This essay has examined a women's subculture within a broader discipline. In the Victorian era physiology, understood in its then-dominant meaning as hygiene, en- tered the women's colleges and was likely also to have been found in modified form in other types of colleges. Toward the turn of the century physiology began to be redefined as a male-oriented experimental biomedical science. Physiology in the five women's colleges under discussion was transformed in light of that new meaning, but in such a (...) manner as to preserve a female network with an identity of its own. (shrink)

The transmission of a product or idea from one culture or point of origin to another and the maintenance of control outside the new locality has been referred to as the distribution and maintenance of “nothing.” This perspective has been used to describe the global marketplace and the influence of large multinational corporations on the politics and cultures of host countries. This paper uses this concept, but within a much smaller context. Using the sensitizing concept of a “disjoint constitution,” we (...) interviewed health inspectors and apple cider producers in Michigan to determine if the implementation of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) program designed to ensure food safety was characterized by a power differential that would favor the inspectors. In addition, a larger survey of processors and an internet survey of apple cider consumers was conducted to supplement this data. It was found that HACCP had characteristics of both “nothing” and “something” and that better communication is needed between these groups to move it further along toward the something end of the continuum. (shrink)

Food irradiation has been acommercially viable postharvest technology fornearly 50 years (the actual idea of usingionizing radiation to extend the shelf-life offoods is over a century old), yet it has beenused only occasionally and sporadically.Interviews with reporters and the sources theyused at a Louisiana newspaper and a Floridanewspaper uncovered three cultural spherespresent in the debate over this post harvesttechnology – food, science/technology, andjournalism. Each of these spheres were pointsof contention for reporters and sources, andthis has had an affect on the (...) adoption of thetechnology among those involved in the foodindustry. Interviews with both reporters andthe individuals they relied on as sourceselucidate how different issues encompassedwithin different cultural spheres have beenlinked to this post harvest technology, andhave been used to help shape this debate. Thesecultural spheres offer various groups power tocontrol relations with reporters, though thatpower can be usurped by others, including thereporters themselves. Interviews with reportersand their sourses may help us understand howthe values attached to cultural spheres aremobilized by various groups to make sense of acontroversial topic, and how those groups gainentrance to public arenas and are then able tomaintain their presence. (shrink)

In this comprehensive collection of essays, most of which appear for the first time, eminent scholars from many disciplines—philosophy, economics, sociology, political science, demography, theology, history, and social psychology—examine the causes, nature, and consequences of present-day consumption patterns in the United States and throughout the world.

The binary between the figure of the child and the fully human being is invoked with regularity in analyses of race, yet its centrality to the conception of race has never been fully explored. For most commentators, the figure of the child operates as a metaphoric or rhetorical trope, a non-essential strategic tool in the perpetuation of White supremacy. As I show in the following, the child/human binary does not present a contingent or merely rhetorical construction but, rather, a central (...) feature of racialization. Where Black peoples are situated as objects of violence it is often precisely because Blackness has been identified with childhood and childhood is historically identified as the archetypal site of naturalized violence and servitude. I proceed by offering a historical account of how Black peoples came to inherit the subordination and dehumanization of European childhood and how White youth were subsequently spared through their partial categorization as adults. (shrink)

As we understand them, dispositions are relatively uncontroversial 'predicatory' properties had by objects disposed in certain ways. By contrast, powers are hypothetical 'ontic' properties posited in order to explain dispositional behaviour. Chapter 1 outlines this distinction in more detail. Chapter 2 offers a summary of the issues surrounding analysis of dispositions and various strategies in contemporary literature to address them, including one of our own. Chapter 3 describes some of the important questions facing the metaphysics of powers including why they're (...) worth positing, and how they might metaphysically explain laws of nature and modality. (shrink)

Humanity stands at a precipice. -/- Our species could survive for millions of generations — enough time to end disease, poverty, and injustice; to reach new heights of flourishing. But this vast future is at risk. With the advent of nuclear weapons, humanity entered a new age, gaining the power to destroy ourselves, without the wisdom to ensure we won’t. Since then, these dangers have only multiplied, from climate change to engineered pandemics and unaligned artificial intelligence. If we do not (...) act fast to reach a place of safety, it may soon be too late. -/- The Precipice explores the science behind the risks we face. It puts them in the context of the greater story of humanity: showing how ending these risks is among the most pressing moral issues of our time. And it points the way forward, to the actions and strategies we can take today to safeguard humanity’s future. (shrink)

