Ecology and the Ethics of Environmental Restoration

1994 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 31-43
Author(s):  
Robert Elliot
Keyword(s):  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Environmental Restoration ◽  
Initial Value ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Human Interference ◽  
Rational Debate ◽  
To Come ◽  
In Virtue Of

Some people think that nature has intrinsic value, that it has value in itself quite apart from its present and future economic, intellectual, recreational and aesthetic uses. Some people think that nature's intrinsic value grounds an obligation to preserve it and to minimise human interference with it. I agree. It is important, however, to try to say exactly why nature has intrinsic value, to go beyond merely stating some idiosyncratic attitude and to provide some justification of that attitude with which others might engage. Presumably there are properties that wild nature exemplifies in virtue of which it is intrinsically valued. Only when these are indicated is rational debate as to whether wild nature has intrinsic value possible. Only when these are indicated is it possible to begin to persuade dissenters to change their views. Indeed, unless one can at least begin to say what these properties are it is not clear that the attitude could have any meaningful content. While it is perhaps possible to value something without immediately understanding what it is about the thing that makes it valuable, the failure to come up with any candidate value-adding property after some reflection suggests that the initial value-judgment is vacuous.

scholarly journals On the series of Legendre

1918 ◽  
Vol 94 (660) ◽  
pp. 292-295
Keyword(s):  
Fourier Series ◽  
General Type ◽  
General Term ◽  
Present Communication ◽  
Legendre Series ◽  
Normal Functions ◽  
Sturm Liouville ◽  
To Come ◽  
In Virtue Of

In recent communications to the Society, I have confined myself largely to the Theory of Fourier Series, partly because much seemed to me still to require doing in this subject, partly because I believed its thorough investigation to be the natural preparation for the study of other series of normal functions. It has, indeed, been known for some time that the behaviour of, for instance, series of Sturm-Liouville functions exactly corresponds to that of Fourier series. The introduction that I have recently made into Analysis of what I have called restricted Fourier series enables us to notably extend the range of such analogies. I propose in the present communication to illustrate this remark with reference to series of Legendre coefficients. Whereas Fourier series may be said to be “naturally unrestricted,” in virtue of the fact that the convergence of the integrated series to an integral necessarily involves the tendency towards zero of its own general term, so that the consideration of the more general type of series does not at once suggest itself, Legendre series may be said to come into being “restricted,” even when the coefficients are expressible in what may be called the Fourier form by means of integrals involving Legendre’s coefficients. In other words, such series correspond precisely to restricted Fourier series, instead of to ordinary Fourier series like the analogous series of Sturm-Liouville functions.

scholarly journals Death Does Not Harm the One Who Dies Because There is No One to Harm

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-106
Author(s):  
David Emmanuel Rowe ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
De Re ◽  
The Subject ◽  
De Dicto ◽  
The One ◽  
In Virtue Of

If death is a harm then it is a harm that cannot be experienced. The proponent of death’s harm must therefore provide an answer to Epicurus, when he says that ‘death, is nothing to us, since when we are, death is not present, and when death is present, then we are not’. In this paper I respond to the two main ways philosophers have attempted to answer Epicurus, regarding the subject of death’s harm: either directly or via analogy. The direct way argues that there is a truth-maker (or difference-maker) for death’s harm, namely in virtue of the intrinsic value the subject’s life would have had if they had not died. The analogy argues that there are cases analogous to death, where the subject is harmed although they experience no pain as a result. I argue that both accounts beg the question against the Epicurean: the first by presupposing that one can be harmed while experiencing no displeasure as a result and the second by conflating a de re with a de dicto reading of death’s harm. Thus, I argue, until better arguments are provided, one is best to agree with Epicurus and those who follow him that death is not a harm.

scholarly journals Human Rights without Objective Intrinsic Value

Labyrinth ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Víctor Cantero-Flores ◽  
Roberto Parra-Dorantes
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Rational Explanation ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Problematic Feature

The current predominant conception of human rights implies that human beings have objective intrinsic value. In this paper, we defend that there is no satisfactory justification of this claim. In spite of the great variety of theories aimed at explaining objective intrinsic value, all of them share one common problematic feature: they pass from a non-evaluative proposition to an evaluative proposition by asserting that a certain entity has intrinsic value in virtue of having certain non-evaluative features. This is a step that cannot be justified. In light of this negative result, we offer a radically different approach to intrinsic value. Our proposal reinterprets the claim that human beings have intrinsic value in terms of a commitment to value human beings intrinsically. This commitment provides both objective practical reasons for, and a rational explanation of, efforts aimed at defending and promoting human rights, without need to appeal to the existence of objective intrinsic value.  

