We analyze a series of interviews with Estonian humanities researchers to explore topics related to the beginning of academic careers and the relationships with supervisors and mentors. We show how researchers strive to have meaningful relationships and produce what they consider quality research in the conditions of a system that is very strongly oriented towards internationalization and project-based funding, where their efforts are compromised by a lack of policies helping them establish a stable position in academia. Leaving researchers to face (...) these obstacles alone places a great burden on them and may lead to a loss of talent in academia. Identifying and addressing these issues is thus important for both the well-being of early career researchers and the future of academia. (shrink)

Context: Maturana’s lifework is extensive, and consists of a coherent network of interlinked ideas the consequences of which have not been fully explored. Problem: What does it take to understand Maturana’s work? Is “learning” Maturana as arduous as learning a completely different language, or is there sufficient value in learning selected elements of his network of ideas? Method: We discuss these fundamental questions and relate them to aspects of understanding, word meaning and the scientific method. Results: While getting only partially (...) familiar with Maturana can have its merits in certain contexts, there is a clear danger of trying to understand Maturana on the basis of words such as autopoiesis, consciousness, cognition, and science. Implications: We identify three directions in which Maturana’s ideas can be further explored: preparing social media videos, finding ever new domains of application, and their historical-conceptual relativization. (shrink)

Context: Humberto Maturana has generated a coherent and extensive explicatory matrix that encompasses his research in neurophysiology, cognition, language, emotion, and love. Purpose: Can we formulate a map of Maturana’s work in a manner that is consistent with the systemic matrix it represents and that serves as an aid for understanding Maturana’s philosophy without reifying its representation? Method: Our arguments are based on experience gained from teaching and presentations. Results: We present a map that that represents Maturana’s main contributions as (...) clusters of notions clustered according to how we see them to be related to each other as a projection of a matrix of ideas onto a two-dimensional space. We claim that there are many paths through these clusters of ideas. Though ideas relevant to individuals are obtained from various partial perspectives, a deep understanding of any element is dependent on an understanding of the whole matrix. Furthermore, we summarize the contributions to this special issue on Maturana. (shrink)

The central concern of this book is us human beings. The authors’ basic question is: ‘How is it that we can live in mutual care, have ethical concerns, and at the same time deny all that through the rational justification of aggression?’ The authors answer this basic question indirectly by providing a look into the fundaments of our biological constitution, concentrating on what they term emotioning, that is the flow of emotions in daily life that guides the flow of the (...) systemic conservation of a manner of living. Maturana and Verden-Zoller claim that the fundamental emotion that gave rise to humans as sapient languaging beings was love, and that this remains our fundament even when other emotions become socially prevalent. (shrink)

What Druzhinin, in the target article, names as “counterfactuals” are stories that an observer claims are more valid than another story. Normally, we treat such conjectures lightly, though all ….

Hoerl & McCormack risk misleading people about the cognitive underpinnings of the belief in a privileged “now moment” because they do not explicitly acknowledge that the sense of existing in the now moment is an intrinsically temporally dynamic one. The sense of happening that is exclusive to the now moment is a better candidate for the source of belief in a privileged now.

The guiding idea behind this collection of papers is a presentation of the transdisciplinary scope of the new semiotics offering a deeper and broader framework than the structuralist semiology that has been the foundation of most European semiotic analyses of culture, texts and languages.

I argue that evolutionary debunking arguments are dialectically ineffective against a range of plausible positions regarding moral truth. I first distinguish debunking arguments which target the truth of moral judgements from those which target their justification. I take the latter to rest on the premise that such judgements can be given evolutionary explanations which do not invoke their truth. The challenge for the debunker is to bridge the gap between this premise and the conclusion that moral judgements are unjustified. After (...) briefly discussing older attempts to bridge this gap, I focus on Joyce’s recent attempt, which rests on the claim that ‘we do not have a believable account of how moral facts could explain the mechanisms and forces which give rise to moral judgements’. I argue that whether or not there is such an account depends on what it is permissible to assume about moral truth in this context. Further, I suggest that it is reasonable to make assumptions about moral truth which allow for the possibility of at least partial moral epistemologies. The residual challenge for the debunker is to show that these assumptions are unreasonable in a way which doesn’t render their debunking argument superfluous. (shrink)

