The first mentions of “social engineering” and “social technologies” concepts started from the 19th century. Until the present moment, different lines of this story have been left neglected and insufficiently researched. In the article, initial meanings and authentic contexts of their usage are explained in more details. The investigation reaches the 1920s−1930s and is finished at the intersection of the Soviet and the American contexts concerned with scientific organization of labor, business optimization and economic planning. In conclusion, recent modifications of (...) social engineering are briefly characterized. They are connected with development of information technologies and automation of smart cities. The research appeals toward histories of scientific management in North America and Western Europe, its industrial roots and unexplained foundations. Meanwhile, it is philosophically substantial due to conceptual analysis and explication of presuppositions of our thinking in respect of society and ways of changing social reality. After Sir Karl Popper, social engineering has been associated with the Soviet methods of planning and centralized governance. However, one can be assured that until now this concept has evolved by different, alternative trajectories within the context of industrial modernization of Europe and America. Within post-industrial world, the vision of social engineering has been enriched by IT-analogies, and social practice is interpreted in light of organizational, cultural, mental, or historical algorithms, which are the subject of purposeful manipulation and modification. (shrink)

The article considers numerous factors that have influenced the formation and application of the social and human sciences. It shows that throughout history an orientation toward practice has always been a characteristic of these sciences. At the end of the Nineteenth and beginning of the Twentieth centuries, ideas related to the transformation of humanity and society fell under the rubric of social technologies and social engineering, which in recent years have experienced increasing prominence in modern science and technoculture.

Throughout most of human history women have been defined by their biological role in reproduction, seen first and foremost as gestators, which has led to the reproductive system being subjected to outside interference. The womb was perceived as dangerous and an object which husbands, doctors and the state had a legitimate interest in controlling. In this article, we consider how notions of conflict surrounding the womb have endured over time. We demonstrate how concerns seemingly generated by the invisibility of reproduction (...) and the inaccessibility of the womb have translated into similar arguments for controlling women, as technology increases the accessibility of the female body and the womb. Developments in reproductive medicine, from in vitro fertilisation to surrogacy, have enabled women and men who would otherwise have been childless to become parents. Uterus transplants and ‘artificial wombs’ could provide additional alternatives to natural gestation. An era of ‘womb technology’ dawns. Some argue that such technology providing an alternative to ‘natural’ gestation could be a source of liberation for female persons because reproduction will no longer be something necessarily confined to the female body. ‘Womb technology’, however, also has the potential to exacerbate the labelling of the female body as a source of danger and an ‘imperfect’ site of gestation, thus replaying rudimentary and regressive arguments about controlling female behaviour. We argue that pernicious narratives about control, conflict and the womb must be addressed in the face of these technological developments. (shrink)

Emotion regulation is one of the major foci of study in the fields of emotion and emotional development. This article proposes that to properly study emotion regulation, one must consider not only an intrapersonal view of emotion, but a relational one as well. Defining properties of intrapersonal and relational approaches are spelled out, and implications drawn for how emotion regulation is conceptualized, how studies are designed, how findings are interpreted, and how generalizations are drawn. Most research to date has been (...) conducted from an intrapersonal perspective, and the shortcomings of this approach for understanding emotion regulation are highlighted. The article emphasizes major conceptual and methodological steps required for a fuller description of the process of emotion regulation. (shrink)

