Both the production of knowledge and the product, knowledge itself, are social phenomena. This generally accepted fact is generally thought to require relativism, scepticism, and Kuhnian incommensurability, as well as casting serious doubt on the potential of our cognitive traditions to provide us with objective knowledge about an objective world. This thesis exposes and critiques the presuppositions about the nature of reasoning and objectivity which underlie these fears. Combining a Nietzschean, perspectivist account of objectivity with a conception of reasoning drawn (...) from Lockean epistemology and pedagogy, I build a new account of cognitive optimality, dubbed 'Linkmaking'. The phrase deliberately encompasses several meanings. We 'make links' by noticing connections between objects in the world, by linking ideas together to form a theory or a curriculum; by forming social connections, and by developing interdisciplinary practices. I defend the view that we cannot fully address any of these kinds of Link without reference to all of the others. I further show that out best means to critically assess our cognitive groups is to evaluate the extent to which those groups encourage Linkmaking practices. The major potential challenge to Linkmaking is Kuhnian incommensurability. Having demonstrated the flaws inherent in Kuhn's account, this thesis defends the weaker, Doppeltian form of incommensurability, which grants us insight into the genuine problems which can occur in interdisciplinary research. We then see that the Strong Programme in the sociology of knowledge, inspired by the strong, relativistic version of the Kuhnian incommensurability thesis, has held sway among sociologists because they do not generally study interdisciplinary practices, which highlight scientists' objectivity. Furthermore, social scientists who accept Kuhnian constructivism doubt their own potential for objectivity, presuming the presence of strong incommensurability where there is none. Undertaking Linkmaking practices both cures this illusion, and improves the cognitive optimality of the group. (shrink)

Locke's reputation as a sceptic regarding testimony, and the resultant mockery by epistemologists with social inclinations, is well known. In particular Michael Welbourne, in his article ‘The Community of Knowledge’ (1981), depicts Lockean epistemology as fundamentally opposed to a social conception of knowledge, claiming that he ‘could not even conceive of the possibility of a community of knowledge’. This interpretation of Locke is flawed. Whilst Locke does not grant the honorific ‘knowledge’ to anything short of certainty, he nonetheless held what (...) we would call ‘testimonial knowledge’ in appropriate esteem. This can be shown by his careful distinction between testimony and mere received opinion. Furthermore, this distinction is dependent upon a knowledge community which enables hearers of testimony to access alternative accounts. In view of this, we can consider Locke's Conduct of the Understanding in a new light. Dedicated to the autodidact adult, The Conduct directs the learner to reason clearly and well. One goal is to render adult students capable of assessing testimony. The advice given is social in nature. The student must not limit his study to ‘one sort of men or one sort of books’. Otherwise, he faces the sort of cognitive isolation which would render him a mere receiver of opinion. The picture of Locke that emerges is not that of a dyed-in-the-wool sceptic regarding testimonial knowledge, but of a philosopher who formed an embryonic social epistemology embedded within a programme of adult education. (shrink)

Genomic screening at population scale generates many ethical considerations. One is the normative role that people’s preferences should play in determining access to genomic information in screening contexts, particularly information that falls beyond the scope of screening. We expect both that people will express a preference to receive such results and that there will be interest from the professional community in providing them. In this paper, we consider this issue in relation to the just and equitable design of population screening (...) programs like reproductive genetic carrier screening (RGCS). Drawing on a pluralistic public health ethics perspective, we claim that generating and reporting information about genetic variants beyond the scope of the screening program usually lacks clinical, and perhaps personal, utility. There are both pragmatic and ethical reasons to restrict information provision to that which fits the stated purpose of the program. (shrink)

Increased attention paid to inter-group genetic variability following completion of the Human Genome Project has provoked debate about race as a category of classification in biomedicine and as a biological phenomenon at the level of the genome. Philosophers of science favor a metaphysical approach relying on natural kind theorizing, the underlying assumptions of which structure the questions asked. Limitations arise the more metaphysically invested and less attuned to scientific practice these questions are. Other questions—arguably, those that matter most socially and (...) politically—remain unasked, not merely overlooked but systematically ignored and even foreclosed. Race fails as a postulated natural kind because it fails to meet expectations that as a category of classification it furnish an authoritative taxonomy that by depicting fundamental divisions in nature is conducive to fulfilling far-ranging explanatory aims. Racial, ethnic, and other group designations may nonetheless be projectible insofar as they support inductive inferences in biomedicine, but this does not render them any less social. Indeed, the statistical, contingent, accidental, localized, and interest-relative bases of such inferences serve to undercut the dichotomizing of race as either biological reality or social construct and favor the adoption of a pragmatic approach. (shrink)

