This review explores the hypothesis that regulation of nucleocytoplasmic shuttling is a means of driving differentiation, using spermatogenesis as a model. The transition from undifferentiated spermatogonial stem cell to terminally differentiated spermatozoon is, at its most basic, a change in the repertoire of expressed genes. To effect this, the complement of nuclear proteins, such as transcription factors and chromatin remodelling components must change. Current knowledge of the nuclear proteins and nucleocytoplasmic transport machinery relevant to spermatogenesis is consolidated in this review, (...) and their functional linkages are highlighted not only as a means of regulating nuclear protein composition, but also as a key mechanism regulating gene transcription and hence cell fate. Through this, we hypothesize that male germ cell differentiation is mediated through regulation of nuclear transport machinery components, and thereby of the access of critical factors to the nucleus. The importance of nucleocytoplasmic trafficking to male germ cell differentiation is discussed, using the sex-determining factors Sry and SOX9, cell cycle regulators, CREM and cofactors and the Smads as specific examples, together with the roles in gametogenesis for particular nuclear transport factors in Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila. BioEssays 27:1011–1025, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Down Girl is a broad, original, and far ranging analysis of what misogyny really is, how it works, its purpose, and how to fight it. The philosopher Kate Manne argues that modern society's failure to recognize women's full humanity and autonomy is not actually the problem. She argues instead that it is women's manifestations of human capacities -- autonomy, agency, political engagement -- is what engenders misogynist hostility.

Introduction: Fielding Derrida -- Jacques Derrida's early writings : alongside skepticism, phenomenology -- Analytic philosophy, and literary criticism -- Deconstruction as skepticism -- Derrida, Husserl, and the commentators : a developmental approach -- A transcendental sense of death : Derrida and the philosophy of language -- Literary theory's languages : the deconstruction of sense vs. the deconstruction of reference -- Jacques Derrida and the problem of philosophical and political modernity -- Jacob Klein and Jacques Derrida : the problem of modernity (...) -- Jacob Klein and Jacques Derrida : historicism and history in two interpretations of Husserl's late writings -- Derrida's contribution to phenomenology : a problem of no species -- Foretellese : futures of Derrida and Marx. (shrink)

'This is an excellent book. It addresses what, in both conceptual and political terms, is arguably the most important source of tension and confusion in current arguments about the environment, namely the concept of nature; and it does so in a way that is both sensitive to, and critical of, the two antithetical ways of understanding this that dominate existing discussions.' Russell Keat, University of Edinburgh.

This article presents an axiological reading of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, reframing its most famous sentence ‘one is not born, but becomes, a woman’ as a claim about femininity, love, and alienation under particular conditions of sexual hierarchy. Because this sentence is often taken to express the thesis of The Second Sex on social constructionist readings, Section 1 rejects the aptness of this approach on three grounds. Section 2 outlines an alternative, axiological reading, which better attends to all (...) of the work’s parts, and to Beauvoir’s emphasis on the concrete inseparability of the physiological, sexual, economic, legal, religious, moral, and aesthetic dimensions of women’s situations. Section 3 turns to the sister ‘one is not born’ clause, in Volume I—‘one is not born, but becomes, a genius’—to show that Beauvoir’s account of frustrated freedom in The Second Sex concerns not only alienated labour, sex, and love, but also aesthetic creativity and moral invention. (shrink)

"Why, in present-day French writing, are we most likely to encounter the word "humanist" only as a term of glib dismissal? In this introduction to the controversy over "humanism", Kate Soper explains how the argument (developed by existentialists and Marxist humanists), that human experience and action play a fundamental role in "making history", has fallen into disrepute. 'Humanism and anti-humanism' shows how the "humanist" standpoint emerged in the post-war period, out of a convergence of arguments derived from Hegel, Marx, (...) Husserl, and Heidegger, then traces its elaboration within existentialism and Marxism, and finally examines the "anti-humanist" reaction in the works of Lèvi-Strauss, Foucault, Althusser, Lacan, and Derrida. Soper clearly explains what is at stake in the debate between "humanists" and "anti-humanists", and contends that this can be understood only in the context of Cold War politics and the crisis for Marxism presented by Stalinism. 'Humanism and anti-humanism' is written from a position of critical sympathy with "humanism" and is aimed chiefly at readers with no previous knowledge of Continental philosophy." -- book cover. (shrink)

