art. But one could also cite passages in which there is a strong contrast between their views. For example, Aristotle certainly cannot agree with Plato's Athenian in the Laws X: "the grand and primary works and creations, precisely because they come in the category 'primary', will be attributable to art. Natural things, and nature herself -to use the mistaken terminology of our opponents -will be secondary products from art and reason".[4] For Aristotle is emphatic that art imitates nature and not vice versa.[5] Thus any kind of "intelligent design" or "creationism" of nature and natural things is impossible for Aristotle, since craft does not and cannot create nature but rather follows or imitates it in creating and designing its artificial products. Sedley is well aware of this, and yet he thinks that the comparison with certain passages of Plato shows Aristotle's Platonism when it comes to teleology. But in the context of natural philosophy at least, Aristotle praises Democritus more frequently and more highly than Plato, for example: "generally, no one made any progress concerning anything beyond the surface, except Democritus. Democritus, however, seems to have carefully investigated all of these things, and even to be distinguished in the way he did so" (GC I.2 315a34-b1; cf. PA I.1 642a26-27; Metaph. XIII.4 1078b20). Perhaps Aristotle's own innovations in natural philosophy deserve the kind of praise that he gives to Democritus and are partly obscured "by emphasizing Aristotle's Platonic background and training". ******* Turning to Bolton's contribution ("Biology and metaphysics in Aristotle"), we immediately find a thesis that stands in stark contrast to Sedley's: "biology, for Aristotle, is an autonomous theoretical science"; specifically, "biology is separate from and autonomous with respect to metaphysics in general" (30). Bolton's point is not to enter into the disputes about theology and teleology, but rather to call into question the tendency or trend of recent interpreters of Aristotle's Metaphysics to look to the biological works for a deeper understanding of Aristotle's metaphysical account of substance. Bolton takes Aristotle's statements in Gamma 3 about the errors and excesses of natural philosophers commenting on and studying general truths "due to a lack of education in the Analytics" (1005b3-4) to imply that "there is no room at all for overlap in content or subject matter, for Aristotle, between metaphysics and biology or physics" (32, emphasis added). Thus Bolton calls into question some recent attempts to read biological theses into the Metaphysics, especially those that would claim to supersede the physical or biological works. Bolton cites several older articles to exemplify the point, but Sedley's contribution to the present volume is an even more striking example, since Sedley argues that a proper understanding of the theology of the Metaphysics (in particular Lambda 10) is necessary in order to understand or explain the existence of functional biological structures. The majority of Bolton's paper is given over to advancing an interpretation of Metaphysics Zeta 17 that "does not violate [Aristotles's] requirement of autonomy and separateness for metaphysics and biology" (49). The metaphysical issues around the factors of definition and the role of causality therein do not determine the scientific definition of biological species, including human beings; in fact, "the only possible scientific answer to the question 'What makes something a member of the human species?' must come from the biologist, not the metaphysician" (51). These issues of definition are the subject of two other contributions to the present volume, Code's ("An Aristotelian puzzle about definition: Metaphysics !.12") and Gill's ("Unity of definition inMetaphysics ".6 and !.12"). I recommend both essays as models of clarity and analytical precision. Code introduces the problem as it is presented in Posterior Analytics II 6 (and represented again in Metaphysics Zeta 12 and Eta 6). Code productively brings not only the Posterior Analytics framework to bear on the issues discussed in the two chapters of the Metaphysics, but also brings in several relevant passages in the Topics (94). He concludes by discussing how Aristotle's definition will answer a question such as "Why man is such and such an animal?" (96) in the form of a syllogism involving a middle term that explains why a predicate such as "two-footed" belongs to a subject like "man". Code reasonably suggests that we would have to look to Aristotle's account of the soul to find an explanation of why a certain kind of living thing is the kind of thing it is. This seems to be in agreement with Bolton's claim that one must look to the biologist (or psychologist), not the metaphysician, for the proper definition of a living thing such as a human being. And it seems most reasonable to think that the explanation of human bipedalism, for example, will come as a result of the sciences of psychology, ethology, biology, etc. and not as a result of