The 2006 census shows 53 listed groups down to 5000 members (most of them Christian denominations, many of them national versions like Greek and Serbian Orthodox). Of the smaller religions Pagan shows 15 thousand, Bahá’í 12 thousand, Wiccan at 8 thousand, Humanism about 7 thousand. Between 1 and 5 thousand, other than small Christian denominations, there are the following religions – Taoist, Druse, Nature Religion, Satanism, Zoroastrian, Rationalism, Creativity, Theosophy, Jainism, Pantheism, and Neopaganism (Neodruidism, Asatru, Gaia).

In general, non-Christian religions, as well as those subscribing to no religion, have been experiencing a rise in proportion to the overall population. With fewer classifications, data from 1996 and 2001 shows Aboriginal Spirituality decreasing from 7 thousand to 5 thousand while Bahá’í grows from just under 9 thousand to over 11 thousand and the rest of the “Other” category growing from about 69,000 to about 92,000.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Religion in Australia, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Gaia (largely referred to simply as “the Planet” in-game) is the fictional world in the 1997 console role-playing game ”Final Fantasy VII”. The game’s setting follows in the footsteps of ”Final Fantasy VI” by presenting a world with considerably more advanced technology than the first five games in the series. Overall, the game’s technology and society approximates that of an industrial or post-industrial science fiction. The world of ”Final Fantasy VII”, retroactively named “Gaia” but referred to in the game as “The Planet”, is composed of three land masses. However, in a possible continuity error, Sephiroth’s final summon shows Meteor, crashing through multiple planets, labeled and illustrated as the ones in our solar system. The eastern continent features the city of Midgar, an industrial metropolis that serves as the headquarters of the Shinra Electric Power Company, a ruthless megacorporation that operates as the de facto world government. Shinra’s major military base, Junon, is also located on the continent, along with a chocobo ranch, a small town called Kalm and a fortified town called Fort Condor.

The western continent features most of the playable areas, which include an amusement park, a seaside resort, and a settlement constructed on a plateau called “Cosmo Canyon”. The tribe inhabiting the canyon places a strong emphasis on living in harmony with nature and dedicate great consideration to its well-being. Their settlement features an observatory and serves as a research facility for those who wish to participate in a philosophy known as “the Study of Planet Life”, an environmentally conscious way of life that encourages utmost deference for nature, and teaches that the planet has a life of its own. The northernmost continent is a heavily glaciated wasteland covered in snow and ice, with its few settlements largely concerned with excavation or research. It does, however, feature a ski resort. The most prominent landmark is the northern crater which is a large crater caused when JENOVA (the calamity from the sky) collided with the planet. There are also underwater locations accessible via submarine.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Gaia (Final Fantasy VII), under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Rod Hemsell is an educator and author who lived in Auroville and at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram from 1968 to 1983. During this time he also travelled widely and spoke about Auroville and Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy at centers and universities in India, as well as publishing articles and essays.

In 1991 he founded the GAIA Learning Center in Crestone, Colorado, USA, and the GLOBE Charter School in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1995.

He gave a lecture and presentation on ”Savitri” and participated in a panel on Auroville at the 1993 Parliament of the Worlds Religions in Chicago.

Since 1994 he has conducted annual Savitri Immersion workshops at the Sri Aurobindo Learning Center in Crestone.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Rod Hemsell, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Panpsychism and emergentism can be seen as alternative ways to bridge the more extreme positions of crude reductionism and crude holism. Panpsychism differs from emergentism in that according to panpsychism, even the smallest physical particles have mental characteristics. Emergentism claims that though the particles be mindless, some systems formed by them, and by nothing but them, ”do” possess mental attributes. The human brain is a case in point.

Gaia theory, which views the biosphere as a self-regulating system, that maintains homeostasis in relation to many vital chemical and physical variables, is sometimes interpreted as panpsychism, because some think that any goal-directed behavior qualifies as mental. However, the goal-directed behavior of the biosphere, as explained by the Gaia theory, is an emergent function of ”organised, living” matter, not a quality of ”any” matter. Thus Gaia theory is more properly associated with emergentism than panpsychism.

So-called ”naive panpsychism”, as opposed to ”philosophical panpsychism”, is sometimes used to refer to the idea of inanimate objects as sentient and/or intentional. This is similar to animism. This attitude of “naive” philosophy could be considered a vestigial Eurocentric belief in the inaccuracy or unimportance of non-Western world views. It could be considered to be a colonial artifact utilized as a tool of domination to discredit the philosophical contributions of the colonized. In addition, it downplays the possible role that indigenous philosophies

Panpsychism, as a view that the universe has “universal consciousness”, is shared by some forms of religious thought: theosophy, pantheism, cosmotheism and panentheism.