The main aim of the book is to provide a good understanding of a range of semantic phenomena and issues in semantics, adopting a truth-conditional account of meaning, but without using a compositional formalism. The book assumes no particular background in linguistics of philosophy, and all the technical tools used are explained as they are introduced. They style is accessible, with numerous examples.

Richly illustrated study drawing on art, literature and science to explore Victorian attitudes towards sight.

This collection of essays on the social history of disciplinary practices in education in North America, Northern Europe, and Colonial Bengal coverage upon an understanding that schools regulate the behavior of beliefs of students, teachers, and parents by enforcing certain disciplinary social norms.

In this entry, we survey key discussions on the role of narrative in theology and philosophy of religion. We begin with epistemological questions about whether and how narrative offers genuine understanding of reality. We explore how narrative intersects with the problems of evil and divine hiddenness. We discuss narrative's role in theological reflection and practice in general, and in black and feminist theologies specifically. We close by briefly exploring the role of narrative in theorization about life's meaning.

This paper explores the tensions that arise when one considers the relevance of institutionalized philosophy to social, political, and environmental change. It considers the time it takes to think deeply, critically, creatively, against the urgent need for protest in the streets, for persuasion of our political representatives, for profound alterations to what we consume. Since philosophy in the academy can reek of disproportionate privilege and self-protection and norms that govern institutionalized philosophy often drive away some of the most curious minds (...) and diverse perspectives, this paper considers: if our philosophical work does not help in substantial ways to address social, political, and environmental crises, can we, in good conscience, continue it? To think through this question, this paper will share a video-based assignment on “activism” that helps me, and hopefully students in my classes, navigate, but not resolve, this tension. (shrink)

Narratives structure and inform how we understand our experiences and identity, especially in instances of suffering. Suffering in mental disorder (e.g. bipolar disorder) is often uniquely distressing as it impacts capacities central to our ability to make sense of ourselves and the world—and the role of narratives in explaining and addressing these effects is well-known. For many with a mental disorder, spiritual/religious narratives shape how they understand and experience it. For most, this is because they are spiritual and/or religious. For (...) others, spiritual/religious narratives still often influence secular approaches to mental disorder, more than approaches to other disabilities (e.g. intellectual, physical) or causes of suffering (e.g. physical disease). Such narratives are often harmful, especially insofar as they ‘over-spiritualize’ mental disorder; and undercut ‘spiritual meaning-making’. Here I address the impact of spiritual/religious narratives that helpfully avoid over-spiritualizing mental disorder while enabling spiritual meaning-making about it. First, I address the role of narratives in meaning-making more generally; then, I present results from my recent empirical study testing the impact of such narratives on participants’ meaning-making about their mental disorder. I conclude by addressing implications and potential worries. (shrink)

One variety of love is familiar in everyday life and qualifies in every reasonable sense as a reactive attitude. ‘Reactive love’ is paradigmatically (a) an affectionate attachment to another person, (b) appropriately felt as a non-self-interested response to particular kinds of morally laudable features of character expressed by the loved one in interaction with the lover, and (c) paradigmatically manifested in certain kinds of acts of goodwill and characteristic affective, desiderative and other motivational responses (including other-regarding concern and a desire (...) to be with the beloved). ‘Virtues of intimacy’ as expressed in interaction with the lover are agent-relative reasons for reactive love, and like other reactive attitudes, reactive love generates reasons in its own right. Within a broad conception of the virtues, reactive love sheds light on the reactive attitudes more generally. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 209-229, June 2022.