reflections on the metaphysics and epistemology of the relation between form and matter (much less on the theology of the stellar rotations). This point is supported by another contribution to the volume ("Definition in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics"), in which Pellegrin argues that Aristotle considers causal-explanatory syllogistic definitions to be logically prior to and the condition for all other kinds of definition (140). The point brought out by Code and Pellegrin about the need for substantive causal definitions informed by the relevant natural sciences brings us back to Bolton's point about the autonomy of the natural sciences from metaphysics and theology. In this connection I want to call attention to a general principle discussed by Aristotle in Posterior Analytics I 13 (78b34-79a13). In no case should one permit "kind-crossing" explanations (for example, explaining biological facts by means of metaphysical or theological considerations), except where there is an official relationship of one science being "under" another (and thus subordinate or subalternate to another).[6] This obtains, for example, in the science of meteorological "iris"-phenomena (such as rainbows and halos) being subordinate to the sciences of optics, which is in turn subordinate to geometry. Thus it is legitimate to appeal to the science of the optics of reflection (or refraction), and ultimately to the geometrical definition of a circle in the explanation of the meteorological phenomena of the lunar halo (as Aristotle does in Meteorology III 2-3),[7] but it does not, on the other hand, seem legitimate to explain the nature of rainfall by reference to the growth of crops planted by human farmers (as some "global" teleologists would have it),[8] since meteorology is not subordinate to agriculture. This, at least, seems to be the policy of the Posterior Analytics (and, in the case of rainfall, of the Meteorology). This issue of the autonomy or subordination of sciences also pertains to several of the examples used by Aristotle in the middle books of the Metaphysics and examined in interesting detail in Gill's paper. Thus she notes (101) that in Aristotle's discussion of the unity of definition problem in Eta 6, his focus is not on biological organisms (such as human beings), but on bronze spheres (and later bronze triangles and white surfaces), and the reason is that the biological examples are complicated by the fact that organic matter lasts only as long as the biological compound (and thus a severed hand is not, biologically speaking, a hand). Gill discusses at length and fruitfully Aristotle's example of sound as both genus and matter in Zeta 12 (105-107). She provides the background of the issue in Plato's Philebus. I would add to this the fact that Aristotle describes harmonics as a science subordinate to arithmetic in the Posterior Analytics passage referred to above (78b38), thus permitting a specific case of "kind-crossing". The present volume contains two essays that are essentially condensed commentaries on Metaphysics Theta 7 and 8 and the metaphysics of potentiality (dunamis) and actuality (as Charles translatesenergeia; cf. Broadie's "activity"). Broadie's paper, the shortest contribution to the volume, titled "Where is the activity?: (An Aristotelian worry about the telic status of energeia)", is more narrowly focused on Theta 8. She includes an appendix entitled "Analysis of the argument of Metaphysics 1050a4-b4" (209-211), which consists of seven Roman-numbered lemmas with Bekker references and elliptical Greek transliterated in parentheses, followed by glosses and internal cross-references. Charles' paper ("Metaphysics !.7 and 8: some issues concerning actuality and potentiality") is also laid out more or less as a commentary: Theta 7 is broken into four passages translated under the Bekker references, followed by commentary, including a lot of useful sub-structuring and occasional restructuring of Aristotle's arguments. Passages in Theta 8 are then commented on less systematically and more selectively (without block translations). Charles' overall interpretation involves a teleological understanding of the notion of matter in Theta 7: "my interpretation has rested on (i) giving the term 'entelecheia' in 1049a5-6 a teleological gloss (what has the goal in it) and (ii) pointing to some teleological material in Theta 8" (183). He concludes with a paragraph oddly entitled "Interim Conclusions" (suggesting this paper is part of a larger commentary on the middle books): I have tried to understand why Aristotle sought to conceptualize matter and form in terms of actuality and capacity (or potentiality) in parts of Theta 6-8. My suggestion is that he did so to capture the importance of teleology for a proper understanding of the required ontology. While I have not attempted to discuss the details of Aristotle's teleology, it provides the key to a proper understanding of these chapters of his Metaphysics (197). The problem I see with this "interim conclusion" (without here remarking