Leibniz’s De incerti aestimatione, which contains his solution to the division problem, has not received much attention, let alone much appreciation. This is surprising because it is in this work that the definition of probability in terms of equally possible cases appears for the first time. The division problem is used to establish and test probability theory; it can be stated as follows: if two players agree to play a game in which one has to win a certain number of (...) rounds in order to win the pool, but if they break the game off before either of them has won the required number of rounds, how should the pool be distributed?Our article has two aims: it provides the readers with the first published English translation of De incerti aestimatione, and it also gives them a brief commentary that explains Leibniz’s philosophical and mathematical concepts necessary in order to understand this work. The translation is as literal as possible throughout; it shows how Leibniz struggled at times to find a solution to the division problem and how he approached it from different angles. The commentary discusses Leibniz’s views on four key concepts: fairness, hope, authority and possibility. The commentary then outlines how Leibniz attempted to solve the problem of division. (shrink)

Leibniz’s De incerti aestimatione, which contains his solution to the division problem, has not received much attention, let alone much appreciation. This is surprising because it is in this work that the definition of probability in terms of equally possible cases appears for the first time. The division problem is used to establish and test probability theory; it can be stated as follows: if two players agree to play a game in which one has to win a certain number of (...) rounds in order to win the pool, but if they break the game off before either of them has won the required number of rounds, how should the pool be distributed?Our article has two aims: it provides the readers with the first published English translation of De incerti aestimatione, and it also gives them a brief commentary that explains Leibniz’s philosophical and mathematical concepts necessary in order to understand this work. The translation is as literal as possible throughout; it shows how Leibniz struggled at times to find a solution to the division problem and how he approached it from different angles. The commentary discusses Leibniz’s views on four key concepts: fairness, hope, authority and possibility. The commentary then outlines how Leibniz attempted to solve the problem of division. (shrink)

Leibniz’s De incerti aestimatione, which contains his solution to the division problem, has not received much attention, let alone much appreciation. This is surprising because it is in this work that the definition of probability in terms of equally possible cases appears for the first time. The division problem is used to establish and test probability theory; it can be stated as follows: if two players agree to play a game in which one has to win a certain number of (...) rounds in order to win the pool, but if they break the game off before either of them has won the required number of rounds, how should the pool be distributed?Our article has two aims: it provides the readers with the first published English translation of De incerti aestimatione, and it also gives them a brief commentary that explains Leibniz’s philosophical and mathematical concepts necessary in order to understand this work. The translation is as literal as possible throughout; it shows how Leibniz struggled at times to find a solution to the division problem and how he approached it from different angles. The commentary discusses Leibniz’s views on four key concepts: fairness, hope, authority and possibility. The commentary then outlines how Leibniz attempted to solve the problem of division. (shrink)

In this contribution I wish to tackle two corruptions in Book 7 of Varro's De lingua Latina that have hitherto gone unnoticed or been corrected inadequately.

Book Symposium on Andrew Feenberg’s Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity Content Type Journal Article Pages 203-226 DOI 10.1007/s13347-011-0017-8 Authors Inmaculada de Melo-Martín, Division of Medical Ethics, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY 10065, USA David B. Ingram, Loyola University Chicago, 6525 North Sheridan Road, Chicago, IL 60626, USA Sally Wyatt, e-Humanities Group, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) & Maastricht University, Cruquiusweg 31, 1019 AT Amsterdam, The Netherlands Yoko Arisaka, Forschungsinstitut für (...) Philosophie Hannover, Gerberstrasse 26, 30169 Hannover, Germany Andrew Feenberg, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University at Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC V6B 5K3, Canada Journal Philosophy & Technology Online ISSN 2210-5441 Print ISSN 2210-5433 Journal Volume Volume 24 Journal Issue Volume 24, Number 2. (shrink)

Designer Biology: The Ethics of Intensively Engineering Biological and Ecological Systems consists of thirteen chapters that address the ethical issues raised by technological intervention and design across a broad range of biological and ecological systems. Among the technologies addressed are geoengineering, human enhancement, sex selection, genetic modification, and synthetic biology.