The French existentialists Simone de Beauvoir and Jean‐Paul Sartre are renowned philosophers of freedom. But what “existentialist freedom” is is a matter of disagreement amongst their interpreters and, some argue, between Beauvoir and Sartre themselves. Since the late 1980s several scholars have argued that a Sartrean conception of freedom cannot justify the ethics of existentialism, adequately account for situations of oppression, or serve feminist ends. On these readings, Beauvoir disagreed with Sartre about freedom—making existentialist ethics, resistance to oppression, and feminism (...) coherently defensible. This article identifies four conceptions of freedom in order to clarify the questions of whether and how they disagreed, arguing that some incompatibilist readings of Sartre and Beauvoir conflate or confuse these conceptions in ways that render their conclusions unconvincing. However, there are stronger grounds on which to claim that Beauvoir disagreed with Sartre about morality—and the conditions of its possibility. (shrink)

“One is not born a woman, but becomes one”, Simone de Beauvoir A symbol of liberated womanhood, Simone de Beauvoir's unconventional relationships inspired and scandalised her generation. A philosopher, writer, and feminist icon, she won prestigious literary prizes and transformed the way we think about gender with The Second Sex. But despite her successes, she wondered if she had sold herself short. Her liaison with Jean-Paul Sartre has been billed as one of the most legendary love affairs of the twentieth (...) century. But for Beauvoir it came at a cost: for decades she was dismissed as an unoriginal thinker who 'applied' Sartre's ideas. In recent years new material has come to light revealing the ingenuity of Beauvoir's own philosophy and the importance of other lovers in her life. This ground-breaking biography draws on never-before-published diaries and letters to tell the fascinating story of how Simone de Beauvoir became herself. (shrink)

Much has been published about the ethical issues encountered by clinicians in genetics/genomics, but those experienced by clinical laboratory scientists are less well described. Clinical laboratory scientists now frequently face navigating ethical problems in their work, but how they should be best supported to do this is underexplored. This lack of attention is also reflected in the ethics tools available to clinical laboratory scientists such as guidance and deliberative ethics forums, developed primarily to manage issues arising within the clinic.We explore (...) what ethical issues are being experienced by clinical scientists, how they think such issues could be best analysed and managed, and whether their practice might be enhanced by more situated approaches to ethics deliberation and practice such as ethical preparedness. From thematic analysis of cases presented by clinical scientists at a specially convened meeting of the UK Genethics Forum, we derived three main ethical themes: (1) the redistribution of labour and responsibilities resulting from the practice of genomic medicine; (2) the interpretation and certainty of results and (3) the proposal that better standardisation and consistency of ethical approaches (for example, more guidelines and policy) could resolve some of the challenges arising.We argue that although standardisation is important for promoting shared understandings of good (including ethical) practice, supplementary approaches to enhance and sustain ethical preparedness will be important to help clinical scientists and others in the recently expanded genetic/genomic medicine environment foster quality ethical thinking. (shrink)

By looking at the politics of classification within machine learning systems, this article demonstrates why the automated interpretation of images is an inherently social and political project. We begin by asking what work images do in computer vision systems, and what is meant by the claim that computers can “recognize” an image? Next, we look at the method for introducing images into computer systems and look at how taxonomies order the foundational concepts that will determine how a system interprets the (...) world. Then we turn to the question of labeling: how humans tell computers which words will relate to a given image. What is at stake in the way AI systems use these labels to classify humans, including by race, gender, emotions, ability, sexuality, and personality? Finally, we turn to the purposes that computer vision is meant to serve in our society—the judgments, choices, and consequences of providing computers with these capacities. Methodologically, we call this an archeology of datasets: studying the material layers of training images and labels, cataloguing the principles and values by which taxonomies are constructed, and analyzing how these taxonomies create the parameters of intelligibility for an AI system. By doing this, we can critically engage with the underlying politics and values of a system, and analyze which normative patterns of life are assumed, supported, and reproduced. (shrink)

