Although primary source work is a major component of undergraduate history degrees in many countries, the topic of how best to support this work has been relatively unexplored. This article addresses the pedagogical support of primary source work by reviewing relevant literature to identify the challenges undergraduates face in interpreting sources, and examining how in two courses carefully articulated course design and supportive teaching activities assisted students to meet these challenges. This fine-grained examination of the courses is framed within a (...) socio-cultural account of learning. The findings show how a skilful drawing of students into the interpretive/discursive practices of source analysis was associated with an epistemological reframing of historical knowledge and dialogical forms of teaching that helped the students to take forward a dialectical engagement with sources. The benefits of an ‘integrated’ approach to source work that fosters students’ affective and intellectual engagement with historical interpretive practices are highlighted. (shrink)

Kant makes and elaborates upon a distinction between active citizenship and passive citizenship. Active citizens enjoy the right to vote and rights of political participation generally. Passive citizens do not, though they still enjoy the protection of the law as citizens. Kant’s examples have left commentators puzzling over how these distinctions follow from his stated rationale or justification for active citizenship, namely, that active citizens possess a kind of political and economic self-sufficiency. This essay focuses on one subset passive citizenry (...) – that of traveling blacksmiths, barbers, and day laborers in order to examine Kant’s distinctions. I argue that these examples show that Kant’s concerns regarding dependence are, at least in some cases, pragmatic rather than political. (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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist Women and Interfaith Work in the United StatesKate DuganWomen from a wide array of backgrounds and interest areas continue to shape the face of Buddhism in the United States—from women who encountered Buddhism during the women's movement in the 1960s to ordained women founding temples for large immigrant populations; from women carving out a space for Buddhism in colleges and universities to Buddhist women engaged in interfaith dialogue (...) and working in interreligious settings. As Buddhist scholar Rita Gross notes, the experiences of women in Buddhism in the United States are wide and varied.1Increasingly, whether they are ordained Buddhist nuns or are Buddhist activists, women in the United States are engaging with questions of interfaith conversations within this multireligious nation. Around the country, Buddhist nuns dialogue with their Catholic counterparts. In local communities, Buddhist women assume leadership roles in interfaith groups. Behind prison walls, women offer Buddhist meditation instruction. Some women introduce tenets of Buddhism to their communities, while others promote justice with people from various faith traditions. On college campuses, Buddhist women work as chaplains and women Buddhologists integrate Buddhism and interfaith dialogue into their academic interests. This article aims to explore several snapshots of Buddhist women engaged in interfaith dialogue and working as Buddhists in interreligious settings; it is not intended to provide all-inclusive coverage of the many and diverse women in Buddhism in the United States engaged with an increasingly religiously diverse country.2Historical Glance: Buddhist Women and Interfaith Dialogue in the United StatesRita Gross suggests that women in the United States began practicing Buddhism in the 1960s and 1970s because "the basic teachings [of Buddhism] were gender-free and gender-neutral, and many found the practice of meditation... intensely liberating."3 Yet, the history of Buddhism is dominated by patriarchal structures and male-centered liturgical and ordination practices. As Buddhism [End Page 31] grew American roots, women found that "deeper explorations into the traditional texts revealed misogynistic passages as well as a strong overall tendency to favor men over women in matters of study and practice."4 No longer certain that Buddhism was any less fettered by patriarchy than other traditions, uneasiness bubbled within the experiences of Buddhist women.In the early 1980s, Cambridge Buddhist Association member Suzie Bowman noted the similarities among women's experiences of American Buddhism—including struggles of motherhood in a tradition that emphasizes the quiet of meditation halls and an alarming number of stories about abusive male teachers. In 1983, Bowman and the Providence Zen Center hosted a conference called "The Feminine in Buddhism"; seventy women attended. A two-day conference, with 120 participants, followed in 1984. In 1985, they hosted a three-day gathering.5These inspired budding Buddhist Sandy Boucher to take to the road to understand Buddhism in women's lives. She interviewed more than one hundred Buddhist women in their homes, workplaces, sangha. In Turning the Wheel: American Women Creating the New Buddhism, Boucher paints portraits of women in Buddhism in the United States in the mid 1980s—immigrant women from Asia who transplanted their Buddhism, white women who discovered Buddhism in tandem with feminism, women of color who encountered a white-dominated Buddhism. In these women's experiences, she suggests, is American Buddhism with "the possibility for the creation of a religion fully inclusive of women's realities."6Against this background, Rita Gross was blazing a trail for Buddhist women in interfaith dialogue. In 1980, an eager Gross attended the first International Buddhist-Christian Dialogue conference. She presented ideas that, twenty years later she says, encompassed "everything to which I have devoted my scholarly attention:... feminism, non-Christian religions, accurate information about world religions, Buddhism, Buddhism and feminism, interreligious interchange, even theology of religion."7 After this first splash, Rita Gross attended the 1984 International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter—the only woman in attendance.8 The organizers were eager to have more women participate; so was Gross. After that conference, she made her further involvement contingent upon more women's involvement. Because of this insistence, members did, and continue to, work toward equal gender representation.9 In 1992, Gross explained, from a personal perspective, the potential... (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)