Varro's De lingua Latina is a treasure trove of information. Of the originally twenty-five books, six have come down to us more or less complete. Among these, Books 5–7 give us many hundreds of etymologies, and Books 8–10 discuss the question whether Latin morphology is regular or not. What Varro rarely comments on is sociolinguistic variation. The sociolinguistic comments in Varro's work can almost be counted on one hand. For instance, in 5.162 Varro remarks that cenaculum, from cena ‘dinner’, means (...) ‘attic’ in Roman Latin, but that the original meaning was, as one might expect, ‘dining-room’, a meaning preserved in the non-Roman dialects of Latium, Falerii and Corduba in Spain; the meaning also lives on in religious uses in Lanuvium. In 7.96, Varro tells us that some words are pronounced with -ae- by some, but with -ē- by others. We know that non-Roman varieties of Latin monophthongized -ae- earlier than the Roman dialect did. Varro mentions pairs like scaena / scēna ‘stage’, a loan from Greek σκηνή, which shows that -ae- is hypercorrect here. Interestingly, only in one such pair is the variant with -ē- ascribed to country people, in the name Maesius / Mēsius, and this is indeed the only pair where the diphthong -ae- is original rather than the result of hypercorrection. (shrink)

For the epic journey of autumn migration, long-distance migratory birds use innate and learned information and follow strict schedules imposed by genetic and epigenetic mechanisms, the details of which remain largely unknown. In addition, bird migration requires integrated action of different multisensory systems for learning and memory, and the hippocampus appears to be the integration center for this task. In previous studies we found that contrasting long-distance migratory flights differentially affected the morphological complexity of two types of hippocampus astrocytes. Recently, (...) a significant association was found between the latitude of the reproductive site and the size of the ADCYAP1 allele in long distance migratory birds. We tested for correlations between astrocyte morphological complexity, migratory distances, and size of the ADCYAP1 allele in three long-distance migrant species of shorebird and one non-migrant. Significant differences among species were found in the number and morphological complexity of the astrocytes, as well as in the size of the microsatellites of the ADCYAP1 gene. We found significant associations between the size of the ADCYAP1 microsatellites, the migratory distances, and the degree of morphological complexity of the astrocytes. We suggest that associations between astrocyte number and morphological complexity, ADCYAP1 microsatellite size, and migratory behavior may be part of the adaptive response to the migratory process of shorebirds. (shrink)

O presente artigo apresenta como intuito primordial a promoção de uma análise acerca das relações entre o naturalismo filosófico de Hume e a sua oposição ao ceticismo radical, estabelecendo, nesse sentido, uma vinculação entre as teses naturalistas do autor em questão e a sua argumentação em prol do ceticismo moderado. A dissertação, num primeiro momento, abordará sobre os elementos centrais da chamada “geografia mental”, proposta por David Hume na primeira seção de seu livro Investigação sobre o entendimento Humano. Além (...) disso, será destacado o esforço do pensador na utilização do método experimental para a elaboração de uma nova ciência da natureza humana, ressaltando os princípios da natureza humana nas condições de percepção e conhecimento. O texto dissertativo realizará uma elucidação dos principais conceitos do empirismo do autor escocês, tais como: o hábito, a formação da crença, o papel da experiência nas inferências causais e a negação da razão como fundamento do conhecimento. Sob essa perspectiva, a construção dissertativa estabelecerá uma defesa da vinculação de David Hume ao “ceticismo COMPLEXITAS REVISTA DE FILOSOFIA TEMÁTICA – ISSN: 2525-4154 – QUALIS B3. Ed. 2022, V7, n 02. p. 01-16. 2 mitigado” em razão do naturalismo presente em sua obra, isto é, da compreensão segundo a qual os princípios da natureza atuam na percepção humana, orientando os indivíduos em sua postura de adoção de crenças e “verdades provisórias” como fundamentos de suas condutas. Fundamentado sob a metodologia de abordagem dedutiva, o presente trabalho foi construído com a utilização de fontes bibliográficas. (shrink)