on the value of his commentary on Theta 6-8) is that the nature of Aristotle's teleology is so controversial that I have doubts that an interpretation of it that does not "discuss the details", and in fact does not even make its own interpretation of that teleology explicit, can unlock "a proper understanding" of Theta 6-8. ******* I turn now to the third group of articles included in the volume, those which offer a narrower study of Aristotle than Sedley but wider than the papers focused on definition in the middle books of the Metaphysics and the Posterior Analytics. These include very solid and useful contributions, beginning with Lennox ("The unity and purpose of On the Parts of Animals I"). Lennox argues that the methodological discussion of PA I 1-5 is meant as a prolegomena to the entire series of biological works, including the Generation of Animals, which arguably contains, in a late chapter, a reference to PA I 1-5 with the terms "principles in the primary accounts" (56-58). Further, Lennox argues, applying a line of argument developed in an earlier essay (2001, ch. 4), that "virtually every topic discussed in these five chapters bridges a gap between the basic framework of scientific inquiry and knowledge found in the Posterior Analytics and the needs of an investigation of natural substances subject to unqualified coming-to-be and passing away" (59-60). These claims are of the greatest import to the understanding of Aristotle's biology, and although the full proof of them is contained in other publications of Lennox, the present essay is an excellent starting point for someone looking for an overview of the issues. Lennox suggests that, despite the prima facie impression of stylistic differences between different parts of the work, an integral interpretation of PA I 1-5 is possible if we take into account what Lennox calls the "narrative unity" of the work, which he compares to "the sort of unity that is referred to as plot when one is discussing fiction writing" (61). This is useful, but perhaps a more pertinent comparison would be to the kind of unity one expects to find in a philosophical dialogue, a form of writing that Aristotle, following Plato, actually practiced (and there have been recent attempts to reconstruct some of his lost dialogues).[9] Since we are dealing with scientific ideas there is a strong disanalogy with the way plot works in fiction, but a strong analogy with the way that in philosophical dialogues, as in PA I, once a certain position has been established, argument will proceed on the assumption that the reader has taken that position on board. Later arguments will look incomplete on their own, because they depend on the reader's assuming a number of premises that go unmentioned. Like reading a plot, one cannot jump around randomly in the text and hope to fully understand what is going on (61). I will comment on only one more of the many and diverse issues discussed in Lennox's paper: the integration of the first half of PA I 5, which contains a famous exhortation or protreptic to the life sciences, with the rest of Book I. Lennox offers convincing reasons to think that this section did not originate as a separate work that was put where it now stands by a later editor, despite the radical stylistic differences between it and the rest of the book. D. S. Hutchinson and I are prepared to argue that this is one of several documentable cases in which Aristotle reworked material from his (lost) dialogue Protrepticus to Philosophy into a different (and non-dialogue) work; other cases include Metaphysics I.1-2; Nicomachean Ethics I.7-8 and X.6-8; and Politics VII.1-3. This reworking of hortatory material from the Protrepticus accounts for the stylistic differences from the methodological sections of PA I 1-5, but allows the argument of the first half of PA I 5 to be seen as integral to the biological works as a whole. The Protrepticus contains, in addition to an extended version of the first part of PA I 1 and strong parallels to the first part of I 5, at least one other very rich passage on biology (the one, mentioned above, that repeatedly invokes the principle that art imitates nature and not vice-versa).[10] Kosman ("Male and female in Aristotle's Generation of Animals") has contributed an article that, for my purposes, has already become the recommended starting point for students researching Aristotle's account of sex and reproduction. A common interpretation, which has been reproduced in the arguments of some feminist critics of Aristotle (150), has it that on Aristotle's account male and female are two different or opposite modes of animal being, one of which is fully human and the other somehow imperfectly or deformedly human, and one of which has the power of generation while the other completely lacks it. The male is supposed to (actively) provide the form, while the female only (passively) provides the matter. There are no passages in Aristotle that say as much, but this interpretation has been advanced largely on the basis of a certain reading