Despite the promise to boost human potential and wellbeing, enhancement drugs face recurring ethical scrutiny. The present studies examined attitudes toward cognitive enhancement in order to learn more about these ethical concerns, who has them, and the circumstances in which they arise. Fairness-based concerns underlay opposition to competitive use—even though enhancement drugs were described as legal, accessible and affordable. Moral values also influenced how subsequent rewards were causally explained: Opposition to competitive use reduced the causal contribution of the enhanced winner’s (...) skill, particularly among fairness-minded individuals. In a follow-up study, we asked: Would the normalization of enhancement practices alleviate concerns about their unfairness? Indeed, proliferation of competitive cognitive enhancement eradicated fairness-based concerns, and boosted the perceived causal role of the winner’s skill. In contrast, purity-based concerns emerged in both recreational and competitive contexts, and were not assuaged by normalization. (shrink)

Christian pro-lifers often respond to Thomson’s defense of abortion that the violinist is allowed to die while the embryo is killed. Boonin and McMahan counter that this distinction does not provide an objection to extraction abortions that disconnect embryos and allow them to die. I disagree. I first argue that letting die and killing are not to be distinguished by differences between acts and omissions, moral and immoral motives, intentional or unintentional deaths, and causing or not causing a pathology. I (...) offer a taxonomy in which hysterotomies turn out to be killings. I then argue that if either the placenta is considered an organ of the embryo or the embryo is construed as a part of the pregnant woman, then abortion pills kill rather than allow death. So, assuming that killing people is morally worse than letting them die, extraction abortions can be condemned to the same degree as other abortions. (shrink)

The power of technology to transform religions, science, and political institutions has often been presented as nothing short of revolutionary. Does technology have a similarly transformative influence on societies’ morality? Scholars have not rigorously investigated the role of technology in moral revolutions, even though existing research on technomoral change suggests that this role may be considerable. In this paper, we explore what the role of technology in moral revolutions, understood as processes of radical group-level moral change, amounts to. We do (...) so by investigating four historical episodes of radical moral change in which technology plays a noteworthy role. Our case-studies illustrate the plurality of mechanisms involved in technomoral revolutions, but also suggest general patterns of technomoral change, such as technology’s capacity to stabilize and destabilize moral systems, and to make morally salient phenomena visible or invisible. We find several leads to expand and refine conceptual tools for analysing moral change, specifically by crystallizing the notions of ‘technomoral niche construction’ and ‘moral payoff mechanisms’. Coming to terms with the role of technology in radical moral change, we argue, enriches our understanding of moral revolutions, and alerts us to the depths of which technology can change our societies in wanted and unwanted ways. (shrink)

This chapter canvasses several arguments for happy‐people‐pills. The argument turns on the idea that happy‐people‐pills will promote such fundamental prudential values as happiness, achievement, and virtue. Since happy‐people‐pills will promote wellbeing, this is a powerful reason to permit their use. In the chapter the case is first made that, far from diminishing autonomy, happy‐people‐pills will enhance autonomy. The chapter argues that happy‐people‐pills will increase the prudential good of individuals. After arguing that at a societal level wellbeing is, for the most (...) part, additive, the chapter goes on to examine an argument that happy‐people‐pills can be multiplicative: their use should encourage the acquisition and exercise of pro‐social virtues. So, not only will happy‐people‐pills benefit those who take them, but they should also promote the good of others. The multiplicative effect is a strong moral reason to suppose that we ought to use happy‐people‐pills. (shrink)