Não apenas uma vez Nietzsche escreve que o mundo, junto com tudo que nele há, é tão somente vontade de poder. Por meio dessa teoria ele pensa os diversos níveis da existência, indo desde elementos ínfimos e simples até estruturas complexas, com elevado grau de refinamento. Tudo não passa, segundo esse filósofo, do desenrolar de forças em jogo agonístico por um algo a mais de poder. Neste artigo nós analisamos alguns aspectos da teoria da vontade de poder para mostrar como (...) Nietzsche faz uso de um mesmo arranjo conceitual para qualificar toda a existência. Assim, tanto o microscópico quanto o macroscópico, tanto o orgânico quanto o inorgânico, são tomados como exemplos de entes que, não obstante suas diferenças, são todos vontades de poder. (shrink)

This study aims to describe social network and social participation and to assess associations with depressive symptoms in older persons with increased risk for dementia in Germany. We conducted a cross-sectional observational study in primary care patients (aged 60-77) as part of a multicenter cluster-randomized controlled trial (AgeWell.de). We present descriptive and multivariate analyses for social networks (Lubben Social Network Scale and subscales) and social participation (item list of social activities) and analyze associations of these variables with depressive symptoms (Geriatric (...) Depression Scale). Of 1030 included patients, 17.2% were at risk for social isolation (Lubben Social Network Scale < 12). Looking at the subscales, a reduced non-family network was found almost twice as often as a reduced family network. Patients with depressive symptoms had significantly smaller social networks than patients without depression (p < 0.001). They rather engaged in social activities of low involvement level or no weekly social activity at all (p < 0.001). The study shows associations of depressive symptoms with a decreased social network and less social participation in elderly participants. Sufficient non-family contacts and weekly social activities seem to play an important role in mental health and should be encouraged in elderly primary care patients. (shrink)

This paper attempts to develop a projectivistic understanding of chance or objective probability or partial determination. It does so by critically examining David Lewis’ philosophy of probability and his defense of Humean Supervenience, building thereupon the constructive projectivistic alternative, which will basically be a suitable reinterpretation of de Finetti’s position. Any treatment of the topic must show how it extends to natural necessity or deterministic laws or full determination in perfect parallel. The paper indicates at the end how this (...) demand can be met. (shrink)

Diese Biographie BERKELEYS beansprucht nicht, eine umfassende Darstellung aller Aspekte dieser faszinierenden Personlichkeit und des zugehorigen Werkes zu geben, sondern betont bewuGt die Seiten, die geeignet sind, das Verstiindnis seiner Beitriige zur Entwicklung der Wissenschaften im 18. lahrhundert zu fordern. Dabei wurde der Schwerpunkt auf die Diskussionen iiber die Grundlagen der Mathe­ matik gelegt. Die folgende Darstellung unterstreicht also gerade die Ziige BERKELEYS, die in den anderen Darstellungen nur beiliiufig behandelt werden, wenn man sie nicht ganz vernachliissigt. Vor allem im (...) deutschsprachigen Raum wurde BERKELEY immer wieder unter­ schiitzt oder miBachtet 1. Wiihrend der Vorbereitung zu diesem Buch erschien eine aus­ gezeichnete BERKELEY -Monographie von AREND K ULENKAMPFF 2. Leser, die sHirker an der Philosophie BERKELEYS interessiert sind, seien auf diese Schrift verwiesen. Ob es mehr als ein gliicklicher Zufall ist, daG innerhalb so kurzer Zeit nach fUnfzig lahren Pause gleich zwei deutschsprachige Biicher iiber BERKELEY erscheinen, wird sich in der Zukunft zeigen. Die Ubersetzungen der Zitate und der Texte im Teil III stam­ men, wenn nicht anders angegeben, von mir. Ich danke allen, die an der Entstehung dieses Buches direkt oder indirekt mitgewirkt haben, insbesondere DAVID BERMAN (Dub­ lin) und RAYMOND W. HOUGHTON (Dublin), die mir in so entgegen­ kommender Weise das Bildmaterial ihres Buches Images zur VerfU­ gung stellten und mir mit Informationen behilflich waren, und B. P. (shrink)

