Many models of motivation suggest that goals can be arranged in a hierarchy, ranging from higher-level goals that represent desired end-states to lower-level means that operate in the service of those goals. We present a hierarchical model that distinguishes between three levels—goals, strategies, and tactics—and between approach/avoidance and regulatory focus motivations at different levels. We focus our discussion on how this hierarchical framework sheds light on the different ways that success and failure are defined within the promotion and prevention systems (...) outlined in regulatory focus theory. Specifically, we review research that demonstrates that differences in what “counts” as success versus failure in these systems have important implications for motivational strength, emotional responses, and risky behavior. (shrink)

We examined the hypothesis that boredom is likely to occur when opportunity costs are high; that is, when there is a high potential value of engaging in activities other than the researcher-assigne...

Conditions of low and high perceived control often lead to boredom, albeit for different reasons. Whereas, high perceived control may be experienced as boring because the situation lacks challenge, low perceived control may be experienced as boring because the situation precludes effective engagement. In two experiments we test this proposed quadratic relationship. In the first experiment we had participants play different versions of the children's game “rock-paper-scissors” in which they arbitrarily won or lost. Despite having only dichotomous conditions, participants reported (...) experiencing a broad range of levels of perceived control. Consistent with our predictions, boredom was highest at low and high levels of perceived control. Experiment 2 tested the notion that the mere prospect of gaining control may mitigate boredom. Participants given to believe that they could gain control over the game of rock, paper, scissors were less bored than those who believed there was no possibility of winning at greater than chance levels. This suggests that beliefs concerning prospective control, rather than a given level of perceived control per se, may predict engagement and boredom. (shrink)

Empathy is a construct that is notoriously difficult to define. Murphy and colleagues argue for leaning into the construct's inherent fuzziness and reverting to what they term a classical definition informed by the observations of philosophers and clinicians: as a dynamic, “unfolding process of imaginatively experiencing the subjective consciousness of another person, sensing, understanding, and structuring the world as if one were that person.” Although consistent with some historical conceptualizations, this definition risks incorporating so many processes it would make empathy (...) difficult to operationalize or distinguish from any generally socially sensitive interaction. Defining empathy instead as the attempted representation, or simulation, of another's subjective internal experiences would increase its clarity and empirical utility. (shrink)

Empathy is a construct that is notoriously difficult to define. Murphy and colleagues argue for leaning into the construct's inherent fuzziness and reverting to what they term a classical definition informed by the observations of philosophers and clinicians: as a dynamic, “unfolding process of imaginatively experiencing the subjective consciousness of another person, sensing, understanding, and structuring the world as if one were that person.” Although consistent with some historical conceptualizations, this definition risks incorporating so many processes it would make empathy (...) difficult to operationalize or distinguish from any generally socially sensitive interaction. Defining empathy instead as the attempted representation, or simulation, of another's subjective internal experiences would increase its clarity and empirical utility. (shrink)

Humans are not only fearful apes, but we also communicate our fear using social cues. Social fear displays typically elicit care and assistance in the real world and the lab. But in the psychology and neuroscience literature fearful expressions are commonly interpreted as “threat cues.” The fearful ape hypothesis suggests that fearful expressions should be instead considered appeasement and vulnerability cues.

Youths with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits showed reduced amygdala responses to fearful expressions under low attentional load but no indications of increased recruitment of regions implicated in top- down attentional control. These findings suggest that the emotional deficit observed in youths with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits is primary and not secondary to increased top- down attention to nonemotional stimulus features.

Emotions evoked in response to others’ distress are important for motivating concerned prosocial responses. But how emotion regulation shapes prosocial responding is not yet well understood. We tes...

Deep Brain Stimulation is an invasive device-based neuromodulation technique that allows the therapeutic direct stimulation of subcortical and deep cortical structures following the surgical placement of stimulating electrodes. DBS is approved by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration for the treatment of movement disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder, while new indications, including Major Depressive Disorder, are in experimental development. We report the case of a patient with MDD who received DBS to the ventral internal capsule and ventral striatum bilaterally and presented with (...) 2 weeks of voltage-dependent Tourette-like symptoms including brief transient episodes of abrupt-onset and progressively louder coprolalia and stuttered speech; tic-like motor behavior in his right arm and leg; rushes of anxiety, angry prosody, angry affect; and moderate amnesia without confusion. We describe the results of the inpatient neuropsychiatric workup leading to the diagnosis of iatrogenic voltage-dependent activation of cortico-subcortical circuits and discuss insights into the pathophysiology of Tourette as well as safety considerations raised by the case. (shrink)

As members of the fetal surgery advisory board at a large tertiary care center, we read with great interest Hendriks’ et al. target article proposing a new ethical framework for fetal therap...