Judging by Refraining from Judgment

2019 ◽  
pp. 95-114
Author(s):  
Gerhard Richter
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Critical Practice ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Singular Form ◽  
To Come ◽  
In Virtue Of

This chapter focuses on Adorno’s understanding of the category of judgment. Proceeding from Adorno’s apodictic interpretation of a poem by the German Biedermeier writer Eduard Mörike, it reconstructs what it might mean for Adorno to argue for the critical practice of judging by refraining from judgment. Mörike’s children’s poem “Mousetrap Rhyme” is the only poem that Adorno chooses to quote in its entirety in his Aesthetic Theory. His surprising choice reveals how the uncoercive gaze can never be reduced to a set of ideological operations or a priori correspondences but rather must confront, in the space of the work of art, the question of its judgment—and the typically unspoken premises and presuppositions of any judgment—always one more time. Here, the uncoercive gaze fastens upon the artwork in a way that allows art to become world without reducing the art to the condition of being merely that which already is the case or that which already claims to be world. The artwork keeps alive the singular form of judgment as judgment without judging, in which the ultimate arrest of judgment remains deferred in virtue of another judgment, based on a future critical engagement, that is always still to come.

scholarly journals The function of consciousness is to generate experience

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Cleeremans ◽  
Catherine Tallon-Baudry
Keyword(s):  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Mental States ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
The Core ◽  
Core Function ◽  
Functional Advantage ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
In Virtue Of

Why would we do anything at all if the doing was not doing something to us? In other words: What is consciousness good for? Here, reversing classical views, according to many of which subjective experience is a mere epiphenomenon that affords no functional advantage, we propose that the core function of consciousness is precisely to enable subject-level experience. “What it feels like” is endowed with intrinsic value, and it is precisely the value agents associate with their experiences that explains why we do certain things and avoid others. Thus, we argue that it is only in virtue of the fact that conscious agents experience things and care about those experiences that they are motivated to act in certain ways and that they prefer some states of affairs vs. others. In this sense, conscious experience functions as a mental currency of sorts, which not only endows mental states with intrinsic value, but also makes it possible for conscious agents to compare vastly different experiences in a common subject-centered space — a feature that readily explains the fact that consciousness is unified. If, as we argue, the function of consciousness is to endow agents with subjective experience, then the hard problem of consciousness seems to dissolve.

scholarly journals Le Neoliberalisme a L’Epreuve de la Crise des Subprimes

2010 ◽  
pp. 266-282
Author(s):  
Sandye Gloria-Palermo
Keyword(s):  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Central Banks ◽  
Cultural Hegemony ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
Value Judgements ◽  
To Come ◽  
Selection Of

The aim of this article is to analyse the ideological impact of the current financial and economic crisis upon the neoliberal values which predominate since the end of the 70s. The specificity of this economic crisis leads to a process of questioning on these values. This is far from being insignificant because cultural hegemony is reached when value judgements transform into assertions perceived as unquestionable, universal and natural. Up to now, there is no such a thing as an ideological revolution because all the economic interventions are justified on the ground of pragmatism. But at least, the current crisis allows the fundamental assertions of neoliberalism to come back to their value judgment status. Another important consequence of the crisis is that alternative value judgements also gain in legitimacy and audience. These conclusions are reached through an analysis of the various interventions actually implemented by governments and central banks and through the presentation of a selection of representative alternative visions of the current financial capitalist order.

scholarly journals Architecture and Forgetting: the Memory in Ruskin

K@iros ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathilde LAVENUE
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
John Ruskin ◽  
Dynamic Approach ◽  
Value Judgment ◽  
To Come ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Way