?Vulnerability? is now a popular term in the lexicon of every-day life and a notion frequently drawn upon by policy-makers, academics, journalists, welfare workers and local authorities. This essay explores some of the ethical and practical implications of ?vulnerability? as a concept in social welfare. It highlights how ideas about vulnerability shape the ways in which we manage and classify people, justify state intervention in citizens? lives, allocate resources in society and define our social obligations. The lack of clarity and (...) limited analysis of the concept of ?vulnerability? in welfare arenas is highlighted as concerning, particularly given that those seen as most in need of support seem to be implicated in commonly held views about ?the vulnerable?. I argue that far from being innocuous, ?vulnerability? is so loaded with political, moral and practical implications that it is potentially damaging to the pursuit of social justice. Two opposing presentations of the notion are set out in order to illustrate that ?vulnerability? is a concept that should be handled with more care. (shrink)

Jones, Kate Too many young people live in aged care nursing homes in Australia because there is a shortage of suitable alternatives. The Young People in Nursing Homes National Alliance confirms this, and advises that one young person is admitted into nursing home care every day. Part two of this article will follow in the next issue of this Bulletin.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Search of FaithKate RowlandSometimes I’m jealous of my patients’ faith. As a former happily religious person I miss the benefits I used to get from an active faith. I know that some of my patients must struggle with their faith, and I know the struggle probably affects their well–being. For those who simply believe or those who simply don’t believe, it’s easy. And for those who do believe, (...) there can be so much serenity and so much reward.As a doctor, I spend a lot of time reading science, weighing evidence, and making recommendations. Religion has been a respite from this. Faith, for me, has never been a series of decisions based on the best available evidence. I could analyze it as much as I wanted, peel its layers apart, question it, but in the end, it was just faith, not a hypothesis. It has always been something that I believe (or don’t), and practicing my faith had always been a relatively pleasant decision of figuring out what kind of community I want to share in.My faith life has been in shambles for the past several years. I feel distant from and unwelcome in the church where I was raised, and I haven’t found anywhere else to land. I cannot decide how to raise my own small children. I want them to have grounding in God, but I can’t decide how much I believe in God anymore, and I am fixated on the idea that I don’t want to be hypocritical or lie to [End Page 210] them. I don’t want them to see me worshipping in a way that is not really authentic to me.My husband is agnostic—literally—on the issue. He is open to introducing a loving, kind, forgiving God, but unsure about a God incarnate. We both worry about the identity with a particular religion usurping the actual relationship with God: I am [religion], therefore I believe [this], therefore my God does [this] or is [this].And so all of these fears and doubts have led us to live with no religion, and no outward faith. Our children attend a parochial nursery school run by a religion other than one where we were raised, and they have an apparently happy but neutral opinion of religion and God. They understand ceremonies. At age four, they have a more active faith life than I do, since they attend weekly services at school. But then, they have fewer choices than I do. They do what the teachers tell them. They would do what I told them to do, if I could ever decide what I believed in.I spend so many hours a week with my patients that they have become my main source of demonstration of active, living faith. I know that they share mostly good parts with me. I see so much of the good because I mostly see patients who get to choose how to practice their own religions; they don’t feel oppressed by religious or culturo–religious demands or expectations. It’s interesting that I see the positive sides of their faith, not the struggle, because I otherwise see a lot of the struggling parts of their lives. I see the flinty, edgy woman, the patient who has spent more time in the hospital in the past month than I have, the woman who is sick of her low platelet count that keeps her from living a normal life. And every day she has some message of faith: she tells our medical team what Bible passage is keeping her strong, she tells us how God watches over her when we tell her that her counts are better, she tells us to have a blessed day. Sometimes she curses at the hospital or her condition or at her medications, sometimes at us. So far her faith is unshaken.I take care of a woman who has burning mouth syndrome, a chronic condition that causes her lips, her tongue, and her palate to feel as though they are on fire. Eating makes it worse, drinking makes it worse, breathing makes it worse... (shrink)