Conversions: A Philosophic Memoir belongs to the tradition of Augustine and Rousseau: the "confession" of a life that is a quest for truth. It is in large part the story of two major episodes from Abigail Rosenthal's early adulthood, bought putting personal identity dramatically at risk. As a young Fulbright scholar in Paris, Rosenthal met and entered reluctantly into a love affair with a young Greek communist philosopher who believed (along with many Parisian intellectuals of that era) that force (...) and deception were justified by a utopian vision of world history. In the inevitable collision of values—between Jew and Greek, liberal and revolutionary, theist and atheist, woman and man in unequal truggle—they separated. Suffering in the aftermath, she at last turned for help to a young African American woman graduate student whom she met in London. This woman's Gnostic Christian rejection of personal and cultural history eventually left Rosenthal without defense against her new mentor's remarkable use of charisma, ridicule, and moralistic reproach to usurp the author's life story. These stratagems of mind control reached a climactic phase in Portugal, where the two went—Rosenthal to paint the other woman to write—in what would turn out to be the terrifying reverse of a summer idyll. With the U.S. State Department, the Portuguese Policía Internacional devised an extraordinary rescue. This arresting narrative, which deals with relations between blacks and whites, Christians and Jews, and men and women, delivers its own philosophic theory of the individual in history. Author note: Abigail L. Rosenthal is Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York and the author of A Good Look at Evil (Temple). (shrink)

Singular they has emerged as a key term in contemporary gender politics, reflecting growing usage of they/them as nonbinary personal pronouns. Drawing on interviews with 54 progressive gender activists, we consider how singular they can be used to resist and redo aspects of the prevailing gender structure. We identify three distinct usages of singular they: as a nonbinary personal pronoun, as a universal gender-neutral pronoun, and as an indefinite pronoun when a person’s self-identified gender is unknown. While previous research on (...) singular they as a gender-inclusive language practice has focused primarily on its usage as a nonbinary personal pronoun, our findings point to the relevance for gender politics of all three usages. Our analysis offers new insight into how nonbinary they challenges dominant gender norms and practices beyond incorporating additional gender categories. Given our findings, we propose further investigation of how using gender-neutral pronouns for everyone in specific contexts can advance progressive activists’ goals. Finally, we argue that the longstanding usage of singular they as an indefinite pronoun has new importance today in affirming gender as a self-determined identity. (shrink)

I consider the question of what moral obligations prospective parents owe to their future children. It is taken as an almost axiomatic premise of a wide range of philosophical arguments that prospective parents have a moral obligation to take such steps as ensuring their own financial stability or waiting until they are emotionally mature before conceiving. This is because it is assumed that parents have a moral obligation to lay the groundwork for their children's lives to go well. While at (...) first glance such a premise seems benign, I will argue that when it is applied to arguments in assisted reproductive technology, as it is in Julian Savulescu's procreative beneficence argument or as it is in Daniel Groll's recent argument for open gamete donation, we see problems with this premise. Problems in Groll's argument also become apparent when it is scrutinized in connection with this premise. (shrink)

Researchers increasingly rely on large data sets of health information, often linked with biological specimens. In recent years, the argument has been made that obtaining informed consent for conducting records-based research is unduly burdensome and results in ?consent bias.? As a type of selection bias, consent bias is said to exist when the group giving researchers access to their data differs from the group denying access. Therefore, to promote socially beneficial research, it is argued that consent should be unnecessary. After (...) analyzing the biostatistics evidence and bioethics arguments, the article concludes that (1) claims about the amount of consent bias are overstated; (2) commonly used statistical methods usually can account for consent bias; and (3) any residual effects of consent bias are below an acceptable level of imprecision and constitute a reasonable social cost for conducting ethically responsible research. (shrink)