We think we know what healers do: they build on patients' irrational beliefs and treat them in a 'symbolic' way. If they get results, it's thanks to their capacity to listen, rather than any influence on a clinical level. At the same time, we also think we know what modern medicine is: a highly technical and rational process, but one that scarcely listens to patients at all. In this book, ethnopsychiatrist Tobie Nathan and philosopher Isabelle Stengers argue that this commonly (...) posed opposition between traditional and modern medicine is misleading. They show instead that healers are interesting precisely because they don't listen to patients, using techniques of 'divination' rather than 'diagnosis'. Healers construct genuine therapeutic strategies by identifying the origins of symptoms in external forces, outside of the mind of the sufferer, and in this regard African healers are virtuosos. Though it may claim otherwise, modern medicine, for its part, is characterised by empiricism rather than rationality. What appears to be the pursuit of rationality is ultimately only a means to dismiss and exclude other forms of treatment. Blurring the distinctions between traditional and modern practices and drawing on perspectives from across the globe, this ethnopsychiatric manifesto encourages us to think in radically new ways about illness, challenging accepted notions on the relationship between sufferer and symptom. It will be of great interest to those working in medicine and healthcare, as well as anthropologists, social scientists and those in the humanities more broadly. (shrink)

In line with Christopher Preston’s argument in the introduction to this volume, I argue here that, although it is helpful to identify potential injustices associated with SRM, it is also crucial both to evaluate how SRM compares to other available options and to consider empirical conditions under which deployment might occur. In arguing for this view, I rely on a distinction between two types of question: (1) whether SRM would produce just or unjust outcomes in some case and (2) whether (...) it would be just to deploy SRM in that same case. The former question pertains to whether some distribution of benefits and burdens is morally good or bad, whereas the latter pertains to whether some action or policy is morally permissible, impermissible, or obligatory. Although related, these two uses of justice do not come to the same thing. It may be that some climate policy involving SRM carries risks of substantial distributive injustice and yet is permissible or even obligatory. This is because, as I argue, considering what would be just to do should be comparative, taking into consideration both empirical conditions and the morally valuable and disvaluable features of alternative climate policies. (shrink)

The Declaration of Helsinki is recognised worldwide as a cornerstone of research ethics. Working in the wake of the Nazi doctors’ trials at Nuremberg, drafters of the Declaration set out to codify the obligations of physician-researchers to research participants. Its significance cannot be overstated. Indeed, it is cited in most major guidelines on research involving humans and in the regulations of over a dozen countries.Although it has undergone five revisions,1 and most recently incorporated language aimed at addressing concerns over research (...) carried out in resource-poor countries,2–5 the Declaration could go much farther in addressing the profoundly altered landscape of research with humans. Research involving humans is now a global enterprise and often involves participants from resource-poor countries. Rather than being carried out at single institutions by veteran researchers, many studies are now conducted at many locations—including sites that are not academic medical centres—by new and relatively inexperienced investigators. A growing number of projects involve novel agents, based on innovative work in genomics and proteomics. Increasingly, research is sponsored by the for-profit sector. National governments and professional organisations around the globe provide laws, regulations and standards for the conduct of research involving humans. Considerable scholarship also critiques and guides this endeavour.In light of the current effort of the World Medical Association to revise the Declaration, we offer ideas on how to re-conceive the concept of “vulnerability” and its links with the principle of justice and, in turn, redirect the attention of researchers towards those who might be so designated.In the research context, “vulnerability” is associated with an inability partly or totally to protect one’s own interests. Typically, conceptions of vulnerability centre upon characteristics associated with particular groups that …. (shrink)