Overdiagnosis is an emerging problem in health policy and practice: we address its definition and ethical implications. We argue that the definition of overdiagnosis should be expressed at the level of populations. Consider a condition prevalent in a population, customarily labelled with diagnosis A. We propose that overdiagnosis is occurring in respect of that condition in that population when the condition is being identified and labelled with diagnosis A in that population ; this identification and labelling would be accepted as (...) correct in a relevant professional community; but the resulting label and/or intervention carries an unfavourable balance between benefits and harms. We identify challenges in determining and weighting relevant harms, then propose three central ethical considerations in overdiagnosis: the extent of harm done, whether harm is avoidable and whether the primary goal of the actor/s concerned is to benefit themselves or the patient, citizen or society. This distinguishes predatory, misdirected and tragic overdiagnosis; the degree of harm moderates the justifiability of each type. We end with four normative challenges: methods for adjudicating between professional standards and identifying relevant harms and benefits should be procedurally just; individuals, organisations and states are differently responsible for addressing overdiagnosis; overdiagnosis is a matter for distributive justice: the burdens of both overdiagnosis and its prevention could fall on the least-well-off; and communicating about overdiagnosis risks harming those unaware that they may have been overdiagnosed. These challenges will need to be addressed as the field develops. (shrink)

The concept of transformative experience (TE) has been widely explored by several disciplines from philosophy to neurobiology, and in different domains, from the spiritual to the educational one. This attitude has engendered heterogeneous models to explain this phenomenon. However, a consistent and clear understanding of this construct remains elusive. The aim of this work is to provide an initial comprehensive interdisciplinary, cross-domain, up-to-date, and integrated overview on the concept of TEs. Firstly, all the models and theories on TEs were reviewed (...) to extract and analyze TEs’ main components emerging from different disciplines. Then, this preliminary analysis was integrated with an in-depth examination of redundancies and particularities across domains and disciplines, to provide an integrated theoretical framework of TEs and a preliminary interdisciplinary operational definition of TEs. This examination, in turn, can help organize current research and theories, thus providing suggestions for operationalizing TEs as well as encouraging new interdisciplinary research endeavors. (shrink)

Civility is formed by social norms that guide our behavior and allow us to interact appropriately with others. These norms affect everyone and are learned through the socialization process. However, in the same process, people also learn gender norms that dictate how men and women should behave, leading to gender stereotypes and differentiated behavioral characteristics. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between gender and civility, and how we react to those who behave uncivilly given their gender. (...) The results of Study 1 showed that even in a fictional and gender-neutral society, uncivil behaviors were associated with stereotypically masculine characteristics, and those who behaved uncivilly were dehumanized. In Study 2, gender differences were observed in incivility. Women were harsher when facing uncivil transgressors than men, especially if the transgressor was another woman. Our findings support the notion that gender norms are applied to civility, leading those supposedly equal social norms to unequal perceptions and evaluations. (shrink)

The article argues that there are different ways of justifying suspension of judgement. We suspend judgement not only privatively, that is, because we lack evidence, but also positively, that is, because there is evidence that provides reasons for suspending judgement: suspension is more than the rational fallback position in cases of insufficient evidence. The article applies the distinction to recent discussions about the role of suspension for inquiry, Turri's puzzle about withholding, and formal representations of suspension.

Mother and daughter Alexandra and Maureen point to the great thinkers who have shaped their beliefs and practices in education, and who continue to influence teachers today. 19 essays from Dewey to Delpit offer parents and new educators an overview of education. These touchstone texts are framed by commentary, as the Milettas include both personal readings with wider contextual value and brief biographies.

I strongly agree with the criticisms of the restrictive isomorphic matching definition of empathy made by Murphy, Lilienfeld, and Algoe, and largely agree with their conceptualization of empathy as a dynamic process best defined by its function. In this commentary, I extend this argument by emphasizing the relational, interpersonal aspects of empathy. It is my view that in order to understand the functions of empathy, we must take into account not only the internal experience of the individual empathizing, but also (...) the individual whose perspective the empathizer is attempting to take. I highlight how the emotional needs of others are dynamic and require flexible adaptation and underscore the role of context in appreciating the function of empathy. (shrink)