Panpsychism also plays a part in Hindu, Buddhist, Dzogchen and Shinto mysticism.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Panpsychism, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Athena’s cult as the patron of Athens seems to have existed from the earliest times and was so persistent that archaic myths about her were recast to adapt to cultural changes. The Greek philosopher, Plato (429–347 BC), identified her with the Libyan deity, Neith, the war-goddess and huntress deity of the Egyptians since the ancient Pre-Dynastic period, who was also identified with weaving. This is sensible as some Greeks identified Athena’s birthplace, in certain mythological renditions, as being beside Libya’s Triton River. Classicist Martin Bernal created the “Black Athena Theory” to explain this associated origin by claiming that the conception of Neith was brought over to Greece from Egypt with “an enormous number of features of civilization and culture in the third and second millennia.” Athena the goddess of philosophy became a part of the cult in the later fifth century BCE and in Classical Greece. She was the patroness of weaving, especially, and other crafts (”Athena Ergane”); the metalwork of weapons also fell under her patronage. She led battles (”Athena Promachos” or the warrior maiden ”Athena Parthenos”) as the disciplined, strategic side of war, in contrast to her brother Ares, the patron of violence, bloodlust and slaughter—”the raw force of war”. Athena’s wisdom includes the cunning intelligence (”metis”) of such figures as Odysseus. Not only was this version of Athena the opposite of Ares in combat, it was also the polar opposite of the serene earth goddess v

Athena appears in Greek mythology as a helper of many heroes, including Odysseus, Jason, and Heracles. In Classical Greek myths she never consorts with a lover nor does she ever marry, earning the title ”Athena Parthenos”. A remnant of archaic myth depicts her as the adoptive mother of Erechtheus/Erichthonius by the foiled rape by Hephaestus. Other variants relate that the serpent who accompanied Athena, also called Erichthonius, was born to Gaia when the rape failed and the semen landed on Gaia, impregnating her, and that after the birth he was given to Athena by Gaia.

Though Athena was a goddess of war strategy, she disliked fighting without a purpose and preferred using wisdom to settle predicaments. The goddess would only encourage fighting if it was for a reasonable cause or to solve conflict.

In her role as a protector of the city, many people throughout the Greek world worshiped Athena as ”Athena Polias” (“Athena of the city”). Athens and Athena bear etymologically connected names.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Athena, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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The Green Apprenticeship Ecovillage and Permaculture Design course is an intensive 6 week work /study experience run by the Center for Creative Ecology at Kibbutz Lotan in southern Israel. The program offers a highly practically-based immersion into the processes and challenges involved with the design, building and running of sustainable communities, linking together ecological, social, economical and spiritual aspects into a unified whole. Practical skills are developed through hands-on work in our environmental education center, organic gardens, alternative/natural building projects and the Lotan migratory bird reserve, complemented by theoretical sessions in topics such as ecological design, permaculture and sustainability.

Students on the course live in the GA eco-campus—a prototype model for sustainable living that is a learning experience in itself. Living quarters are super-insulated straw-bale and mud geodesic domes, built on-site by previous course participants. Passive cooling systems are employed to combat the desert heat. Electricity is almost entirely from alternative energy sources. Composting toilets and grey-water systems help conserve water. The daily challenges of living together as a micro-community in this low-impact environment form an integral part of the educational experience of the course.

Participants on the course are also interwoven into the daily life of our kibbutz, an intentional cooperative community based on the principles of liberal, egalitarian Judaism. The experience and world view of Lotan is utilized as a case study for focusing on grou

Every practical experience on the course is reinforced by formal studies, a holistic link to permaculture ideas, and an opportunity for participants to share their ideas and past experiences to influence our projects. The activities are designed with the belief that an individual can bring these ideas to their own homes and communities, empowering them towards making positive change.

The Green Apprenticeship course is an authorized provider of the Ecovillage Design Education curriculum developed by Gaia Education. The Ecovillage Design Education curriculum is an official contribution to the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005–2014 and has the endorsement of UNITAR – United Nations Institute for Training and Research. Gaia Education is a program of GEN – the Global Ecovillage Network.

On successful completion of the course work, participants will receive a Permaculture Design Course Certificate according to the International Permaculture standards, which will be taught as part of the Green Apprenticeship program.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Lotan, Israel, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Word spread quickly and the three were invited to perform at the Festival at Tara at Camp Gaia near Kansas City, Kansas. On the way to this concert the three discussed Buddhist philosophy, and Joe Credit III told the story of the lute player and the Buddha . This parable describes how the Buddha taught a lute player how using our energies to find enlightenment is like bringing the lute’s strings to just the right tautness so that the instrument will be in tune, and so, as we keep our energies in balance we will be in tune and find enlightenment.

Not long after this discussion, Papa Joe found a book of Buddhist teaching which revealed that the lute player’s name was ”Sona” . When the three of them got together at Wolvenwold, Beltana’s home, Papa Joe shared this information with Beltana and Joe Credit III and the band decided to adopt the name SONA for themselves. (The use of all capital letters for SONA was to distinguish the band from the Buddhist lute player, and later, from other groups of the same name).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article SONA (band), under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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The following list summarizes and classifies the instances of self-organization found in different disciplines. As the list grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine whether these phenomena are all fundamentally the same process, or the same label applied to several different processes. Self-organization, despite its intuitive simplicity as a concept, has proven notoriously difficult to define and pin down formally or mathematically, and it is entirely possible that any precise definition might not include all the phenomena to which the label has been applied.

