This chapter uses feminist standpoint theory to investigate Diotima’s epistemic advantage in Plato’s Symposium. Scholars have wondered why Diotima – a woman speaking about the role of erōs in gestation, childbirth, and childrearing – voices the view that Plato privileges most among all the symposiasts (Halperin 1990, Evans 2006, Hobbs 2007). Feminist standpoint theory is useful in developing a novel answer to this question; it supposes that oppressed groups, because they occupy different social locations, often develop epistemic privileges over their (...) dominant counterparts, especially with respect to finding lacunae in dominant narratives (cf. Hartsock 1987, Collins 1990, Harding 1987 and 1993, and Intemann 2016). This chapter proposes that Diotima’s unique social location – she is an older, non-Athenian woman, well versed in gestation, childbirth, and childrearing – disposes her to know something about erōs that the dominant group, the Athenian pederasts, do not. What she knows is that having erōs for something does not merely inspire one to pursue or possess it; by attending to how erōs affects women, she argues that it also manifests as a desire to reproduce what is beloved and care for it. Diotima’s standpoint is epistemically revelatory, then, because it establishes that love is far more than the pursuit of beauty; it is a creative and laborious act. Moreover, her standpoint is ethically revelatory, since she argues that the highest form of love entails fostering and nourishing virtue in others. Understood in this way, Diotima is espousing something like a protofeminist ethics of care. (shrink)

Diotima’s speech claims that philosophy ranks among the erōtica. The standard reading of this holds that erōs manifests in philosophical activity. This is puzzling. Eros has a reputation for overpowering the psyche, making reasoning impossible. The major interpretive discussion of this puzzle suggests that Diotima must therefore accept either non-rationalist philosophizing or rationalist erōs. This paper argues for an alternative. The “ancillary activities view” posits that the erōtica do not manifest erōs but are activities undertaken to achieve its telos. On (...) this view, love’s relationship to philosophy is as un-mysterious as wanting something and doing what it takes to get it. (shrink)

Plato’s partition argument infers that the soul has parts from the fact that the soul experiences mental conflict. We consider an ambiguity in the concept of mental conflict. According to the first sense of conflict, a soul is in conflict when it has desires whose satisfaction is logically incompatible. According to the second sense of conflict, a soul is in conflict when it has desires which are logically incompatible even when they are unsatisfied. This raises a dilemma: if the mental (...) conflict is supposed to be the latter kind of conflict, then the partition argument is valid but is likely unsound; if it’s supposed to be the former kind, then the partition argument has true premises but is invalid. We explain this dilemma in detail and defend a dispositionalist solution to it. (shrink)

This volume deploys recent feminist epistemological frameworks to analyze how concepts like knowledge, authority, rationality, objectivity and testimony were constructed in Greece and Rome. The introduction serves as a field guide to feminist epistemological interpretations of classical sources, and the following sixteen chapters treat a variety of genres and time periods, from Greek poetry, tragedy, philosophy, oratory, historiography and material culture to Roman comedy, epic, oratory, letters, law and their reception. By using an intersectional approach to demonstrate how epistemic systems (...) exclude and pathologize the experiences of ancient women and other oppressed groups, these contributions aid in the recovery of non-dominant narratives and reveal issues of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual identity, religion, age, class, familial status and citizenship in the ancient and modern world. The volume contributes to a more inclusive and equitable study of classical antiquity and builds transhistorical connections capable of exposing similar injustices in our own time. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue S1, Page S79-S82, March‐April 2022.

Surveillance is essential for communicable disease prevention and control. Traditional notification of demographic and clinical information, about individuals with selected infectious diseases, allows appropriate public health action and is protected by public health and privacy legislation, but is slow and insensitive. Big data–based electronic surveillance, by commercial bodies and government agencies, which draws on a plethora of internet- and mobile device–based sources, has been widely accepted, if not universally welcomed. Similar anonymous digital sources also contain syndromic information, which can be (...) analysed, using customised algorithms, to rapidly predict infectious disease outbreaks, but the data are nonspecific and predictions sometimes misleading. However, public health authorities could use these online sources, in combination with de-identified personal health data, to provide more accurate and earlier warning of infectious disease events—including exotic or emerging infections—even before the cause is confirmed, and allow more timely public health intervention. Achieving optimal benefits would require access to selected data from personal electronic health and laboratory records and the potential to re-identify individuals found to be involved in outbreaks, to ensure appropriate care and infection control. Despite existing widespread digital surveillance and major potential community benefits of extending its use to communicable disease control, there is considerable public disquiet about allowing public health authorities access to personal health data. Informed public discussion, greater transparency and an ethical framework will be essential to build public trust in the use of new technology for communicable disease control. (shrink)

