Radical Axiology

This book treats values as the basis for all of philosophy, an approach distinct from critiquing theories of value and far rarer. “First Philosophy,” the effort to justify the foundations for a system of philosophy, is one of the main issues that divide philosophers today. McDonald’s philosophy of values is a comprehensive attempt to replace philosophies of “existence,” “being,” “experience,” the “subject,” or “language,” with a philosophy that locates value as most basic. This transformation is a radical move within Western philosophy as a whole, since it has never been done in such a thoroughgoing way. Hugh P. McDonald makes a comprehensive case against first philosophy as metaphysical, by mounting a case against all metaphysical systems of philosophy. Radical Axiology: A First Philosophy of Values is a fresh start for a rebirth of philosophy. While other movements debate the “death of philosophy,” this book radically re-evaluates the direction of philosophy by discovering values at the basis of all philosophy. This reorientation addresses the question of what the love of wisdom can mean for us today.

Tourism as an activity is increasingly being criticised for its exploitative and extractive industrial approaches to business. Yet, it has the power to transform and to regenerate societies, cultures and the environment. The desire to explore the world around us is deeply embedded in many people’s psyche, but it comes at a cost to the environment and often to the residents of the visited communities. Much of tourism education has been closely linked to preparing students for future professional practice, but the challenges and opportunities linked to its consumption require that its future leaders must exhibit very different values and understandings to tackle ever more complex and wicked problems from which tourism cannot dissociate itself. This compilation of values-based learning experiences can be adapted to suit the needs and disposition of individual instructors and aims not only to engage students in the subject matter but also deepen their understanding of its complexity and interconnectivity and help them become global citizens that lead lives of consequence.

Preliminary Material -- INTRODUCTION -- CREATIVE ACTUALIZATION -- MODES OF VALUE -- MORAL JUSTIFICATION -- CREATIVE ACTUALIZATION AND THE WORLD -- CRITICAL EVALUATION OF METAPHYSICAL VALUE THEORIES -- CRITICAL EVALUATION OF SUBJECTIVE VALUE THEORIES -- CRITICAL EVALUATION OF RELATIONAL VALUE THEORIES -- VALUE HIERARCHIES AND VALUE AUTONOMY -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- ABOUT THE AUTHOR -- INDEX -- VIBS.

This book uses scientific validity measures to create empirical value science and a normative new science of axiological psychology by integrating cognitive psychology with Robert S. Hartman’s formal theory of axiological science. It reveals a scientific way to identify and rank human values, achieving values appreciation, values clarification, and values measurement for the twenty first century.

This interdisciplinary volume links dis/ability and agency by exploring LatDisCrit’s theory and activist emancipatory practice. It uses the author’s experiential and analytical views as a blind brown Latinx engaged scholar and activist from the global south living and struggling in the highly racialized global north context of the United States. LatDisCrit integrates critically LatCrit and DisCrit which look at the interplay of race/ethnicity, diasporic cultures, historical sociopolitics and disability within multiple Latinx identities in mostly global north contexts, while incorporating global south epistemologies. Using intersectional analysis of key concepts through critical counterstories, following critical race theory methodological traditions, and engaging possible decoloniality treatments of material precarity and agency, this book emphasizes intersectionality’s complex underpinnings within and beyond Latinidades. Through a careful interplay of dis/ability identity and dis/ability rights/empowerment, the volume opens avenues for intersectional solidarity and spaces for radical transformational learning. This book will be of interest to all scholars and students working in disability studies; intersectional disability justice activists; critical Latinx/Chicanx studies; critical geographies; intersectional political philosophy; and political and public sociology.

What do you find more trustworthy, experts or numbers, personal 'know-how' or 'objective facts'? Can science claim special authority based on the objectivity of its methods? Are our ethical decisions always better when we strive to be impartial and unbiased? Why should we value objectivity, and is it achievable anyway? These are a few of the thought-provoking questions Guy Axtell asks in this comprehensive new text book, employing examples from the natural and social sciences as well as philosophy. This unique introduction surveys the key issues in a clear and concise way, assessing the nature of objectivity and value of the demand to be impartial decision-makers. Moving beyond the fundamentals, Axtell explores contemporary feminist and social epistemological attempts to 'reconstruct' the concept of objectivity, explains the implications of the so-called science wars for philosophy and the analytical method, and the ethical consequences of these debates. Objectivity is an excellent introduction to one of the most exciting areas of study in philosophy and science today. Students and scholars alike will value this balanced guide to a hotly contested, and vitally important, topic.

This comprehensive book focuses on how the COVID-19 pandemic is transforming travel and tourism, globally. Despite the devastation caused by COVID-19, authors argue that within the ongoing crisis, there is also an opportunity to positively transform the tourism sector in ways that contribute to a more hopeful future for tourism practitioners, tourists and host communities. As the world emerges from the shadow of COVID-19 there will not be a return to the "normal". Rather, the volume shares a vision of global transformation that is driven at least in part by the changing ways people in the post-COVID-19 era may travel and encounter each other and their environments. Individual chapters explore topics such as: regenerative economies, transformational travel, critical perspectives on pandemics and tourism, sustainable development and resilience post-COVID-19, re-discovering and re-localising tourism, global (im)mobilities, transforming tourism management, as well as new value systems for travel and tourism including the chance to strengthen social equity and social justice as tourism returns after COVID-19. In this edited volume, a series of senior and emerging scholars engage with debates on how to best contribute to more substantial, meaningful, and positive planetary shifts within the tourism industry. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Tourism Geographies.

This book offers international perspectives on the economic, social, geopolitical, and environmental implications of COVID-19 on tourism, an unprecedented situation for this sector. It considers the challenge of making the tourism industry more resilient to such crises and the future sustainability of tourism. Contributions explore the changing dimensions of tourism marketing post-COVID-19; the rising challenges in tourism education and ways to handle the crisis; the impact of the pandemic on tourism governance; and the emerging ethical issues of stakeholders’ responsibility. The book will be useful for researchers, students, and practitioners in the fields of tourism, geography, and crisis management disciplines.