The therapeutic misconception has been seen as presenting an ethical problem because failure to distinguish the aims of research participation from those receiving ordinary treatment may seriously undermine the informed consent of research subjects. Hence, most theoretical and empirical work on the problems of the therapeutic misconception has been directed to evaluate whether, and to what degree, this confusion invalidates the consent of subjects. We argue here that this focus on the understanding component of informed consent, while important, might be (...) too narrow to capture the ethical complexity of the therapeutic misconception. We show that concerns about misplaced trust and exploitation of such trust are also relevant, and ought to be taken into account, when considering why the therapeutic misconception matters ethically. (shrink)

Resumen La imagen de Moby Dick de Herman Melville, novela fundacional de la narrativa estadounidense, tiene su origen en las costas del sur chileno. El repertorio precedente de la obra literaria propuesto por Wolfgang Iser presenta un proceso en el que se producen diferentes versiones del mito. La novela gráfica Mocha Dick, con textos de Francisco Ortega y dibujos de Gonzalo Martínez, es una de esas versiones. La historieta chilena plantea un diálogo con los textos precedentes y propone una (...) revisión de Melville y de los orígenes de la legendaria ballena blanca.The image of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, foundational novel of the American narrative, is originated in the southern chilean sea. The repertory that precedes the literary work proposed by Wolfgang Iser presents a process in which different versions of the myth are written. The graphic novel Mocha Dick by Francisco Ortega and Gonzalo Martínez is one of these versions of the myth. The chilean comic dialogues with the previous texts and proposes a review of Melville´s and the origins of the legendary white whale. (shrink)

Recent advances in biotechnologies have led to speculations about enhancing human beings. Many of the moral arguments presented to defend human enhancement technologies have been limited to discussions of their risks and benefits. The author argues that in so far as ethical arguments focus primarily on risks and benefits of human enhancement technologies, these arguments will be insufficient to provide a robust defence of these technologies. This is so because the belief that an assessment of risks and benefits is a (...) sufficient ethical evaluation of these technologies incorrectly presupposes that risk assessments do not involve value judgements. Second, it presupposes a reductionist conception of ethics as merely a risk management instrument. Each of these assumptions separates ethical evaluation from discussion and appraisal of ends and means and thus leaves important—indeed, essential—ethical considerations out of view. Once these problematic assumptions are rejected, it becomes clear that an adequate defence of human enhancement technologies requires more than a simple balance of their risks and benefits. (shrink)

It is argued here that bioethicists might inadvertently be promoting genetic determinism: the idea that genes alone determine human traits and behaviours. Discussions about genetic testing are used to exemplify how they might be doing so. Quite often bioethicists use clinical cases to support particular moral obligations or rights as if these cases were representative of the kind of information we can acquire about human diseases through genetic testing, when they are not. On other occasions, the clinical cases are presented (...) in simplistic ways that portray genetic testing as yielding information more accurate than it actually is. It is concluded that, because of the problematic implications that the ideology of genetic determinism might have for individuals’ wellbeing and for our public policies, bioethicists should be careful to present these issues in ways that do not promote questionable ideas about the causal role of genes in human diseases and behaviours. (shrink)