We report on the case of a 2-year-old female, the youngest person ever to undergo ovarian tissue cryopreservation (OTC). This patient was diagnosed with a rare form of sickle cell disease, which required a bone-marrow transplant, and late effects included high risk of future infertility or complete sterility. Ethical concerns are raised, as the patient's mother made the decision for OTC on the patient's behalf with the intention that this would secure the option of biological childbearing in the future. Based (...) on Beauchamp and Childress's principlism approach of respect for autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice, pursing OTC was ethically justified. (shrink)

Drawing on the recognition that questions of discourse and power are vital components in analysing the public participation in environmental governance, this paper examines the ways in which dominant scientific discourses about the Earth's climate inform the types of public talk facilitated in and by mini-publics, particularly when they are 'scaled up' to address environmental issues such as climate change. World Wide Views on Global Warming (WWViews) serves as a case study. Conceived and organised by the Danish Board of Technology, (...) WWViews was a historically unprecedented public forum in which participants, invited from a range of nations, were given the opportunity to deliberate on key themes addressed in the negotiations taking place during the United Nations Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen (COP 15). The overarching purpose of this analysis is to invite reflection on the practices and assumptions that serve to make up publics in relation to issues that have been framed, predominantly, as scientific, universal and global. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to outline a pragmatist image of science following Rorty’s discussions and critics of epistemology and to develop some consequences of it in the philosophical analysis and its relations to culture. I will deal with some aspects of how scientific practice is construed and understood, and also outline the shift in Philosophy of Science from epistemological to ethical-political concerns that are implied in his proposal. I will contend that this perspective suggests an interesting way of (...) analysing scientific practices, theories, and public policies of it. Furthermore, I will suggest that it successfully connects the most interesting proposals of contemporary scientific views in philosophy. Finally, I will use some examples in physics and biology to illustrate my assertions. (shrink)

Two cross-modal experiments provide partial support for O'Regan & Noë's (O&N's) claim that sensorimotor contingencies mediate perception. Differences in locating a target sound accompanied by a spatially disparate neutral light correlate with whether the two stimuli were perceived as spatially unified. This correlation suggests that internal representations are necessary for conscious perception, which may also mediate sensorimotor contingencies.

-/- CONCLUSION “The experience in California is clear. Affirmative action has helped to dismantle barriers such as "old boys' networks" that have excluded not only women and individuals of racial or ethnic minorities, but also white American men who did not belong to networks of privilege. Affirmative action has also worked to ensure that our schools, workplaces, and other social institutions fully use our diverse talents, thereby helping our government and social institutions to better serve their communities. -/- In short, (...) affirmative action has helped to bring out the best in us as a society. It challenges us to have the courage of our convictions that: (1) we do want a truly equal opportunity society; and (2) we believe that all Americans, including women and minorities, are competent individuals who have talents to contribute. Passing the CCRI would completely eliminate affirmative action, and thus have the same effect as "throwing the baby out with the bathwater." The "baby" —active and affirmative commitment to equal opportunity— is barely out of its infancy. We must not now abandon our commitment, just when we have taken our first steps towards creating a truly equal opportunity society.” -/- (This essay was written against the backdrop of legislative efforts in the mid 1990s, to overturn “affirmative action” policies at educational institutions, which had given more equal access to higher education for students from previously under-represented communities, particularly white women but also racialized communities. By mischaracterizing affirmative action programs as “gender or racial preferences”, opponents were able to pass the 1996 ballot measure, Proposition 209, the so-called “California Civil Rights Initiative” (CCRI). The ban on “preferences” gained the support of 54.6% of all California voters, including 58% of white women and 66% of white men voters. Use of language was key, as a slight majority of Americans approved of some affirmative actions but opposed racial preferences. The CCRI has had a huge toll on Latino and African American enrollment at UC Berkeley and UCLA, which has never recovered. State contracts for firms owned by women and minorities also dropped sharply. Similar initiatives failed in some states but succeeded elsewhere. See online Encyclopedia). (shrink)