There are growing discontinuities between the research practices of data science and established tools of research ethics regulation. Some of the core commitments of existing research ethics regulations, such as the distinction between research and practice, cannot be cleanly exported from biomedical research to data science research. Such discontinuities have led some data science practitioners and researchers to move toward rejecting ethics regulations outright. These shifts occur at the same time as a proposal for major revisions to the Common Rule—the (...) primary regulation governing human-subjects research in the USA—is under consideration for the first time in decades. We contextualize these revisions in long-running complaints about regulation of social science research and argue data science should be understood as continuous with social sciences in this regard. The proposed regulations are more flexible and scalable to the methods of non-biomedical research, yet problematically largely exclude data science methods from human-subjects regulation, particularly uses of public datasets. The ethical frameworks for Big Data research are highly contested and in flux, and the potential harms of data science research are unpredictable. We examine several contentious cases of research harms in data science, including the 2014 Facebook emotional contagion study and the 2016 use of geographical data techniques to identify the pseudonymous artist Banksy. To address disputes about application of human-subjects research ethics in data science, critical data studies should offer a historically nuanced theory of “data subjectivity” responsive to the epistemic methods, harms and benefits of data science and commerce. (shrink)

Conflict over who belongs in women-only spaces is now part of mainstream political debate. Some think women-only spaces should exclude on the basis of sex, and others think they should exclude on the basis of a person’s self-determined gender identity. Many who take the latter view appear to believe that the only reason for taking the former view could be antipathy towards men who identify as women. In this paper, we’ll revisit the second-wave feminist literature on separatism, in order to (...) uncover the reasons for women-only spaces as feminists originally conceived them. Once these reasons are understood, those participating in debates over women-only spaces will be in a better position to adjudicate on whether shifting from sex to gender identity puts any significant interests at stake. (shrink)

Internalists about reasons following Bernard Williams claim that an agent’s normative reasons for action are constrained in some interesting way by her desires or motivations. In this paper, I offer a new argument for such a position—although one that resonates, I believe, with certain key elements of Williams’ original view. I initially draw on P.F. Strawson’s famous distinction between the interpersonal and the objective stances that we can take to other people, from the second-person point of view. I suggest that (...) we should accept Strawson’s contention that the activity of reasoning with someone about what she ought to do naturally belongs to the interpersonal mode of interaction. I also suggest that reasons for an agent to perform some action are considerations which would be apt to be cited in favor of that action, within an idealized version of this advisory social practice. I then go on to argue that one would take leave of the interpersonal stance towards someone—thus crossing the line, so to speak—in suggesting that she do something one knows she wouldn’t want to do, even following an exhaustive attempt to hash it out with her. An internalist necessity constraint on reasons is defended on this basis. (shrink)

Consumer concern for “ethical products”, or ethical aspects of the goods which they purchase, is a subject of increasing interest and research,which is here illustrated by an examination of the Fair Trade movement, with special reference to coffee as an indicative commodity. Kate Bird, is currently Lecturer in the Development Administration Group, School of Public Policy, Birmingham University, Birmingham B15 2TT, England, having previously worked abroad and written her MSc dissertation at Wye College on fair trade in coffee products. (...) Dr Hughest holds the Sainsbury Chair in Agribusiness and Food Marketing at Wye College, University of London, Wye, Ashford, Kent TN25 5AH, England (email: [email protected]), where he is also Director of the Food Industry Management Group. He has wide international experience of food management issues. (shrink)