Early research suggested that migration changed gender roles by offering women new wages and exposing them to norms of gender equity. Increasingly, however, scholars have drawn attention to the role of structural factors, such as poverty and undocumented status, in mediating the relationship between migration and gender. This article takes such insights a step further by showing that migrant communities’ reactions to structural marginality—and their efforts to build alternatives in their home villages—may also draw women into new gender roles. I (...) demonstrate this mechanism through the case of San Miguel, a Mixtec sending community in Southern Mexico where, in the context of U.S. migration, once-excluded women came to predominate in civic affairs. In response to harsh conditions in the United States, migrants from San Miguel returned to their village. To make this economically feasible, they sought state development resources. Men, who often stayed in the United States as breadwinners, relied on sympathetic women back in the sending community to advocate on their behalf. Meanwhile, women’s own rejection of migrant life gave them new interest in sustaining their village. For both, incorporating women into politics offered a strategy to secure needed resources and avoid assimilating into an undocumented underclass. (shrink)

Minkoff, Vullikanti, and Marshall (2024) worry that assumptions about fetal personhood used to justify states’ restrictions on a pregnant person’s right to request certain interventions (i.e. abort...

Background Human brain organoids are a valuable research tool for studying brain development, physiology, and pathology. Yet, a host of potential ethical concerns are inherent in their creation. There is a growing group of bioethicists who acknowledge the moral imperative to develop brain organoid technologies and call for caution in this research. Although a relatively new technology, brain organoids and their uses are already being discussed in media literature. Media literature informs the public and policymakers but has the potential for (...) utopian or dystopian distortions. Thus, it is important to understand how this technology is portrayed to the public. Methods To investigate how brain organoids are displayed to the public, we conducted a systematic review of media literature indexed in the Nexis Uni database from 2013–2019. News and media source articles passing exclusion criteria (_n_ = 93) were scored to evaluate tone and relevant themes. Themes were validated with a pilot sample before being applied to the dataset. Thematic analysis assessed article tone, reported potential for the technology, and the scientific, social, and ethical contexts surrounding brain organoids research. Results Brain organoid publications became more frequent from 2013 to 2019. We observed increases in positively and negatively toned articles, suggesting growing polarization. While many sources discuss realistic applications of brain organoids, others suggest treatment and cures beyond the scope of the current technology. This could work to overhype the technology and disillusion patients and families by offering false hope. In the ethical narrative we observe a preoccupation with issues such as development of artificial consciousness and “humanization” of organoid-animal chimeras. Issues of regulation, ownership, and accuracy of the organoid models are rarely discussed. Conclusions Given the power that media have to inform or misinform the public, it is important this literature provides an accurate and balanced reflection of the therapeutic potential and associated ethical issues regarding brain organoid research. Our study suggests increasing polarization, coupled with misplaced and unfounded ethical concern. Given the inhibitory effects of public fear or disillusion on research funding, it is important media literature provides an accurate reflection of brain organoids. (shrink)

IntroductionThe National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines acknowledge the importance of the parent–infant relationship for child development but highlight the need for further research to establish reliable tools for assessment, particularly for parents of children under 1 year. This study explores the acceptability and psychometric properties of a co-developed tool, ‘Me and My Baby’.Study designA cross-sectional design was applied. The MaMB was administered universally with mothers during routine 6–8-week Health Visitor contacts. The sample comprised 467 mothers. Dimensionality of (...) instrument responses were evaluated via exploratory and confirmatory ordinal factor analyses. Item response modeling was conducted via a Rasch calibration to evaluate how the tool conformed to principles of ‘fundamental measurement’. Tool acceptability was evaluated via completion rates and comparing ‘completers’ and ‘non-completers’ demographic differences on age, parity, ethnicity, and English as an additional language. Free-text comments were summarized. Data sharing agreements and data management were compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation, and University of York data management policies.ResultsHigh completion rates suggested the MaMB was acceptable. Psychometric analyses showed the response data to be an excellent fit to a unidimensional confirmatory factor analytic model. All items loaded statistically significantly and substantially on a single underlying factor. The item response modeling showed that most MaMB items fitted the Rasch model. item reliability was high yet the test yielded little information on each respondent, as highlighted by the relatively low ‘person separation index’ of 0.1.Conclusion and next stepsMaMB reliably measures a single construct, likely to be infant bonding. However, further validation work is needed, preferably with ‘enriched population samples’ to include higher-need/risk families. The MaMB tool may benefit from reduced response categories and some modest item wording amendments. Following further validation and reliability appraisal the MaMB may ultimately be used with fathers/other primary caregivers and be potentially useful in research, universal health settings as part of a referral pathway, and clinical practice, to identify dyads in need of additional support/interventions. (shrink)