Is there anything wrong with publishing philosophical work which one does not believe (publishing without belief, henceforth referred to as ‘PWB’)? I argue that there is not: the practice isn’t intrinsically wrong, nor is there a compelling consequentialist argument against it. Therefore, the philosophical community should neither proscribe nor sanction it. The paper proceeds as follows. First, I’ll clarify and motivate the problem, using both hypothetical examples and a recent real-world case. Next, I’ll look at arguments that there is something (...) wrong with PWB, and show that none is sound. Then, I’ll give some reasons for thinking a norm against PWB is detrimental to the profession. Do I believe these arguments? If I’m right, it shouldn’t matter. (shrink)

Views of ‘plant consciousness’ in the literature are classified on a scale ranging from descriptions of plant phenomena using consciousness as a metaphor, to explicit statements that plants are conscious beings. The idea of plant consciousness is far from new, but it has received a new impetus from recent claims by psychics to communicate with plants. The literature surveyed is widely scattered and very diverse, but it can teach us much about the views that various segments of society hold on (...) plant consciousness. (shrink)

I will argue here a) that we have a right to have opportunities to meaningful relationships, b) that such a right is distinct from a right focusing only on protecting access to more basic social interactions, and c) that to the extent that we have rights to both kinds of social interactions, the one focused on more meaningful relationships should have priority because it secures an interest of greater importance for us.

Although Ian Hacking’s meta-concept is frequently applied to historical cases, few theorists have questioned the very idea of a style of reasoning. Hacking himself considers Donald Davidson’s conceptual scheme argument to be the most formidable challenge to the style idea, but Hacking has set up a straw man in Davidson. Beyond Hacking’s own conclusion, that Davidson's narrow concern with meaning incommensurability does not apply to styles, which are not incommensurable in that way, there is the more obvious point that styles, (...) which do not organize or fit the world, are not the kind of schemes with which Davidson is concerned. In fact, Hacking agrees with Davidson, in that both propose we can argue over a topic only when we employ the same style of reasoning (a suggestion which I contend is not necessarily the case). Hacking has a more serious problem, in that he cannot remain a Kantian without justifying his style idea with a transcendental argument. But this kind of argument is only available to those who support a univocal notion of reason, which the very idea of a style seems to outlaw. He has overlooked the challenges which arise out of Arthur Fine’s NOA. Hacking’s attention to historical detail and unwillingness to employ transcendental arguments in support of his view renders him immune to Fine’s arguments against inference to the best explanation. But the list of the necessary and sufficient criteria which identify styles of reasoning cannot prevent the proliferation of (bogus) styles. Moreover, Fine’s call for openness in inquiry shifts the burden of proof against Hacking and calls for him to prove: 1) that we cannot understand the history of science without the style meta-concept and 2) that whenever we encounter a mystery, our first order of business should be to stand back and uncover the style of reasoning which makes the predicament possible, instead of getting directly to the business of solving the problem. According to Fine, some puzzles just happen. And there is no guarantee that uncovering the style, which identifies the topic as a topic, will have anything to do with solving the mystery. Not only is there no such guarantee, but Hacking’s position, if it is to sidestep Davidson’s critique, actually requires that styles play only the minimal role of identifying topics. Styles must be fairly trivial. Fine thinks it is deeply unnatural to view science as entertainment. Philosophers are not to shine their lights on the action and watch it unfold. Rather, we are all to join the performance, thereby eliminating the artificial boundary between actor and audience which we mistakenly call upon to reinforce the notion that the raw material of science constrains our reflections about it. (shrink)

This study is concerned with current images of Science Studies travelling to places outside Western Europe and North America. These images focus on the movement of Science Studies’ formative concepts and ideas. They eclipse other formative aspects specific to the context in which this field was established. For example, Science Studies has analysed science within the conceptual architecture of modernity. Michel-Rolph Trouillot has proposed the notion of “Elsewhere” as analytical lens to analyse the constitution of modernity. The paper claims that (...) modern science, too, can be studied through this analytical lens to call attention to characteristics of science that remain systematically eclipsed. Trouillot’s notion of Elsewhere is applied to a paradigmatic case study from the field of Science Studies—Leviathan and the Air-Pump by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer—to test and demonstrate its analytical potential. By proposing a Programme in Science Studies Elsewhere, this paper refers to David Bloor’s four ten.. (shrink)