of a few passages (GA I 20, 729a9-11; cf. II 1, 732a34). Kosman shows that the view that according to Aristotle the male provides the active and substantial form while the female provides the passive matter (i.e., the menses) goes back to Alexander of Aphrodisias, but not to Aristotle (151). Those surprisingly few cases in which Aristotle does say that the male provides the form must be interpreted with the utmost caution. Kosman emphasizes Aristotle's account of the male as the initiator or origin of the motions that cause matter to be rearranged into a homospecific animal form. Aristotle sees the male contribution as being the "initiator" of action in a way that Kosman compares to how we now say that the zygote is a fertilized egg "rather than, for example, a fertilized sperm, or perhaps an egged sperm" (160). Why do biologists (and everyone else) tend to think of the sperm as doing something to the egg, and not the other way around? Kosman offers some interesting speculations as to why this might be, and why Aristotle might have thought so too. The only criticism I have is that I would have liked to have heard more about the rival views that Aristotle aims to replace. Kosman mentions only poetic sources (Aeschylus' Eumenides 657-64; Euripides' Orestes 552) in his description of the preformationist theories, and has nothing to say about the account of reproduction in the Hippocratic corpus, or even in Democritus, a philosopher Aristotle directly engaged at length on this issue. Finally, we come to the longest essay in the volume (three times as long as the shortest, and almost twice as long as any other in the volume), in which Cooper ("Political community and the highest good") offers an attractive account of Aristotle's statement, in the final chapter of the Nicomachean Ethics, exhorting the student of ethics to proceed to the study of constitutional systems and laws (X 9, 1180a32ff). One might be surprised or dubious at the claim that "we [meaning his readers or hearers, including himself as studying alongside them as he lectures] need now to study laws and constitutions in order to be able, ourselves, to act in accordance with the virtues (1179b1-2) -that is, to attain happiness and live happy lives" (213, emphasis in original). The Nicomachean Ethics is thus not a stand-alone treatise of ethics, but is conceived of as part of an integral "philosophy concerned with anthropology" (hê peri ta anthrôpina philosophia, X.9) that includes not only politics but presumably economics or household management as well. Cooper says, "it is clear that the course of study completed in the Ethics itself has not accomplished all its goals" (225), which I think is right insofar as it has not accomplished the goals of this larger philosophical anthropology, but is wrong insofar as nowhere in the Ethics (or anywhere else) does Aristotle set himself the goal of a self-contained study of ethics that he then fails to deliver. In fact, the opening of the Ethics explicitly refers to a hierarchy of practical sciences, of which "the most authoritative science, the highest master science . . . is obviously the science of politics" (1094a26-28). Incidentally, this relates to the point I made above about Aristotle's policy with regards to autonomous sciences and kind-crossing: here we have an explicit indication of a scientific subordination: the science of the good of individual human conduct is "obviously" subordinate to the science of the good of human communities, and so we can expect (unlike the case of metaphysics and biology), that there will be top-down political considerations that govern, so to speak, ethical inquiry. Cooper's discussion of Aristotle's statement that "we" need now to study laws and constitutions brings to the fore the important question of the audience of the Nicomachean Ethics, a point that is sometimes overlooked by those who read it as a systematic treatise on ethics and assume that its audience are students of philosophy in essentially the same situation as the present-day reader. Cooper speculates that: "those who come to the study of ethics/politics are only basically decent, young adult, but still somewhat unformed people. Certainly, they are not, strictly speaking, morally virtuous yet" (218). The purpose of the Nicomachean Ethics-Politics as a whole, to quote from two sub-headers of Cooper's essay, is to be not only an "aid to selfimprovement" (225), but also a "handbook for political leaders" (220). Cooper gives an extensive and valuable analysis of Aristotle's concept of "political community" and how it functions as an interdependent whole in a way that makes it impossible to treat ethics as a private or individual project. Although, apart from Lennox's essay, the philosophical arguments of Allan Gotthelf are not discussed or debated, the volume contains a biographical sketch (xii-xv) and a chronological list of his contributions to classical philosophy, including a bibliography (265-269). Several of the individual authors have dedicated their contributions to