AN INTELLECTUAL BIOGRAPHY OF TWO PIONEERS OF ECO-LOGICAL LIVING Richard Sylvan and Val Plumwood were eminent twentieth-century Australian philosophers who, in the way of philosophers, devoted their lives to examining fundamental assumptions about thought and the world. Though they were both renowned logicians - and probed metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, social and political theory and economics - it was their determination to fuse the practical and the intellectual, to 'walk the talk', that made them special. The world they sought to elucidate was not primarily interior; not for them navel-gazing or abstract theorising, but a passionate concern about the non-human world and the non-human others with which we share it: Sylvan was convinced of the culpability of the philosopher who could 'fiddle while the Earth begins to burn'. They were renowned as practical and rhetorical defenders of Australia's forests, as zealous conservationists who not only campaigned for the non-human world but tried to codify philosophically an 'environmental culture' that would be ethically and rationally engaged with it. Their philosophical endeavours to provide a modern foundation for such a culture were as much rooted in the forests they inhabited and worked physically to protect as in the academy; indeed Plumwood claimed that her every word had 'the thought of the forest behind it, as the ultimate progenitor and meaning of my speech'. To them, the separation of physical and intellectual labour was as wrong as, and symptomatic of, human alienation from nature; and they strove to reconnect these artificial, dangerous dichotomies. While Sylvan strove for the general 'greening of ethics', Plumwood became increasingly aware of other toxic dichotomies that infused gender politics, going on to gain recognition as a pioneering eco-feminist. Sylvan and Plumwood were iconoclastic, even anarchic, and spoke what they believed without concern for social nicety. In their lives and in their works they promoted an 'eco-logic' to live by, a world view that, in the years since their deaths, has become ever more essential. In the present volume Dominic Hyde explores their intertwined lives and complex ideas with lucidity, respect and clear-sighted affection.

The topic of vagueness re-emerged in the twentieth century from relative obscurity. It deals with the phenomenon in natural language that manifests itself in apparent semantic indeterminacy - the indeterminacy, for example, that arises when asked to draw the line between the tall and non-tall, or the drunk and the sober. An associated paradox emphasises the challenging nature of the phenomenon, presenting one of the most resilient paradoxes of logic. The apparent threat posed for orthodox theories of the semantics and logic of natural language has become the focus of intense philosophical scrutiny amongst philosophers and non-philosophers alike. Vagueness, Logic and Ontology explores various responses to the philosophical problems generated by vagueness and its associated paradox - the sorites paradox. Hyde argues that the theoretical space in which vagueness is sometimes ontologically grounded and modelled by a truth-functional logic affords a coherent response to the problems posed by vagueness. Showing how the concept of vagueness can be applied to the world, Hyde's ontological account proposes a substantial revision of orthodox semantics, metaphysics and logic. This book will be of particular interest to readers in philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science and geographic information systems.

The topic of vagueness re-emerged in the twentieth century from relative obscurity. It deals with the phenomenon in natural language that manifests itself in apparent semantic indeterminacy - the indeterminacy, for example, that arises when asked to draw the line between the tall and non-tall, or the drunk and the sober. An associated paradox emphasises the challenging nature of the phenomenon, presenting one of the most resilient paradoxes of logic. The apparent threat posed for orthodox theories of the semantics and logic of natural language has become the focus of intense philosophical scrutiny amongst philosophers and non-philosophers alike. Vagueness, Logic and Ontology explores various responses to the philosophical problems generated by vagueness and its associated paradox - the sorites paradox. Hyde argues that the theoretical space in which vagueness is sometimes ontologically grounded and modelled by a truth-functional logic affords a coherent response to the problems posed by vagueness. Showing how the concept of vagueness can be applied to the world, Hyde's ontological account proposes a substantial revision of orthodox semantics, metaphysics and logic. This book will be of particular interest to readers in philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science and geographic information systems.

This title was first published in 2003. Richard Sylvan died in 1996, he had made contributions to many areas of philosophy, such as, relevant and paraconsistent logic, Meinongianism and metaphysics and environmental ethics. One of his "trademarks" was the taking up of unpopular views and defending them. To Richard Sylvan ideas were important, wether they were his or not. This is a book of ideas, based on a collection of work found after his death, a chance for readers to see his vision of his projects. This collected works represents material drafted between 1982 and 1996, and the theme is that a small band of logics, namely pararelevant logics, offer solutions to many problems, puzzles and paradoxes in the philosophy of science.