It has often been noted that there is some tension between engaging in decision-making and believing that one’s choices might be predetermined. The possibility that our choices are predetermined forces us to consider, in our decisions, act-state pairs which are inconsistent, and hence to which we cannot assign sensible utilities. But the reasoning which justifies two-boxing in Newcomb’s problem also justifies associating a non-zero causal probability with these inconsistent act-state pairs. Put together these undefined utilities and non-zero probabilities entail that (...) expected utilities are undefined whenever it is a possibility that our choices are predetermined. There are three ways to solve the problem, but all of them suffer serious costs: always assume that, contrary to our evidence, the outcome of our present decision-making is not predetermined; give up the reasoning that justifies unconditional two-boxing in Newcomb’s problem; or allow epistemically impossible outcomes to contribute to expected utility, leading to the wrong results in a series of cases introduced by Ahmed :665–685, 2014a, Evidence, decision and causality, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014b). However they choose to respond, causal decision theorists cannot remain silent: the intuitive tension between decision-making and the possibility of predetermination can be made precise, and resolving it will require giving up something. Causal decision theorists have a predetermination problem. (shrink)

Settler colonialism is structured in part according to the principle of civilizational progress yet the roots of this doctrine are not well understood. Disparate ideas of progress and practices related to colonial dispossession and domination can be traced back to the Enlightenment, and as far back as ancient Greece, but there remain unexplored logics and continuities. I argue that civilizational progress and settler colonialism are structured according to the opposition between politics governed by reason or faith and the figure of (...) the child as sinful or bestial. Thus, it is not contingent, but rather necessary that justificatory frameworks of European empire and colonialism depict Indigenous peoples as children. To illustrate how the theoretical link between Indigenous peoples and children emerges not as a simple analogy, but rather, as the source of the premodern/modern and savage/civilized binaries, I trace the various historical iterations of the political/childhood opposition through the classical, medieval, enlightenment, and modern eras. I show how the model of civilizational progress from a premodern and savage state of childhood continues to serve as the model for settler colonial exclusion and domination of Indigenous peoples. (shrink)

In this article, I outline the major themes of ‘anti-theodicy’. Anti-theodicy is characterised as a reaction, as rejection, against traditional solutions to the problem of evil and against the traditional formulations of the problem of evil to which those solutions respond. I detail numerous ‘moral’ anti-theodical objections to theodicy, illustrating the central claim of anti-theodicy: Theodicy is morally objectionable. I also detail some ‘non-moral’ anti-theodical objections, illustrating the second major claim of anti-theodicy: Traditional formulations of the problem of evil are (...) conceptually misguided. My focus remains on the analytic philosophical tradition throughout, but I briefly allude to the rich theological tradition of anti-theodicy. Although we should recognise the significant degree of diversity amongst anti-theodical arguments and the philosophical views of their proponents, this article should serve to illustrate the general theme: ‘Theodicies mediate a praxis that sanctions evil.’. (shrink)

The deliberative systems approach is a recent innovation within the tradition of deliberative democratic theory. It signals an important shift in focus from the political legitimacy produced within isolated and formal sites of deliberation (e.g., Parliament or deliberative mini-publics), to the legitimacy produced by a number of diverse interconnected sites. In this respect, the deliberative systems (DS) approach is better equipped to identify and address defects arising from the systemic influences of power and coercion. In this article, I examine one (...) of the least explored and least understood defects: the exclusion of non-speaking political actors generated by the uniform privileging of speech in all sites within a system. Using the examples of prefigurative protest, Indigenous refusal to deliberate, and the non-deliberative agency of disabled citizens, I argue that the DS approach allows theorists to better understand forms of domination related to the imposition of speech on those who are either unwilling or unable to speak. (shrink)

The fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip can be taken to be allegorical of not only chance discovery (serendipity) but of other aspects of scientific discovery as well. Just as Horace Walpole coined serendipity, so can the term bahramdipity be derived from the tale and defined as the cruel suppression of a serendipitous discovery. Suppressed, unpublished discoveries are designated nulltiples. Several examples are presented to make the case that bahramdipity is an existent aspect of scientific discovery. Other examples of (...) non-ideal scientific research and discovery are provided in order to contrast and clarify the meaning and use of bahramdipity. Additional allegories of scientific discovery are taken from the tale and a hope for the strengthening of scientific integrity is expressed. (shrink)

It is often claimed that from the moment of conception embryos have the same moral status as adult humans. This claim plays a central role in many arguments against abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem cell research. In what follows, I show that this claim leads directly to an unexpected and unwelcome conclusion: that natural embryo loss is one of the greatest problems of our time and that we must do almost everything in our power to prevent it. I examine (...) the responses available to those who hold that embryos have full moral status and conclude that they cannot avoid the force of this argument without giving up this key claim. (shrink)

A poor understanding of probability may lead people to misinterpret every day coincidences and form anomalistic beliefs. We investigated the relationship between anomalistic beli...