Nurses and other medical practitioners often experience moral distress: they feel an anguished sense of responsibility for what they take to be their own moral failures, even when those failures were unavoidable. However, in such cases other people do not tend to think it is right to hold them responsible. This is an interesting mismatch of reactions. It might seem that the mismatch should be remedied by assuring the practitioner that they are not responsible, but I argue that this denies (...) something important that the phenomenon of moral distress tells us. In fact, both the practitioners’ tendencies to hold themselves responsible and other people’s reluctance to hold the practitioners responsible get something right. The practitioners may be right that they are responsible in the sense of having failed to meet a binding moral requirement, even when the requirement was impossible to meet. This makes moral distress a fitting response because it correctly represents their own action as a wrongdoing. However, others may meanwhile be right that the practitioners are not responsible in the sense of being culpable and blameworthy. To blame others, or oneself, for certain failures, including those that are unavoidable, would be unfair. My claim depends on distinguishing between the fittingness and the fairness of holding someone (including oneself) responsible for moral failure. Having drawn the distinction, I suggest that moral distress should be addressed in a way that both recognizes it as a fitting response and avoids the unfairness of blame. (shrink)

This study investigated the knowledge of academic integrity and associated emotions of a small sample of international students studying at Canadian postsecondary institutions using survey methodology. Depending on the survey item, 25–60 participants provided responses. Many respondents appeared knowledgeable about academic integrity and misconduct and reported that expectations in their home countries and in Canada were similar. There was, however, disagreement on the concept of duplicate submission/self-plagiarism, indicating an important gap in educating students about specific aspects of policy in postsecondary (...) education in Canada. In addition, more than a third of respondents provided neutral responses to a situation involving contract cheating, suggesting a lack of certainty in how to respond when witnessing peers’ engagement in outsourcing academic work. Many respondents reported feeling confident upon reading the academic integrity and misconduct policies of their Canadian postsecondary institution, although nearly one third indicated feeling fearful, anxious, and/or confused. These negative feelings were associated with reduced knowledge of academic integrity and misconduct. Future research should further explore the experiences and emotions of international students related to academic integrity and misconduct to better understand the successes and challenges that they face in their postsecondary studies in Canada. Our findings have important implications for the delivery of academic integrity education, enhancing supports and resources, and refining academic integrity policies and procedures to improve the experience of students who come from abroad to study in Canada. (shrink)

This paper questions the prevailing historical understanding that scientific racism “retreated” in the 1950s when anthropology adopted the concepts and methods of population genetics and race was recognized to be a social construct and replaced by the concept of population. More accurately, a “populational” concept of race was substituted for a “typological one”—this is demonstrated by looking at the work of Theodosius Dobzhansky circa 1950. The potential for contemporary research in human population genetics to contribute to racism needs to be (...) considered with respect to the ability of the typological-population distinction to arbitrate boundaries between racist society and nonracist, even anti-racist, science. I point out some ethical limits of “population thinking” in doing so. (shrink)

Drawing on a conception of people as ‘ecological subjects’, creatures situated in specific social relations, locations, and material environments, I want to emphasize the importance of place and place‐making for basing, demonstrating, and forging future solidarity. Solidarity, as I will define it here, involves reaching out through moral imagination and responsive action across social and/or geographic distance and asymmetry to assist other people who are vulnerable, and to advance justice. Contained in the practice of solidarity are two core ‘enacted commitments’, (...) first, to engaging our moral imaginations and recognizing others in need and, second, to responsive action. Recognizing the suffering of displacement and responding through place‐making should follow from even the most simplistic understanding of people as ‘implaced’. Recognition, furthermore, that places are created and sustained, transformed, or neglected in ways that foster or perpetuate inequities, including health inequities, generates responsibilities concerning place‐making. Place‐based interventions, on either count, should be principal and, indeed, prioritized ways of showing solidarity for the vulnerable and promoting justice. Where solidaristic relations do not prevail, place‐making can catalyze and nurture them, and over time advance justice. On the moral landscapes of bioethics, the terrain where care and health are or should be at the center of attention, an ethic of place and place‐making for those who have been displaced – patients, the elderly, urban populations, and asylum‐seekers, for instance – expresses and has rich potential for nurturing bonds of solidarity. (shrink)