Oregon is the only state in the United States where a physician may legally prescribe a lethal dose of barbiturate for a patient intending suicide. The Oregon Death with Dignity Act was passed by voters in 1994 and came into effect after much legal wrangling in October of 1997. At the same time, a cabinetmaker named Pat Matheny was struggling with progressive weakness from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. I met with Pat and his family for a lengthy interview in (...) October 1998 in Coos Bay, Oregon, for a television news report on his decision to get a lethal prescription. Below is an extract from that interview. On the day this introduction was written, 10 March 1999, Pat took the prescribed lethal overdose of barbiturates and died at home. His illness was taking his voice, he could not move his hands or legs, and breathing was becoming very difficult. His mother told me he knew that was for him. (shrink)

On 1 December 2019, over one hundred Aboriginal nations performed ancestral and creation dances in synchrony across the Australian continent. One of the communities that danced was the Anaiwan nation from the north-eastern region of New South Wales, Australia. Since 2014 I have been working with Anaiwan people in a collaborative activist research project, creating and maintaining an Aboriginal community garden on the fringes of my hometown of Armidale as a site for land reclamation and decolonising, multispecies research. The community (...) garden is adjacent to the site of the old East Armidale Aboriginal Reserve, where over one hundred dispossessed Aboriginal people were forced to live on the municipal town garbage depot in the mid-twentieth century. This paper positions both the Nation Dance 2019 movement, and the Armidale Aboriginal Community Garden, as rhythmic events that activate Aboriginal Law and sovereignty that is held enduring in the land but that has been buried alive by the settler-colonial state. Focusing on the tensions between deep Indigenous ancestral temporality and colonial territoriality, I argue that the emergence of the Anthropocene reveals a dangerous dissonance between the rhythms of Aboriginal Law patterned through present-day Australian environments and the grid-based structures of colonial governance imposed upon them. (shrink)

DISEASE X is the codename given by the World Health Organisation to a pathogen currently unknown to science that could cause havoc to humankind. Emerging infections are sending us multiple warnings that another Disease X is looming. We've had SARS in 2002, H5N1 bird flu in 2004, H1N1 'swine flu' in 2009, MERS in 2012, Ebola in 2014, Zika in 2015 and now COVID-19. These events are not freak events, but are happening continually, and at an increasing cadence. Written by (...) a long-standing ex-Reuters global health and science correspondent, DISEASE X will use privileged access to the body leading international efforts to control viruses, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and its CEO, Dr Richard Hatchett. CEPI seed-funded three successful COVID vaccines, including Astra-Zeneca and Moderna. DISEASE X will explore the emergence of the novel coronavirus and the crisis it caused, analysing the responses of global health organisations and experts, including the WHO, national governments such as Britain, China and the USA, COVAX, the global vaccine allocation facility, pharmaceutical companies, and leading research scientists. Weaving in insights from the likes of Bill Gates, Sir Jeremy Farrar, Dr Anthony Fauci and Sir Patrick Vallance, the book will explain how the world's public health scientists are embarking on a 100 Days Mission to snuff out future threats before they become deadly pandemics. This is the inside story written for the public. (shrink)