Good decision-making requires reliable information. In medicine, relevant information comes from clinical trials and other forms of scientific research. In business, one source is in corporate annual financial statements. As for-profit, publicly traded companies whose business is discovering, manufacturing, and marketing drugs, pharmaceutical companies sit at the nexus of these two fields. Determining the safety and efficacy of a pharmaceutical product and determining the profitability of a complex enterprise are similarly difficult tasks: each is fraught with deeply ambiguous information that (...) requires sophisticated judgment to interpret reasonably. (shrink)

The problem of the manipulation of data that arises when there is both opportunity and incentive to mislead is better accepted and studied — though by no means solved — in financial accounting than in medicine. This article analyzes pharmaceutical company manipulation of medical research as part of a broader problem of corporate manipulation of data in the creation of accounting profits. The article explores how our understanding of accounting fraud and misinformation helps us understand the risk of similar information (...) manipulation in the medical sciences. This understanding provides a framework for considering how best to improve the quality of medical research and analysis in light of the current system of medical information production. I offer three possible responses: (1) use of the Dodd-Frank whistleblower provisions to encourage reporting of medical research fraud; (2) a two-step academic journal review process for clinical trials; and (3) publicly subsidized trial-failure insurance. These would improve the release of negative information about drugs, thereby increasing the reliability of positive information. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Historically, maternal HIV research has focused on prevention of mother‐to‐child transmission and child outcomes, with little focus on the health outcomes of mothers. Over the course of the HIV epidemic, the approach to including pregnant women in research has shifted. The current landscape lends itself to reviewing the public health ethics of this research. This systematic review aims to identify ethical barriers and considerations for including pregnant and postpartum women living with HIV in treatment adherence and retention research. We (...) completed a systematic literature review following PRISMA guidelines with analysis using a relational ethics perspective. The included studies (n = 7) identified ethical barriers related to (a) women research participants as individuals, (b) partner and family dynamics, (c) community perspectives on research design and conduct, and (d) policy and regulatory implications. These broader contextual factors will yield research responsive to, and respectful of, the needs of pregnant and postpartum women living with HIV. While current regulatory and policy environments may be slow to change, actions can be taken now to foster enabling environments for research. We suggest that a relational approach to public health ethics can best support the needs of pregnant and postpartum women living with HIV; acknowledging this population as systematically disadvantaged and inseparable from their communities will best support the health of this population. (shrink)

Relational experiences shape emergent social understanding, and two influences deserve particular attention. First, parent-child conversation about shared experiences incorporates both implicit and explicit information about mental states that catalyzes the social construction of understanding, especially in juxtaposition with the child's direct experience. Second, emotion infuses the contexts and cognitions about social experiences that provoke the child's constructivist efforts.

La Nota Roja en México es una manifestación periodística bien consolidada en la cultura en México, cada año se venden miles de ejemplares en los lugares más cotidianos de esta sociedad. Así pues, este trabajo tiene como objetivo principal presentar un debate que resulta fundamental para la teoría de los modelos de mundo: la necesidad de “reconstrucción del contexto” que nace de la discusión que se plantea en Crítica y sabotaje con los planteamientos derridianos (Firma acontecimiento contexto. La Diseminación) y (...) que se trabajarán a propósito del periodismo. (shrink)

The notion of survivance is central to Derrida’s later thinking. Much of that thinking, for example in addressing the non–human in The Animal That Therefore I Am and The Beast and the Sovereign, is more precisely a thinking of the human in relation to the animal. Taking inspiration from the recent turn towards biodeconstruction, this essay works through the implications of survivance beyond the human-animal by considering the synergy between biological and textual survivance. And in so doing, this essay outlines (...) a new way of conceptualizing the living self as a composite form made up of many non-human and even textual others. (shrink)

A body-based healing model that interrogates what we've been taught about unfair hierarchies of the body-and pushes back against the white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism embedded in modern embodiment practices.