him. I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for some of his work that does not come up in the present volume, but is nevertheless a very important contribution to the field of Aristotle studies: his completion of D. M. Balme's edition (text and critical apparatus) of Aristotle's Historia animalium (Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries Series, 2002). I hope that I have been able, in the limited space I was allocated for this review, to give some impression of the wide-ranging and interesting material contained in this anthology. I encourage anyone that is interested in as broad and diverse a set of subjects as Being, Nature, and Life in Aristotle to check it out. [1] D. Sedley (1991),"Is Aristotle's Teleology Anthropocentric?," Phronesis 36: 179-96; Creationism and its Critics in Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles 2007). [2] J. Cooper (1982), "Aristotle on Natural Teleology", in Language and Logos, ed. M. Schofield and M. Nussbaum, Cambridge, 197-222. C. Kahn (1985), "The Place of the Prime Mover in Aristotle's Teleology", in A. Gotthelf (ed.) (1985), Aristotle on Nature and Living Things, Pittsburgh and Bristol, 183-205. A. Code (1997), "The Priority of Final over Efficient Causes in Aristotle's PA", in W. Kullman and S. Föllinger (eds.), Aristotelische Biologie: Inentionen, Methoden, Ergebnisse, Stuttgart, 127-143. M. Matthen, 2001, "The Holistic Presuppositions of Aristotle's Cosmology," Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 20: 171-99. [3] P. Pellegrin (2002), "Les ruses de la nature et l'éternité du mouvement. Encore quelques remarques sur la finalité chez Aristote," in M. Canto-Sperber. and P. Pellegrin (eds.), Le Style de la pensée, Paris, 296-323. R. Wardy (1993), "Aristotelian Rainfall or the Lore of Averages," Phronesis 38: 18-30. L. Judson (2005), "Aristotelian Teleology," Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy29: 341-66. I. Bodnár (2005), "Teleology across Natures," Rhizai 2: 9-29. M. R. Johnson, Aristotle on Teleology (Oxford 2005). [4] 892b5-8, tr. T. J. Saunders in J. Cooper. and D. S. Hutchinson (eds.) 1997, Plato: Complete Works, Indianapolis and Cambridge, MA, 1549. [5] Phys. II.2 194a21-22, II.8 199a15-17; Meteor. IV.3 381b6; this is a principle that he also repeatedly invoked in his early Protrepticus to Philosophy: see Aristotle, Protrepticus, apud Iamblichus,Protrepticus IX 49.28-50.1, 50.12, X 54.22-23; cf. V 34.8-9. Sedley offers an interpretation of the Protrepticus IX passage in support of his global interpretation, " Is Aristotle's Teleology Anthropocentric?", 188-189. See my criticism of his interpretation, Aristotle on Teleology, 152-154. For the authentication of these passages, see: D. S. Hutchinson and M. R. Johnson (2005), "Authenticating Aristotle's Protrepticus," Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 29: 193-294, at 258-262. [6] On this point, see the recent study by R. J. Hankinson (2005), "Aristotle on Kind-Crossing," in R. W. Sharples (ed.), Philosophy and the Sciences in Antiquity, Aldershot and Burlington, 23-54. [7] M. R. Johnson, "The Aristotelian Explanation of the Halo," Apeiron 42: 325-357. [8] D. Sedley (in the present volume and the works cited in note 1 above) follows the influential argument of D. Furley (1985), "The Rainfall Example in Physics ii.8" in A. Gotthelf, Aristotle on Nature and Living Things, Pittsburgh and Bristol, 177-182. [9] For example, Aristotle's lost dialogues On Poets and the Protrepticus. For the former, see: R. Janko, Philodemus, On Poems, Books 3-4, with the Fragments of Aristotle, On Poets (Oxford 2010). For the latter, see Hutchinson and Johnson, "Authenticating Aristotle's Protrepticus," cited above in note 5. [10] See: Aristotle, Protrepticus, apud Iamblichus Protrepticus IX 49.26-50.12 Festa; discussed by Sedley, Hutchinson and Johnson, and Johnson (see footnote 5, above). For the parallel to the first part of PA I.1 (on the importance of a "general education", see: Iamblichus, De communi mathematica scientia XXVII, a passage which Hutchinson and Johnson attribute to Aristotle'sProtrepticus. Copyright © 2011 ISSN: 1538 1617 College of Arts and Letters Notre Dame, IN


Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds by Ãdouard Machery

Philosophy

PHILOSOPHY WITHIN ITS PROPER BOUNDS Full Title: Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds Author / Editor: Édouard Machery Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2017 BUY ON AMAZON Review © Metapsychology Vol. 22, No. 48 Reviewer: Jonathan Lewis Since around the turn of the twenty-first century, philosophers have become increasingly occupied with using experimental methods to answer philosophical questions. Specifically, experimental GENRES Art and Photography Fiction General Memoirs Philosophical Self Help SUBJECTS Addiction and Alcoholism Search ...  Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD philosophers have drawn upon the design, tools and findings of experimental psychology and the behavioural sciences in general in order to shed light on the phenomena that affect actual judgments about philosophical cases. Do folk think that George should shove the portly man onto the track in in order to save ten scrawny strangers? Do they think the farmer knew that his prized cow was in the field all along? Do they consider the hermetically-sealed symbol shifter to understand Chinese? Furthermore, do responses to such cases vary between different cultures, ages and genders or when presented in different ways? In his new book, Édouard Machery, a long-time proponent of the experimental philosophy ('XPhi') movement, claims that the cases with which many philosophers and non-philosophers are familiar have been deployed from the armchair in order to answer questions concerning the modal facts bearing on knowledge about what is necessary and what is possible. Is it the case that necessarily someone knows that p if and only if they have a justified true belief that p? Is it the case that necessarily the extension of natural kind terms is determined by empirical properties? Is it the case that necessarily descriptivism about the reference of proper names is false? Since the inception of X-Phi, experimental philosophers have provided evidence that judgments about cases are subject to demographic and presentational effects. On that basis, the so-called method of cases, which, according to Machery, aims to determine what facts hold and to distinguish competing philosophical theories, should be restricted. Machery's latest monograph is an innovative and substantial contribution to the project of 'negative X-Phi' in that it argues for a 'radical restriction' on the method of cases as the basis for modal claims. He starts by arguing that the judgments we make in philosophical cases are no different to the beliefs we hold in response to everyday situations. There is nothing special about the judgments Anxiety Childhood Disorders Children Depression Ethics Grief Medications Mental Health Personality Psychoanalysis Psychology Psychotherapy Relationships Religion Sexuality Wellness MEDIA TYPES Audio Books Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD elicited by philosophical cases; these judgments do not rely on irreducible intuitions or conceptual mastery or a priori judgment (chapter 1). Machery goes on to provide a systematic review of the literature in experimental philosophy in order to support the claim that judgments elicited in response to the most well-known philosophical cases vary according to demographic factors, the order in which cases are presented and the way in which questions about them are framed (chapter 2). The results of the literature review provide the inductive basis for two arguments that support his radical restrictionism. Firstly, because judgments elicited by philosophical cases are influenced to a large enough degree by demographic and presentation variables, these judgments are unreliable. Furthermore, since the method of cases aims to distinguish between competing philosophical theories, and since, according to Machery, philosophers from different camps tend to agree when responding to mundane situations, it is not an accident that philosophical cases feature 'disturbing characteristics'. For Machery, philosophical cases express unusual situations, adopt irrelevant and tendentious narrative elements and pull apart properties that go together in everyday life (physical violence from doing-more-harm-than-good; truth and justification from getting-things-right-by-luck, and so on). On the basis that the disturbing characteristics of philosophical cases elicit judgments that we would not be expected to make in everyday life, these judgments are fundamentally unreliable (chapter 3). The second argument is that since many proponents of the method of cases do not take seriously the variations in judgments about philosophical cases, the premises of their arguments should not be taken seriously. The point is that either there is a disagreement between philosophers and nonphilosophers or they talk about different things when making judgments in philosophical cases. In either case, Machery argues that the method of cases is more likely to enshrine philosophical Movies Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD prejudices than articulate modal facts (chapter 4). If peers are likely to disagree about a philosophical case or if judgments about a case are plausibly severely unreliable, then we ought to suspend judgment about answers elicited by a particular case. Indeed, according to Machery, the consequent of that conditional applies to all philosophical cases (unless certain cases are known to elicit either a reliable judgment or agreement amongst peers). Alternatively, if it is the case that peers do not disagree but refer to different properties (epistemic, moral, semantic, and so on) when they respond to philosophical cases, then, as Machery sees it, philosophers should abstain from the method of cases, 'reorient their philosophical interests and stop theorizing about the philosophically familiar' (p. 148). Machery