It should also be noted that, the farther a phenomenon is removed from physics, the more controversial the idea of self-organization ”as understood by physicists” becomes. Also, even when self-organization is clearly present, attempts at explaining it through physics or statistics are usually criticized as reductionistic.

Similarly, when ideas about self-organization originate in, say, biology or social science, the farther one tries to take the concept into chemistry, physics or mathematics, the more resistance is encountered, usually on the grounds that it implies direction in fundamental physical processes. However the tendency of hot bodies to get cold (see Thermodynamics) and by Le Chatelier’s Principle- the statistical mechanics extension of Newton’s Third Law- to oppose this tendency should be noted.

Self-organization in physics

There are several broad classes of physical processes that can be described as self-organization. Such examples from physics include:

>* structural (order-disorder, first-order) phase transitions, and spontaneous symmetry breaking such as

** spontaneous magnetization, crystallization (see crystal growth, and liquid crystal) in the classical domain and

** the laser, superconductivity and Bose-Einstein condensation, in the quantum domain (but with macroscopic manifestations)

* second-order phase transitions, associated with “critical points” at which the system exhibits scale-invariant structures. Examples of these include:

** critical opalescence of fluids at the critical point

** percolation in random media

* structure formation in thermodynamic systems away from equilibrium. The theory of dissipative structures of Prigogine and Hermann Haken’s Synergetics were developed to unify the understanding of these phenomena, which include lasers, turbulence and convective instabilities (e.g., Bénard cells) in fluid dynamics,

** structure formation in astrophysics and cosmology (including star formation, planetary systems formation, galaxy formation)

** self-similar expansion

** Diffusion-limited aggregation

** percolation

** reaction-diffusion systems, such as Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction

* self-organizing dynamical systems: complex systems made up of small, simple units connected to each other usually exhibit self-organization

** Self-organized criticality (SOC)

* In spin foam system and loop quantum gravity that was proposed by Lee Smolin. The main idea is that the evolution of space in time should be robust in general. Any fine-tuning of cosmological parameters weaken the independency of the fundamental theory. Philosophically, it can be assumed that in the early time, there has not been any agent to tune the cosmological parameters. Smolin and his colleagues in a series of works show that, based on the loop quantization of spacetime, in the very early time, a simple evolutionary model (similar to the sand pile model) behaves as a power law distribution on both the size and area of avalanche.

**Although, this model, which is restricted only on the frozen spin networks, exhibits a non-stationary expansion of the universe. However, it is the first serious attempt toward the final ambitious goal of determining the cosmic expansion and inflation based on a self-organized criticality theory in which the parameters are not tuned, but instead are determined from within the complex system.

Self-organization vs. entropy

Statistical mechanics informs us that large scale phenomena can be viewed as a large system of small interacting particles, whose processes are assumed consistent with well established mechanical laws such as entropy, i.e., equilibrium thermodynamics. However, “… following the macroscopic point of view the same physical media can be thought of as continua whose properties of evolution are given by phenomenological laws between directly measurable quantities on our scale, such as, for example, the pressure, the temperature, or the concentrations of the different components of the media. The macroscopic perspective is of interest because of its greater simplicity of formalism and because it is often the only view practicable.” Against this background, Glansdorff and Ilya Prigogine introduced a deeper view at the microscopic level, where “… the principles of thermodynamics explicitly make apparent the concept of irreversibility and along with it the concept of dissipation and temporal orientation which were ignored by classical (or quantum) dynamics, where the time appears as a simple parameter and the trajectories are entirely reversible.”

As a result, processes considered part of thermodynamically open systems, such as biological processes that are constantly receiving, transforming and dissipating chemical energy (and even the earth itself which is constantly receiving and dissipating solar energy), can and do exhibit properties of self organization far from thermodynamic equilibrium.

A laser can also be characterized as a self organized system to the extent that normal states of thermal equilibrium characterized by electromagnetic energy absorption are stimulated out of equilibrium in a reverse of the absorption process. “If the matter can be forced out of thermal equilibrium to a sufficient degree, so that the upper state has a higher population than the lower state (population inversion), then more stimulated emission than absorption occurs, leading to coherent growth (amplification or gain) of the electromagnetic wave at the transition frequency.”

Self-organization in chemistry

Self-organization in chemistry includes:

# molecular self-assembly

# reaction-diffusion systems and oscillating chemical reactions

# autocatalytic networks (see: autocatalytic set)

# liquid crystals

# colloidal crystals

# self-assembled monolayers

# micelles

# microphase separation of block copolymers

# Langmuir-Blodgett films

Self-organization in biology

According to ”Scott Camazine.. [et al.]”:

The following is an incomplete list of the diverse phenomena which have been described as self-organizing in biology.