Discussions about whether new biomedical technologies threaten or violate human dignity are now common. Indeed, appeals to human dignity have played a central role in national and international debates about whether to allow particular kinds of biomedical investigations. The focus of this paper is on chimera research. I argue here that both those who claim that particular types of human-nonhuman chimera research threaten human dignity and those who argue that such threat does not exist fail to make their case. I (...) first introduce some of the arguments that have been offered supporting the claim that the creation of certain sorts of chimeras threatens or violates human dignity. I next present opponents' assessments of such arguments. Finally I critically analyze both the critics' and the supporters' claims about whether chimera research threatens human dignity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to examine critically Julian Savulescu's claim that people should select, of the possible children they could have, the one who is expected to have the best life, or at least as good a life as the others, based on the relevant, available genetic information, including information about non‐disease genes. I argue here that in defending this moral obligation, Savulescu has neglected several important issues such as access to selection technologies, disproportionate burdens on women, (...) difficulties in determining what is best, problems with aggregate effects of individual choices, and questions about social justice. Taking these matters into account would call such a moral requirement into serious question. (shrink)

Current developments in biomedicine are presenting us with difficult ethical decisions and raising complex policy questions about how to regulate these new developments. Particularly vexing for governments have been issues related to human embryo experimentation. Because some of the most promising biomedical developments, such as stem cell research and nuclear somatic transfer, involve such experimentation, several international bodies have drafted documents aimed to provide guidance to governments when developing biomedical science policy. Here I focus on two such documents: the Council (...) of Europe's Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being and the Additional Protocol to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being.I argue that by using human dignity as a criterion to determine the permissibility of particular human embryo research practices, these documents cannot aid in identifying research that would be contrary to human dignity. Thus, they fail to guide public policy on embryo experimentation. Their use of human dignity as a criterion makes their task of offering guidance unfeasible because the concept as used in these documents is too vague and is applied in contradictory ways. I discuss the main goals of these documents and their claims in relation to human embryo research. I then discuss how they have influenced public policy in several countries. Finally, I show that although these Council of Europe treaties attempt to serve as public policy guides in the area of embryo research, they fail to do so. (shrink)

Because of the important benefits that biomedical research offers to humans, some have argued that people have a general moral obligation to participate in research. Although the defense of such a putative moral duty has raised controversy, few scholars, on either side of the debate, have attended to the social context in which research takes place and where such an obligation will be discharged. By reflecting on the social context in which a presumed duty to participate in research will obtain, (...) this article shows that decontextualized discussions of this putative moral obligation are problematic. (shrink)