This paper explores the wartime creation of veterinary expertise in cattle breeding, and its contribution to the transition between two very different types of agriculture. During the interwar period, falling prices and steep competition from imports caused farmers to adopt a ‘low input, low output’ approach. To cut costs, they usually butchered, marketed or doctored diseased cows in preference to seeking veterinary aid. World War II forced a greater dependence on domestic food production, and inspired wide-ranging state-directed attempts to increase (...) agricultural output. However, the weak connection between veterinary services and livestock productivity meant that the drive for greater milk yields did not automatically translate into a demand for improved veterinary health care. Rather veterinary expertise had to be actively created and made relevant to the new context. Leaders of the profession secured this goal through establishing a government-backed ‘scheme for the control of certain diseases of dairy cows’. Drawing on pre-existing but rarely applied reproductive technologies, the scheme provided the opportunities and education necessary for more extensive veterinary interventions in cattle breeding. I show how its operation transformed understandings of fertility, raised veterinarians to the status of experts, won them the patronage of farmers and the state, and facilitated the shift to a productivity-oriented agriculture. (shrink)

This paper argues that most conceptualizations of citizenship limit the purview of the discourse to static categories. ‘Citizenship’ is commonly seen as an ideal type, presuming a largely legal relationship between an inidividual and a single nation-state – more precisely only one type of nation-state, the advanced capitalist post-war model. Alternatively, we suggest a re-conceptualization of citizenship as a negotiated relationship, one which is subject therefore to change, and acted upon collectively within social, political and economic relations of conflict. This (...) dynamic process of negotiation takes place within a context which is shaped by gendered, racial and class structures and ideologies; it also involves international hierarchies among states. Citizenship is therefore negotiated on global as well as national levels. This conceptualization is demonstrated by way of identifying one particular set of experiences of negotiated citizenship, involving foreign domestic workers in Canada. As non-citizens originating from Third World conditions, this is a case involving women of colour workers, highly prone to abusive conditions, and under the direction of employers who are more affluent First World citizens and predominantly white women. Original survey data based on interviews with Caribbean and Filipino domestic workers in Canada are used to demonstrate the varied, creative and effective strategies of two distinctive groups of non-citizens as they attempt to negotiate citizenship rights in restrictive national and international conditions. (shrink)

With no statutory definition of death, the accepted medical definition relies on brain stem death criteria as a definitive measure of diagnosing death. However, the use of brain stem death criteria in this way is precarious and causes widespread confusion amongst both medical and lay communities. Through critical analysis, this paper considers the insufficiencies of brain stem death. It concludes that brain stem death cannot be successfully equated with either biological death or the loss of integrated bodily function. The overemphasis (...) of the brain-stem and its consequences leaves the criteria open to significant philosophical critique. Further, in some circumstances, the use of brain stem death criteria causes substantial emotional conflict for families and relatives. Accordingly, a more holistic and comprehensive definition of death is required. (shrink)

(2013). An Unbiased Response to the Open Peer Commentaries on “Does Consent Bias Research?”. The American Journal of Bioethics: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. W1-W4. doi: 10.1080/15265161.2013.769824.

ABSTRACT Psychological or political criticism of the parent‐child relation presupposes a normative account of that relation. Such an account is here provided. The normative account can shed most light when the parent‐child relation is presented recognizably, not in Utopian disguise. The purposes of reasonable people partly depend on their interpretations of those of their parents. This is so whether such people accept or reject any particular parental purposes. The filial art sticks to the project of working out the enacted interpretation—until (...) it gets it approximately right. There is a corresponding parental art, neither compensatory nor sacrificial. (shrink)