This chapter argues that evolutionary debunking arguments are dialectically ineffective. Such arguments rely on the premise that moral judgements can be given evolutionary explanations which do not invoke their truth. The challenge for the debunker is to bridge the gap between this premise and the conclusion that moral judgements are unjustified. After discussing older attempts to bridge this gap, this chapter focuses on Joyce’s recent attempt, which claims that ‘we do not have a believable account of how moral facts could (...) explain the mechanisms…which give rise to moral judgements’. It argues that whether there is such an account depends on what it is permissible to assume about moral truth and that it is reasonable to make assumptions which allow for the possibility of at least partial moral epistemologies. The challenge for the debunker is to show that these assumptions are unreasonable in a way which does not render their debunking argument superfluous. (shrink)

The use of cognition-enhancing drugs (CEDs) appears to be increasingly common in both academic and workplace settings. But many universities and businesses have not yet engaged with the ethical challenges raised by CED use. This paper considers criticisms of CED use with a particular focus on the Accomplishment Argument: an influential set of claims holding that enhanced work is less dignified, valuable, or authentic, and that cognitive enhancement damages our characters. While the Accomplishment Argument assumes a view of authorship based (...) on individual credit-taking, an impersonal or collaborative view is just as possible. This paper considers the benefits of this view—including humility, a value often claimed by critics of enhancement—and argues that such a view is consistent with open CED use. It proposes an ethics of cognitive enhancement based on toleration, transparency, and humility, and it discusses how institutions and individuals can build a culture of open cognitive enhancement. (shrink)

The primary objective of this paper is to introduce a new epistemic paradox that puts pressure on the claim that justification is closed under multi premise deduction. The first part of the paper will consider two well-known paradoxes—the lottery and the preface paradox—and outline two popular strategies for solving the paradoxes without denying closure. The second part will introduce a new, structurally related, paradox that is immune to these closure-preserving solutions. I will call this paradox, The Paradox of the Pill. (...) Seeing that the prominent closure-preserving solutions do not apply to the new paradox, I will argue that it presents a much stronger case against the claim that justification is closed under deduction than its two predecessors. Besides presenting a more robust counterexample to closure, the new paradox also reveals that the strategies that were previously thought to get closure out of trouble are not sufficiently general to achieve this task as they fail to apply to similar closure-threatening paradoxes in the same vicinity. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss the illness and recovery of the depressed Moses Herzog, the protagonist of Saul Bellow’s novel _Herzog_ ( 1964 ). Using this novel as a case study, I criticize a one-sided (neuro)biological and drug-based approach to depression. Referring to the hermeneutic anthropology of philosophers like Paul Ricoeur and Marya Schechtman, I argue that the treatment of depression could benefit from a broader approach that takes into account existential and social-cultural factors as well as biological factors. I (...) suggest that narrative psychiatry offers a framework wherein various models of mental illness may be combined in ways that move beyond a pro/contra bio-psychiatry binary. By investigating depression using philosophical ideas and a literary text, this article aims to illustrate how the humanities may contribute to our thinking about depression. (shrink)

The statistics at least seem alarming. The production of Ritalin, an amphetamine derivative used for the treatment of attention deficit disorder in children (and lately, in adults as well), has risen a whopping 700 percent since 1990. According to figures given by Lawrence Diller in Running on Ritalin, over the decade, the number of Americans using Ritalin has soared from 900,000 to almost 5 million -- the vast majority children from the ages of 5 to 12, though there is a (...) significant rise in Ritalin use among teens and adults as well. No comparable rise is reported in other countries, though a much smaller surge has taken place in Canada and Australia. In Virginia Beach, Virginia (perhaps the most egregious example), 17 percent of fifth-grade boys were taking Ritalin in 1996 to control behavior problems and improve school performance. (Boys on Ritalin 1 outnumber girls in a ratio of 3.5 to 1; when I was recently complaining to another mother about my own son's academic difficulties, she said simply, "Welcome to the world of boys.") Stimulants have been used to treat behavior problems in children since 1937; Ritalin itself appeared on the market in the 1960s to treat what was then called "hyperactivity" -- impulsive, disruptive behavior by children who just "couldn't sit still." In recent years, however, the root problem has been identified as "attention deficit disorder" (ADD), either with or without attendant hyperactivity. Symptoms of ADD, according to the standard survey used in its diagnosis, include: "often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork," "often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities," and "often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require mental effort (such as schoolwork or homework)." Symptoms of ADD-H (the variant with hyperactivity) include: "often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat," and "often has difficulty playing or engaging in leisure activities quietly." Ritalin, by most accounts, is remarkably effective in getting such children to settle down and pay attention, with resultant (at least short term) gains in parental sanity and academic achievement. The fear, stated quite baldly, is that as a society we are 1 drugging our children in ever-larger numbers to get them to conform to adult expectations.. (shrink)