Why should we decolonise knowledge? One popular rationale is that colonialism has set up a single perspective as epistemically authoritative over many equally legitimate ones, and this is a form of...

McCarthy, Homan, and Rozier’s presentation of theological anthropology and its contribution to secular bioethics suffers from three primary limitations. First, the article re...

Ivan Karamazov is frequently used, and misused, in discussions concerning the problem of evil. The purpose of this article is to correct some pervasive misinterpretations of Ivan’s statement, as found in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. I criticise some common misinterpretations, as exemplified in the theodical work of Marilyn Adams and John Hick, as well as the more nuanced interpretation of Stewart Sutherland. Though Sutherland’s interpretation is the strongest, it nevertheless misses the mark in identifying Ivan as a positivist. I argue (...) that Ivan Karamazov is not a positivist, but a romantic, and a hopeless one at that. We should, therefore, not read Ivan as stating an argument for the non-existence of God, but instead see him as a representative of a very particular and robust form of non-cognitive atheism. (shrink)

It is a commonplace that scientific inquiry makes extensive use of probabilities, many of which seem to be objective chances, describing features of reality that are independent of our minds. Such chances appear to have a number of paradoxical or puzzling features: they appear to be mind-independent facts, but they are intimately connected with rational psychology; they display a temporal asymmetry, but they are supposed to be grounded in physical laws that are time-symmetric; and chances are used to explain and (...) predict frequencies of events, although they cannot be reduced to those frequencies. This book offers an accessible and non-technical introduction to these and other puzzles. Toby Handfield engages with traditional metaphysics and philosophy of science, drawing upon recent work in the foundations of quantum mechanics and thermodynamics to provide a novel account of objective probability that is empirically informed without requiring specialist scientific knowledge. (shrink)

A hub and spoke model offers an effective and efficient approach to providing informed guidance to those who need it. The National Center for Ethics in Health Care (NCEHC) at the Veterans Health Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, is the largest known hub and spoke healthcare ethics delivery model. In this article, we describe ways NCEHC’s hub and spoke configuration succeeded during the COVID- 19 pandemic, as well as limitations of the model and possible improvements to inform adoption at other (...) healthcare systems. (shrink)

Shamatha, Transcendental, and Stillness Meditation are said to aim for “contentless” experiences, where mental content such as thoughts, perceptions, and mental images is absent. Silence is understood to be a central feature of those experiences. The main source of information about the experiences is texts by experts from within the three traditions. Previous research has tended not to use an explicit scientific method for selecting and reviewing expert texts on meditation. We have identified evidence synthesis as a robust and transparent (...) method that is suitable for this purpose. In this paper we use evidence synthesis based on expert texts to examine silence/quietness as a feature of the contentless experiences in the three practices. Objective criteria were used to select a sample of 135 expert texts. A database containing the expert descriptions of the meditation techniques and experiences was produced by extracting the relevant material from the publications and coding that material to differentiate individual features. The database, which forms part of the supplementary material for this paper, identifies each feature of the contentless experiences referred to in the expert texts, including silence/quietness. Our key finding is that the experts indicate silence/quietness has a particular connection with stillness, and the absence of concepts, mental activity/noise, thoughts, and disturbance. Further analysis leads to the following insights. The silence/quietness reflects the absence of thoughts and sounds, and this fits neatly with a conception of silence/quietness as the absence of internal and external noise. In some cases the terms silence and quietness may also reflect the absence of other disturbances such as non-auditory perceptions, mental images, and negative feelings. That would fit with a conception of silence/quietness as complete calm or absence of disturbance. It is not clear from the expert texts how silence/quietness is distinct from other features such as stillness that also reflect the absence of disturbances. As a separate matter, silence/quietness has connections with all the other features of the contentless experiences, but the closeness of the connections varies. Our work uncovers fine distinctions and ambiguities which lead to new research questions that can be explored in future studies. (shrink)