The paper considers the notion of Science Policy from a postcolonial perspective. It examines the theoretical implications of the recent trend to include emerging and developing countries in international Science Policies by way of the case study of Switzerland. This country’s new international science policy instruments and measures have challenged the classical distinction between international scientific cooperation and development cooperation, with consequences on standards and evaluation criteria. The analysis reveals that the underlying assumptions of the concept of Science Policy perpetuate (...) traditional asymmetries in the global political economy of science. The paper suggests that the present legacy of Science Policy institutions and practices needs to be transformed to reflect an increasingly diverse spectrum of scientific purposes and traditions. It offers a revised set of foundational assumptions on Science Policy and, more broadly, proposes a fresh point of entry for the field of Science & Technology Studies to contribute to the Science Policy discourse. (shrink)

One of the main theorems of the paper states the following. Let R-K-M be finite extensions of a rational one variable function field R over a finite field of constants. Let S be a finite set of valuations of K. Then the ring of elements of K having no poles outside S has a Diophantine definition over its integral closure in M.

The philosophical debate over disgust and its role in moral discourse has focused on disgust’s epistemic status: can disgust justify judgments of moral wrongness? Or is it misplaced in the moral domain—irrelevant at best, positively distorting at worst? Correspondingly, empirical research into disgust has focused on its role as a cause or amplifier of moral judgment, seeking to establish how and when disgust either causes us to morally condemn actions, or strengthens our pre-existing tendencies to condemn certain actions. Both of (...) these approaches to disgust are based on a set of assumptions that I call, in what follows, the evidential model of disgust. This paper proposes an alternative model, which I call the response model. Instead of looking at disgust as a cause and justification of judgments of moral wrongness, I will argue that disgust is better understood as a response to wrongness. More precisely, I argue that disgust is a response to norm violations, and that it is a fitting response insofar as norm violations are potentially contagious and therefore pose a threat to the stability and maintenance of norms. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an account of the wrong that is done to women when everyday people fail to believe allegations of sexual assault made by women. I argue that an everyday person wrongs both the accuser and women causally distant from the accuser when they fail to believe the accuser’s allegation. First, I argue that there are responses that we, as everyday members of society, owe to victims of sexual assault. A condition enabling everyday people to respond in (...) the way owed to victims is that they have an outright belief that the accuser was assaulted. Actively suspending judgement about whether a crime occurred is in tension with the ability to respond to the victim in a way that supports and validates them. When an everyday person fails to have an outright belief in the truth of an allegation, they wrong the accuser because they risk failing to satisfy the conditions enabling them to fulfill their obligation to her. Second, I argue that everyday people wrong women who are causally distant from the accuser because in our social context, women are often treated in particular ways – especially in the sexual domain – because they are women. As a result, when women hear that an everyday person fails to believe a particular allegation, they easily project themselves into the accuser’s position and reasonably worry that if they were to be assaulted, they too would be met with doubt and disbelief by the people in their community. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine a special subgroup of emotion: self-referential emo- tions such as shame, pride and guilt. Self-referential emotions are usually conceptualized as (i) essentially involving the subject herself and as (ii) having complex conditions such as the capacity to represent others’ thoughts. I will show that rather than depending on a fully fledged ‘theory of mind’ and an explicit language-based self-representation, (i) pre-forms of self-referential emotions appear at early developmental stages already exhib- iting their (...) characteristic structure of the intentional object of the emotion being identical with or intricately related to the subject experiencing the emotional state and that (ii) they precede and substantially contribute to the development of more complex representations and to the development of a self-concept, to social interaction and to ways of understand- ing of other minds. (shrink)

This paper provides the first examples of rings of algebraic numbers containing the rings of algebraic integers of the infinite algebraic extensions of where Hilbert's Tenth Problem is undecidable.