Establishing healthy dietary habits in childhood is crucial in preventing long-term repercussions, as a lack of dietary variety in childhood leads to enduring impacts on both physical and cognitive health. Poor conceptual knowledge about food has recently been shown to be a driving factor of food rejection. The majority of studies that have investigated the development of food knowledge along with food rejection have mainly focused on one subtype of conceptual knowledge about food, namely taxonomic categories. However, taxonomic categorization is (...) not the only way to understand the food domain. We also heavily rely on other conceptual structures, namely thematic associations, in which objects are grouped because they share spatial-temporal properties or exhibit a complementary relationship. We rely on such thematic associations between food items, which may not fall into the same taxon, to determine the acceptability of food combinations. However, the development of children's ability to master these relations has not been systematically investigated, nor alongside the phenomenon of food rejection. The present research aims to fill this gap by investigating the development of conceptual food knowledge and the putative relationship between children's food rejection and both thematic and taxonomic food knowledge. A proportional analogy task, with a choice between taxonomic and thematic food associates, was conducted on children between 3 and 7-years-old. The children were systematically presented with either a thematic or taxonomic food base pair and then asked to extend the example type of relation to select the respective thematic or taxonomic match to the target. Our results revealed, for the first time, that increased levels of food rejection were significantly predictive of poorer food identification and decreased thematic understanding. These findings entitle us to hypothesize that knowledge-based food education programs to foster dietary variety in young children, should not only aim to improve taxonomic understanding of food, but also thematic relations. (shrink)

Seasonal influenza poses a significant public health risk in many countries worldwide. Lower immunity and less influenza virus circulating during the pandemic has resulted in a significant increase in cases since the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions in 2022. The seasonal influenza vaccine offers effective protection and is safe for use in large numbers of the population. This article asserts that a moral obligation to vaccinate against influenza can be understood as an Institutional Duty of Rescue. The traditional understanding of the (...) Duty of Rescue encounters issues with force and scope, making it difficult to apply to rescue cases in general, as well as being overdemanding for the individual agent. An Institutional view of the Duty of Rescue addresses these difficulties, looks at the wider context of rescue and leaves room for discussion on collective, preventative rescue measures. This makes the concept well suited to supporting a moral obligation to vaccinate against influenza as part of a collective effort on the part of institutional organisations. (shrink)

This article examines the limitations associated with Irigaray’s concept of a culture of difference. I suggest that her concept of sexual difference depends upon a conservative fiction of sameness. I argue that a fiction of phallic sameness underpins her evangelical championing of difference, and that such a fiction retains a conservative blindness to the complexities of contemporary social relations and erases the positive effects oppositional discourses have had on the culture of modernity. I question the debt Irigaray disavows to other (...) non-difference feminism, her insistence that woman are radically marginalized and suggest that her culture of difference is prescriptive and normative. Egalitarian feminism, understood as a postmodern project, is far more strategic, insofar as it offers a multiply-situated analysis of the relationship between women and power within modernity. I replace Irigaray’s negative image of the egalitarian feminist as an unnatural woman with the figure of the cyborg who embraces ontological impurity and strategically works within culture. (shrink)

In the past three decades, feminist scholars have produced an extraordinary rich body of theoretical writing in humanities and social science disciplines. This revised and updated second edition of Theorizing Feminism: Parallel Trends in the Humanities and Social Sciences, is a genuinely interdisciplinary anthology of significant contributions to feminist theory.This timely reader is creatively edited, and contains insightful introductory material. It illuminates the historical development of feminist theory as well as the current state of the field. Emphasizing common themes and (...) interests in the humanities and social sciences, the editors have chosen topics that remain relevant to current debates, reflect the interests of a diverse community of thinkers, and have been central to feminist theory in many disciplines.The contributors include leading figures from the fields of psychology, literary criticism, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, art history, law, and economics. This is the ideal text for any advanced course on interdisciplinary feminist theory, one that fills a long-standing gap in feminist pedagogy. (shrink)

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many have become increasingly dissatisfied with how science funding is distributed. Traditional grant funding processes are seen as stifling the creativity of researchers, in addition to being bureaucratic, slow, and inefficient. Consequently, there have been increasing popular calls to make “fast funding” – fast, unbureaucratic grant applications – a new standard for scientific funding. Though this approach to funding, implemented by Fast Grants, has been successful as a pandemic response strategy, we believe there (...) are serious costs to its wide-scale adoption, particularly for transparency and equity, and that the purported benefits – increased creativity and efficiency – are unlikely to materialize. While traditional funding mechanisms are certainly not perfect, scientific communities should think twice before adopting fast funding as a new standard for funding. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the way that mental illness stigma impacts epistemic credibility in people who have mental illness. While any kind of stigma has the potential to discredit a person’s epistemic agency, in the case of mental illness the basis for discrediting is in some cases and to some extent justifiable, for impairments in rationality, control, and reality perception can indeed be obstacles to participating appropriately in epistemic activities such as normal conversation and public discourse. People with mental (...) illness are still potentially subject to epistemic injustices, however, especially when we rely on stereotypes and fail to make complicated and nuanced judgments which are more accurate. In this paper, I explain some of the ways that people with mental illness may be subject to epistemic injustices, and I propose some suggestions for how epistemic injustice can be avoided. (shrink)

