The essays included here represent Fox Keller's attempts to integrate the insights of feminist theory with those of her contemporaries in the history and philosophy of science.

Children have special duties to their parents: there are things that we ought to do for our parents, but not for just anyone. Three competing accounts of filial duty appear in the literature: the debt theory, the gratitude theory and the friendship theory. Each is unsatisfactory: each tries to assimilate the moral relationship between parent and child to some independently understood conception of duty, but this relationship is different in structure and content from any that we are likely to share (...) with anyone apart from a parent. A more promising account will concentrate on what is unique about the parent-child relationship. I articulate and defend the 'special goods theory', according to which filial duties arise from the distinctive kinds of goods that healthy parent-child relationships typically involve. (shrink)

Two decades of critique have sensitized historians and philosophers of science to the inadequacies of conventional dichotomies between theory and practice, thereby prompting the search for new ways of writing about science that are less beholden than the old ways to the epistemological mores of theoretical physics, and more faithful to the actual practices not only of physics but of all the natural sciences. The need for alternative descriptions seems particularly urgent if one is to understand the place of theory (...) (and, in parallel, the role of modeling) in contemporary molecular biology, a science where, until now, no division between theory and experiment has obtained, and where distinctions between representing and intervening, and more generally, between basic and applied science, are daily becoming more blurred. Indeed, the very division between theory and experiment threatens to slight the extensive and sophisticated theoretical analyses (and even modeling) on which experimental work in contemporary molecular biology so often depends. My aim in this paper is to find a way of talking about theoretical practices in biology that is directly rooted in the mix of conceptual and material work that biologists do. As an example of such theoretical practices, I choose for the focus of my analysis the development of a model for gene regulation out of the experimental work of Eric Davidson and his colleagues at Cal Tech. (shrink)

I intend to argue that good friendship sometimes requires epistemic irresponsibility. To put it another way, it is not always possible to be both a good friend and a diligent believer.

Recent observations of power-law distributions in the connectivity of complex networks came as a big surprise to researchers steeped in the tradition of random networks. Even more surprising was the discovery that power-law distributions also characterize many biological and social networks. Many attributed a deep significance to this fact, inferring a “universal architecture” of complex systems. Closer examination, however, challenges the assumptions that (1) such distributions are special and (2) they signify a common architecture, independent of the system's specifics. The (...) real surprise, if any, is that power-law distributions are easy to generate, and by a variety of mechanisms. The architecture that results is not universal, but particular; it is determined by the actual constraints on the system in question. BioEssays 27:1060–1068, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

You care about what others believe about you. What others believe about you determines whether you have a good reputation, whether you have the respect of your peers, and whether your friends genuinely like you. Your caring about others’ beliefs makes sense, because others’ beliefs bear directly upon your level of well-being. Your beliefs can influence others’ well-being, as much as their beliefs can influence yours. How your beliefs influence another’s well-being is a different matter from whether your beliefs are (...) supported by the evidence. Sometimes you can benefit another person by regulating your beliefs in response to considerations of her well-being, not of the evidence. Usually, you do not have strong reasons to regulate your beliefs in response to considerations of the interests of others. But it can be different when the person in question is your friend. Within some perfectly good friendships, the support that each friend provides for the other extends as far as their being willing to regulate their beliefs with the goal of benefiting the other, even if that makes it less likely that their beliefs will be supported by the evidence. Within our friendships, we then have reasons for belief that do not arise directly from, and sometimes compete with, reasons provided by evidence. This claim conflicts with the widespread Aristotelian view that good friendship is oriented to virtue. But it fits with a more plausible view about friendship, on which the function of friendship is to help us cope with the fact that we are not fully virtuous, and to serve needs that we have because we are not fully virtuous. (shrink)

While care ethics has frequently been criticized for lacking an account of autonomy, this paper argues that care ethics' relational model of moral agency provides the basis for criticizing the philosophical tradition's model of autonomy and for rethinking autonomy in relational terms. Using Diana Meyers's account of autonomy competency as a basis, a dialogical model of autonomy is developed that can respond to internal and external critiques of care ethics.

Ensemble musicians play in synchrony despite expressively motivated irregularities in timing. We hypothesized that synchrony is achieved by each performer internally simulating the concurrent actions of other ensemble members, relying initially on how they would perform in their stead. Hence, musicians should be better at synchronizing with recordings of their own earlier performances than with others’ recordings. We required pianists to record one part from each of several piano duets, and later to play the complementary part in synchrony with their (...) own or others’ recordings. The pianists were also asked to identify their own recordings. The pianists were better at synchronizing with their own than with others’ performances, and they were able to recognize their own recordings. Furthermore, synchronization accuracy and recognition were correlated: Pianists who were relatively accurate at synchronizing with their own performances were also good at recognizing them. Thus, action simulation may underlie both synchronization and self-recognition. (shrink)

This comment concerns a two-fold phenomenon, namely differentiations within the wide array of what is called civic engagement, including voluntary action; and shifts that sometimes blur the demarcation lines between the worlds of voluntary action and working life. How do these two developments affect the meaning of volunteering both on an analytical and on a public discourse level?

Einleitung.--Der Mensch und das dynamische Spannungsnetz des Weltalls.--Kirche, Religion und Wissenschaft.--Geld, gold, papier und Bajonette!

Culturally different connotations of basic concepts challenge the comparative study of religion. Do persons in Germany or in the United States refer to the same concepts when talking about ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’? Does it make a difference how they identify themselves? The Bielefeld-Chattanooga Cross-Cultural Study on ‘Spirituality’ includes a semantic differential approach for the comparison of self-identified “neither religious nor spiritual”, “religious”, and “spiritual” persons regarding semantic attributes attached to the concepts ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ in each research context. Results show (...) that ‘spirituality’ is used as a broader concept than ‘religion’. Regarding religion, semantics attributed by self-identified religious persons differ significantly from those of the spiritual persons. The ‘spiritual’ and the ‘religious’ groups agree on semantics attributed to spirituality but differ from the ‘neither spiritual nor religious’ group. Qualifications of differences and agreements become visible from the comparison between the United States and Germany. It is argued for the semantically sensitive study of culturally situated ‘spiritualities’. (shrink)

Molday and Hsu review results from in vitro experiments, which indicate that Ca-bound calmodulin reduces the cGMP sensitivity of the cyclic nucleotide-gated channel of photoreceptor cells, and speculate about the role they might play in the recovery of the light response. We discuss results from in vivo experiments that argue against the participation of Ca-calmodulin in photorecovery.

Cet article aborde la question du deuil et plus particulièrement du deuil d’un enfant dans une famille. Ce deuil traumatique vient bouleverser l’ordre générationnel. Il confronte l’ensemble du groupe familial à un impensable. Comment peut-on accompagner au mieux une famille frappée par un tel drame? Est-il pertinent de prendre en charge l’ensemble de la famille? La plupart des auteurs qui ont travaillé ces questions sont d’orientation systémique. Les auteures, psychologues et thérapeutes familiales psychanalytiques, se proposent ici d’aborder cette thématique sous (...) l’angle de la théorie psychanalytique individuelle et groupale. Elles illustrent leurs propos au travers d’une situation clinique afin de montrer l’évolution du travail de deuil au sein d’une famille confrontée à la perte d’un enfant. (shrink)

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Despite clear parallels between Jürgen Habermas's discourse ethics and recent scholarship in feminist ethics, feminists are often suspicious of discourse ethics and have kept themselves mostly separate from the field. By developing a sustained application of Habermas's discourse ethics to friendship, Keller demonstrates that feminist misgivings of discourse ethics are largely misplaced and that Habermas's theory can be used to develop a compelling moral phenomenology of interpersonal relations.

The everyday is that element of our material and social environment that comes closest to us, and is thus the least visible; for it stands to reason that it will neither attract attention to itself, nor catch the eye.

"In den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten wurde die Dominanz des Zeichnens für die Architektur von einer ganzen Reihe von digitalen Repräsentationstechniken verdrängt. Der Beitrag stellt eine kritische Antwort auf Mario Carpos These dar, dieser Wandel bringe Architektur zu einer »autographischen« Praxis zurück, die noch vor die Renaissance zurückreiche. Demgegenüber argumentiert der Beitrag, dass Architektur nach dem Modell von Rosalind Kraus als post-medium art (»postmediale Kunst«) gedacht werden sollte. Over the last two decades drawing has been displaced from its dominant role in (...) architecture by a range of computational representations. This article offers a critical response to Mario Carpo's recent argument that this shift returns architecture to an 〉autographic〈 mode of practice not seen since before the Renaissance. In contrast, I suggest that architecture today should be thought of through Rosalind Krauss's model of a post-medium art. ". (shrink)

For computer simulation models to usefully inform climate risk management, uncertainties in model projections must be explored and characterized. Because doing so requires running the model many ti...

In these excerpts from his diary, Adam Keller, spokesperson for Gush Shalom, relates some of the protest actions undertaken by the Israeli peace movement during the Second Intifada, as well as the sense of urgency and occasional confusion that permeates these activities.

The psycholinguistic literature has identified two syntactic adaptation effects in language production: rapidly decaying short-term priming and long-lasting adaptation. To explain both effects, we present an ACT-R model of syntactic priming based on a wide-coverage, lexicalized syntactic theory that explains priming as facilitation of lexical access. In this model, two well-established ACT-R mechanisms, base-level learning and spreading activation, account for long-term adaptation and short-term priming, respectively. Our model simulates incremental language production and in a series of modeling studies, we show (...) that it accounts for (a) the inverse frequency interaction; (b) the absence of a decay in long-term priming; and (c) the cumulativity of long-term adaptation. The model also explains the lexical boost effect and the fact that it only applies to short-term priming. We also present corpus data that verify a prediction of the model, that is, that the lexical boost affects all lexical material, rather than just heads. (shrink)

Some authors have called for increased research on various forms of geoengineering as a means to address global climate change. This paper focuses on the question of whether a particular form of geoengineering, namely deploying sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere to counteract some of the effects of increased greenhouse gas concentrations, would be a just response to climate change. In particular, we examine problems sulfate aerosol geoengineering (SAG) faces in meeting the requirements of distributive, intergenerational, and procedural justice. We argue (...) that SAG faces obstacles to meeting the requirements of all three considered kinds of justice, because its impacts can harm some persons and communities much more than others; it poses serious risks to future generations; and SAG is especially prone to unilateral implementation. While we do not claim that SAG ought not to be implemented, we argue that it is the responsibility of proponents of SAG to recognize and address these ethical obstacles before advocating its implementation. (shrink)