The paper considers the status of mathematics and mathematicians in German industrial labs from the 1920s. As an example, we take the use of statistical methods in the electrical engineering company Osram in Berlin. In the United States, the former employee and member of a special mathematical research department of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Walter Andrew Shewhart (1891–1967), is regarded as the father of statistical quality control. Although the first textbook on applications of mathematical statistics to problems of mass production (...) was published in Germany in 1927, Germany was nevertheless generally considered as conservative in using statistical methods until 1945. In the past we have known little about whether and how these methods were actually applied in German industry before 1945. The present analysis is based on laboratory reports and other sources. It shows that in this field of research there was a close cooperation between industry and university, which was cut off in the mid 1930s due to the Nazi regime. Furthermore, we discovered that female researchers – such as Iris Runge (1888–1966) in the Osram company – could as individuals play a decisive role as mathematical consultants. The position of Runge will be described and compared with the position of mathematical researchers in other industrial labs. am Beispiel früher Anwendung von mathematischer Statistik in der Osram G.m.b.H.Hans Wußing zum 80. Geburtstag gewidmet. (shrink)

Prioritarianism is the moral view that a fixed improvement in someone's well-being matters more the worse off they are. Its supporters argue that it best captures our intuitions about unequal distributions of well-being. I show that prioritarianism sometimes recommends acts that will make things more unequal while simultaneously lowering the total well-being and making things worse for everyone ex ante. Intuitively, there is little to recommend such acts and I take this to be a serious counterexample for prioritarianism.

The orthodox view of the metaphysics of desert is that desert is a triadic relation that obtains between a subject, an object and a desert base. Not only is this view lacking in motivation, but conceiving of the desert base as part of the desert relation renders the concept of desert incoherent. Instead, desert should be thought of as a dyadic relation between a subject and an object, where desert bases are simply the grounds for dyadic desert facts.

The possibility of predetermined choices raises a challenge for Causal Decision Theory [Ahmed 2014b]. Sandgren and Williamson [2021] have recently proposed a response—Selective Causal Decision Theory—that they hope will avoid Ahmed’s counterexamples, maintain (a particular kind of) compatibilism, and endorse universal Two-boxing in Newcomb’s Problem—CDT’s raison d’être. Their proposal does an admirable job of satisfying the first two desiderata. However, in this reply I raise several worries about whether it can satisfy the third.

This article concerns Quentin Meillassoux’s claim that Kant’s revolution is responsible for philosophy’s catastrophic loss of the ‘great outdoors’, of our knowledge of things as they are in themselves. I argue that Meillassoux’s critique of Kant’s ‘weak’ correlationism and his defence of ‘strong’ correlationism are predicated on a fallacious argument (termed ‘the Gem’ by David Stove) and the traditional, but in my view mistaken, metaphysical interpretation of Kant’s transcendental distinction. I draw on Henry Allison’s interpretation of Kant’s idealism to argue (...) that when Kant’s transcendental distinction is understood epistemologically we can avoid the fallacious reasoning underpinning Meillassoux’s argument, and at the very least attenuate his concerns about the ‘Kantian catastrophe’. (shrink)

In contentless experience there is an absence of mental content such as thought, perception, and mental imagery. The path to contentless experience in meditation can be taken to comprise the meditation technique, and the experiences on the way to the contentless “goal-state/s”. Shamatha, Transcendental, and Stillness Meditation are each said to access contentless experience, but the path to that experience in each practice is not yet well understood from a scientific perspective. We have employed evidence synthesis to select and review (...) 135 expert texts from those traditions. In this paper we describe the techniques and interim-states based on the expert texts and compare them across the practices on key dimensions. Superficially, Shamatha and Transcendental Meditation appear very different to Stillness Meditation in that they require bringing awareness to a meditation object. The more detailed and systematic approach taken in this paper indicates that posturally Shamatha is closer to Stillness Meditation, and that on several other dimensions Shamatha is quite different to both other practices. In particular, Shamatha involves greater measures to cultivate attentional stability and vividness with respect to an object, greater focusing, less tolerance of mind-wandering, more monitoring, and more deliberate doing/control. Achieving contentless experience in Shamatha is much slower, more difficult, and less frequent. The findings have important implications for taxonomies of meditation and for consciousness, neuroscientific, and clinical research/practice, and will provide new and useful insights for meditation practitioners. (shrink)