Feeling, for any animal, is a faculty of comparing objects or representations with regard to whether they promote its vital powers or hinder them. But whereas these comparisons presuppose a species-concept in non-rational animals, nature has not equipped the human being with a universal principle or life-form that would determine what agrees or disagrees with it. As humans, we must determine our mode of life for ourselves. Contrary to other interpretations, I argue that this places the human capacity for pleasure (...) and displeasure outside of nature and in a realm of spirit. (shrink)

Lucy Allais’s Manifest Reality presents a systematic discussion of the role that Kant assigns to concepts in making knowledge of objects possible. In this paper, I ascribe to Allais a version of non-conceptualism, according to which knowledge is a ‘hybrid’ or loose unity of concept and intuition; concept relates to intuition as form relates to matter in an artefact. I will show how this view has trouble accommodating the distinction between knowledge and accidentally true belief, and how it leads to (...) objectionable forms of idealism. (shrink)

In his lectures on general logic Kant maintains that the generality of a representation (the form of a concept) arises from the logical acts of comparison, reflection and abstraction. These acts are commonly understood to be identical with the acts that generate reflected schemata. I argue that this is mistaken, and that the generality of concepts, as products of the understanding, should be distinguished from the classificatory generality of schemata, which are products of the imagination. A Kantian concept does not (...) provide mere criteria for noting sameness and difference in things, but instead reflects the inner nature of things. Its form consists in the self-consciousness of a capacity to judge (i.e. the Concept is the ‘I think’). (shrink)

The development of empathy is central to positive social adjustment. However, issues remain with integrating empathy research conducted with children, adolescents, and adults. The current article (...

Contrary to the contemporary view that negation is a logical operation that modifies the mere content of a thought or judgment, but not the act of thinking or judging it, Kant maintains that negation is an act of logical apperception through which I exclude a thought or judgment from what ‘I think.’ In this paper, I argue against two interpretations of Kant’s account of logical negation. According to the first, negation is a subjective psychological act of excluding an erroneous judgment. (...) Against this, I will show that for Kant, negation is an operation of logical, not empirical apperception. The second interpretation views logical negation as an objective representation either of a relation of opposition or of non-being. I argue that, on the contrary, the logical function of negation is merely formal, not material, and therefore does not have semantic content. The paper’s final section develops a positive conception of logical negation as a formal function of judging. (shrink)

Empathy is an extensively studied construct, but operationalization of effective empathy is routinely debated in popular culture, theory, and empirical research. This article offers a process-focused approach emphasizing the relational functions of empathy in interpersonal contexts. We argue that this perspective offers advantages over more traditional conceptualizations that focus on primarily intrapsychic features. Our aim is to enrich current conceptualizations and empirical approaches to the study of empathy by drawing on psychological, philosophical, medical, linguistic, and anthropological perspectives. In doing so, (...) we highlight the various functions of empathy in social interaction, underscore some underemphasized components in empirical studies of empathy, and make recommendations for future research on this important area in the study of emotion. (shrink)

This paper argues for Kantian “universalism,” according to which the subject of empirical cognition is not merely individual, but universal. In the first section, I consider the limitations of Hume’s individualist view of the subject of judgment, which is able to explain how another person exerts power over my judgments, but cannot explain how what she says can challenge or support my judgments. In the second section, I argue that Kant’s universalism accounts for the possibility of rational support both among (...) different judgments in me, and among judgments of different subjects. The third section looks at the consequences of universalism for Kant’s account of testimony. I argue that on Kant’s view, it does not matter whether I learn something from my own experience or from your experience. Testimony thus does not emerge in Kant’s philosophy as a significant topic. In the fourth section, I argue that the enlightenment project of overcoming prejudice and acquiring wisdom makes it imperative that knowledge be not only universally shareable, but also actually shared among members of an epistemic community. (shrink)