The social group named after the various discourses of individuals who define themselves as the champions of the men's rights movement on social media is called the “Manosphere” in the literature. “Oneitis”, a concept in the jargon of the manosphere, basically refers to a disease state used to represent situations in which a man invests excessive attention in a woman who is not equally interested in him. For the Red Pill movement, the most influential group in the manosphere, oneitis is (...) criticized as a pattern of behavior that should be avoided by men. Red Pill philosophy is also often associated with alt-right ideologies due to its anti-feminist and pragmatic views. Red Pill thought can therefore often be seen as contrasting with Woke Culture, a counter-cultural movement that advocates the constant practice of vigilance against political discourses that oppress certain social groups through structural mechanisms of oppression such as racism, anti-blackness, and anti-feminism. In this paper, I argue that the concept of oneitis, when suspended from its anti-feminist and commodifying contexts, can in fact be read as a critique of a conception of love that is deeply rooted in traditional gender roles that are often criticized from perspectives such as feminism or Woke Culture. When the liberation from oneitis is considered independently of the manosphere framework, it can be read as a critique of coercive social practices in terms of romantic relationships. (shrink)

This chapter explores policy questions that arise from accepting our moral arguments for happy‐people‐pills. It looks at arguments from the liberty and justice point of view which support the policy prescription that society should permit the development of happy‐people‐pills. The crucial difference is that the justice argument is compatible with paternalism in a way that the liberty argument is not. The chapter then turns to objections to such a policy based on adverse effects on health and society at large. Finally, (...) it addresses the question of how happy‐people‐pills ought to be justly distributed. The chapter examines at length the question of what role, if any, governments ought to have in the creation and distribution of happy‐people‐pills. It argues that happy‐people‐pills are important for the wellbeing of many, but this in itself does not answer the question of just distribution of this good. (shrink)

Happy-People-Pills for All explores current theories of happiness while demonstrating the need to develop advanced pharmacological agents for the enhancement of our capacity for happiness and wellbeing. Presents the first detailed exploration of the enhancement of happiness A controversial yet rigorous argument that demonstrates the moral imperative for the development and mass distribution of ‘happy-pills’, to promote the wellbeing of the individual and society Brings together the philosophy, psychology and biology of happiness Maps the development of the next generation of (...) positive mood pharmacology Offers a corrective to contemporary accounts of happiness. (shrink)

RU 486, an experimental drug to terminate early pregnancy, raises again the fundamental questions about the status of the early embryo: What are the morally relevant similarities and differences among contraception, early abortion and late abortion? And how does language affect both our social practices and attitudes concerning those social practices?

It may soon be possible to develop pills that allow parents to induce in themselves more loving behaviour, attitudes and emotions towards their children. In this paper, I consider whether pharmacologically induced parental love can satisfy reasonable conditions of authenticity; why anyone would be interested in taking such parental love pills at all, and whether inducing parental love pharmacologically promotes narcissism or results in self-instrumentalization. I also examine how the availability of such pills may affect the duty to love a (...) child. (shrink)

Among philosophers of mind, it is common to assume that at least some mental properties are functional in nature, and that functional properties are second-order properties. In the functionalist literature, the notion of being a second-order property is cashed out in three different ways: (i) in terms of semantic features of characterizations or definitions of properties, (ii) in terms of syntactic features of second-order quantification, and (iii) in terms of a metaphysical criterion, according to which properties are second order if (...) they are properties of first-order properties. It is shown that in the context of functionalism reference to these interpretations is misguided, and it is suggested that the notion of an ordering of properties in this context is best understood as being tied to dependence-relations. (shrink)