The prominent place of corpuscularian mechanism in Locke's Essay is nowadays universally acknowledged. Certainly, Locke's discussions of the primary/secondary quality distinction and of real essences cannot be understood without reference to the corpuscularian science of his day, which held that all macroscopic bodily phenomena should be explained in terms of the motions and impacts of submicroscopic particles, or corpuscles, each of which can be fully characterized in terms of a strictly limited range of properties: size, shape, motion, and, perhaps, solidity (...) or impenetrability. Indeed, Locke's lists of primary qualities are quite consistent with those found in the work of his friend Robert Boyle, a prominent defender of the corpuscularian program; his real essences of substances appear to be corpuscular constitutions, arrangements of particles. (shrink)

The Football Association has been under pressure to allow girls to play in mixed teams since 1978, following 12-year old Theresa Bennett’s application to play with boys in a local league. In 1991, over a decade after Bennett’s legal challenge, the FA agreed to remove its ban on mixed football and introduced Rule C4 in order to permit males and females to play together in competitive matches under the age of 11. More recently, following a campaign by parents, coaches, local (...) Members of Parliament and the Women’s Sport Foundation, the FA agreed to trial mixed football for the under-12 to under-15 age categories in order to establish, among other things, the risk of injury to players in sex-integrated competitions. A series of exponential changes ensued: between 2010 and 2014, the age at which mixed football was permitted increased from U11 to U16. In 2015, the FA announced the decision to raise the age limit on mixed football from U16 to U18 for the forthcoming 2015–2016 season. We critically examine th... (shrink)

Despite increased interest in “intuition” within cognitive psychology, the conceptual framework of this notion remains problematic. This paper argues that conceptual shortcomings stem from a tendency to ignore the philosophical heritage of intuition or to dismiss the relevance of this heritage to contemporary theory. The paper outlines major understandings of intuition within psychology and prominent philosophical traditions, highlighting important points of inconsistency in these and examining consequences of the inconsistency. It also considers psychological conceptions of intuition that more readily overlap (...) with philosophical accounts and offers some suggestions toward a more philosophically informed notion of intuition relevant to contemporary psychological theory. (shrink)

Procrastination is a chronic and widespread problem; however, emerging work raises questions regarding the strength of the relationship between self-reported procrastination and behavioral measures of task engagement. This study assessed the internal reliability, concurrent validity, predictive validity, and psychometric properties of 10 self-report procrastination assessments using responses collected from 242 students. Participants’ scores on each self-report instrument were compared to each other using correlations and cluster analysis. Lasso estimation was used to test the self-report scores’ ability to predict two behavioral (...) measures of delay. The self-report instruments exhibited strong internal reliability and moderate levels of concurrent validity. Some self-report measures were predictive of days to study completion. No self-report measures were predictive of deadline action pacing, the pacing style most commonly associated with procrastination. Many of the self-report measures of procrastination exhibited poor fit. These results suggest that researchers should exercise caution in selecting self-report measures and that further study is necessary to determine the factors that drive misalignment between self-reports and behavioral measures of delay. (shrink)

In this article the increasing significance of Bourdieu’s social theory is mapped in recent sociological accounts of gender in late-modern societies. What is highlighted in particular is the influence of Bourdieu’s social theory, and especially his arguments regarding critical reflexivity and social transformation, on a specific thesis which is common to a number of contemporary feminist accounts of gender transformations in late modernity. Here it is suggested that in late modernity there is a lack of fit between habitus and field (...) in certain public spheres of action via an increasing transposition or movement of the feminine habitus from private to public spheres, which is linked to a heightened critical reflexivity vis-à-vis gender and to detraditionalization. In this article, however, a number of limits regarding this line of argument are highlighted, especially those flowing from the unproblematic coupling of reflexivity with detraditionalization. This exploration in turn leads to a critical discussion of Bourdieu’s ideas regarding social transformation. In particular it is asked why, when thinking about social transformation, does Bourdieu abandon his own principles regarding practice? (shrink)