Human microbiome research makes causal connections between entire microbial communities and a wide array of traits that range from physiological diseases to psychological states. To evaluate these causal claims, we first examine a well-known single-microbe causal explanation: of Helicobacter pylori causing ulcers. This apparently straightforward causal explanation is not so simple, however. It does not achieve a key explanatory standard in microbiology, of Koch’s postulates, which rely on manipulations of single-microorganism cultures to infer causal relationships to disease. When Koch’s postulates (...) are framed by an interventionist causal framework, it is clearer what the H. pylori explanation achieves and where its explanatory strengths lie. After assessing this ‘simple’, single-microbe case, we apply the interventionist framework to two key areas of microbiome research, in which obesity and mental health states are purportedly explained by microbiomes. Despite the experimental data available, interventionist criteria for explanation show that many of the causal claims generated by microbiome research are weak or misleading. We focus on the stability, specificity and proportionality of proposed microbiome causal explanations, and evaluate how effectively these dimensions of causal explanation are achieved in some promising avenues of research. We suggest some conceptual and explanatory strategies to improve how causal claims about microbiomes are made. (shrink)

Philosophy of mind addresses a broad range of topics about the human mind including its role in personhood and in our ability to experience and understand the world. Christianity maintains that God is intimately involved in both of these things. I will address some of the theological implications of philosophical work on personhood; as well as some of the ways in which philosophy can help address theological questions about our connection with God. Though these are especially pressing topics, they are (...) only a few of the points of intersection between philosophy of mind and Christian theology. (shrink)

As the ubiquity of technology-mediated communication grows, so does the number of questions about the costs and benefits of replacing in-person interactions with technology-mediated ones. In the present study, we used a daily diary design to examine how people’s emotional experiences vary across in-person, video-, phone-, and text-mediated interactions in day-to-day life. We hypothesised that individuals would report less positive affect and more negative affect after less life-like interactions (where in-person is defined as the most life-like and text-mediated as the (...) least life-like). In line with this hypothesis, the analysis of 527 unique interactions reported by 102 individuals (mean age = 19.3; 85.6% female) over the course of 7 days reveals that people feel lonelier, sadder, less affectionate, less supported, and less happy following less life-like interactions. Additional analyses show that the links between life-like communication and momentary experiences are independent of properties of individual interactions such as interaction length and participants’ overall evaluations of interaction quality. These findings provide initial evidence that there may be inherent properties of common technology-mediated communication tools that may lead to momentary changes in affective experiences and make social connection more challenging. (shrink)

Consumer concern for “ethical products”, or ethical aspects of the goods which they purchase, is a subject of increasing interest and research,which is here illustrated by an examination of the Fair Trade movement, with special reference to coffee as an indicative commodity. Kate Bird, is currently Lecturer in the Development Administration Group, School of Public Policy, Birmingham University, Birmingham B15 2TT, England, having previously worked abroad and written her MSc dissertation at Wye College on fair trade in coffee products. (...) Dr Hughest holds the Sainsbury Chair in Agribusiness and Food Marketing at Wye College, University of London, Wye, Ashford, Kent TN25 5AH, England (email: [email protected]), where he is also Director of the Food Industry Management Group. He has wide international experience of food management issues. (shrink)

Pragmatics – the study of language in context, and of how we understand what other people say – is a core subject in English language, linguistics, and communication studies. This textbook introduces the key topics in this fast-moving field, including metaphor, irony, politeness, disambiguation, and reference assignment. It walks the reader through the essential theories in pragmatics, including Grice, relevance theory, speech act theory, and politeness theory. Each chapter includes a range of illustrative examples, guiding readers from the basic principles (...) to a thorough understanding of the topics. A dedicated chapter examines how research is conducted in pragmatics, providing students with resources and ideas for developing their own projects. Featuring exercises, a comprehensive glossary, and suggestions for further reading, this book is accessible to beginner undergraduates, including those with no prior knowledge of linguistics. It is an essential resource for courses in English language, English studies, and linguistics. (shrink)