articulates what a suitable 'reorientation' might look like. After responding to several common arguments for the method of cases (chapter 5), he sets out his own particular vision for 'positive X-Phi'. For Machery, the method of cases is part-and-parcel of the modal immodesty of contemporary analytic philosophy. Although the purported authority of modal claims involving metaphysical necessity or possibility allows philosophy to establish distinct research projects on which scientific practices cannot supervene, the fact that the main philosophical method for identifying modal facts cannot facilitate such knowledge means that we should adopt more modally skeptical positions. Machery's radical restrictionism concerning the method of cases undermines modally immodest philosophical enterprises, especially in less 'naturalistic' areas of philosophy. For Machery, standard philosophical issues, specifically, issues that preclude investigation by means of scientific methods, are beyond our epistemic reach (Chapter 6). Advocating philosophical modesty, he calls for a 'naturalised' approach to conceptual analysis (chapter 7). If the concepts actually possessed by folk are interpreted as psychological entities – subsets of people's belief-like states (which Machery calls 'bliefs' (p. 210)) – and thereby difficult Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD to access for those that possess them, then, according to Machery, we can make progress in analyzing concepts by using the designs, tools and findings of experimental psychology to make the implicit structures underpinning our belief-like states explicit. If the first goal of a naturalized conceptual analysis is descriptive, then, for Machery, the second goal is prescriptive. If we assume that concepts are psychological entities, then, as is the case with our beliefs, they can contain false information. According to Machery, naturalized conceptual analysis would not only assess the validity of inferences that concepts dispose us to draw by exposing the 'bliefs' that constitute them and the relation of those 'bliefs' to empirical knowledge about the world, it would set about revising those inferences that are in some way deficient. In response, the proponent of modally immodest philosophical enterprises might argue that in order to assess the validity of our inferences drawn from concepts like 'knowledge', 'justification' and 'truth', we would be required to gain knowledge about knowledge, justification and truth, whereby the processes for accessing such knowledge would be tantamount to the practice of making modal claims. This leads us to consider whether Machery's overarching modal scepticism is reasonably justified. One can accept his case against the method of cases and yet still remain open to the possibility that knowledge of metaphysical modality is not a fruitless non-naturalistic goal. Even though Machery considers some alternative routes to modal knowledge in chapter 6, it would be difficult to reasonably claim that he has justified the inductive leap from the modally-defunct method of cases to a totalizing modal skepticism. Indeed, there are other inferentialist, essentialist, explanationist and principle-based approaches to modal knowledge that do not rely on the method of cases and (when taken at face value) do not seem to fall neatly under the categories of alternative approaches discussed by Machery in chapter 6. I accede that this is only a minor contention. After all, neither the validity of Machery's case against the method of cases nor his Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD proposals for a naturalized conceptual analysis depend on him demonstrating that modal skepticism is true. Nevertheless, the case against the method of cases does depend on the reliability and validity of the experimental findings that Machery uses as the inductive basis for his arguments against philosophical dogmatism and parochialism as well as for his claims regarding the reliability of judgments in philosophical cases. It also depends on the reliability and validity of the inductive leap from the unreliability of judgments elicited by those cases that have been analyzed by experimental philosophers to the fundamental unreliability of judgments elicited by philosophical cases in general. Regarding the findings of experimental studies that Machery discusses in chapter 2, he acknowledges that the X-Phi movement has examined only a limited number of cases, of which few have been systematically studied, and many have not been subjected to repeated draws (p. 85). He also mentions deficiencies with the experimental design of these studies, though he does not go into detail about what these deficiencies are. Consequently, Machery claims that 'the arguments based on this empirical record...must assume that it is representative of the phenomena that characterize the judgments elicited by philosophical cases in general' (p, 85). This assumption may be too much of a 'leap of faith' for some experimental researchers, that is, without further