The shallow ecology of public reason liberalism

In this article, I shall contend that Rawlsian public reason liberalism (PRL) is in tension with non-anthropocentric environmentalism. I will argue that many reasonable citizens reject non-anthropocentric values, and PRL cannot allow them to be used as the justification for ecological policies. I will analyse attempts to argue that PRL can incorporate non-anthropocentric ideas. I shall consider the view, deployed by theorists such as Derek Bell and Mark A. Michael, that PRL can make a distinction between constitutional essentials and non-essentials, and therefore ecocentric values can be employed when only non-essentials are at stake. I will also consider Simon Hailwood’s argument that PRL can incorporate concern for nature based on its ‘otherness’. I shall conclude that both positions fail to rebut the claim that PRL excludes non-anthropocentric viewpoints. I will consider the question of whether PRL’s exclusion of non-anthropocentric ethics is a problem, and I shall show that appealing to purely anthropocentric arguments leads to a variety of unpalatable conclusions. I will suggest that comprehensive liberalism can include non-anthropocentric concerns, and hence is superior from an environmental perspective

The environmental counter-history of liberalism: A formidable challenge?

In the view of the Marxist philosopher Domenico Losurdo, liberalism is ‘the most dogged enemy of freedom’. This surprising statement runs contrary to the received wisdom among liberal thinkers. Losurdo and other ‘counter-historians’ of liberalism are very effective at exposing the historical atrocities that liberal states have committed, and which have been supported by liberal philosophers – including slavery, racism, genocide, and the subjugation of the working class. But what implications, if any, does this have for contemporary theory? I will argue that there is an important contemporary variation of this ‘counter-history’. Liberalism-in-practice is currently implicated in various forms of environmental degradation and resulting structural violence against disempowered groups. Moreover, divorcing these failings of liberalism-in-practice from liberalism-in-theory is a challenging philosophical endeavour, because even the philosophy of liberalism has difficulties adjusting to environmental issues. The contemporary version of the counter-history thus presents a powerful although not decisive challenge, one worthy of greater discussion

The shallow ecology of public reason liberalism

In this article, I shall contend that Rawlsian public reason liberalism (PRL) is in tension with non-anthropocentric environmentalism. I will argue that many reasonable citizens reject non-anthropocentric values, and PRL cannot allow them to be used as the justification for ecological policies. I will analyse attempts to argue that PRL can incorporate non-anthropocentric ideas. I shall consider the view, deployed by theorists such as Derek Bell and Mark A. Michael, that PRL can make a distinction between constitutional essentials and non-essentials, and therefore ecocentric values can be employed when only non-essentials are at stake. I will also consider Simon Hailwood’s argument that PRL can incorporate concern for nature based on its ‘otherness’. I shall conclude that both positions fail to rebut the claim that PRL excludes non-anthropocentric viewpoints. I will consider the question of whether PRL’s exclusion of non-anthropocentric ethics is a problem, and I shall show that appealing to purely anthropocentric arguments leads to a variety of unpalatable conclusions. I will suggest that comprehensive liberalism can include non-anthropocentric concerns, and hence is superior from an environmental perspective

MISER: Mise-En-Scène Region Support for Staging Narrative Actions in Interactive Storytelling

The recent increase in interest in Interactive Storytelling systems, spurred on by the emergence of affordable virtual reality technology, has brought with it a need to address the way in which narrative content is visualized through the complex staging of multiple narrative agents' behaviors within virtual story worlds. In this work we address the challenge of automating several aspects of staging the activities of a population of narrative agents and their interactions, where agents can have differing levels of narrative relevance within the situated narrative actions. Our solution defines an approach that integrates the use of multiple dynamic regions within a virtual story world, specified via a semantic representation that is able to support the staging of narrative actions through the behaviors of the primary and background agents' that are involved. This encompasses both the mechanics of dealing with the narrative discourse level as well as the interaction with the narrative generation layer to account for any dynamic modifications of the virtual story world. We refer to this approach as mise-en-scène region (miser) support. In this paper, we describe our approach and its integration as part of a fully implemented Interactive Storytelling system. We illustrate the work through detailed examples of short narrative instantiations. We present the results of our evaluation which clearly demonstrate the potential of the miser approach, as well as its scalability

Mise-En-Scène of Narrative Actions in Interactive Storytelling (Demonstration).

In this Interactive Storytelling (IS) work, we provide a framework for automating several aspects of staging the activities of a population of narrative agents and their interactions. Narrative agents can have differing levels of narrative relevance within the situated narrative actions which are visualised within a 3D real-time virtual world. The solution we propose here offers a framework for integrating the use of multiple dynamic regions within the 3D story world defined through a semantic representation that is able to support the staging of narrative actions through the behaviours of the primary and background agents’ involved. This includes both the mechanics of dealing with the narrative discourse level as well as the interaction with the narrative generation layer to account for any dynamic modifications of the 3D story world. We refer to this approach as MISE-en-scène Region support (MISER) and are providing here details of the demonstration application which users will be able to interact with

Adverse Interaction Between a Left Ventricular Assist Device and an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73346/1/j.1540-8167.2007.00805.x.pd

Benchmark Framework for Virtual Students’ Behaviours

This paper demonstrates the integration and evaluation of different atmosphere models into Virtual Reality (VR) training for teacher education. We developed three behaviour models to simulate different levels of class discipline. We evaluated their performances using a combination of objective and subjective measurements. Our initial results suggest that the more believable and distinguishable classroom atmospheres are produced by creating more consistent behaviours across virtual students. Our results confirm the importance of similar behaviours to elicit a particular atmosphere