In this article, I discuss how the space of the classroom is a contested object that is constituted by historical, cultural, political, social, psychological, and discursive practices (Lefebvre in The production of space, Blackwell, Oxford, UK, 1991). I then employ Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of “assemblage” to characterize the ways in which educational spaces cohere “content and affect” quoted in Puar (Terrorist assemblages: Homonationalism in queer times, Duke University Press, Durham, 2007, 193) into discursive figures of the heteronormative and racialized (...) national “family.” Finally, I argue that in order to advance contemporary theorizing on safe space we might consider shifting the metaphor of the classroom (and/or schooling) as a situation of home (in loco parentis) to that of a metaphor of camp. As a discursive practice, “camp” is like “home” in that it has multiple associations of past histories. However, the advantage of the metaphor of classroom as camp allows for a more capacious range of past histories of association, from recreation to temporary inhabitation to forced relocation, thus foregrounding the innate political implications of theorizing space. Moreover, the metaphor of camp implies transience (whether real or imaginary) while keeping in mind the partial and situated nature of particular places and spaces. Foregrounding the transient component/feature of safe space allows us to make visible and explore the possibilities and limitations of conceptualizing relations of power as circuitous, contested and performative through competing claims to particular places as objects of safety. (shrink)

This paper illustrates a role that bioethics should play in developing and criticizing protocols for breast cancer genetic screening. It demonstrates how a critical bioethics, using approaches and reflecting concerns of contemporary philosophy of science and science studies, may critically interrogate the normative and conceptual schemes within which ethical considerations about such screening protocols are framed. By exploring various factors that influence the development of such protocols, including politics, cultural norms, and conceptions of disease, this paper and the critical bioethics' (...) approach it endorses illuminate and critically assess some of the competing worldviews informing protocol development. One of the frequently neglected worldviews in traditional bioethics' treatment of protocols concerning breast care is constituted by women's own views of their breasts and breast cancer, both within the technologically-oriented social practice of American medicine and in light of the social construction of their breasted experience in American society. This paper attempts to redress and critically assess this neglect on the part of traditional bioethics. Finally, in contrast to traditional bioethics, critical bioethics critically interrogates its own normative and conceptual commitments. In this final capacity, a critical bioethics' approach makes a valuable contribution to the evolution of bioethics. (shrink)

People increasingly access news through ‘new’, algorithmic intermediaries such as search engines or aggregators rather than the ‘old’ (i. e., traditional), journalistic intermediaries. As algorithmic intermediaries do not adhere to journalistic standards, their trustworthiness comes into question. With this study, we (1) summarize the differences between journalistic and algorithmic intermediaries as found in previous literature; (2) conduct a cross-media comparison of information credibility and intermediary trustworthiness; and (3) examine how key predictors (such as modality, reputation, source attribution, and prior experience) (...) affect the trustworthiness and credibility assessments. Results from a quasi-experimental online survey (n = 485) confirm that recipients assess journalistic intermediaries more positively than algorithmic intermediaries and audio more positively than text intermediaries. Furthermore, we found reputation and information credibility to be the most important predictors of intermediary trustworthiness, while general media trust is the most important predictor of information credibility. Implications and directions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

Drees makes a strong case for the importance of the humanities in the university, providing an excellent resource for anyone in the Western Academy. Its usefulness for those who want to work outside the West is limited, however, because he does not engage with literature that challenges its methods and disciplines. If we are to have a positive global impact, we need to do more than clarify existing boundaries, we need to blur them, beginning with an examination of inherent biases (...) reflected in its history, structure, and content. This article focuses on one critique, a decolonial critique of the Western view that ontology precedes epistemology (an external reality produces knowledge). Outside the modern Western Academy, epistemologies create ontologies (epistemic creations/stories about the world give us a sense of the world and its materiality). I describe a relational understanding of knowledge and how this changes our understanding of the humanities and our epistemic responsibilities. (shrink)

Within the health care industry, the move from regulatory cost controls to market competition has generated rapid and dramatic restructuring of providers. To enhance their competitive positions in the evolving market, many health care organizations are pursuing the ownership and integration of all elements and stages of health care delivery and payment, with the goal of increasing access to capital and lowering costs through administrative efficiencies and economies of scale. As of July 1994, 24 percent of hospitals were members of (...) an integrated delivery system, and 47 percent were involved in IDS development.IDSs pose a singular challenge to the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS recognizes that its traditional policies for granting tax exempt status are not flexible enough for the competitive and rapidly changing health care market. In recent years, the IRS has taken a more active role in scrutinizing emerging health care institutions seeking taxexempt status. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 19 Heft: 1 Seiten: 91-106.