In the range of his intellectual interests and the profundity of his mathematical thought Hermann Weyl towered above his contemporaries, many of whom viewed him with awe. This volume, the most ambitious study to date of Weyl's singular contributions to mathematics, physics, and philosophy, looks at the man and his work from a variety of perspectives, though its gaze remains fairly steadily fixed on Weyl the geometer and space‐time theorist. Structurally, the book falls into two parts, described in the general (...) introduction by the editor: Part 1 contains four essays on particular aspects of Weyl's work, highlighting ideas he developed in various editions of his classic Raum‐Zeit‐Materie. Part 2 presents a lengthy study by Robert Coleman and Herbert Korté covering nearly the whole gamut of Weyl's mathematical research, an impressive feat. Both in the introduction as well as in footnotes to the articles Erhard Scholz's editorial voice chimes in discreetly, helping tie all five studies together.Coleman and Korté begin chronologically with Weyl's early work in analysis and the modern theory of Riemann surfaces before turning to differential geometry, unified field theory, and the space problem, a topic they use as a springboard for a discussion of their own recent work on the foundations of space‐time. They then take up Weyl's shift to group representation theory and its applications to quantum mechanics, ending with his much earlier research on the structure of the continuum. All of these topics are well handled, but the authors' own agendas coupled with their penchant for overlooking chronology in order to package Weyl's work into neat little bundles leave one feeling rather stranded and far removed from the sources of Weyl's inspiration. Moreover, the narrative style makes this part of the volume read like a technical appendix, albeit a most informative one. Readers who tackle Scholz's far more contextualized essay will be amply rewarded by comparing his views with the opinions set forth by Coleman and Korté in Part 2.Scholz gives a masterful account of Weyl's intellectual journeys from 1917 to 1925 in a study that serves as a fulcrum for the entire volume. Drawing on a number of recently published studies, including his own, on the interplay between mathematics and physics inspired by Einstein's theory of general relativity, Scholz describes how Weyl responded to this challenge by developing a truly infinitesimal space‐time geometry that generalized classical Riemannian geometry. Although unconvinced by Einstein's critique of his unified field theory, Weyl shifted his focus from this realm to the classical space problem, analyzed earlier with more primitive techniques by Hermann Helmholtz and Sophus Lie. In this connection, it should be mentioned that Thomas Hawkins has given a probing analysis of Weyl's related work on the representation of Lie groups in his tour‐de‐force work, Emergence of the Theory of Lie Groups . Scholz argues that Weyl's struggle to tame his modernized version of the space problem stemmed from a deep‐seated belief in his geometrical ideas, which in turn were nourished by philosophical musings. By demonstrating the closely related conceptual links that motivated Weyl's research in infinitesimal geometry, space‐time physics, and the foundations of mathematics, Scholz nicely illuminates the underlying fabric of epistemological concerns that occupied Weyl's attention during this fertile period.The three remaining essays in Part 1 focus on other aspects of Weyl's work in mathematical physics and cosmology. Skuli Sigurdsson's “Journeys in Spacetime” offers a broad interpretation of Weyl's career, one that emphasizes Weyl's sensitivity to cultural tensions as reflected in his philosophical roots, which combined phenomenology with facets of German idealism. Shaken by the annihilation of cultural values in Nazi Germany, Weyl became deeply aware of the gulf that separated his earlier life in Göttingen and Zurich from the one he took up at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study in 1933. He tried to adapt, but felt out of place in an Anglo‐American scientific culture openly hostile toward metaphysics and speculative philosophy. Sigurdsson stresses these tensions, contrasting the introspective, creative individual against the backdrop of the collective in the age of the machine, but without spelling out which collective were most important for him. Wolfgang Pauli thought he knew and, like Einstein before him, he had no compunction about bluntly telling Weyl he was a mathematician, not a physicist.Pauli's opinions notwithstanding, Weyl did far more than just dabble around the mathematical edges of the new physics. If Coleman and Korté perhaps press their case for his visionary accomplishments too far, Norbert Straumann's essay “Ursprünge der Eichtheorien” suggests why Weyl's reputation among physicists has risen steadily ever since the advent of Yang‐Mills theory in the 1950s. In the course of describing Weyl's adaptation of his gauge transformation formalism to Dirac's electron theory, Straumann sheds considerable light on Pauli's role as self‐appointed watchman guarding the disciplinary boundary that separated theoretical physics from physical mathematics . He further suggests that disciplinary jealousy was a major reason why Pauli dismissed Weyl's two‐component formalism for spinors out of hand.In the realm of cosmology, on the other hand, Weyl's work has long since passed into the dustbins of history, as Hubert Goenner remarks in recounting a fascinating chapter in the infancy of space‐time physics. While doing so, Goenner shows how initially Weyl almost slavishly adopted what Einstein called Mach's principle, which asserts that the metric structure of space‐time is solely determined by the distribution of matter in the universe. This notion was quickly challenged by Willem De Sitter, who showed that Einstein's matter‐free field equations admitted a global solution with non‐zero constant curvature. Both Einstein and Weyl tried to argue that invisible masses must be present just over the “spatial horizon” of De Sitter's world in order to account for its curvature. Goenner meticulously analyzes the physical and mathematical issues at stake in this debate, stressing how Weyl gradually moved away from a strong physical interpretation to one in which mathematics models rather than physics models simply reveal natural phenomena. He argues further that Weyl's cosmological principle arose as the final expression of his search for a deeper physical meaning.Given the quality of these essays, it is regrettable that this book contains so little about Weyl's professional career, a weakness the editor could have redressed at least partially in his general introduction. This omission is all the more unfortunate given the dearth of readily accessible information about Weyl's life available elsewhere. For however mundane his outward existence may have been, the reader cannot be expected to appreciate the interplay between the world Weyl knew and his creative responses to it without fairly detailed knowledge of his biography. Shorn from these contexts, it becomes difficult to form a flesh‐and‐blood image of Weyl beyond the cliché‐ridden stereotype that sees him as a “heroic thinker in the grand German tradition.” While none of the authors falls into this trap, the collective impression they leave suggests a most enigmatic figure. Either Weyl the man tends to get lost in the shadows of his collected scientific output or he appears as a mystic loner, an outcast who abhorred the machine age in which he lived. Closer attention to the people in his life would no doubt produce a very different picture of the man and his interests. This major lacuna notwithstanding, the present volume will surely remain an indispensable resource for any future investigations of Weyl's staggering intellectual achievements. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show that arguments for and against cloning fail to make their case because of one or both of the following reasons: 1) they take for granted customary beliefs and assumptions that are far from being unquestionable; 2) they tend to ignore the context in which human cloning is developed. I will analyze some of the assumptions underlying the main arguments that have been offered for and against cloning. Once these assumptions are critically analyzed, (...) arguments both rejecting and supporting human cloning seem to lose weight. I will first briefly present the main arguments that have been proposed against cloning and I will argue that they fail to establish their case. In the next section I will evaluate some of the positive arguments that have been offered supporting such technology. This analysis will show that the case for cloning also fails. Finally, I will maintain that because critics and especially supporters of this technology neglect the context in which human cloning is developed and might be implemented, their arguments are far from compelling. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that critics of biological explanations of human nature may be granting too much to those who propose such explanations when they argue that the truth of genetic determinism implies an end to critical evaluation and reform of our social institutions. This is the case because when we argue that biological determinism exempts us from social critique we are erroneously presupposing that our social values, practices, and institutions have nothing to do with what (...) makes biological explanations troublesome. My argument is that what constitutes a problem for those who are concerned with social justice is not the fact that particular behaviours may be genetically determined, but the fact that our value system and social institutions create the conditions that make such behaviours problematic. Thus, I will argue that even if genetic determinism were correct, the requirement of assessing and transforming our social practices and institutions would be far from superfluous. Biology is rarely destiny for human beings and the institutions they create. (shrink)