This paper provides a novel response to Vlastos’s challenge that Platonic erōs in the Symposium, since it is for the form of beauty rather than any particular person, is impersonal and egotistical. Vlastos, in addition to generations of his readers and critics, badly misunderstands Diotima’s reproductive theory of love. In particular, it has been widely overlooked or diminished that the ideal erotic relationship set out in the ladder of love mirrors the reproductive labor of ancient Greek mothers and caregivers. The (...) lover of the highest mysteries undertakes the psychic equivalent of motherly care to rear virtuous ideas in the next generation. Thus, properly understanding Diotima’s gendered vision of psychic reproduction reveals that Platonic love is anything but impersonal and egotistical. (shrink)

I will relate some social and epistemic aspects involved in the conceptual development of the genetic model in the early Molecular Biology. I will use the link between Biology and Physics as a framework, which supports such assumptions, providing new methodologies, but mainly as a framework that provides a model of objectivity developed within Modern Tradition. Finally, I will interpret this relationship from the pragmatist perspective to embrace Rorty’s thesis on «the ontological priority of the social» which implies understanding biology (...) as a part of a general cultural politics. (shrink)

“If anthropology and history once begin to collaborate in the study of … societies, it will become apparent that the one science can achieve nothing without the help of the other,” said Claude Levi-Strauss. This statement is so immediately sensible in a plain, common-sense way, that only an examination of historical and anthropological practices reveal that such a collaboration is neither as frequent nor as complete as it ought to be.Anthropologists traditionally studied preliterate societies, historians, literate ones. Preliterate societies lack (...) written documents (or such documents are rare and often unreliable since they are usually written by untrained observers from outside the culture) and anthropologists found themselves with only oral traditions from which to reconstruct the past. Oral traditions, myths, tales, legends and so on are part of every culture; but the value of such traditions as a source of historical information was considered doubtful by most anthropologists, and historians seemingly had no need of them. The functionalist school of anthropology contributed to our understanding by recognizing the value and importance of oral histories in terms of the functions such tales fulfill in a given society. (shrink)

This article addresses two components of the new governing architecture that help to reform the delivery of health care and to control costs of the health care system: the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation and the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The republican controlled federal government has partially disassembled these two components, threatening the effectiveness of federal delivery system reform and cost control initiatives.

PPACA epitomizes comprehensive health care reform legislation. Public health, disease prevention, and wellness were integral considerations in its development. This article reveals the author's personal experiences while working on the framework for health care reform in the United States Senate and reviews activity in the United States House of Representatives. This insider's perspective delineates PPACA's positive effect on public health by examining the infrastructure Congress designed to focus on prevention, wellness, and public health, with a particular focus on the National (...) Prevention, Health Promotion and Public Health Council; the National Prevention, Health Promotion, Public Health, and Integrative Health Care Strategy; and the Prevention and Public Health Fund. The Council, strategy, and fund are especially important because they reflect compliance with some of the Institute of Medicine's recommendations to improve public health in the United States, as well as international health and human rights norms that protect the right to health. (shrink)

On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a major piece of health care reform legislation. This comprehensive legislation includes provisions that focus on prevention, wellness, and public health. Some, including authors in this symposium, question whether Congress considered public health, prevention, and wellness issues as mere afterthoughts in the creation of PPACA. As this article amply demonstrates, they did not.This article documents the extent of congressional consideration on public health issues based on personal (...) experience working on the framework for health care reform — specifically, my experience as a Fellow for a member of the Health Subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee from 2008-2009. I also include a review of congressional activity in the United States House of Representatives. Analysis of the congressional meetings and hearings reveals that Congress had a deep understanding about the critical need to reform the U.S. public health and prevention system. (shrink)

In Europe ≈15,000 patients receive larval therapy for wound treatment annually. Over the past few years, clinical studies have demonstrated the success of larvae of Lucilia sericata as debridement agents. This is based on a combination of physical and biochemical actions. Laboratory investigations have advanced our understanding of the biochemical mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of larval secretions, including removal of dead tissue, reduction of the bacterial burden, and promotion of tissue regeneration. The present article summarizes our current understanding of (...) the microbiological, immunological, and wound healing actions of larval therapy, and the molecules involved in these beneficial effects. Future studies will focus on the isolation, identification, and (pre)clinical testing of the effective molecules of L. sericata larvae. These molecules may be candidates for the development of new agents for the treatment of several infectious and inflammatory diseases, including chronic wounds. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyze and to compare the conception of science that Richard Rorty and Jean-François Lyotard contend in some of their main writings. First, I will point out some similarities and agreements in their philosophical perspectives, particularly, I will emphasize their epistemological coincidences. Then, I will highlight some important differences in his philosophical interpretation of scientific development and its social role. As a result, it will be possible to clarify and accurately qualify these two postmodern conceptions of science (...) that in several writings appear as indistinguishable or that, at least, are characterized with the same features. I will argue that these differences provide two essentially different viewpoints of science and culture. Finally, I will try to show that the Rortian perspective is more suitable facing contemporaneous problems in science, and to give a proper account of its historical development. (shrink)

