Thinking Twice about Virtue and Vice: Philosophical Situationism and the Vicious Minds Hypothesis

This paper provides an empirical defense of credit theories of knowing against Mark Alfano’s challenges to them based on his theses of inferential cognitive situationism and of epistemic situationism. In order to support the claim that credit theories can treat many cases of cognitive success through heuristic cognitive strategies as credit-conferring, the paper develops the compatibility between virtue epistemologies qua credit theories, and dual-process theories in cognitive psychology. It also a response to Lauren Olin and John Doris’ “vicious minds” thesis, and their “tradeoff problem” for virtue theories. A genuine convergence between virtue epistemology and dual-process theory is called for, while acknowledging that this effort may demand new and more empirically well-informed projects on both sides of the division between Conservative virtue epistemology (including the credit theory of knowing) and Autonomous virtue epistemology (including projects for providing guidance to epistemic agents)

Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries and Aquaculture: Implementing the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries

This publication provides guidance on how to implement the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (CCRF) using an ecosystem approach to fisheries and aquaculture. The CCRF is a voluntary code covering all aspects of the management and development of fisheries and is designed to ensure sustainable development without adversely affecting the livelihoods of local communities that share the same resources as the fisheries. The authors outline the basic principles of the CCRF, describe concrete steps to be taken to use the ecosystem approach effectively, and recommend certain institutional changes and reforms that will be necessary if the potential of the ecosystem approach is to be realized in the Asia-Pacific region. The most significant reform needed is a paradigm shift in policy from one that is production oriented to one that is benefits oriented (social and economic). There is evidence that this is already being undertaken in the region with efforts being made to limit access, reduce the number of fishing vessels and introduce community-based rights systems. Stakeholder participation is essential and existing legal instruments and practices that interact with or impact fisheries may also need to be reconsidered, and adjustments made where necessary. In the future, it may even be necessary to regulate the inter-sectoral interactions and impacts through primary legislation. To promote broader adoption and implementation of the ecosystem approach by member countries, a wide range of regional activities is suggested by the authors including a media campaign, the building of fishery alliances among countries and capacity building in fishery agencies

Halting indigenous biodiversity decline: ambiguity, equity, and outcomes in RMA assessment of significance

In New Zealand, assessment of ‘significance’ is undertaken to give effect to a legal requirement for local authorities to provide for protection of significant sites under the Resource Management Act (1991). The ambiguity of the statute enables different interests to define significance according to their goals: vested interests (developers), local authorities, and non-vested interests in pursuit of protection of environmental public goods may advance different definitions. We examine two sets of criteria used for assessment of significance for biological diversity under the Act. Criteria adapted from the 1980s Protected Natural Areas Programme are inadequate to achieve the maintenance of biological diversity if ranking is used to identify only highest priority sites. Norton and Roper-Lindsay (2004) propose a narrow definition of significance and criteria that identify only a few high-quality sites as significant. Both sets are likely to serve the interests of developers and local authorities, but place the penalty of uncertainty on non-vested interests seeking to maintain biological diversity, and are likely to exacerbate the decline of biological diversity and the loss of landscape-scale processes required for its persistence. When adopting criteria for assessment of significance, we suggest local authorities should consider whose interests are served by different criteria sets, and who will bear the penalty of uncertainty regarding biological diversity outcomes. They should also ask whether significance criteria are adequate, and sufficiently robust to the uncertainty inherent in the assessment of natural values, to halt the decline of indigenous biological diversity

Environmental governance: Participatory, multi-level - and effective?

Current international and European Union environmental policies increasingly promote collaborative and participatory decision-making on appropriate and multiple governance levels as a means to attain more sustainable policies and a more effective and lasting policy implementation. The entailed shifts of geographical scale of governance can be exemplified by the EU Water Framework Directive in that higher-level policies are devolved not only to the member states but to local collaborative decision-making bodies on natural as opposed to territorial scales. To date, empirical evidence and theoretical considerations have remained ambiguous about the environmental outcomes of such modes of governance. At the same time, the relationship between multi-level governance and non-state actor involvement remains a largely uncharted terrain. Accordingly, a twofold research agenda is mapped out: How does public participation work in different governance contexts? And what potential do multi-level governance environments have to foster the effectiveness of participatory governance? Drawing on scholarly literature on multi-level governance, policy implementation, public participation and complex systems, we develop five sets of hypotheses on how the number of policy levels and geographical rescaling affect citizen participation, actor interests and policy outcomes. We present empirical results based on a comparative meta-analysis of 47 case studies in environmental governance in North America and the EU, combining qualitative and quantitative methods. --Civic participation,multi-level governance,re-scaling,policy implementation,institutional fit,meta-analysis,case survey

MERGERS - SUCCESS OR FAILURE?

The article examines the capacity of the Ecological Modernisation Theory (EMT) as a paradigm for environmental policy making within the tourism destinations to improve their sustainability, competitiveness and commercial success. To cope with the challenges and threats the tourism faces, of great importance is setting-up an innovative policy- making model, to bring new perspectives, interactions between stakeholders and policy instruments to balance the economic growth and environmental concerns. While the ecological modernisation within the tourism industry makes necessary the introduction of new technologies and management strategies at the company level to bring about economic and environmental benefits, the state needs new policy instruments and approaches to deal with these new paths. Policy making process and ecological restructuring of the tourism sector is analysed using as a tool the “policy network” analysis.Environmental Governance, Sustainable Tourism, Ecological Modernisation, Environmental-oriented Innovation, Policy networks, Romania

Egocentric Spatial Representation in Action and Perception

Neuropsychological findings used to motivate the “two visual systems” hypothesis have been taken to endanger a pair of widely accepted claims about spatial representation in visual experience. The first is the claim that visual experience represents 3-D space around the perceiver using an egocentric frame of reference. The second is the claim that there is a constitutive link between the spatial contents of visual experience and the perceiver’s bodily actions. In this paper, I carefully assess three main sources of evidence for the two visual systems hypothesis and argue that the best interpretation of the evidence is in fact consistent with both claims. I conclude with some brief remarks on the relation between visual consciousness and rational agency

Cosmic Evolution and the Theology of Social Solidarity

This essay is concerned with the intersection between theology, social theory, and evolution. In an effort to sketch an ecologically sound theology of social solidarity and a global ethics, the author examines constructive theologies that take cosmic evolution as a central organizing principle. While the inherent utopianism of Washington Gladden \'s social gospel cannot be revived, his theology provides useful insights into the creative use of scientific and religious discourse for a contemporary democratic theology in search of the common good

An Enactive-Ecological Approach to Information and Uncertainty

Information is a central notion for cognitive sciences and neurosciences, but there is no agreement on what it means for a cognitive system to acquire information about its surroundings. In this paper, we approximate three influential views on information: the one at play in ecological psychology, which is sometimes called information for action; the notion of information as covariance as developed by some enactivists, and the idea of information as minimization of uncertainty as presented by Shannon. Our main thesis is that information for action can be construed as covariant information, and that learning to perceive covariant information is a matter of minimizing uncertainty through skilled performance. We argue that the agent’s cognitive system conveys information for acting in an environment by minimizing uncertainty about how to achieve her intended goals in that environment. We conclude by reviewing empirical findings that support our view and by showing how direct learning, seen as instance of ecological rationality at work, is how mere possibilities for action are turned into embodied know-how. Finally, we indicate the affinity between direct learning and sense-making activity