# spontaneous folding of proteins and other biomacromolecules

# formation of lipid bilayer membranes

# homeostasis (the self-maintaining nature of systems from the cell to the whole organism)

# pattern formation and morphogenesis, or how the living organism develops and grows. See also embryology.

# the coordination of human movement, e.g. seminal studies of bimanual coordination by Kelso

# the creation of structures by social animals, such as social insects (bees, ants, termites), and many mammals

# flocking behaviour (such as the formation of flocks by birds, schools of fish, etc.)

# the origin of life itself from self-organizing chemical systems, in the theories of hypercycles and autocatalytic networks

# the organization of Earth’s biosphere in a way that is broadly conducive to life (according to the controversial Gaia hypothesis)

Self-organization in mathematics and computer science

As mentioned above, phenomena from mathematics and computer science such as cellular automata, random graphs, and some instances of evolutionary computation and artificial life exhibit features of self-organization. In swarm robotics, self-organization is used to produce emergent behavior. In particular the theory of random graphs has been used as a justification for self-organization as a general principle of complex systems. In the field of multi-agent systems, understanding how to engineer systems that are capable of presenting self-organized behavior is a very active research area.

Self-organization in cybernetics

Wiener regarded the automatic serial identification of a black box and its subsequent reproduction as sufficient to meet the condition of self-organization. The importance of phase locking or the “attraction of frequencies”, as he called it, is discussed in the 2nd edition of his “Cybernetics”. Drexler sees self-replication as a key step in nano and universal assembly.

By contrast, the four concurrently connected galvanometers of W. Ross Ashby’s Homeostat hunt, when perturbed, to converge on one of many possible stable states. Ashby used his state counting measure of variety to describe stable states and produced the “Good Regulator” theorem which requires internal models for self-organized endurance and stability.

Warren McCulloch proposed “Redundancy of Potential Command” as characteristic of the organization of the brain and human nervous system and the necessary condition for self-organization.

Heinz von Foerster proposed Redundancy, R = 1- H/Hmax , where H is entropy. In essence this states that unused potential communication bandwidth is a measure of self-organization.

In the 1970s Stafford Beer considered this condition as necessary for autonomy which identifies self-organization in persisting and living systems. Using Variety analyses he applied his neurophysiologically derived recursive Viable System Model to management. It consists of five parts: the monitoring of performance of the survival processes (1), their management by recursive application of regulation (2), homeostatic operational control (3) and development (4) which produce maintenance of identity (5) under environmental perturbation. Focus is prioritized by an “algedonic loop” feedback: a sensitivity to both pain and pleasure.

In the 1990s Gordon Pask pointed out von Foerster’s H and Hmax were not independent and interacted via countably infinite recursive concurrent spin processes (he favoured the Bohm interpretation) which he called concepts (liberally defined in ”any” medium, “productive and, incidentally reproductive”). His strict definition of concept “a procedure to bring about a relation” permitted his theorem “Like concepts repel, unlike concepts attract” to state a general spin based Principle of Self-organization. His edict, an exclusion principle, “There are No Doppelgangers” means no two concepts can be the same (all interactions occur with different perspectives making time incommensurable for actors). This means, after sufficient duration as differences assert, all concepts will attract and coalesce as pink noise and entropy increases (and see Big Crunch, self-organized criticality). The theory is applicable to all organizationally closed or homeostatic processes that produce endurance and coherence (also in the sense of Reshcher Coherence Theory of Truth with the proviso that the sets and their members exert repulsive forces at their boundaries) through interactions: evolving, learning and adapting.

Pask’s Interactions of actors “hard carapace” model is reflected in some of the ideas of emergence and coherence. It requires a knot emergence topology that produces radiation during interaction with a unit cell that has a prismatic tensegrity structure. Laughlin’s contribution to emergence reflects some of these constraints.

Self-organization in human society

The self-organizing behaviour of social animals and the self-organization of simple mathematical structures both suggest that self-organization should be expected in human society. Tell-tale signs of self-organization are usually statistical properties shared with self-organizing physical systems (see Zipf’s law, power law, Pareto principle). Examples such as Critical mass, herd behaviour, groupthink and others, abound in sociology, economics, behavioral finance and anthropology.

In social theory the concept of self-referentiality has been introduced as a sociological application of self-organization theory by Niklas Luhmann (1984). For Luhmann the elements of a social system are self-producing communications, i.e. a communication produces further communications and hence a social system can reproduce itself as long as there is dynamic communication. For Luhmann human beings are sensors in the environment of the system.{p410 Social System 1995} Luhmann developed an evolutionary theory of Society and its subsytems, using functional ”analyses” and systems ”theory”. {Social Systems 1995}.