Recent empirical studies have established that disgust plays a role in moral judgment. The normative significance of this discovery remains an object of philosophical contention, however; ‘disgust skeptics’ such as Martha Nussbaum have argued that disgust is a distorting influence on moral judgment and has no legitimate role to play in assessments of moral wrongness. I argue, pace Nussbaum, that disgust’s role in the moral domain parallels its role in the physical domain. Just as physical disgust tracks physical contamination and (...) pollution, so moral disgust tracks social contamination. I begin by examining the arguments for skepticism about disgust and show that these arguments threaten to overgeneralize and lead to a widespread skepticism about the justifiability of our moral judgments. I then look at the positive arguments for according disgust a role in moral judgment, and suggest that disgust tracks invisible social contagions in much the same way as it tracks invisible physical contagions, thereby serving as a defense against the threat of socio-moral contamination. (shrink)

The work of Sara Ahmed and Judith Butler exemplifies a recent concern with the politics of affect. Their distinctive contributions are informed by phenomenological accounts of passivity and agency. They view affect as critical to the articulation of social and political space, as well as to the individuation of embodied agents; for each, affect is key to an account of critical engagement. Their at-tention to affective economies also reflects their concern with the dynamics of exclusion, concealment, and marginalization, and thus (...) their powerful insights into the politics of affect contribute to our understanding of the role that affect plays in both the formation of normative orientations over time, and also to their potential disruption and transformation.Le travail de Sara Ahmed et Judith Butler illustre une préoccupation récente pour la politique de l’affect. Leurs contributions distinctives sont éclairées par des récits phénoménologiques de passivité et d’agentivité. Elles considèrent l’affect comme essentiel à l’articulation de l’espace social et politique, ainsi qu’à l’individuation des agents incarnés; pour chacune, l’affect est la clé d’engagement critique. Leur attention aux économies affectives reflète également leur préoccupation pour les dynamiques d’exclusion, de dissimulation et de marginalisation, et ainsi leur puissante connaissance de la politique de l’affect contribue à notre compréhension du rôle que joue l’affect dans le modelage des orientations normatives au fil du temps et leur perturbation et trans-formation potentielles. (shrink)

What is 'intellectual property'? This book examines the way in which this important area of law is constructed by the legal system. It argues that intellectual property is a body of rules, created by the legal system, that regulate the documented forms of abstract objects, which are also defined into existence by the legal system. Intellectual property law thus constructs its own objects of regulation and it does so through the application of a collection of core concepts. By analyzing the (...) metaphysical structure of intellectual property law and the concepts the legal system uses to construct 'intellectual property', the book sheds new light on the nature of this fascinating area of law. It explains anomalies between social and intellectual property uses of concepts such as authorship - here dubbed 'creatorship' - and originality and it helps to explain the role of intellectual property from a structural perspective. (shrink)

Post-war Japan has seen profound and rapid social change and transformation. One of the most visible areas of change in Japan has been medicine, and particularly the ethical practices and policies that guide medical decision-making. The formal discipline of bioethics, Seimei Rinri in Japanese, has grown by leaps and bounds since the late 1970s, when it began to appear in the curriculum and professional activities of Japanese medical schools and philosophy departments. The introduction of bioethics to Japan was timely, as (...) innovation in medicine and technology was evolving in ways that revealed that the intersection of medicine, traditional Japanese values, and new cultural trends was an area of great moral complexity. In its infancy, bioethics in Japan was more or less an import from the United States, where the discipline took its roots. Quickly, however, it became clear that Japan's history and tradition would call for a different approach, and the engagement of slightly different ethical issues. Organ transplantation, for example, sparked much greater controversy in Japan than it ever did in the United States. Today, Japan has one of the most dynamic bioethics programs in the world, and it is one that reflects both traditional Japanese culture and the need for inter-cultural engagement in an increasingly global world. Through a series of original chapters written by bioethicists and covering a range of ethical issues, this anthology shows that, in contrast to previous assumptions, Japanese bioethics has, in fact, taken on an identity that is undoubtedly separate from its American origins. Rich philosophical questions raised by medicine, human subjects research, and psychiatric care are being posed by scholars in a way that reflect Japanese tradition and is no longer simply reflective of, or shaped by, American traditions and philosophical problems. The book highlights and showcases these trends through a series of chapters written by some of the leading scholars in contemporary Japanese bioethics, many of whom were pioneers of the field when it began and are now nearing retirement. (shrink)