This paper is an intervention within feminist and queer debates that have re-posed so-called negative states of being as offering productive possibilities for political practice and social transformation. What is sometimes called the politics of negative affect or analyses of political feeling has sought to de-pathologise shame, melancholy, failure, depression, anxieties and other forms of ‘feeling bad’, to open up new ways of thinking about agency, change and transformation. Ann Cvetkovich's recent memoir explores depression as a public feeling and argues (...) that ‘feeling bad might, in fact, be the ground for transformation’. As she suggests, the question, ‘how do I feel’ could usefully be reframed as ‘how does capitalism feel’? This performative staging of political forms of psychosocial reflexivity opens up new strategies for survival, new visions of the future, and importantly de-medicalises feeling beyond an individual expression of psychopathology. The grounds for affective politics might be found within new feminist futures that are attentive to the relations between emotion, affect, feelings and politics. This paper will be situated within these debates and the challenge of thinking about the productive possibilities of negative states of being. However, rather than focus on depression, I will turn my attention to experiences such as psychosis and temporal dissociation, based on my long-standing research with the Hearing Voices Network. In the context of discussions of disability and capability I will discuss the value of concepts such as debility, and ‘living in prognosis’, and respond to the call to think through what such states might offer for feminist and queer practice. (shrink)

Das Bose ist die zentrale Herausforderung fur das Denken der Freiheit. Die vorliegende Studie rekonstruiert historisch versiert den Problemzusammenhang von Freiheit und Notwendigkeit im Deutschen Idealismus und prazisiert den systematischen Losungsansatz Schellings um das Jahr 1809. Diese Neuinterpretation der Freiheitsschrift berucksichtigt auch die theologischen Fragen und die im Hintergrund wirksame Tradition des (Neu-)Platonismus.

In 2014, the first child in the world was born after live uterus transplantation and IVF (UTx-IVF). Before and after this event, ethical aspects of UTx-IVF have been discussed in the medical and bioethical debate as well as, with varying intensity, in Swedish media and political fora. This article examines what comes to be identified as important ethical problems and solutions in the media debate of UTx-IVF in Sweden, showing specifically how problems, target groups, goals, benefits, risks and stakes are (...) delineated and positioned. It also demonstrates how specific assumptions, norms and values are expressed and used to underpin specific positions within this debate, and how certain subjects, desires and risks become shrouded or simply omitted from it. This approach—which we label the Ethics of the Societal Entrenchment-approach, inspired by Koch and Stemerding (1994)—allows us to discuss how the identification of something as the problem helps to shape what gets to be described as a solution, and how specific solutions provide frameworks within which problems can be stated and emphasised. We also offer a critical discussion of whether some of these articulations and formations should be seen as ethically troubling, and if so, why. (shrink)

In “Bourdieusian reflections on language: Unavoidable conditions of the real speech situation”, Simon Susen proposes that Bourdieu’s account of language is based on a number of ontological presuppositions. While the extensive commentary on Bourdieu’s analysis of language tends to bracket these assumptions—not least because of an enduring attachment to the “sociological Bourdieu”—Susen insists that a recognition of the ontological features of language is consistent with Bourdieu’s own writings. While Susen’s ontological retrieval may be controversial, especially to those attached to the (...) “sociological Bourdieu”, in this reply I suggest that in “Bourdieusian reflections on language” we find something more interesting than any such controversy. Specifically, Susen’s ontological retrieval opens out Bourdieu’s oeuvre to currents in the social sciences which question the limits of the sociology of the social in the context of an increasingly ontological life. In this reply, I ask how Susen’s “ontological Bourdieu” fares in a dialogue with this body of work. (shrink)