In queste pagine è delineata la vicenda esistenziale e intellettuale di Edith Stein. Donna straordinaria, è stata capace di racchiudere nella sua persona molte "possibili" vite. Le ha realizzate come ebrea e cattolica, fenomenologa e filosofa cristiana, docente e monaca carmelitana, agnostica e santa. Si tratta di un processo vitale dagli apparenti salti qualitativi, i quali si volgono all'ascolto di un medesimo nucleo identitario. Questa viva "formazione di sé" ha condotto Edith Stein a una "donazione di sé", culminata (...) nell'Olocausto. Il Diario di Edith si sovrappone ai pensieri di Angela Ales Bello, in veste di narratrice d'eccezione. Con la sentita partecipazione della narratrice, e insieme mantenendo il distacco critico della studiosa, viene scoperta la storia di un'anima. Le emozioni e le conquiste intellettuali trovano una sintesi grazie al peculiare approccio ai "fenomeni" che Edith Stein aveva appreso alla scuola di Edmund Husserl, di Tommaso d'Aquino e di Teresa D'Avila. Sintesi mirabile di pensatori che "si danno la mano" al di là dello spazio e del tempo--Front flap. (shrink)

El siguiente trabajo pretende mostrar algunas conexiones ontológicas y epistemológicas entre los supuestos que subyacen en la conservación de la energía en física y la teoría del valor en economía clásica. Para ello, en primer lugar, haré una reconstrucción de ciertos supuestos metafísicos y hallazgos empíricos que guían la configuración de la conservación de la energía, desde la época de Descartes hasta su elaboración formal por parte de Helmholtz, como principio termodinámico. A continuación, describiré cómo encontramos supuestos equivalentes, con otra (...) elaboración, que guían las preocupaciones sobre el valor en los economistas clásicos en Smith, Ricardo y particularmente en Marx, y sus respectivas conexiones con la física. Finalmente conectaré estos paralelismos que se siguen de tales construcciones, que a su vez provienen de supuestos comunes e inmersos en la cultura y que interactúan en este caso en física y economía. Con ello argumentaré en favor de una perspectiva no autónoma de la ciencia, determinada por tales factores culturales de su tiempo. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo haré uso del cambio conceptual gestado en la primera parte del siglo XX con el nacimiento de la teoría cuántica y su interpretación basada en el principio de complementariedad e indeterminación, elaborados por Niels Bohr y Werner Heisenberg respectivamente, para argumentar a favor de la demarcación de la ciencia que defiende Richard Rorty. Con este propósito retomaré algunos elementos del desarrollo histórico y características de las nuevas explicaciones de la ciencia cuántica respecto de la física clásica (...) para diluir la diferencia entre búsqueda de la verdad y deliberación práctica. Con ello defenderé una relación causal entre el mundo y nuestras descripciones en oposición a una representacional, así como una concepción pragmatista del conocimiento, siguiendo la propuesta del!lósofo norteamericano. Como consecuencia, defenderé que no existe una distinción de tipo epistemológica entre la ciencia y otros discursos; no hay diferencia metodológica que marque una distinción ontológica o viceversa entre ciencia y otras cosas. Sosteniendo así, una indiferencia o pluralidad ontológica, es decir, que todos los discursos están en pie de igualdad.In this paper I will use the conceptual change between Quantum and Classical Mechanics to support the science demarcation proposed by Richard Rorty. I will rescue some characteristics of the historical development on Quantum Mechanics until the Prnciple of Complementarity´s formulation to dissolve the di"erence between the search of the truth and practical deliberation. #en I will to criticize a representational conception of knowledge to defend a pragmatist one, such as the american philospher does. As a conesequence, I will dissolve the epistemological distinction between science and other speeches, and so, the ontological one too. (shrink)