Self-organization in human and computer networks can give rise to a decentralized, distributed, self-healing system, protecting the security of the actors in the network by limiting the scope of knowledge of the entire system held by each individual actor. The Underground Railroad is a good example of this sort of network. The networks that arise from drug trafficking exhibit similar self-organizing properties. Parallel examples exist in the world of privacy-preserving computer networks such as Tor. In each case, the network as a whole exhibits distinctive synergistic behavior through the combination of the behaviors of individual actors in the network. Usually the growth of such networks is fueled by an ideology or sociological force that is adhered to or shared by all participants in the network.

In economics

In economics, a market economy is sometimes said to be self-organizing. Paul Krugman has written on the role that market self-organization plays in the business cycle in his book “The Self Organizing Economy”. Friedrich Hayek coined the term ”catallaxy” to describe a “self-organizing system of voluntary co-operation,” in regard to capitalism. Most modern economists hold that imposing central planning usually makes the self-organized economic system less efficient. By contrast, some socialist economists consider that market failures are so significant that self-organization produces bad results and that the state should direct production and pricing. Many economists adopt an intermediate position and recommend a mixture of market economy and command economy characteristics (sometimes called a mixed economy). When applied to economics, the concept of self-organization can quickly become ideologically-imbued (as explained in chapter 5 of A. Marshall, The Unity of Nature, Imperial College Press, 2002).

In collective intelligence

Non-thermodynamic concepts of entropy and self-organization have been explored by many theorists. Cliff Joslyn and colleagues and their so-called “global brain” projects. Marvin Minsky’s “Society of Mind” and the no-central editor in charge policy of the open sourced internet encyclopedia, called Wikipedia, are examples of applications of these principles – see collective intelligence.

Donella Meadows, who codified twelve leverage points that a self-organizing system could exploit to organize itself, was one of a school of theorists who saw human creativity as part of a general process of adapting human lifeways to the planet and taking humans out of conflict with natural processes. See Gaia philosophy, deep ecology, ecology movement and Green movement for similar self-organizing ideals. (The connections between self-organisation and Gaia theory and the environmental movement are explored in A. Marshall, 2002, The Unity of Nature, Imperial College Press: London).

Self-organization in linguistics

Self-organization refers to a property by which complex systems spontaneously generate organized structures”. It is the spontaneous formation of well organized structures, patterns, or behaviors, from random initial conditions. It is the process of macroscopic outcomes emerging from local interactions of components of the system, but the global organizational properties are not to be found at the local level. The systems used to study this phenomenon are referred to as dynamical systems: state-determined systems. They possess a large number of elements or variables, and thus very large state spaces.

Traditional framework of good science is Reductionism, in the sense that sub-parts are studied individually to understand the bigger part. However, many natural systems cannot simply be explained by a reductionist study of their parts. Self-organization is not studying the whole structure by breaking it down to smaller sub-parts which are then studied individually. The emphasis of the “self-organization” is, rather, the process of how a super macro global structure evolves from local interactions.

“The self that gets organized should not be just the language ability but the cluster of competencies through which it emerges. These probably include a variety of cognitive, social, affective, and motor skills.” The human brains, and thus the phenomena of sensation and thought, are also under the strong influence of features of spontaneous organization in their structure. Indeed, the brain, composed of billions of neurons dynamically interacting among themselves and with the outside world, is the prototype of a complex system. A good example of self organization in linguistics is the evolution of Nicaraguan Sign Language. Examples of linguistic questions in the light of self organization are: e.g. the decentralized generation of lexical and semantic conventions in populations of agents.;the formation of conventionalized syntactic structures; the conditions under which combinatoriality, the property of systematic reuse, can be selected; shared inventories of vowels or syllables in groups of agents, with features of structural regularities greatly resembling those of human languages

Methodology

In many complex systems in nature, there are global phenomena that are the irreducible result of local interactions between components whose individual study would not allow us to see the global properties of the whole combined system. Thus, a growing number of researchers think that many properties of language are not directly encoded by any of the components involved, but are the self-organized outcomes of the interactions of the components.

Building mathematical models in the context of research into language origins and the evolution of languages is enjoying growing popularity in the scientific community, because it is a crucial tool for studying the phenomena of language in relation to the complex interactions of its components. These systems are put to two main types of use: 1) they serve to evaluate the internal coherence of verbally expressed theories already proposed by clarifying all their hypotheses and verifying that they do indeed lead to the proposed conclusions ; 2) they serve to explore and generate new theories, which themselves often appear when one simply tries to build an artificial system reproducing the verbal behavior of humans.

Therefore, constructing operational models to test hypothesis in linguistics is gaining popularity these days. An operational model is one which defines the set of its assumptions explicitly and above all shows how to calculate their consequences, that is, to prove that they lead to a certain set of conclusions.

In the emergence of language

The emergence of language in the human species has been described in a game-theoretic framework based on a model of senders and receivers of information (Clark 2009, following Skyrms 2004). The evolution of certain properties of language such as inference follow from this sort of framework (with the parameters stating that information transmitted can be partial or redundant, and the underlying assumption that the sender and receiver each want to take the action in his/her best interest) . Likewise, models have shown that compositionality, a central component of human language, emerges dynamically during linguistic evolution, and need not be introduced by biological evolution (Kirby 2000). Tomasello (1999) argues that through one evolutionary step, the ability to sustain culture, the groundwork for the evolution of human language was laid. The ability to ratchet cultural advances cumulatively allowed for the complex development of human cognition unseen in other animals.

In language acquisition

Within a species’ ontogeny, the acquisition of language has also been shown to self-organize. Through the ability to see others as intentional agents (theory of mind), and actions such as ‘joint attention,’ human children have the scaffolding they need to learn the language of those around them (Tomasello 1999).

In articulatory phonology

Articulatory phonology takes the approach that speech production consists of a coordinated series of gestures, called ‘constellations,’ which are themselves dynamical systems. In this theory, linguistic contrast comes from the distinction between such gestural units, which can be described on a low-dimensional level in the abstract. However, these structures are necessarily context-dependent in real-time production. Thus the context-dependence emerges naturally from the dynamical systems themselves. This statement is controversial, however, as it suggests a universal phonetics which is not evident across languages. Cross-linguistic patterns show that what can be treated as the same gestural units produce different contextualised patterns in different languages. Articulatory Phonology fails to attend to the acoustic output of the gestures themselves (meaning that many typological patterns remain unexplained). Freedom among listeners in the weighting of perceptual cues in the acoustic signal has a more fundamental role to play in the emergence of structure. The realization of the perceptual contrasts by means of articulatory movements means that articulatory considerations do play a role, but these are purely secondary.

In diachrony and synchrony

Several mathematical models of language change rely on self-organizing or dynamical systems. Abrams and Strogatz (2003) produced a model of language change that focused on “language death” – the process by which a speech community merges into the surrounding speech communities. Nakamura et al. (2008) proposed a variant of this model that incorporates spatial dynamics into language contact transactions in order to describe the emergence of creoles. Both of these models proceed from the assumption that language change, like any self-organizing system, is a large-scale act or entity (in this case the creation or death of a language, or changes in its boundaries) that emerges from many actions on a micro-level. The microlevel in this example is the everyday production and comprehension of language by speakers in areas of language contact.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Self-organization, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Agent-centered theories

One more recent philosophical proposal has defined good as “That which increases the quality and quantity of choices available overall.” These approaches have been called ”choice optimization theories”. This maxim might be countered by the phenomenon of opportunity costs observed by social scientists. Opportunity cost is when people who are confronted with a greater number of choices also experience greater dismay at their choices after the fact, because of the missed opportunities.

In his ”Development as Freedom”, Amartya Sen asserted free time as the most fundamental good and systems of organizing which enabled it as the most fundamental value in civilization. He refuted the common claim that Asian value theorists had devalued freedom and was clear that a marketplace (creating unity via pricing) valuing free time could be created. Marilyn Waring took a similar view from a feminist perspective, arguing women’s time was undervalued and especially the free time they used to raise and teach children. Waring also strongly denied that military hardware or activities were of any value, and attempted to reconcile peace or welfare views of good with the ecological values.

Oher agent-centered theories amongst contemporary thinkers such as Bernard Williams seek to revive the old concept (associated for example with Aristotle and Confucius, that the right action is the action that a person of good character (the “great-souled man” as Aristotle said) will perform.

A Good Will

John Rawls

One problem with the thinkings of Rawls is that it is overly procedural. Procedurally fair processes of the type used by Rawls may not leave enough room for judgment, and therefore, reduce the totality of goodness. For example, if two people are found to own an orange, the standard fair procedure is to cut it in two and give half to each. However, if one wants to eat it while the other wants the rind to flavor a cake, cutting it in two is clearly less good than giving the peel to the baker and feeding the core to the eater.

Applying procedural fairness to an entire society therefore seems certain to create recognizable inefficiencies , and therefore be unfair, and (by the equivalence of justice with fairness) unjust.

However, procedural processes are not always necessarily damning in this way. Kant, a great influence for Rawls, similarly applies a lot of procedural practice within the practical application of ”The Categorical Imperative”, however, this is indeed not based solely on ‘fairness’. Even though an example like the one above regarding the orange would not be something that required the practical application of ”The Categorical Imperative”, it is important to draw distinction between Kant and Rawls, and note that Kant’s Theory would not necessarily lead to the same problems Rawls’ does – i.e., the cutting in half of the orange. Kant’s Theory promotes acting out of Duty – acting for the Summum Bonum for him, ”The Good Will” – and in fact encourages Judgement, too. What this would mean is that the outcome of the Orange’s distribution would not be such a simple process for Kant as the reason why it would be wanted by both parties would necessarily have to be a part of the Judgement process, thus eliminating the problem that Rawls’ account suffers here.

Agent-external theories=

Society, life and ecology

Many views value ”unity” as a good: to go beyond eudaimonia by saying that an individual person’s flourishing is valuable only as a means to the flourishing of society as a whole. In other words, a single person’s life is, ultimately, not important or worthwhile in itself, but is good only as a means to the success of society as a whole. Some elements of Confucianism are an example of this, encouraging the view that people ought to conform as individuals to demands of a peaceful and ordered society.