details of the limitations of the experimental designs and without repeated trials. That said, repeated draws come with their own risks; primarily, an increase in the likelihood of reactive behavior on the part of the study participants. Consequently, as is commonly understood, an experimental design with repetition does not automatically guarantee or improve the validity of a study. Furthermore, what is important about experimental practice is not so much observational results and the products of experiments, but the design and implementation of experimental setups that reveal or produce causal relationships in a reliable manner. Consequently, even when Machery argues that 'judgments elicited by typical Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD philosophical cases are similar to experimental artefacts – outcomes of experimental manipulations that are not due to the phenomena experimentally investigated, but to the (often otherwise reliable) experimental tools used to investigate them' (p. 90), it will not take an experimentally-oriented researcher long to suggest that unless the implementation of the experimental design is successful, the same holds true for the judgments elicited by X-Phi surveys. As previously mentioned, Machery's inductive leap from the unreliability of some of the specific judgments of studied cases to the fundamental unreliability of judgments elicited by philosophical cases in general appeals to the similarity of philosophical cases in the sense that they exhibit disturbing characteristics (pp. 111-120). Firstly, it is not clear how the presence of such characteristics relates to the inductive leap. Secondly, Machery does not investigate whether demographic and presentation variables influence judgments in usual, everyday situations. He briefly considers this latter issue but quickly dismisses it (p.129-30), claiming, with no evidence, that 'people do actually agree about everyday situations eliciting the application of concepts of philosophical interest' (p. 130). Much rides on the distinction between unusual judgments elicited by philosophical cases and judgments in 'everyday life'. If it were found that people do not, in fact, agree in their philosophical judgments elicited by everyday situations, the case against the method of cases would lose some of its potency in the sense that one might have reason to suggest that the method of cases is not epistemically inferior to other philosophical methods employed to determine which facts hold in certain situations. Assuming that the principle aim of experimental methodologies is to make reliable causal inferences about the effects of some particular causal relationship, one way in which Machery could respond to these two interrelated problems is by explaining the causal factors that operate Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD between specific disturbing characteristics and (what are otherwise considered to be) reliable processes of judgment-making. Many philosophers of the social and behavioral sciences suggest that the causal inferences within an experiment are reliable if they are the results of causes that happen under the governance of a causal relationship, which, in turn, results from an underlying causal structure. To warrant the belief that a causal inference can be extrapolated from a particular experiment or small set of experiments to situations involving philosophical cases in general, proposed techniques of causal inference stress that what is required is knowledge of the nature and stability of the causal factors involved as well as knowledge of the background causal structures that operate in judgments elicited by philosophical cases. Such knowledge cannot be underwritten by any particular experiment or set of experiments. As result, both experimental and non-naturalistic philosophers may have reason to question whether the inductive leap has been established. Overall, it seems that what Machery presents is a manifesto – a tightly-and-powerfully-argued, eminently readable, innovative manifesto – for the X-Phi movement rather than a full-blown evidence-based policy. However, unlike the majority of contemporary political manifestos, it deserves to be taken seriously. By consolidating findings drawn from individual experimental studies, by incorporating various approaches to experimental philosophy and by advocating a particular picture of what the future of 'positive-X-Phi' could look like, this book serves not only as the foundations on which experimental philosophers can build, but as a provocative challenge to more common approaches to theorising in the tradition of analytic philosophy. © 2018 Jonathan Lewis Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD Jonathan Lewis, Dublin City University PREVIOUS REVIEW NEXT REVIEW Home About Metapsychology Terms and Privacy Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD Copyright © 2020 Metapsychology Online Reviews Built by Cranky Fox | Powered by Astra WordPress Theme Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD