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The interaction among species & chemicals in the food chain often yields potential outcomes that are difficult to foresee. In policy terms, these interactions comprise an information load beyond human cognition, resulting in unexpected side effects, eg, invasions of species, epidemics, air pollution, toxic substances, & endangered species. The policy process attempts to deal with the information problem by using: (1) an incremental approach, (2) a bounding approach, or (3) an uncertainty approach. Unfortunately, the bounding approach excludes all data on interactions outside the apparent cause/effect hypothesis. Possible approaches to augment & improve environmental policy, beyond the bounding approach, are: inquiring into uncertainties & side effects, choosing complex ecologies over simple ones, & sampling for uncertain risks by probability assessments. HA.

ABSTRACTThe interaction among myriad species and chemicals in the food chain often yields potential outcomes which are difficult to foresee. In policy terms, these interactions comprise an information load beyond human cognition, resulting in unexpected side effects. The clearest examples are seen in the invasions of species and epidemics, air pollution, toxic substances, and endangered species. The policy process attempts to deal with the information problem by using (1) an incremental approach, (2) a bounding approach, or (3) an uncertainty approach. Unfortunately, the bounding approach excludes all data on interactions outside the apparent cause/effect hypothesis. Possible approaches to augment and improve environmental policy, beyond the bounding approach, are to inquire into uncertainties and side‐effects, choose complex ecologies over simple ones, and sample for uncertain risks by probability assessments.

Contents -- List of Contributors -- Acknowledgments -- Series Preface -- 1 Introduction to general ecology: The ecologization of thinking Erich Hörl -- 2 Computational logic and ecological rationality Luciana Parisi -- 3 Elements for an ecology of separation: Beyond ecological constructivism Frédéric Neyrat -- 4 General ecology, economy, and organology Bernard Stiegler -- 5 The modern invention of nature Didier Debaise -- 6 Deep times and media mines: A descent into ecological materiality of technology Jussi Parikka -- 7 Planetary immunity: Biopolitics, Gaia theory, the holobiont, and the systems counterculture Bruce Clarke -- 8 Ecologizing biopolitics, or, What is the "bio-" of bioart? Cary Wolfe -- 9 Ecologies of communion, contagion, &c, especially Bataille David Wills -- 10 Metafiction and general ecology: Making worlds with worlds James Burton -- 11 An ecology of differences: Communication, the Web, and the question of borders Elena Esposito -- 12 Specters of ecology Timothy Morton -- 13 Devastation Matthew Fuller and Olga Goriunova -- 14 Virtual ecology and the question of value Brian Massumi -- Index

In the focus of the paper there are some basic insights and ideas of rational choice theory, that is the "core" of contemporary economic theory. Also, rational choice theory is the "center" of modern political science and is used in various other scientific disciplines, such as: sociology, philosophy, political science, psychology and the like. There are two main goals of this paper. One is to point out the limitations of rational choice theory as one of the theories of economic behavior (and decision making). The second goal is to analyze psychological programs of research of heuristics and bias in behavioral economics and to consider the importance of alternative concepts, models and theories from the point of view of improving the understanding of economic and social behavior.

Experimental economics and bounded rationality are very different from one another, but both claim to offer a more general and more empirical type of economic theory. Experimental economists, in addition, claim that their game-theoretic analyses provide rigorous, calculable, inferences from individual decisions to society as a whole. They claim to be describing the basis of social stability, although the argument depends on a unitary conception of "society" that ethnologists have now largely rejected. Both groups view rationality as inherently or originally individualistic and "utility maximizing" rather than inherently or originally social—albeit for entirely different reasons. Neither recognizes rationality as inherently bound up with organizations. These views have no basis in ethnography and are sharply in conflict with the stress on local knowledge in the most successful contemporary development policies. A crucial empirical issue is the nature and power of indigenous decision algorithms. The economists treat them as non-existent, insignificant, or erroneous. I show that they are organizationally situated and part of the organizational process, genuinely optimizing, and the basis of cultural ecological adaptation. Moreover, it is this external adaptation, not an internal game-like system of self-perpetuating rules, that is the ultimate basis of social stability, as well as dynamism.

AbstractThe Gaia hypothesis is often used as the basis for demonstrating environmental integrity in current arguments within the field of ecological philosophy. However, when citing the Gaia hypothesis, people are often vague when defining its connotations and extensions. By analysing the controversies surrounding the Gaia hypothesis, we can achieve an appropriate conception of its ontology, including the blindness of the strong theoretical approach and the rationality of the weak one. Gaia's naturalistic epistemology, holistic methodology and systematic values can thus be discriminated. Gaia has strong significance for allowing human beings to understand the Earth's ecological environment and is an effective ecological holistic theory.

Concerns about immigration are salient in the European Union and in Malta in particular. Previous research has demonstrated deep antipathy towards the Arab community in Malta, and social representations of Arabs are mired in a conflation of ethnic and religious categories with negative connotations. This paper presents evidence of the potency, within the public sphere, of negative arguments from cultural essentialism, concerning the integration of Arabs in Europe. The data was obtained abductively from a data corpus containing positive, mixed and negative arguments about Arabs and their integration. Results show evidence of the almost total exclusivity of cultural essentialism. All such arguments posited Arabic culture as an underlying essence that makes integration with Arabs difficult or impossible, yet different arguments were distinguishable by emphasis. Results pointed towards forms of culturally essentialist views that vary in their emphasis of different aspects of cultural essentialism. Reductionist, determinist, bounded and temporal aspects of cultural essentialism were all emphasised by respondents. The essentialist exceptions to negative arguments from cultural essentialism were extremely few in number and were posed tentatively by participants. Their paucity and manner of delivery give strength to the claim that it is strictly an Arabic cultural essence that is deemed to make integration impossible in the eyes of participants. Findings are discussed in light of the communicative functions that these dominant argumentative strategies fulfill.

Highly toxic pesticides bring negative externalities to water pollution, which increase the demand for green pesticides that are low-toxic and high-efficiency. With the implementation of the unique the Centralized Pesticide Distribution (CPD) policy aiming to reduce the use of chemical pesticides in Huangshan, we try to explore the factors that affect farmers' acceptance of CPD and thus change their pesticides selection. Based on the theory of farmers' ecological rationality, we build a decision-making ecosystem on accepting CPD and assuming that farmers' behavior is determined hierarchically by factors, then the Logistic-AISM model is used for empirical testing using data collected from 233 representative farmers. The results show that the proportion of agri-income and participation in cooperatives fundamentally affected choices for CPD acceptance through two middle-level indirect factor: government publicity and the availability of agri-information by changing farmers' cognition on pesticides and production status. Thus, CPD may be improved by selling a richer variety of insecticides and implementing more publicity. Lessons from China inspire other intensive farming countries to promote green pesticides by: expanding the sales channel of green agri-products, playing the auxiliary role of cooperatives, and inventing more eco-friendly pesticides.

Modern economic rationality is an instrumental rationality geared towards the idea of 'progress': the continuous need for wealth production (in quantitative terms). This rationality underscores our political and legal order (amongst others). Law and politics can be said to serve the interests of progress. However, we have become increasingly aware of the side effects this rationality brings about. These side effects can be conceptualised, following the German social theorist Ulrich Beck, in terms of 'modern risks'; they are manufactured uncertainties. Global warming can be considered a modern risk. It is becoming more and more plausible that modern economic rationality and ways of wealth production are contributing factors to global warming and, hence, climate change. It has an impact on water issues in the broadest sense. Climate change poses a threat to the natural environment and carries the potential of catastrophic social consequences. To deal with it implies managing its ecological and social side effects. The question is how. The side effects of economic rationality are countered by another rationality, which one could characterise as 'security' or 'safety' rationality. With this approach we are considered to be in a 'state of exception' - a situation out of the ordinary that demands attention with an aim to return to, or re-establish, the ordinary. The state of exception, as a theoretical concept, suggests an increase of power structures in times of crisis. What is new is that global warming and climate change can be considered as an ecological state of exception leading to a new normality that demands different ways as to how we want to live together in our social and natural environment. In this article I seek to explore the idea of an ecological state of exception as the 'normal' state of affairs, demanding a new rationality and, consequently, ask to what extent a reconsideration of self-evident assumptions that underscore modem contemporary life, economic, political and social is necessary and ...

The present paper considers the implications of the postulate that the activities of scientists constitute complex phenomena in the sense associated with the methodological writings of the Nobel Prize-winning Austrian economist, methodologist, and political philosopher, F.A. Hayek. Although Hayek wrote extensively on the methodology of sciences that investigate systems of complex phenomena, he never addressed the possibility that science itself is such a system. The application of Hayek's method ology of sciences of complex phenomena to science itself implies some minimal criteria for explanations of scientific rationality. If science is complex in Hayek's sense, then scientific belief may be rational in more than one way. It is argued that a failure to recognize the possibility of multiple kinds of scientific rationality contributes to an error theory of certain unsuccessful accounts of scientific belief in the history of philosophy of science. It is further argued that, where ecological rationality is operative, rational belief requires an element of methodological liberty. It is shown that acceptance of the possibility of ecologically-rational scientific outcomes–a view here dubbed methodological liberalism–is closely related to Hayek's denial of the possibility of a successful scientism, a denial crucial to his arguments against socialism and Keynesian macroeconomics.

In a small rural village in the mountains of Northeastern China, a transnational assemblage is building an internationally lauded eco-city. Examining the global dreams for a green "sustainable community" in Huangbaiyu Village opens up a window on to the science of global warming and the ecological rationality to which it gives rise. Taking the site of Huangbaiyu not as a bounded physical location, but a nodal point through which multiple logics, values, and persons converge, I ask: What type of self and society do the structures of the eco-city shape through its spaces of inhabitance and systems of survival? The construction of an eco-city is itself more than a built environment; it is a physical manifestation of a system of values and a record of power. In the name of a shared community of fate, new assemblages of authority and practices of governance are emerging. As scientific models ground political discourse, the name through which authority to act upon a population is invoked is no longer only the state, but also the planet, in which every person has a vested interest and for which every person is responsible. Under these terms, everyday practices of living become subject to judgment, transformation and discipline by persons never met in the name of protecting the planet. In China, the uncertainties of global climate change align with national anxieties over the "three rural problems": agriculture, farmers, and the countryside. In the name of sustainable development, the villagers of Huangbaiyu are again becoming the object of alien ends. This time it is market consolidation, not Communist collectivization that is re-ordering value in the countryside. In the name of protecting a "planet in peril," the villagers of Huangbaiyu would be dispossessed of their access to the natural resources of their valleys. In the name of improving their quality of life, they would be forced into either wage labor or abject poverty.What is at stake in Huangbaiyu is not only of consequence to the persons who have inhabited its spaces, but to all those who are encountering the ethical claims operationalized by ecological citizenship, or are thinking of making such claims on others. Unless attention is focused on what - and who - a new hierarchy of ecological value devalues, an ecological age may prove to be little different from the present industrial age.

We discuss the recent emergence of 'deliberative ecological economics', a field that highlights the potential of deliberation for improving environmental governance. We locate the emergence of this literature in the long concern in ecological economics over the policy implications of limited views of human action and its encounter with deliberative democracy scholarship and the model of communicative rationality as an alternative to utilitarianism. Considering criticisms over methods used and the focus of research in deliberative decision-making, we put forward a research agenda for deliberative ecological economics. Given the promising potential of deliberative processes for improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of environmental decision-making, work in this area could help advance both theory and practice in environmental governance.