Digital medicine is a medical treatment that combines technology with drug delivery. The promises of this combination are continuous and remote monitoring, better disease management, self-tracking, self-management of diseases, and improved treatment adherence. These devices pose ethical challenges for patients, providers, and the social practice of medicine. For patients, having both informed consent and a user agreement raises questions of understanding for autonomy and informed consent, therapeutic misconception, external influences on decision making, confidentiality and privacy, and device dependability. For providers, (...) digital medicine changes the relationship where trust can be verified, clinicians can be monitored, expectations must be managed, and new liability risks may be assumed. Other ethical questions include direct third-party monitoring of health treatment, affordability, and planning for adverse events in the case of device malfunction. This article seeks to lay out the ethical landscape for the implementation of such devices in patient care. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Abilify MyCite was granted regulatory approval in 2017, becoming the world’s first “smart pill” that could digitally track whether patients had taken their medication. The new technology was introduced as one that had gained the support of patients and ethicists alike, and could contribute to solving the widespread and costly problem of patient nonadherence. Here, we offer an in-depth exploration of this narrative, through an examination of the origins and development of Abilify, the drug that would later become MyCite. (...) This history illuminates how an antipsychotic can become a top-selling drug and maintain its blockbuster status for more than a decade. It also provides a detailed case study for how knowledge is constructed within the logic of biomedical capitalism, providing impetus to reexamine claims regarding how MyCite addresses patient nonadherence, engenders patient support, and is ethicist-approved. (shrink)

The morning-after pill has been promoted as a solution to the growing teenage sexual health problem being witnessed in Scotland. The continuing increase in sexually transmitted infections (STIs), recorded in recent reports of the Scottish Centre for Infections and Environmental Health2, has come as a shock to members of the health profession across Scotland. Documenting a marked increase in teenage sexual activity, the report raises urgent questions about the impact of the “safe sex” message in our classrooms and the Scottish (...) Executive’s overall approach to teenage sexual health. One specific feature of this approach that has prompted concern from General Practitioners (GPs), parents and educators (and others) has been the official policy on the promotion of the morning-after pill as a method of contraception. When appropriately initiated within 72 hours of unprotected coitus, emergency contraception will prevent approximately 80% of pregnancies in teens and young women who are mid-cycle and, thus, at risk of pregnancy.3 But this policy has not been based on a clear and rigorous understanding of the properties, the function and the efficacy of the morning-after pill. Neither has there been adequate and in-depth research on the short and long-term safety implications of the morning-after pill. In light of proposals to increase the availability of the morning-after pill, the overall aim of this Briefing Paper is: 1. to provide specific answers to the questions raised above, based on research evidence; and 2. to provide an independent source of information on the most recent research on the morning-after pill and STIs, for parents, teachers, politicians, members of the health and legal professions and other interested parties. (shrink)

From my point of view, the pandemic worsened the rigidity of epistemic injustices. I work as a philosophical counselor, and I research bioethics. For me, bioethics, in line with what Potter wrote, is a discipline that cannot be separated from individual problems. I believe that we cannot think of a sustainable life on this planet if we first do not learn how to live a sustainable one.During this pandemic, my work as a philosophical counselor consisted mostly of helping my clients (...) to live sustainable lives by not buying into rigid categories that underlined heavy social injustices. I supported them in holding on to their narratives against, more or less implied, guidelines that would have made their world... (shrink)

There is evidence from the empirical sciences that >happiness= B understood in the social scientists= sense of >positive affect=B leads to prosocial behaviour: the happiest amongst us are more likely to help others. There is also scientific evidence of a genetic component to positive affect: genetic differences can account for some of the observed variances in positive affect. Let us think of >happy-people-pills= as pharmacological agents, modeled on those with a genetic predisposition for high levels of positive affect, which will (...) promote positive moods and emotions in >normally= happy persons. It is argued that if we want to increase prosocial behaviour then we should (other things being equal) promote the use of happy-people-pills. Since we should increase prosocial behaviour, we should (other things being equal) promote the use of happy-people-pills. In a short paper like this, I cannot possibly show that everything else is equal. However, I hope to establish at least a prima facie case for policy that permits the creation and distribution of happy-people-pills. (shrink)

