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There is a lively discussion in contemporary philosophy that explores the meaning of life or, more modestly, meaning in life. Philosophers, for the most part, assume that religion has little to contribute to this inquiry. They believe that the Western religions, such as Judaism, have doctrinaire beliefs which have become implausible and can no longer satisfy the search for meaning. In this book, Alan L. Mittleman argues that this view is misconceived. He offers a presentation of core Jewish beliefs by using classical and contemporary texts that address the question of the meaning of life in a philosophical spirit. That spirit includes profound self-questioning and self-criticism. Such beliefs are not doctrinaire: Jewish sources, such as the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes, are, in fact, open to an absurdist reading. Mittleman demonstrates that both philosophy and Judaism are prone to ineliminable doubts and perplexities. Far from pre-empting a conversation, they promote honest dialogue.
Ecology is receiving more attention from philosophers as the severity and complexity of environmental problems, and ecology’s potential role in solving them, becomes apparent. Threats to coral reefs and management strategies developed in response is a vivid example. This chapter explores the ways values influence both applied ecology and policy making informed by it. Most sciences are concerned with discovering and explaining new truths. But some applied sciences pursue more immediately pressing, ethical goals, such as improving health or conserving biodiversity. Nonepistemic values permeate these ethically driven sciences. This perception has recently encouraged the view they are value-laden in a strong sense: both ethical values and nonnormative facts factor indispensably in these sciences, and their respective contributions cannot be clearly demarcated. In fact, the inextricable suffusion of value has even been taken to challenge the cogency of a fact/value distinction. Such claims are overstated. Ethically driven sciences are best conceptualized as conditionalized endeavors. Achieving ethically valued objectives dictates some of their structure, but this influence can be demarcated from the factual status of claims made within them. The conditional nature of ethically driven sciences grounds this delineation and reaffirms the fact/value distinction remains distinct.
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