Skin conditions such as eczema and psoriasis are relatively prevalent health concerns in children, adolescents and young adults. Experiences of these dermatology diagnoses in adolescence have hitherto not been the focus of research, perhaps owing to assumptions that these diagnoses are not particularly impactful or intricate processes, events or labels. We draw on a thematic secondary analysis of in-depth interviews with 42 adolescents and young people living in the United Kingdom and, influenced by the sociologies of diagnosis and time, highlight (...) the psychological, emotional, social and temporal complexities involved in their diagnosis experiences. Firstly, we describe how participants remembered, re- and co-constructed their diagnosis experiences during the interview. Secondly, we explore the pace and rhythm of diagnosis, including mis-diagnoses, highlighting the jarring potential for adolescents on being diagnosed, even for conditions typically deemed minor. Thirdly, we consider the ways in which these diagnoses have the capacity to reformulate notions of past, present and future, including projecting into imagined futures and reinterpreting past bodily sensations. Finally, we examine how memories about and the meaning of diagnosis are revisited, revised and potentially replaced as a child or adolescent grows older, and increases their management of their condition and encounters with healthcare professionals. In unsettling an assumption that diagnosis experiences for adolescents of common skin conditions is unproblematic or straightforward, our qualitative analysis critically engages with and contribute to tenets of health research that are of interest to quantitative and qualitative researchers, clinicians and patients. (shrink)

Folk psychology holds that resolving to do something is effective in resisting temptation. What is a resolution? Resolutions are often understood as two-tier intentions or an intention-desire pair. However, both accounts of resolution are subject to a problem. Why should we expect the second-order aspect of resolutions to resist temptation? Even if we posit that we have additional or independent reasons for the second-order intention or desire, these reasons will be insufficient in the face of temptation, because temptation makes one’s (...) reasons for acting on tempting desires very salient. From the first-person perspective there is no neutral deliberative space from which to take stock of reasons when being tempted. I conclude that rationally resisting temptation instead requires forestalling temptation through the practical virtue of resolve. Resolve understood as a virtue involves dispositions to deliberate and desire in accordance with one’s resolutions. (shrink)

Around the world, agricultural landscapes are increasingly seen as “multi-functional” spaces, expected to deliver food supplies while improving rural livelihoods and protecting and restoring healthy ecosystems. To support this array of functions and benefits, governments and civil society in many regions are now promoting integrated farm- and landscape-scale management strategies, in lieu of fragmented management strategies. While rural producers are fundamental to achieving multi-functional landscapes, they are frequently viewed as targets of, or barriers to, landscape-oriented initiatives, rather than as leading (...) agents of change. In reality, however, rural producers in many areas have embraced elements of multi-functional land management. In this paper, we explore the role and recent evolution of producer movements in influencing multi-functional farm and landscape management. We explore these roles through six case studies, including a land reform movement in Brazil, indigenous territorial development in Bolivia, conservation agriculture associations in Canada, environmental cooperatives in the Netherlands, indigenous and biocultural heritage associations in Peru, and Landcare groups in the Philippines. These experiences suggest that producer movements are playing pivotal roles in supporting landscape multi-functionality, not only through agroecological farming practices but also through off-farm efforts to conserve ecosystems and support multi-stakeholder landscape planning. On the other hand, interests of producer movements are not always fully aligned with multi-functional landscape management approaches. The contribution of producer movements to multi-functional landscapes depends on these movements including farm and landscape stewardship in their values and goals, and having the political support and capacity to engage meaningfully in multi-stakeholder processes. (shrink)

Typically, the quantification and management of population as a reason of state is associated with modernity. As scholars, we tend to take this for granted, especially in our post-Foucauldian theor...