In recent discussions about whether the use of a love pill to enhance love in our romantic relationships is desirable, one argument centres on the question whether this love pill would secure the final value we attribute to love. Sven Nyholm argues that it would not, because one thing we desire for its own sake is to be at the origin of the love others feel for us. In a reply, Hichem Naar argues against Nyholm that a love pill does (...) not need to be incompatible with the final value we attribute to love and that a love pill can have a facilitating role in the creation and sustainment of loving attachment. I think Naar is right but does not address Nyholm's worry completely. I will argue that Naar and Nyholm are speaking of different ends for which the love pill is used as a means, and that whether the love pill would fail or not fail to secure the final value we attribute to love, depends on this particular end. (shrink)

Imagine a drug—let's call it Curebitt—that is safe, cheap, and very effective: take a pill once a day and you will be healthier. Curebitt's taste is so unpleasant, so bitter, however, that a significant proportion of patients cannot bring themselves to ingest the pill regularly. Now suppose that after some time, another drug, Curesweet, hits the market. This drug is clinically equivalent to Curebitt and costs the same, but it is much more palatable, so adherence rates for it are significantly (...) higher than for Curebitt. Should physicians continue prescribing Curebitt, now that Curesweet is available? No, prescribing the bitter pill puts patients at a greater risk of nonadherence and ultimately results in reduced clinical benefit for a significant proportion of patients, whereas prescribing Curesweet benefits more patients and increases the probability that any given patient's health will improve. The Curebitt versus Curesweet scenario draws our attention to how a physician can fail her patients by prescribing drugs with lower adherence rates when equivalent drugs with higher adherence rates are available. What does this fictional case tell us about the real world? A lot. We know that adherence rates vary with out‐of‐pocket costs. Name‐brand drugs carry higher out‐of‐pocket costs than their generic counterparts; as a result, when name‐brand drugs are prescribed rather than their generic counterparts, fewer patients receive health benefits. If prescribing Curebitt is unethical, then so is prescribing the name‐brand drug. (shrink)

New physiological and pharmacological research points to the possibility of a pill that produces the complete physiological effects of exercise. Is replacement of exercise with a pill a good idea? And if so, under what circumstances? To explore answers, I have examined three approaches to the understanding exercise. From a dualist point of view, exercise is explained mechanistically in terms of physiological cause and effect relationships. From this perspective, and in particular for reluctant exercisers, there seems to be no strong (...) argument against the use of a pill. From a phenomenological point of view, exercise is understood from a first person perspective focusing on experiential qualities. It is argued that a pill can never replace the embodied, experiential values of exercising and their potential ethical significance. In other words, the use of a pill is rejected. From a critical social constructivist point of view, exercise is understood as an expression of sociocultural values. Exercise can be a source of both bodily alienation and embodied self-realization and meaning. It is argued that in settings of alienating exercise malpractice, an exercise pill can be a temporary lesser evil approach. It is pointed out, however, that the long-term solution to malpractice is not a pill but a change of practice. In a final section, the possibility of the exercise pill is contextualized in the larger, bio-ethical debate on human enhancement. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that deceptive placebo use can be morally permissible, on the grounds that the deception involved in the prescription of deceptive placebos can differ in kind to the sorts of deception that undermine personal autonomy. In order to argue this, I shall first delineate two accounts of why deception is inimical to autonomy. On these accounts, deception is understood to be inimical to the deceived agent’s autonomy because it either involves subjugating the deceived agent’s will to (...) another’s authority or because it precludes the agent from acting effectively in pursuit of their ends. I shall argue that providing an agent with false beliefs is not inimical to their autonomy if they are only able to effectively pursue their autonomously chosen ends by virtue of holding those particular false beliefs. Finally, I show that deceptive placebo use need only involve this latter sort of deception. (shrink)