A standard view in philosophy is that knowledge entails justification. Yet recent research suggests otherwise. We argue that this admirable and striking research suffers from an important limitation: participants were asked about knowledge but not justification. Thus it is possible that people attributed knowledge partly because they thought the belief was justified. Perhaps though, if given the opportunity, people would deny justification while still attributing knowledge. It is also possible that earlier findings were due to perspective taking. This paper reports (...) further research that directly addresses these questions. Our findings support the hypothesis that knowledge entails justification on the ordinary view. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt has become standard to treat Kant’s characterization of pure apperception as involving the claim that questions about what I think are transparent to questions about the world. By contra...

The book discusses the central notion of logic: the concept of logical consequence. It shows that the classical definition of consequence as truth preservation in all models must be restricted to all admissible models. The challenge for the philosophy of logic is therefore to supplement the definition with a criterion for admissible models. -/- The problem of logical constants, so prominent in the current debate, constitutes but a special case of this much more general demarcation problem. The book explores the (...) various dimensions of the problem of admissible models and argues that standard responses are unwarranted. As a result, it develops a new vision of logic, suggesting in particular that logic is deeply imbued with metaphysics. (shrink)

Why do we say that something is unspeakable, even though we know the issue well? We find in many cultural contexts the classification of something as ‘unspeakable'. Using semantics and semiotic theory separating between ‘concept', ‘sign', and ‘reference object of the sign' in several cases where the ‘unspeakable' is described, we will discuss the functions of ‘the unspeakable‘ as a cultural phenomenon. Philosophers use the term frequently with reference to their culture. In our article we will look at the socio-cultural (...) conditions of the concept of ‘the unspeakable'. While it seems that this concept is universal, functions and meanings of this concept vary depending on the cultural settings. We will examine in this article the functions of this concept comparing the use of it in different cultures with religious and mythological impact expressed in this concept. Furthermore, we will look at the linguistic settings that allow us a construction like ‘the unspeakable' to be used as a representation for something not spoken in speech, but existing in another cultural or transcendental sphere. We will show that the expression serves as a semiotic replacement for issues that could be articulated, but due to cultural limits like religion or myths as act of cultural censorship should not be articulated in speech. (shrink)

Although self‐testing apps, a form of mobile health (mHealth) apps, are often marketed as empowering, it is not obvious how exactly they can empower their users—and in which sense of the word. In this article, I discuss two conceptualisations of empowerment as polar opposites—one in health promotion/mHealth and one in feminist theory—and demonstrate how both their applications to individually used self‐testing apps run into problems. The first, prevalent in health promotion and mHealth, focuses on internal states and understands empowerment as (...) an individual process. However, this version of empowerment has been accused of paternalism and responsibilisation. The second, feminist version considers structural conditions and foregrounds collective, political change, whose realisation is not obviously attainable for an individually used app. By pointing out the flaws of the positions that focus on either internal states or external conditions, and by engaging with theory from critical phenomenology, I argue that the interplay between them is where empowerment can take place. I propose to formulate empowerment in phenomenological terms as a shift in being‐in‐the‐world and discuss how this conceptualisation of empowerment would avoid the criticism of previous empowerment narratives while being realisable by self‐testing apps. (shrink)