This practical and accessible guide tackles the challenges that busy childcare educators face with their mental health in what is a wonderful, rewarding, but often exhausting role. Drawing from 'day-in-the-life' experiences and case studies, this book sets out high-quality staff wellbeing practices that can revolutionise the way childcare practitioners approach their job and their own health. Chapters guide the reader through a process of reflection and development, encouraging and empowering them to create a workplace culture that positively contributes to their (...) personal wellbeing. This book: Focuses on the realities of early years education, combining the authors' lived experience with examples of real-life practice; Encourages educators to think and feel positively about themselves; to identify the individual skills, strengths and talents they bring to their work; Can be used individually or collaboratively by team members, with guidance on creating a positive workplace culture with a shared vision, core values and beliefs. Essential reading for anybody who finds that the job they love can sometimes leave them feeling worn out, stressed and depleted, this book has been written to enrich the lives of all training and practising early years educators. (shrink)

Calling into question all structural rules and principles relating to language, Joshua Kates presents a radical new path for interpreting this every day, taken-for-granted tool of communication. Traversing theory, literary criticism, philosophy, and the philosophy of language, the book speaks to contemporary debates on analytical and humanistic modes of inquiry. Language and texts are thought of as active 'events', replete with allusions to history, context and tradition that are always in the making. This emphasis makes the case for a rigorous (...) inquiry of text and talk in all their forms, bridging the continental and analytical divide in the process. (shrink)

"I am a Jew who was born and who grew up in a Catholic country; I never had a religious education; my Jewish identity is in large measure the result of persecution." This brief autobiographical statement is a key to understanding Carlo Ginzburg's interest in the topic of his latest book: distance. In nine linked essays, he addresses the question: "What is the exact distance that permits us to see things as they are?" To understand our world, suggests Ginzburg, it (...) is necessary to find a balance between being so close to the object that our vision is warped by familiarity or so far from it that the distance becomes distorting. Opening with a reflection on the sense of feeling astray, of familiarization and defamiliarization, the author goes on to consider the concepts of perspective, representation, imagery, and myth. Arising from the theme of proximity is the recurring issue of the opposition between Jews and Christians -- a topic Ginzburg explores with an impressive array of examples, from Latin translations of Greek and Hebrew scriptures to Pope John Paul II's recent apology to the Jews for antisemitism. Moving with equal acuity from Aristotle to Marcus Aurelius to Montaigne to Voltaire, touching on philosophy, history, philology, and ethics, and including examples from present-day popular culture, the book offers a new perspective on the universally relevant theme of distance. (shrink)

We present the Welleye – a novel and conceptually clear framework that shows how attention links the objective circumstances of people’s lives and selves to how they spend their time and feel day to day. While existing wellbeing frameworks in policy contain many of the factors included in the Welleye, they all lack attention as the “lens” that determines the impact of these factors on how people feel. Policymakers and organizations can use the Welleye to better understand how people are (...) faring and design and evaluate interventions aimed at making people better off. (shrink)

Within academic circles, the “deficit” model of public understanding of science has been subject to increasing critical scrutiny by those who favor more constructivist approaches. These suggest that “the public” can articulate sophisticated ideas about the social and ethical implications of science regardless of their level of technical knowledge. The seminal studies following constructivist approaches have generally involved small-scale qualitative investigations, which have minimized the pre-framing of issues to a greater or lesser extent. This article describes the Gene Week Project, (...) sponsored by the Wellcome Trust, which attempted to extend this work to a large-scale consultation on genetics and health through the medium of a local daily newspaper. Readers were invited to respond to a set of open-ended questions that accompanied stimulus material published each day for five consecutive weekdays. The articles were written with the intention of extending the limited range of discourses around genetics and biotechnology that are usually presented by the popular media. Responses raised overarching issues about the place of emerging health technologies in society reminiscent of previous open-ended consultations in this field. The paper ends with a critical discussion about the potential of this method to contribute to the further development of open-ended public consultations. (shrink)

