Economy has been down for quite some time now and the situation is very uncertain. Should we expect more hard times to come or did we reach the bottom? How to prevent a recession?

Economics is hardly a science of certainty, despite all the numbers that economists may throw at us. From a philosophical standpoint economics harbors some deep questions span across different areas: from the logic of economic thinking to the structure of economic theorizing as studied by philosophers of science, from the epistemic problem of induction to the understanding of how news spread across economists through linguistic and non linguistic conventions.

Despite this wealth of philosophical issues surrounding economics (after all, some of the earliest modern economists such as Adam Smith and Karl Marx had a training in philosophy), it is rare to see philosophers being interviewed regarding the puzzling economic situation. Are philosophers to blame for this? What role can philosophers play in understanding the economic challenges of contemporary global society?

Philosopher Philip Kitcher has a review out of Derek Parfit's On What Matters, a work that I blogged about a few weeks ago.

Kitcher's review is pungent and deserves to be read in its entirety. Here, I wish to bring to attention one point that particularly struck me. Towards the end of the article, Kitcher stresses the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to the quest ethical truths; the intellectual project that many ethicists are embarked on nowadays is collectively shared with biologists, cognitive psychologists, economists, political scientists, and so on. Parfit completely missed this point: his volume is filled with imaginary and approximative examples.

Kitcher's suggestion owes much to the lesson of American pragmatism. But there is another ancestor which deserves being brought into the picture: Enlightenment. Authors such as Voltaire and Rousseau innovated philosophy by opening up their quest for philosophical truth to disciplines such as geology, physics, chemistry, biology, but also to the knowledge typical of crafts, such as gardening and cooking. Perhaps, this way a novel approach to ethics and the self could be fostered.

Sir Michael Dummett, one of the most cherished British living philosophers, died at age 86 on December 27th. Dummett was most famous for his work in logic and philosophy of language. Several philosophically-minded obituaries have already been written. Here are - in no particular order - my favorite three, appeared in the Telegraph, the Opinionator at the New York Times online, the Guardian.

The second, exciting new is that CUNY distinguished professor Saul Kripke is out with a new book, Philosophical Troubles. Collected Papers, Volume 1. Regarded as one of the most influential contemporary American philosophers, before this new work Kripke had published only a dozen lengthy papers and two books, one of which - Naming and Necessity - collected a series of lectures he gave in Princeton in the early Seventies. Indeed, most of Kripke's manuscripts have so far never seen a press. Philosophical Troubles is the first volume of a series of collected papers, which includes both published and unpublished materials. With the support of the Saul Kripke Center, more volumes are scheduled for the coming years.

Along with authors such as Tim Ingold and James Gibson, I favor a metaphysics centered on an ecological perspective, where individuals do not play a central role, rather the features of an environment do. This position is confirmed also by less theoretically oriented writings. For instance, when speaking of the relationship between bees and apple trees, Michael Pollan remarks in the Botany of Desire that "the traditional distinction between subject and object is meaningless." ("Introduction": xiv)

Over the past few days, while I was reflecting on the distinctive aspects of the idea of the West and how these relate to liberalism and humanism, I was wondering what would happen to the West were an ecological perspective to prevail in the years to come. Can liberalism still be defended from an ecological perspective? How about the cognate core doctrines within humanism? What are the implications of an ecological perspective over capitalism, the attribution of individual rights and duties, and the very idea of democracy?

To address those questions may well end up on my New Year's resolutions list. Stay tuned for more on those topics in the weeks to come.