The Rationality of the Arms Racers

Abstract  Against Peter Baehr's 'The irrationality of the arms race', published in Vol. 2 No. 2 of the Journal of Applied Philosophy, this paper argues that, at least directly and in the first instance, both rationality and irrationality characterise individual beliefs and individual behaviour. Furthermore it is fundamental to the understanding of persons that, before putting anyone down as in either respect irrational, we should first reconsider whether we were right, either in attributing to them beliefs which it would have been irrational for them to hold, or in assuming that their actual purposes and priorities were indeed such as to make their behaviour—by these standards—counterproductive. Once our present questions are approached in this way it becomes apparent that we have been given no sufficient reason for concluding that there is significantly more irrationality here than elsewhere. More than enough is too much.     

Arms and the Man

An address given at the festival 'A World in Peril', organized by Professions for World Disarmament and held in London, at Southwark Cathedral, on 25 October 1986.     

Arms races and the opportunity for peace

We model the evolution of international conflict as a game of sequential decisions and show that arms races are neither necessary nor sufficient for peace or war. Peaceful intentions are not adequate to insure peace, even when both rivals wish to avoid violence. Peaceful intentions together with complete information are sufficient for peace. A preference for forcefully pursuing foreign policy goals also is not sufficient to preclude the peaceful resolution of disputes, and this is true even if there is complete information. In some circumstances, the absence of an arms race can precipitate violence, even giving the military advantage to a nation that unilaterally stopped getting ready for a war it would initiate. Finally, we also show that empirical research is likely to be biased in favor of the hypothesis that deterrence leads to peace. Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.Vegetius,Artes Latinae     

Being an Intelligent Slave of God

How did premodern Muslim thinkers talk about living authentically as a Muslim in the world? How, in their view, could selves transform themselves into ideal religious subjects or slaves of God? Which virtues, technologies of the self and intersubjective relations did they see implicated in inhabiting or attaining what I shall call ?abdī subjectivity? In this paper, I make explicit how various discursive, ethical strategies formed, informed, and transformed Muslim subjectivity in early Muslim thought by focusing on the writings of an important ninth century Muslim moral pedagogue, al‐Mu?āsibī (d. 857). This study illustrates the advantages of approaching early Muslim texts and discourses through the tools and methods made available by comparative religious ethics in order to reexamine our understanding of Muslim subject formation and the role of ethical and theological discourses in the same.     

Cynthia Willet,Maternal Ethics and Other Slave Moralities

Continental Philosophy Review -     

The World Trade Center Disaster and the Apocalyptic

A discussion of the apocalyptic dimensions of the World Trade Center disaster, this paper considers some first-hand reports of the towers burning and collapsing, as well as the author's own experience that day watching events unfold and discussing these horrors with his patients. Several conceptual ideas are developed, including the varied ways people experienced the disaster in terms of “zones of sadness”; the organic nature of the way the disaster unfolded; the language of the victims in terms of underlying rhetorical structures of response; and psycho-historical considerations that suggest, in part, why the disaster was such a collective trauma.     

The Roman Catholic Church and Slavery in José Evaristo d'Almeida's O Escravo (The Slave)

This installment of Dialog's Theology in Film and Fiction series introduces the first Cape Verdean novel, The Slave, by José Evaristo d'Almeida (1856). This vivid story depicts a number of social and moral issues tied together within the tragic plot of the novel. The article discusses the historical relationship of the Roman Catholic Church to slavery, the colonial history of Portugal and Cape Verde, and the theological use of the Bible in this history. This discussion is applied to Almeida's novel, revealing the manifold nineteenth‐century varieties of the literary history and theology of colonialism.     

The University and the Moral Imperative of Fair Trade Coffee

This paper examines the relationship between the university and fair trade coffee campaigns in North America. In recent years, fair trade coffee sales internationally have increased substantially but have still not grown large enough to meet the needs of fair trade producers in the South. In consequence, fair trade activists have sought to expand the market by pressuring public institutions to adopt fair trade purchasing policies. In North America, the university has emerged as a central focus of fair trade coffee campaigns. Thus far, university administrators have been reluctant to support fair trade. This paper explores this reluctance and asserts that the university has a moral responsibility to support fair trade. However, it also argues that the potential exists for administrators to employ fair trade as an ethical fig leaf to mask the growing corporatization of the university under the weight of neoliberal reforms. This has become a common strategy of many neoliberal institutions in the North. Contrary to the assumptions of much of the emerging literature, it cannot be assumed that the impact of fair trade will necessarily be beneficial in the North unless activists work to ensure fair trade does not become employed as an ethical fig leaf.     

Family Functioning Following Wildfires: Recovering from the 2011 Slave Lake Fires

Natural disasters are increasingly becoming a common occurrence; but there remains a paucity of information about how families as a unit recover from disasters in general and from wildfires in particular. The work presented here investigates family recovery after a devastating wildfire in a rural community in Alberta, Canada. The goal is to examine the experience of families, parents and children, in the aftermath of the wildfire including the evacuation and recovery. The study was conducted within a research program that is focusing on understanding the links between disaster recovery and community resilience. We interviewed 27 parents and 26 children representing 19 families and conducted extensive community fieldwork. Data analysis included an inductive coding process. Findings indicate commonalities among affected families. In particular, six main themes related to family recovery were generated: different life goals and priorities, new routines, changes in attitudes, changes in interactions within the family unit and with the community, as well as new values and perceptions. Results also indicate parents’ and children’s recovery is marked by their own experiences and particular needs. The discussion of these findings highlights the important role of parents in family recovery, but also the necessity of examining the family unit and the changes it undergoes in re-establishing family routines while acknowledging children’s concerns about protecting their parents. The study enhances our theoretical understanding of the social impacts of wildfires and is useful for those involved in disaster planning and recovery in preparation for future wildfire events.     

Quiet Eye Training Improves Small Arms Maritime Marksmanship

Quiet eye training—teaching task-specific gaze control—has been consistently shown to optimize the acquisition of motor skills. The present study aimed to examine the potential benefits of a quiet eye training intervention in a simulated maritime marksmanship task that involved shooting fast approaching moving targets with a decommissioned general-purpose machine gun. Twenty participants were randomly assigned to a quiet eye trained (QET) or technical trained (TT) group and completed 2 baseline, 20 training, and 2 retention trials on the moving-target task. Compared to their TT counterparts, the QET group displayed more effective gaze control (longer quiet eye durations and greater target locking) and more accurate performance (smaller radial error of both the initial shot and average of all shots) at retention. These findings highlight the potential for quiet eye training to be used to support the training of marksmanship skills in military settings.