The author of this paper discusses why the issue of financial conflicts of interest in psychiatry has important public health implications for women and why FCOI complicate the informed consent process. For example, when psychiatric diagnostic and treatment guidelines are unduly influenced by industry, informed consent becomes a critical issue, because women may be assigned diagnostic labels that are not valid and may also be receiving imbalanced or even inaccurate information about their mental health treatment options. However, mere disclosure of (...) industry relationships is an insufficient solution. Following Ells, the author offers a more robust account of autonomy, inspired by Foucault, to strengthen informed consent practices. In addition to addressing power relations, this Foucauldian account of autonomy emphasizes the relational and dialogical aspect of the physician–patient relationship. (shrink)

Popular interest in the topic of food has exploded in the past decade. Due in part to books by Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, and Eric Schlosser and films such as Food, Inc., Super Size Me, and Forks over Knives, people are starting to think critically about where their food originates, how it is processed, and how their consumption choices affect the environment, nonhuman animals, and other people. At the same time, there is rising concern about the dangers of obesity. Although (...) the voices raising these concerns are by no means monolithic, one of the most common solutions offered to various food-related issues is the suggestion that people educate themselves and make.. (shrink)

Movement of leukocytes from peripheral blood into tissues, also called leukocyte extravasation, is absolutely essential for immunity in higher organisms. Over the past decade, our understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in white blood cell extravasation during both normal immune surveillance and the generation of protective immune responses has taken a great leap forward with the discovery of the chemokine gene superfamily. Chemokines are low-molecular-weight cytokines whose major collective biological activity appears to be that of chemotaxis of both specific and (...) overlapping subsets of leukocytes. They are therefore likely to play a critical role in the directed movement of leukocytes from the bloodstream into tissue. These molecules are almost exclusively secreted and act as extracellular messengers for the immune system. However, emerging data also show that various members of the chemokine gene superfamily exert other biological effects outside the immune system. All nucleated cells and all tissues examined to date are capable of expressing at least some chemokines, and it seems likely therefore that by the time all the chemokines are identified, and all their biological functions elucidated, we will find that, as a family, these molecules perform an extracellular messenger role in all tissues and systems of the body. BioEssays 1999;21:17–28. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

This paper explores two apparently-unrelated forms of authenticity. One, “restaurant authenticity,” is a subcategory of the larger category of authentic objects, focused specifically on food and especially on ethnic cuisines. “Personal authenticity” refers to a set of traits or qualities in oneself. Contrary to appearances, I argue that the two forms of authenticity intertwine in ways that merit thoughtful attentiveness. I suggest that approaching the question of the authenticity of a cuisine with an attitude of flexibility and responsiveness can, in (...) turn, constitute an activity that cultivates personal authenticity, understood as “wholehearted living.” As Diana Meyers might put it, it is itself a practice of authenticity. (shrink)

This paper extends the sensibilities of the Gilligan-Kohlberg debate into classical political economy and makes links with modern psychotherapeutics and the psychological development of individuals. The model of moral maturity represented in contemporary psychological theories is posited as the direct descendant, not only of Immanuel Kant, as is generally argued, but also of the universal, homogenous agent of classical economics; the ‘rational economic man’ representedin the writings of Adam Smith and J. S. Mill. Both thinkers lent their support to the (...) creation of an order which produces (masculine) actors who are ’rational’ self-governing, separative, competitive, self-asserting, self-interested, acquisitive, pecuniary and driven to success by a desire for the social recognition afforded by consumerism; the same order which typically designates women moral failures and which renders them largely invisible. Liberalism generates conditions which enable it to sustain and reproduce itself at the psychic level. The assumption of the market as the paradigmatic social interaction and its status as the analytical and moral starting point in liberal capitalism infects the putatively private domain of ‘self-governance’ and contemporary psychotherapeutics; the development and management of the self in contemporary culture is a direct reflection of the imperatives and assumptions of market society. The separative self is the ‘healthy’ self, hence the parallel emphasis in modern therapy on ‘individuation’ as the highest level of psychological evolvement. Gilligan’s ‘care ethic’ is approached with some scepticism, nevertheless, her critique of Kohlberg guides us towards a more comprehensive critique of the ‘pneumatic’ and political assumptions of liberalism. (shrink)