According to the naturalistic view, the flourishing of society is not, or not the only, intrinsically good thing. Defenses of this notion are often formulated by reference to biology, and observations that living things compete more with their own kind than with other kinds. Rather, what is of intrinsic good is the flourishing of all sentient life; extending to those animals which have some level of similar sentience, such as Great Ape personhood. Others go farther, by declaring that life itself is of intrinsic value.

By another approach, one achieves peace and agreement by focusing, not on one’s peers (who may be rivals or competitors), but on the common environment. The reasoning: As living beings it is clearly and objectively good that we are surrounded by an ecosystem that supports life. Indeed, if we weren’t, we could neither discuss that good nor even recognize it. The anthropic principle in cosmology recognizes this view.

Under materialism or even embodiment values, or in any system that recognizes the validity of ecology as a scientific study of limits and potentials, an ecosystem is a fundamental good. To all who investigate, it seems that goodness, or value, exists within an ecosystem, Earth. Creatures within that ecosystem and wholly dependent on it, evaluate good relative to what else could be achieved there. In other words, good is situated in a particular place and one does not dismiss everything that is not available there (such as very low gravity or absolutely abundant sugar candy) as “not good enough”, one works within its constraints. Transcending them and learning to be satisfied with them, is thus another sort of value, perhaps called satisfaction, or in Buddhism, enlightenment.

Values and the people that hold them seem necessarily subordinate to the ecosystem. If this is so, then what kind of being could validly apply the word “good” to an ecosystem as a whole? Who would have the power to assess and judge an ecosystem as good or bad? By what criteria? And by what criteria would ecosystems be modified, especially larger ones such as the atmosphere (climate change) or oceans (extinction) or forests (deforestation)?

“Remaining on Earth” as the most basic value. While green ethicists have been most forthright about it, and have developed theories of Gaia philosophy, biophilia, bioregionalism that reflect it, the questions are now universally recognized as central in determining value, e.g. the economic “value of Earth” to humans as a whole, or the “value of life” that is neither whole-Earth nor human. Many have come to the conclusion that without assuming ecosystem continuation as a universal good, with attendant virtues like biodiversity and ecological wisdom it is impossible to justify such operational requirements as sustainability of human activity on Earth.

One response is that humans are not necessarily confined to Earth, and could use it and move on. A counter-argument is that only a tiny fraction of humans could ever do this, and those would be self-selected by ability to do technological escalation on others (for instance, the ability to create large missiles on which to flee the planet and simultaneously threaten others who sought to prevent them). Another counter-argument is that extraterrestrial life would encounter the fleeing humans and be forced to destroy them as a locust species. A third is that if there are no other worlds fit to support life (and thus no extraterrestrials competing with humans to occupy them) it is both futile to flee, and foolish to imagine that it would take less energy and skill to protect the Earth as a habitat, than it would take to construct some new habitat.

Accordingly remaining on Earth, as a living being surrounded by a working ecosystem, is a fair statement of the most basic values and goodness to any being we are able to communicate with. A moral system without this axiom seems simply not actionable.

However, most religious systems acknowledge an afterlife and improving this is seen as an even more basic good. In many other moral systems, also, remaining on Earth in a state that lacks honor or power over self is less desirable – consider seppuku in bushido, kamikazes or the role of suicide attacks in Jihadi rhetoric. In all these systems, remaining on Earth is perhaps no higher than a third-place value.

Radical values environmentalism can be seen as either a very old or a very new view: that the only intrinsically good thing is a flourishing ecosystem; individuals and societies are merely instrumentally valuable, good only as means to having a flourishing ecosystem. The Gaia philosophy is the most detailed expression of this overall thought but it strongly influenced Deep Ecology and the modern Green Parties.

It is often claimed that aboriginal peoples never lost this sort of view – anthropological linguistics studies links between their languages and the ecosystems in which they lived and which gave rise to their knowledge distinctions. Very often, environmental cognition and moral cognition were not distinguished in these languages – offenses to nature were like those to other people, and Animism reinforced this by giving nature “personality” via myth. Anthropological theories of value explore these questions.

Most people in the world reject older situated ethics and localized religious views. However small-community-based and ecology-centric views have gained some popularity in recent years. In part, this has been attributed to the desire for ethical certainties. Such a deeply rooted definition of goodness would be valuable because it might allow one to construct a good life or society by reliable processes of deduction, elaboration or prioritisation. Ones that relied only on local referents one could verify for oneself, creating more certainty and therefore less investment in protection, hedging and insuring against consequences of loss of the value.

History and novelty

An event is often seen as being of value simply because of its ”novelty” in fashion and art. By contrast, cultural history and other antiques are sometimes seen as of value in and of themselves due to their ”age”. Philosopher-historians Will and Ariel Durant spoke as much with the quote, “As the sanity of the individual lies in the continuity of his memories, so the sanity of the group lies in the continuity of its traditions; in either case a break in the chain invites a neurotic reaction” (The Lessons of History, 72).

