McMurtry, J. (Ed.). (2011). Philosophy and world problems (Vols. I–III). EOLSS Publishers / UNESCO.
Deep Dive Audio Overview | The Hidden War Between Money and Life
Critique | Forensic Editing for Life-Blind Economics
Debate | When Money Devours Life
Video Explainer | A World of Crises
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This encyclopedia addresses a central and largely unexamined problem: modern civilization lacks a shared criterion for distinguishing value systems that enable life from those that degrade it.
Across economics, law, governance, and culture, a dominant value syntax equates success with monetary gain, competitive advantage, and quantitative growth. Yet this system operates without an explicit accountability structure to the biological, ecological, and social conditions that make human and planetary life possible. The result is systemic contradiction: rising financial abstraction alongside ecological destabilization, social fragmentation, and preventable suffering.
Volume I establishes the conceptual foundation. It distinguishes life-value — what objectively enables life capacity — from desire-based and market-based valuations. It identifies the life-coherence principle: institutional and individual practices are valid to the extent that they sustain and enhance life-support systems across time. The volume demonstrates how moral philosophy and economic theory have systematically abstracted from this ground.
Volume II applies this framework to justice and rights. It analyzes the conflict between corporate personhood and embodied human persons, and clarifies the structural opposition between money-sequence value and life-sequence value. It reconstructs justice in terms of universal human life necessities — such as water, food, shelter, education, healthcare, and meaningful social participation — and develops the concept of the civil commons as historically evolved institutions that secure these goods.
Volume III situates the life-ground framework within broader philosophical and ecological contexts. It critiques mechanistic reductionism and life-blind positivism, explores alternative world-views, and integrates ethical, ecological, and civilizational analysis. It advances a model of governance and economic order accountable to life-support systems as the ultimate measure of rationality and progress.
The encyclopedia does not propose utopian blueprints. It proposes a criterion. A compass.
Its central claim is simple but far-reaching:
No economic, political, or philosophical system is rational unless it is accountable to the life conditions that sustain the beings who live within it.
The stakes are not theoretical. They are civilizational.
And beneath the abstraction of markets, ideologies, and rights claims lies a more basic reality: life-support systems must either be reproduced or they collapse.
This work seeks to restore that ground to conscious thought and collective decision.
Articles and Contributors to Philosophy and World Problems Encyclopedia
Please scroll to right to see columns on right| Article Title | Author(s) | Institutional Affiliation | Volume Number | Summary of Content |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Philosophy And World Problems What Is Good? What Is Bad? - The Value Of All Values Through Time, Place And Theories | John McMurtry | University of Guelph, Guelph NIG 2W1, Canada | Volume I | Analyzes the global crisis of values, excavating core principles of major value theories across traditions. Proposes the 'primary axiom of value' and explores ultimate value fields of thought, felt being, and action to establish a life-grounded ethics. |
| The Global Crisis Of Values | John McMurtry | Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Guelph NIG 2W1, Canada | Volume I | Provides an overview of unexamined presuppositions governing science, technology, and social orders. It explores the conflict between money and life sequences of value and the unique human choice-space for deciding reproduction rules. |
| The Transcultural Idea: Good As Happiness And Bad As Pain | John McMurtry | Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Guelph NIG 2W1, Canada | Volume I | Decodes errors in the universal idea that happiness is good and pain is bad. It establishes criteria for 'good pain' as the felt side of life-capacity growth and identifies suffering from need as the core of social injustice. |
| Moral Philosophy In Question | John McMurtry | Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Guelph NIG 2W1, Canada | Volume I | Evaluates a spectrum of major value theories including analytic moral philosophy, desire theory, and transcendental ideals. Argues that a needs theory of value alone provides an objective ground for moral truth but requires life-value onto-ethics to bridge spiritual and material divisions. |
| Natural Good And Evil: Beyond Fitness To Survive | John McMurtry | Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Guelph NIG 2W1, Canada | Volume I | Unpacks the 'fitness to survive' principle of the global market. It diagnoses the 'deep naturalistic fallacy' in market capitalism and re-grounds concepts of beauty, duty, and consensus in life-value referents. |
| Traditions as Moral Anchor in an Age of Criterionless Relativism | John McMurtry | Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Guelph NIG 2W1, Canada | Volume I | Examines class morality and Virtue Ethics. It critiques the lack of universal moral grounds in 'practices of excellence' like the money game or armed force, arguing for life-value standards to prevent systemic evil. |
| The Lost Social Subject: Evaluating the Rules by Which We Live | John McMurtry | Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Guelph NIG 2W1, Canada | Volume II | Explains the deciding plane of the human condition as the rules by which we live and defines the ultimate principles of their evaluation and advance through life-value analysis. |