It might come as a surprise to many that Spain, a country with a strong Catholic tradition that officially banned contraceptive technologies until 1978, has some of the most liberal regulations in assisted reproduction in the world. Law No. 35/1988 was one of the first and most detailed acts of legislation undertaken on the subject of assisted-conception procedures. Indeed, not only did the law permit research on nonviable embryos, it made assisted reproductive technologies available to any woman, whether married or (...) not, through the national healthcare system. (shrink)

Recently, some have proposed moral bioenhancement as a solution to the serious moral evils that humans face. Seemingly disillusioned with traditional methods of moral education, proponents of bioenhancement believe that we should pursue and apply biotechnological means to morally enhance human beings. Such proposal has generated a lively debate about the permissibility of moral bioenhancement. We argue here that such debate is specious. The claim that moral bioenhancement is a solution - whether permissible or not - to the serious moral (...) problems that affect human beings is based on several problematic framing assumptions. We evaluate here three of such assumptions: the first rests on a contested understanding of morality, the second consist in a mistaken conception of human moral problems, and the third relates to problematic presuppositions grounding the interpretation of existent scientific evidence presented to defend moral bioenhancement. Once these framing assumptions are identified and critically evaluated, it becomes clear that the moral bioenhancement debate is misguided. (shrink)

The disclosure policies of scientific journals now require that investigators provide information about financial interests relevant to their research. The main goals of these policies are to prevent bias from occurring, to help identify bias when it occurs, and to avoid the appearance of bias. We argue here that such policies do little to help achieve these goals, and we suggest more effective alternatives.

A growing number of jurisdictions hold that gamete donors must be identifiable to the children born with their eggs or sperm, on grounds that being able to know about one's genetic origins is a fundamental moral right. But the argument for that belief has not yet been adequately made.