We describe our efforts to address theoretical opportunities and methodological challenges that arose in the context of our ethnographic investigation of research labs in four different fields of bioengineering science. The multiyear study compared the common and specific features of four sites of interdisciplinary practice and aimed to analyze personal and collective goals, problem formulations, methods, technologies, and social organization within each lab. In the second phase of the study we sought to inform curriculum development for biomedical engineering from the (...) ethnographic study, with the broader goal of positioning students to engage in the kind of thinking scientists actually do. Evaluating thinking in action posed considerable challenges, and required us to develop an approach to assessing the extent to which students enrolled in the new course were “thinking like a biomedical engineer.” Our principal point of emphasis for this chapter is that honest confrontation of the challenges of ethnographic study of science practice must lead to caution, yet that ethnographic study of science enables innovative adaptations of methods and can yield vital insights into psychological dimensions of science, including interdisciplinary science. (shrink)

Lucretia Mott is widely recognized as a moral and spiritual leader in the abolitionist and early women’s rights movements. She has been characterized as a disciple of William Lloyd Garrison, a proliferator of Mary Wollstonecraft’s ideas, and a religious promoter of human rights whose efforts were surpassed by the theoretically sophisticated and politically astute Elizabeth Cady Stanton. These portrayals paradoxically elevate Mott’s status while understating the originality of her views. This analysis examines Mott’s speeches and writings in detail and finds (...) that her unique theoretical contributions are shaped by a combination of elements: a radically anti-dogmatic worldview rooted in her progressive religious faith, an unwavering commitment to autonomy for all people, and an egalitarian conception of power. Careful study of Mott’s work reveals a compelling alternative viewpoint in the early women’s rights and abolitionist movements and provides important insight into the philosophical roots of contemporary feminism and pacifism. (shrink)

Over the past decade, Convergence Research has increasingly gained prominence as a research, development, and innovation (RDI) strategy to address grand societal challenges. However, a dearth of research-based evidence is available to aid researchers, research teams, and institutions with navigating the complexities attendant to the specifics of Convergence Research. This paper presents a multilevel research agenda that accounts for an integral understanding of Convergence Research as a complex adaptive system. Furthermore, by developing a framework that accounts for ancillary, yet essential, (...) systems associated with Convergence Research, we enrich the agenda with a literature-steeped discussion that considers how systems-based practices of collaboration, inquiry, and context interact with the processes and products of Convergence Research. Finally, we synthesize and apply insights from the reviewed literature by providing paths for empirical exploration emphasizing systems-based practices. In so doing, we delineate an extended boundary for a research stream that both clarifies and enlarges our understanding of Convergence Research as a ‘system-of-systems’. (shrink)

A set of science‐inspired cosmic narratives referred to as the Epic of Evolution and the Universe Story or, collectively, the new cosmology, proposes to bring humans closer to nature by placing us into the broader narrative of the cosmos. This article responds to commentary and critique on my book Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World, which critically examines these science‐based cosmic narratives and their particular and problematic modes and objects of wonder. Themes include the relationship of wonder to (...) science and ethical engagement; the question of whether wonder, grounded in everyday sensory experience, can scale up to the level of global environmental problems; the relevance of wonder to nonideal environments and negative affects like fear or grief; and the importance of humanistic and religious studies scholarship for critiquing grand narratives of science, among other themes. I also respond to claims that my book misdiagnoses and distorts the work of the new cosmology and its claims to wonder. (shrink)

Although the category “race” fails as a postulated natural kind, racial, ethnic, national, linguistic, religious, and other group designations might nonetheless be considered projectible insofar as they support inductive inferences in biomedicine. This article investigates what it might mean for group concepts in population genetics and genomics to be projectible and whether the projectibility of such predicates licenses the representation of their corresponding classes as natural kinds according to currently prevailing projectibility-based accounts of natural kinds. The article draws on a (...) case study from cancer genetics, specifically, breast cancer risk in Ashkenazi Jewish women. (shrink)

Lindquist et al. argue that emotional categories do not map onto distinct regions within the brain, but rather, arise from basic psychological processes, including conceptualization, executive attention, and core affect. Here, we use examples from cultural neuroscience to argue that psychological constructionism, not locationism, captures the essential role of emotion in the social and cultural brain.