Judicial independence is generally understood as requiring that judges must be insulated from political life. The central claim of this work is that far from standing apart from the political realm, judicial independence is a product of it. It is defined and protected through interactions between judges and politicians. In short, judicial independence is a political achievement. This is the main conclusion of a three-year research project on the major changes introduced by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, and the consequences (...) for judicial independence and accountability. The authors interviewed over 150 judges, politicians, civil servants and practitioners to understand the day-to-day processes of negotiation and interaction between politicians and judges. They conclude that the greatest threat to judicial independence in future may lie not from politicians actively seeking to undermine the courts, but rather from their increasing disengagement from the justice system and the judiciary. (shrink)

Based on an original ethnographic study of a translational cancer research institute in the United States, we propose calibration as a process that makes interdisciplinary collaboration without consensus possible. Calibration refers to ongoing, day-to-day negotiation and alignment of personal identities, disciplinary commitments, and research group customs that occur during face-to-face group deliberations around everyday research concerns. Calibration provides a mechanism that explains how collaboration without consensus is possible. Crucially, it does not presuppose that interdisciplinary collaboration either indicates or causes the (...) blurring or softening of disciplinary boundaries. We argue that at the microsociological level it may be disciplinary robustness, rather than synthesis, that contributes to interdisciplinary innovation. (shrink)

ArgumentLambert ten Kate (1674-1731), the scholar of language, religious writer, art theoretician and collector, and natural philosophy enthusiast, was part of an informal network of Amsterdam-based mathematics and natural philosophy enthusiasts who played a pivotal role in the early diffusion of Newton’s natural philosophical ideas in the Dutch Republic. Because Ten Kate contributed to several areas of research, it is worth asking whether connections can be found between his different scholarly activities and, more specifically, whether his oeuvre as (...) a whole was shaped by his religious views, as has been suggested. In this essay, I shall argue that his oeuvre was indeed shaped by his religious beliefs, which reflect elements typical of Dutchdoperdom, but also reflect a more general Christian orientation that transcends confessional divides. More particularly, I aim to show that, if we want to understand why Ten Kate was drawn to the natural philosophy of his day, and especially to Isaac Newton’s (1642-1727), and why he sought to promote it, we also need to pay attention to this broader Christian orientation in his thought. Along the way, I shall add nuance to earlier characterizations of how ten Kate mobilized Isaac Newton’s natural philosophy according to his own agenda. (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)

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.

We read with great interest the commentaries submitted in response to our paper about clinical scientists and the role of ethical preparedness1. The responses raised some important themes that intersect with those discussed in our paper, and we are grateful for the opportunity to expand on them. Pruski2 highlights the importance of ethics education for clinical scientists, noting insufficient provision of such teaching within the clinical science profession. This gap means that scientists completing higher specialist training, who now encounter more (...) complex ethical challenges, are not benefitting from equivalent ethics education standards enjoyed by their counterparts in medical professions. We agree that clinical scientists deserve access to quality education in ethics in order to develop their skills in this area. Alongside a formal element to education, we see ethical preparedness (EP) as advocating for more informal education opportunities. This can be facilitated through the encouragement and creation of space (both physical and metaphorical) to discuss ethical issues as they arise in practice and explore potential scenarios in a supportive and judgement-free environment. Cultivating such an environment plays is crucial to develop professional skills in navigating ethical challenges, promoting a greater sense of collective responsibility and capability to do justice to ethical issues encountered. Van Steijvoort et al 3 draw …. (shrink)

How can absence make presence become? The question turns a usual notion of form inside out; it subverts normative habits in drawing distinctions. If we adapt the models of time by which we might consider such things (and not-things), the relational terms of form can shift. Two lines of inquiry are pursued in this article. The first is an investigation of form and its relation to time. The second is an exploration of paradox in describing forms of art. Both are (...) cybernetic in their framework and approach. The ‘Hastig’ (‘Hastily’) movement of Robert Schumann’s 1839 piano work Humoreske is the form that serves as site for the two inquiries to intertwine. Its construction presents a paradox through which form and time may be called into question. In considering Schumann’s composition as a re-conceiving of form and time, an idea emerges; art can make us aware of the constraints and possibilities of our models and our experiences of paradox in living with them. (shrink)

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

One variety of love is familiar in everyday life and qualifies in every reasonable sense as a reactive attitude. ‘Reactive love’ is paradigmatically an affectionate attachment to another person, 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 paradigmatically manifested in certain kinds of acts of goodwill and characteristic affective, desiderative and other motivational responses . ‘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)