Many have argued that allowing and encouraging public avenues for dissent and critical evaluation of scientific research is a necessary condition for promoting the objectivity of scientific communities and advancing scientific knowledge . The history of science reveals many cases where an existing scientific consensus was later shown to be wrong . Dissent plays a crucial role in uncovering potential problems and limitations of consensus views. Thus, many have argued that scientific communities ought to increase opportunities for dissenting views to (...) be heard and taken seriously. Such opportunities are necessary for both limiting the influence .. (shrink)

Several feminist philosophers of science have argued that social and political values are compatible with, and may even enhance, scientific objectivity. A variety of normative recommendations have emerged regarding how to identify, manage, and critically evaluate social values in science. In particular, several feminist theorists have argued that scientific communities ought to: 1) include researchers with diverse experiences, interests, and values, with equal opportunity and authority to scrutinize research; 2) investigate or "study up" scientific phenomena from the perspectives, interests, and (...) conditions of marginalized stakeholders potentially affected by the research; and 3) make gender, ethnicity, class, and geographical location "visible," or use them as categories of analysis when appropriate. Yet, more work is needed to determine what exactly these recommendations would require, and the benefits they would yield, in specific research contexts. Using the recent development of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines, we examine how these three feminist recommendations would have applied. We argue that these principles would have yielded several epistemic and social benefits in the HPV case, as well as in biomedical research more generally. That is, biomedical research guided by these principles would not only be epistemically superior, but also more socially responsible. (shrink)

Although surprising to some proponents of sex selection for non-medical reasons (Dahl 2005), a considerable amount of critical debate has been raised by this practice (Blyth, Frith, and Crawshaw 2008; Dawson and Trounson 1996; Dickens 2002; Harris 2005; Heyd 2003; Holm 2004; Macklin 2010; Malpani 2002; McDougall 2005; Purdy 2007; Seavilleklein and Sherwin 2007; Steinbock 2002; Strange and Chadwick 2010; Wilkinson 2008). While abortion or infanticide has long been used as means of sex selection, a new technology—preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD)—has (...) become a highly efficient, and arguably less controversial, way of ensuring the birth of a child of a particular sex. PGD, used in combination with in vitro .. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 4, Page 14-15, April 2012.

Este artigo está inserido na área de concentração de educação intercultural, etnofilosofia e estudos de gênero, com ênfase nas pressuposições teóricas pós-identitárias advindas com os estudos queer. Assim, o presente artigo tem como objetivo geral promover um estudo histórico-descritivo sobre a efabulação e o enclausuramento do espírito “queer” na comunidade religiosa yorùbá em territorialidades nigerianas, bem como, se propõem a revistar as representações sociais dos modelos heteronormativos de depredação, de submissão e de abjeção de indivíduos de orientação sexual ou de (...) identidade sexual não heterossexual nas práticas e iniciações religiosas de sacerdócio do Ifá no Brasil. A análise que se segue busca demonstrar, através de fragmentos históricos, como se deu a construção do moralismo e da discriminação LGBTfóbica pelo cristianismo e pelo islão nas comunidades étnicas de matriz ancestral yorùbá em tempos de colonização e pós-colonização na Nigéria. Além da revisão de literatura, trabalhamos com o método de abordagem de pesquisa qualitativa sobre o DAFA - análise de documentos e análise de discursos, complementando estes com alguns nuances da pesquisa etnográfica de natureza virtual. A cultura e a matriz ancestral africana yorùbá é algo muito distante, apesar de estar, ao mesmo tempo, tão próxima, dentro da cultura religiosa afrodescendente brasileira. Muito se tem sido debatido, ressignificado, reconstruído e analisado dentro do Brasil sobre a realidade e a história da cultura africana e afrodescendente. Todavia, este artigo demonstra a possibilidade de reinventarmos o que ainda não foi pensado, de quebrarmos as nossas próprias barreiras e de nos aproximarmos, nós afrodescendentes, de nossas origens, de nossa cultura griot, de nossas pretagogias, de nossos Arché, de nosso Àşé, ou seja, de toda uma cosmovisão que nos separam do espírito da pureza, e respectivamente, que nos distanciam de Eèlà. (shrink)