With modern technological advances, distance education has become an increasingly important education delivery medium for, for example, the higher education provided by open universities. Among predictive factors of successful learning in distance education, the effects of non-cognitive skills are less explored. Grit, the dispositional tendency to sustain trait-level passion and long-term goals, has raised much research interest and gained importance for predicting academic achievement. The Grit Questionnaire, measuring Perseverance of Effort and Consistency of Interests, has been shown to be a (...) reliable instrument in traditional university student populations. However, the measurement and predictive validity of this questionnaire is still unknown for adult distance education university students who differ from traditional students in various ways. Based on a sample of 2,027 students from a distance education university, this study assessed the psychometric properties of the two-factor structure grit measured by the Grit Questionnaire. The findings suggest that the short form of the Grit Questionnaire is a potentially useful assessment tool for measuring the grit construct for distance learning higher education and that the Consistency of Interests factor is especially relevant to consider the improvement of learning performance for distance education in terms of courses credit and exam attempts. The measurement precision of the Perseverance of Effort factor, however, should be improved in future research to provide higher measurement accuracy and broader item coverage. (shrink)

In this paper, Kate Kirkpatrick argues that the recent return to moral exemplars in exemplarist moral theory might benefit from engaging with existentialists' use of exemplars in two ways: first, by considering the role of negative exemplars and the power of emotions other than admiration in moral formation; and second, by considering objections to exemplarist education, in particular Simone de Beauvoir's objection that narrative exemplars often serve an ideological function and perpetuate oppressive ideals — especially (but not only) about (...) women. After situating this discussion in ancient and recent debates about the role of literary narratives in moral formation, Kirkpatrick outlines a moral perfectionist reading of Beauvoir and an objection to exemplarist moral theory's reliance on exemplars that “we” admire on the basis that “the admirable” often serves to promote the interests of the powerful rather than the flourishing of all human beings. Finally, while agreeing with this symposium's editors that efforts to improve our understanding of how to use narrative exemplars in educational settings are valuable, she asks how, given the force of the Beauvoirian objection, their criterion of “appropriate critical reflection” might be met. (shrink)

In this book, Kate Distin proposes a theory of cultural evolution and shows how it can help us to understand the origin and development of human culture. Distin introduces the concept that humans share information not only in natural languages, which are spoken or signed, but also in artefactual languages like writing and musical notation, which use media that are made by humans. Languages enable humans to receive and transmit variations in cultural information and resources. In this way, they (...) provide the mechanism for cultural evolution. The human capacity for metarepresentation - thinking about how we think - accelerates cultural evolution, because it frees cultural information from the conceptual limitations of each individual language. Distin shows how the concept of cultural evolution outlined in this book can help us to understand the complexity and diversity of human culture, relating her theory to a range of subjects including economics, linguistics, and developmental biology. (shrink)

Background: Ethical care in maternity is fundamental to providing care that both prevents harm and does good, and yet, there is growing acknowledgement that disrespect and abuse routinely occur in this context, which indicates that current ethical frameworks are not adequate. Care ethics offers an alternative to the traditional biomedical ethical principles. Research aim: The aim of the study was to determine whether a correlation exists between midwifery-led care and care ethics as an important first step in an action research (...) project. Research design: Template analysis was chosen for this part of the action research. Template analysis is a design that tests theory against empirical data, which requires pre-set codes. Participants and context: A priori codes that represent midwifery-led care were generated by a stakeholder consultative group of nine childbearing women using nominal group technique, collected in Perth, Western Australia. The a priori codes were applied to a predesigned template with four domains of care ethics. Ethical considerations: Ethics approval was granted by the Edith Cowan University research ethics committee REMS no. 2019-00296-Buchanan. Findings: The participants generated eight a priori codes representing ethical midwifery care, such as: 1.1 Relationship with Midwife; 1.2 Woman-centred care; 2.1 Trust women’s bodies and abilities; 2.2. Protect normal physiological birth; 3.1. Information provision; 3.2. Respect autonomy; 4.1. Birth culture of fear and 4.2. Recognition of rite of passage. The a priori codes were mapped to the care ethics template. The template analysis found that midwifery-led care does indeed demonstrate care ethics. Discussion: Care ethics takes into consideration what principle-based bioethics have previously overlooked: relationship, context and power. Conclusion: Midwifery-led care has been determined in this study to demonstrate care ethics, which suggest that further research is defensible with the view that it could be incorporated into the ethical codes and conduct for the midwifery profession. (shrink)