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)

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)

Sometimes, a form of discrimination is hard to register, understand, and articulate. A rich precedent demonstrates how victim testimonies have been key in uncovering such “hidden” forms of discrimination, from sexual harassment to microaggressions. I reflect on how this plausibly goes too for “attentional discrimination”, referring to cases where the more meaningful attributes of one social group are made salient in attention in contrast to the less meaningful attributes of another. Victim testimonies understandably dominate the “context-of-discovery” stage of research into (...) these initially opaque forms of discrimination; a victim’s encounter with the gap between their experience and dominant conceptual frameworks for understanding it is what provides an initial foothold for analysis to begin. Some object, however, to this methodology continuing to dominate the later “context-of-justification” stage, where the hypothesis is rigorously challenged. I argue that this objection underestimates not just how other methodologies are more likely to inherit the various mechanisms of invisibility hiding the discrimination in question, but also how victim testimonies are distinctively well-suited to recognize and challenge those mechanisms. Victim testimonies, then, ought to continue playing a dominant role into these later stages of research regarding hidden forms of discrimination. (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)

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)

The relationship between the photographic and optical images and time has been the subject of great deal of debate. Despite their differences, what many of these considerations have in common is their focus on the receiver, whether mechanical (the camera), biological (the eye–brain as the optical receiver), social or the memory and imagination of the observer. My aim here is to shift the emphasis from the receiver to the object or vista that is photographed or viewed and to explore how (...) the constraints implied by our modern understanding of the Universe, concerning space and time, impact on the way we perceive photographic and optical images. Viewed from this perspective, photographs can be treated as light projections of sections of the four-dimensional observable world onto two-dimensional spatial photographic or viewing surfaces. I shall show that despite the severe reduction that such projections imply, these modern considerations have the important consequence of bestowing a complex temporality upon optical images, including photographs. This realization dramatically changes the way we view photographs. I give examples of this rich temporality through considerations of terrestrial images – and more significantly images of the Sky, where these temporal effects are far more pronounced. (shrink)

This paper explores Charles Darwin’s hypothesis of pangenesis through a popular and professional reception history. First published in The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868), pangenesis stated that inheritance can be explained by sub-cellular “gemmules” which aggregated in the sexual organs during intercourse. Pangenesis thereby accounted for the seemingly arbitrary absence and presence of traits in offspring while also clarifying some botanical and invertebrates’ limb regeneration abilities. I argue that critics largely interpreted Variation as an extension of On (...) the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), while pangenesis was an extension of natural selection. Contrary to claims that pangenesis was divorced from natural selection by its reliance on the inheritance of acquired characters, pangenesis’s mid nineteenth-century reception suggests that Darwin’s hypothesis responded directly to selection’s critics. Using Variation’s several editions, periodical reviews, and personal correspondence I assess pangenesis popularly, professionally, and biographically to better understand Variation’s impact on 1860s and 70s British evolutionism and inheritance. -/- . (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)

“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)

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)

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)

Does the morality of abortion depend on the moral status of the human fetus? Must the law of abortion presume an answer to the question of when personhood begins? Can a law which permits late abortion but not infanticide be morally justified? These are just some of the questions this book sets out to address. With an extended analysis of the moral and legal status of abortion, Kate Greasley offers an alternative account to the reputable arguments of Ronald Dworkin (...) and Judith Jarvis Thomson and instead brings the philosophical notion of 'personhood' to the foreground of this debate. Structured in three parts, the book will consider the relevance of prenatal personhood for the moral and legal evaluation of abortion; trace the key features of the conventional debate about when personhood begins and explore the most prominent issues in abortion ethics literature: the human equality problem and the difference between abortion and infanticide; and examine abortion law and regulation as well as the differing attitudes to selective abortion. The book concludes with a snapshot into the current controversy surrounding the scope of the right to conscientiously object to participation in abortion provision. (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)

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)

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)

