ions such as justice, fairness, and equality. Posner argues that “academic philosophy” is “a field that has essentially no audience among judges and lawyers—let alone among politicians—even when philosophy is taken up by law professors . . . who think it should influence law.” Legal pragmatists reject “abstract theorizing of which professors of constitutional 62. See J.M. Balkin, The Declaratio...

On the face of it, a psychologist is an odd choice for representative science; as psychologists, our scientific credentials are oft-disparaged, sometimes even by ourselves, only half-jokingly. But it turns out that work with which this particular cadre theologians has found meet to engage fits mostly within my disciplinary remit. Truly, in at least way, not grandparents’ science-and-religion, f...

This is a brief note on ecotourism typologies as reported by different authors at different points of time. As such, this note tries to throw light on the research done so far on segmentation of ecotourists. One important parameter of ecotourist market segmentation that is receiving increased attention is the concept of a hard-to-soft spectrum that allows for identification of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’...

In early 2020, the world was rocked by a highly contagious, acute respiratory virus. Within few months, many countries had gone into lockdown and were issuing mandatory mask-wearing social distancing in what came to be known as COVID-19 pandemic.1 Many theories quickly developed how where emerged, although definitive answer is still not available. Scientists do agree, however, that it zoonotic ...

Economic inequality is widely regarded as one of the most important issues our time. Extreme economic disparities destabilize democracy—as richest exert increasing control over political outcomes—and lead to forms social stratification which take a severe toll on mental wellbeing worst-off. also plays key role in driving ongoing ecological catastrophe, spending habits wealthiest tend be concent...

I shall start with some belated and limited conclusions.11 focus principally on the United States Kingdom. Obviously, many of developments explore are global ones, albeit course local contingent variations. Resurgent forms authoritarian nationalism, for example, currently key to governing regimes in countries as diverse Brazil, China, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Russia, Turkey. Righ...

This is the fourth article in a four-article series that examines Buddhist responses to the Western philosophical problem of whether free will is compatible with “determinism,” the scientific doctrine of universal lawful causation. The first article focused on “early period” scholarship from the 1970’s, which was primarily compatibilist, that is, of the view that the Buddhist conception of caus...

The fifth edition of Beauchamp and Childress’s Principles of Biomedical Ethics is distinguished by its emphatic embrace of common morality as the ultimate source of moral norms. This essay critically evaluates the fifth edition’s discussion of common morality and, to a lesser extent, its treatment of coherence (both the model of ethical justification and the associated concept). It is argued th...

The world, over the course even of its relatively recent history, has known many natural disasters, including earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunami, hurricanes, floods, droughts, and pandemics. The 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic killed more than 20 million people (some estimates run as high as 50 million). The current AIDS pandemic has already killed more than 20 million people (most in sub-...

Contract has been conceptualized as a species of promise. This prevailing approach obscures essential differences between legally binding and everyday, or “private,” promises. The moral character of a private promise depends on the fact that it is not only freely made but also freely kept. Contractual promises are not intended to have and do not have this voluntary character. In making a privat...