| Deep Principles of Justice Grounding In Life-Value Meaning | John McMurtry | Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Guelph NIG 2W1, Canada | Volume II | Critically focuses on leading philosophies of justice to develop a life-coherent understanding of what each is due across cultures, grounding justice in life-value measures. |
| The Unseen Global War of Rights Systems and Its Principles of Resolution | John McMurtry | Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Guelph NIG 2W1, Canada | Volume II | Addresses the conflict between life-protective rights and corporate profit rights, identifying the transnational corporate person as a supreme global power. |
| Reclaiming Rationality and Scientific Method: The Life-Coherence Principle as Global System Imperative | John McMurtry | Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Guelph NIG 2W1, Canada | Volume II | Critiques dominant paradigms of rationality and scientific method in light of the life-coherence principle, identifying the causal mechanism behind global life-system decline. |
| Human Identity and the Meaning of Life | John McMurtry | University Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Canada | Volume II | Lays bare the inner logic of theories of human identity and life meaning, completing life-value onto-axiology as a universal philosophy. |
| Western Philosophy and the Life-Ground | G. Baruchello | University of Akureyri, Iceland | Volume III | Critiques Western philosophy's decoupling from ecological and social life support systems. It traces the life-ground through both the 'Via Negativa' (Ancient Idealism to Twentieth Century Linguistic Turn) and 'Via Positiva' (Ancient to modern times/Green Thought). |
| Life Responsibility versus Mechanical Reductionism: Western World-Views of Nature from Pantheism to Positivism | Richard Allen and Giorgio Baruchello | Formerly of the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad; Faculty of Law and Social Sciences, University of Akureyri, Iceland | Volume III | Explores the evolution of the Western idea of the natural world from Biblical and Ancient Greek perspectives to Newtonian mechanistic science and positivism, highlighting human responsibility and the distinctiveness of life. |
| The Embodied Good Life: From Aristotle To Life-Ground Ethics | Jeff Noonan | Department of Philosophy, Windsor University, Canada | Volume III | Examines the understanding of the good life as grounded in terrestrial embodiment from Aristotle and Marx through Nietzsche, Marcuse, Adorno, and Sen/Nussbaum, concluding in a life-grounded synthesis. |
| Visions Of Universal Identity In World Religions: From Life-Incoherent To Life-Grounded Spirituality | John McMurtry | Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Canada | Volume III | Investigates world religions to distinguish between life-destructive rituals and life-coherent spiritual consciousness that identifies with an all-inclusive oneness and universal life needs. |
| Logic, Philosophy Of Science And The Quality Of Life | Alex C. Michalos | University of Northern British Columbia, Canada | Volume III | Introduces logical foundations and scientific methods, connecting them to social responsibility and the global pursuit of sustainable human development and quality of life. |
| Paradigm Wars: Competing Models Of Understanding | James Robert Brown | Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, Canada | Volume III | Investigates competing models of understanding, including Kuhn's paradigms and naturalism, examining how social and political factors (funding, gender bias) impact scientific methodology. |
| The Logic Of Natural Language | J. Anthony Blair and Ralph H. Johnson | Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric, University of Windsor, Canada | Volume III | Explains the logic of reasoning in ordinary language, providing systematic coverage of logical norms, argument schemes, and fallacies in relation to practical argumentation and world problems. |
| Why Not Socialism? | G. A. Cohen | All Souls College, Oxford, UK | Volume III | Presents a case for socialism and non-market reason using the 'camping trip' metaphor to illustrate principles of equality and community, while discussing feasibility and social obstacles. |
| Philosophy, Human Nature, And Society | Jeff Noonan | Department of Philosophy, University of Windsor, Canada | Volume III | Traces the development of critical social philosophy from Greek metaphysics and divine hierarchy to the social freedom concepts of Kant, Hegel, and Marx. |
| Human Nature From A Life-Grounded Perspective | Jeff Noonan | Department of Philosophy, University of Windsor, Canada | Volume III | Defends a universal, critical conception of human nature based on organic capacities, tracing its development from the Classical age and Renaissance to current life-grounded perspectives. |
| Life-Blind Liberalism And Life Grounded Democracy | Jeffery Noonan | Department of Philosophy, University of Windsor, Canada | Volume III | Critiques the conflict between property rights and human needs in liberal-capitalist societies and globalization, arguing for a democracy centered on universal life-interests and biological needs. |
| Environmental Philosophy And Its Onto-Ethical Problems: Ancient, Medieval And Contemporary World-Views | Philip Rose and Jeff Noonan | Department of Philosophy, University of Windsor, Canada | Volume III | Rethinks the techno-scientific enterprise through a history of environmental worldviews, covering shifts from ancient hierarchies of limits to modern conceptions and the need for life-grounded reform. |
| Human Rights And Global Life-Support Systems | Jeffrey Noonan | Department of Philosophy, University of Windsor, Canada | Volume III | Examines the ethical foundations of human rights, distinguishing between corporate property rights and the rights of embodied individuals grounded in universal human life-requirements. |