Writer and English fine arts critic of the 19th century, John Ruskin is the author in 1849 of The seven lamps of architecture. This theorical work tries to define the fundamentals of architecture. One of the seven chapters of this book, “the sixth lamp”, is dedicated to the memory and those links with architecture. This development is based on forgetting but this question is treated by the way with the antonym : the memory. In a dynamic approach where nostalgia and value judgment are ruled out , memory is developped by the substitution of forgetting. This thinking on the memory obliged Ruskin to attribute to architecture a memory finality that differs from the commemoration aim of the monument. In fact with this term, Ruskin asks the question of the meaning of architecture and calls out to the sense of the space’s creation and uses. Those reflexions contribute to put the question of the architecture’s permanency. The term of memory offers to him the opportunity to examine the notion of time and the period’s representation by building concrete spaces. With this singular consideration, he shows that architecture offers to the man the possibilty to come within through the space and the time with architectural objects which are the evidences of living and building. Architecture would becoming with this approach a kind of building’s archives, that will support the partial and biased memory, in a dynamic and dialectic way between erasing the tracks and the conservation of the stratums.

Why Potentiality Matters

1987 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 815-829 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Stone
Keyword(s):  
Human Fetus ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Adult Human ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
To Come ◽  
Physical Capacities ◽  
In Virtue Of

Do fetuses have a right to life in virtue of the fact that they are potential adult human beings? I take the claim that the fetus is a potential adult human being to come to this: if the fetus grows normally there will be an adult human animal that was once the fetus. Does this fact ground a claim to our care and protection? A great deal hangs on the answer to this question. The actual mental and physical capacities of a human fetus are inferior to those of adult creatures generally thought to lack a serious right to life (e.g., adult chickens), and the mere fact that a fetus belongs to our species in particular seems morally irrelevant. Consequently, a strong fetal claim to protection rises or falls with the appeal to the fetus's potentiality, for nothing else can justify it.

scholarly journals Expresiones con doble ‘nacionalidad’ lingüística

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario García-Page Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Grammatical Structure ◽  
Light Verb ◽  
Free Construction ◽  
To Come ◽  
In Virtue Of

In Spanish, there are locutions with a homophonous literal counterpart, or, in other words, polisemous expressions that can be analysed in two different ways in virtue of their meaning. The literal counterpart can be a free construction or syntagm, as tirar la toalla; a compound, such as perro faldero; a lexical collocation, such as tocar el violín; or a verb construction composed by a light verb, as dar una lección. In this sense, these expressions have two means of categorization according to both senses, and thus belong to different fields: phraseology, morphology, syntax. Obviously, they have different grammatical structure. We had named them “expressions of double linguistic nationality”. Furthermore, there are locutions with only idiomatic sense, as tirar la casa por la ventana ‘to spare no expenses’, and polisemous ones with two or more idiomatic senses without literal counterpart, as dar de ojos ‘to make a mistake’, ‘to fall flat on someone’s face’, ‘to come across someone’. All the examples have been taken from DLE.

scholarly journals Worm addendum thickness and gear curvature interference for enveloping cylindrical worm drive with arc-toothed worm

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinyue Zhu ◽  
Yaping Zhao ◽  
Yifei Chi ◽  
Gongfa Li ◽  
Xinyuan Chen
Keyword(s):  
Nonlinear Equation ◽  
Geometric Analysis ◽  
Boundary Line ◽  
Initial Value ◽  
Axial Section ◽  
Value Range ◽  
Vector Rotation ◽  
Curvature Interference ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Worm Drive

The purpose of this paper is to provide the calculation methods on worm addendum thickness and curvature interference limit line, and find the feasible value range of the technological crossing angle to avoiding addendum sharpening and curvature interference for enveloping cylindrical worm drive with arc-toothed worm. In accordance with the features of the proposed worm, the mathematical models of cutting and working are established. Based on this, the tooth profile geometry of the worm in its axial section and the worm addendum thickness are obtained by geometric analysis and calculation, and then, the feasible value range of the technological crossing angle is given. In virtue of vector rotation and elimination method, the nonlinear equation with one variable for solving the interference limit line is determined. In the process of solving nonlinear equation, the method of geometric construction is used to judge the existence of solutions and provide an initial value for the subsequent iterative calculation. The numerical example results show that with the increases of the technological crossing angle, the interference limit line is close to the boundary line of the conjugate region of the worm pair, and the hazard of curvature interference evident increases. Generally, a smaller value of the technological crossing angle within its available value range can completely avoid the occurrence of the curvature interference.

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