This paper explores a neglected normative dimension of algorithmic opacity in the workplace and the labor market. It argues that explanations of algorithms and algorithmic decisions are of noninstrumental value. That is because explanations of the structure and function of parts of the social world form the basis for reflective clarification of our practical orientation toward the institutions that play a central role in our life. Using this account of the noninstrumental value of explanations, the paper diagnoses distinctive normative defects (...) in the workplace and economic institutions which a reliance on AI can encourage, and which lead to alienation. (shrink)

More than two hundred years after its publication, David Hume's Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals is still widely regarded as either a footnote to the more philosophically interesting third book of the Treatise, or an abbreviated, more stylish, version of that earlier work. These standard interpretations are rather difficult to square with Hume's own assessment of the second Enquiry. Are we to think that Hume called the EPM “incomparably the best” of all his writings only because he preferred that (...) later style of exposition? Or worse, should we take his preference for the second Enquiry as a sign of aging literary vanity? Does Hume's stated preference for the EPM in no way speak to its philosophical content? (shrink)

Large-scale social media services have been challenged due to their lack of ethical principles, which has resulted in allegations of user manipulation such as propagation of fake news related to COVID-19 vaccination and biased algorithmic curations that lead to social polarization. We studied current social media community guidelines and conducted a systematic literature review to identify the core values needed for the establishment of guidelines for responsible social media services. Through expert interviews, a framework and guidelines are proposed for each (...) of three areas: protecting privacy, raising awareness, and controlling abuse. We present each set of guidelines with executable principles and relevant design interventions that practitioners can use to offer responsible social media services. Our expert interviews surfaced tensions between the three areas that need to be addressed in developing responsible social media, such as privacy vs. sharing information, pseudonymity vs. safety, and spreading information vs. safety. (shrink)

Knowledge is a presumed motivator for changed consumption practices in ethical eating discourse: the consumer learns more about where their food comes from and makes different consumption choices. Despite intuitive appeal, scholars are beginning to illuminate the limits of knowledge-focused praxis for ethical eating. In this paper, we draw from qualitative interviews and focus groups with Toronto mothers to explore the role of knowledge in conceptions of ethical foodwork. While the goal of educating children about their food has become central (...) to Canadian and American discourses of “good” mothering, we identify a paradoxical maternal expectation surrounding meat consumption: to raise informed child consumers who know where their food comes from, and to protect children from the harsh realities of animal slaughter. Rather than revealing the story behind the meat on a child’s plate, mothers seek to shield children from knowledge of meat production. Our analysis of the child consumer contributes to ethical eating scholarship and illuminates a larger paradox surrounding knowledge of meat in an industrialized food system. In the practice of feeding children, mothers confront the visceral discomforts of meat consumption; their reactions speak to discordant feelings involved with eating meat in a setting far-removed from the lives and deaths of animals. Ultimately, the paper illustrates the limits of consumer-focused strategies for food-system change that call on individual mothers to educate young consumers and protect childhood innocence, all while getting ethically-sourced meals on the table. (shrink)

Revealed preference approaches to modelling agents’ choices face two seemingly devastating explanatory objections. The no self-explanation objection imputes a problematic explanatory circularity to revealed preference approaches, while the causal explanation objection argues that, all things equal, a scientific theory should provide causal explanations, but revealed preference approaches decidedly do not. Both objections assume a view of explanation, the constraint-based view, that the revealed preference theorist ought to reject. Instead, the revealed preference theorist should adopt a unificationist account of explanation, allowing (...) her to escape the two explanatory problems discussed in this paper. (shrink)