Ethics dumping is the practice of undertaking research in a low- or middle-income setting which would not be permitted, or would be severely restricted, in a high-income setting. Whilst Kenya operates a sophisticated research governance system, resource constraints and the relatively low number of accredited research ethics committees limit the capacity for ensuring ethical compliance. As a result, Kenya has been experiencing cases of ethics dumping. This article presents 11 challenges in the context of preventing ethics dumping in Kenya, namely (...) variations in governance standards, resistance to double ethics review, resource constraints, unresolved issues in the management of biological samples, unresolved issues in the management of primary data, unsuitable informed consent procedures, cultural insensitivity, differing standards of care, reluctance to provide feedback to research communities, power differentials which facilitate the exploitation of local researchers and lack of local relevance and/or affordability of the resultant products. A reflective approach for researchers, built around the values of fairness, respect, care and honesty, is presented as a means of taking shared responsibility for preventing ethics dumping. (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)

Culture is a unique and fascinating aspect of the human species. How did it emerge and how does it develop? Richard Dawkins suggested culture evolves and that memes are cultural replicators, subject to variation and selection in the same way as genes are in the biological world. Thus human culture is the product of a mindless evolutionary algorithm. Does this imply, as some have argued, that we are mere meme machines and that the conscious self is an illusion? This highly (...) readable and accessible book extends Dawkins's theory, presenting for the first time a fully developed concept of cultural DNA. Distin argues that culture's development can be seen as the result of memetic evolution and as the product of human creativity. Memetic evolution is perfectly compatible with the view of humans as conscious and intelligent. This book should find a wide readership amongst philosophers, psychologists, sociologists and non-academic readers. (shrink)

This essay presents Augustine as a rich ethical resource on issues of wealth and poverty. Contrary to prevalent views that he had little to say on issues of economic justice, Augustine decries wealth as morally dangerous, promotes the agency of the poor in advocating for themselves with the wealthy, and supports distributive justice. Augustine envisions an interdependent Christian community where the wealthy not only help the poor, but rely on the poor to help them achieve salvation by “bearing their goods (...) to heaven,” as Augustine describes the receipt of alms. Augustine's view of wealth's moral danger is an apt resource for ethicists interested in virtue. His insistence on poor people's moral agency and interdependence among poor and wealthy speak to pressing issues of justice in today's unequal societies. (shrink)

Meaning-making plays a central role in how we deal with experiences of suffering, including those due to mental disorder. And for many, religious beliefs, experiences, and practices (hereafter, religious engagement) play a central role in informing this meaning-making. However, a crucial facet of the relationship between experiences of mental disorder and religious engagement remains underexplored—namely the potentially positive effects of mental disorder on religious engagement (e.g. experiences of bipolar disorder increasing sense of God’s presence). In what follows, I will present (...) empirical findings from two recent studies of mine which shed light on the extent to which participants experienced these positive effects, specific components of these effects, and how they fit into their understanding of their mental disorder and its relationship to their religious identity. In doing so, I will draw on and expand Tasia Scrutton’s Potentially Transformative view (2015a, 2015b, 2020) according to which mental disorders may provide opportunities for spiritual growth. My empirical results align with and help deepen an account according to which mental disorders are potentially spiritually transformative by providing further insight into such instances: specifically, which symptoms and internal and external factors are often involved, as well as which religious beliefs, experiences, and/or practices are often affected. After presenting these results and articulating their relevance for a potentially transformative view of mental disorder, I will then address some potential objections to the theoretical account as well as some limitations of the empirical work, before sketching possible promising directions for future research. (shrink)

Philosophers have turned their attention to gaslighting only recently, and have made considerable progress in analysing its characteristic aims and harms. I am less convinced, however, that we have fully understood its nature. I will argue in this paper that philosophers and others interested in the phenomenon have largely overlooked a phenomenon I call moral gaslighting, in which someone is made to feel morally defective—for example, cruelly unforgiving or overly suspicious—for harbouring some mental state to which she is entitled. If (...) I am right about this possibility, and that it deserves to be called gaslighting, then gaslighting is a far more prevalent and everyday phenomenon than has previously been credited. And it can also be a purely structural phenomenon, as well as an interpersonal one, which remains a controversial possibility in the current literature. (shrink)