Assessment of the value of old or historical artifacts takes into consideration, especially but not exclusively: the value placed on having a detailed knowledge of the past, the desire to have tangible ties to ancestral history, and/or the increased market value scarce items traditionally hold.

Creativity and innovation and invention are sometimes upheld as fundamentally good especially in Western industrial society – all imply newness, and even opportunity to profit from novelty. Bertrand Russell was notably pessimistic about creativity and thought that knowledge expanding faster than wisdom necessarily was fatal.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Good and evil, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Ecofeminism, or ecological feminism, is a term coined in 1974 by Françoise d’Eaubonne. It is a philosophy and movement born from the union of feminist and ecological thinking and the belief that the social mentality that leads to the domination and oppression of women is directly connected to the social mentality that leads to the abuse of the natural environment. It combines eco-anarchism or bioregional democracy with a strong ideal of feminism. Its advocates often emphasize the importance of interrelationships between humans, non-human others (e.g. pigs, squirrels, toads), and the earth.

A central tenet in ecofeminism states that male ownership of land has led to a dominator culture (patriarchy), manifesting itself in food export, over-grazing, the tragedy of the commons, exploitation of people, and an abusive land ethic, in which animals and land are valued only as economic resources. Other ecofeminists claim that the degradation of nature contributes to the degradation of women. For example, Thomas-Slayter and Rocheleau detail how in Kenya, the capitalist driven export economy has caused most of the agriculturally productive land to be used for monoculture cash crops. This led to intensification of pesticide use, resource depletion and relocation of subsistence farmers, especially women, to the hillsides and less productive land, where their deforestation and cultivation led to soil erosion, furthering the environmental degradation that hurts their own productivity (Thomas-Slayter, B. and D. Rocheleau. (1995) Gender, Environment and Development in Kenya: A Grassroots Per

Vandana Shiva makes it clear that one of the missions of ecofeminism is to redefine how societies look at productivity and activity of both women and nature who have mistakenly been deemed passive, allowing for them both to be ill-used. For example, she draws a picture of a stream in a forest. According to her, in our society it is perceived as unproductive if it is simply there, fulfilling the needs for water of women’s families and communities, until engineers come along and tinker with it, perhaps damming it and using it for generating hydropower. The same is true of a forest unless it is planted with a monoculture plantation of a commercial species. A forest may very well be productive, protecting groundwater, creating oxygen, allowing villagers to harvest fruit, fuel, and craft materials, and creating a habitat for animals that are also a valuable resource. However, for many, if it is not for export or contribution to GDP, without a dollar value attached, it cannot be seen as a productive resource (4 Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development 1988).

Some ecofeminists point to the linguistic links between oppression of women and land, such as the terms, “rape the land”, “tame nature,” and “reap nature’s bounty.” Terms also express nature as feminine (using the pronoun “she” and the term “Mother Nature”) and women as “wild” and “untamed” (like nature). Ecofeminists also criticize Western lifestyle choices, such as consuming food that has travelled thousands of miles and playing sports (such as golf and downhill skiing) which inherently require ecological destruction.

Feminist and social ecologist Janet Biehl has criticized ecofeminism as idealist, focusing too much on the idea of a mystical connection with nature and not enough on the actual conditions of women. However, this line of criticism may not apply to many ecofeminists who reject both mysticism and essentialist ideas about the connection between women and nature. This antiessentialist ecofeminism has become more prominent since the early 1990s [http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/twine/ecofem/bookreview.html] : it has an epistemological analysis of the Enlightenment, places the spirituality in immanent world and then practices modern activism. The materialist ecofeminism discuss economical and political issues and can use metaphorically the link of ”Great mother earth” or Gaia (while the idealistic tendency uses it literally).

Views on technology

Françoise d’Eaubonne proposed a cooperative system in small unities (villages) with autonomization, without alienating technology. With ecofeminist ideals and pagan practices, these projects are sometimes seen as a form of primitivism. However, while some ecofeminists see technology as inherently alienating, many see a substantial role for modern technologies in the creation and operation of such villages. A number of ecofeminists advocate the use of technologies such as solar power as a way to stay off ‘the grid’, which they regard as more important than relying upon poisonous industrial processes or materials. The ecological movement is itself split on issues like this. However, it is likely that an intermediate technology, appropriate technology, would be preferred in general if an ecofeminist movement sought to spread into developing nations quickly.

Views on human/animal relations

One strand of ecofeminism, associated with Carol J Adams, Marti Kheel and Greta Gaard has consistently argued that veganism is an important part of ecofeminist ethics. Other positions represented by Val Plumwood and Karen J. Warren argue for a contextual vegetarianism which ties animal ethics more to material and social context. Yet other ecofeminists place ethical emphasis on ecosystem health at the expense of valuing individual animals or stipulating vegetarianism or veganism.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Ecofeminism, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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