An Irish surrogacy case from 2013 illustrates how negotiations of the mother’s identity in a given national and legal context are drawing on novel scientific perspectives, at a time when the use of new biotechnological possibilities is becoming more widespread and commonplace. The Roman dictum, ‘Mater Semper Certa Est’ is contested by the finding of this Irish court, in which the judge made a declaration of parentage stating that the genetic parents of twins born using a surrogate were the parents. (...) This article critically examines the normative background assumptions involved in this ruling. It will argue that the particular deployment of arguments from genetics and epigenetics in this court case produces a naturalization of the mother’s identity that is inherently reductive. A second surrogacy case is also examined, this time regarding the rights of a woman of Irish nationality to receive paid maternity leave or paid leave similar to adoptive leave after the birth of her daughter to a surrogate mother in the US state of California. This case, which was brought to the Equality Tribunal in Ireland and decided by the Court of Justice of the European Union, is used to illustrate the possible ramifications of conflicting definitions of motherhood in the legal system. In concluding, this article argues for the development and deployment of a more complex understanding of the evolving state of motherhood within the courts, in keeping with developments in the IVF industry and the various new mother-relations it makes possible. (shrink)

The main purpose of this paper is to draw attention to an important part of Habermas’ critique of genetic enhancement, which has been largely ignored in the discussion; namely his use of Kierkegaard’s reflections on the existential conditions for becoming one-self from Either/or and the Sickness unto Death. It will be argued that, although Habermas presents some valuable and highly significant perspectives on the effect of genetic enhancement on the individual’s self-understanding and ability to experience him- or herself as a (...) free and equal individual, he does not succeed in working out a consistent argument. The claim is that he fails to explain how the existential analysis is related to his reflections on the sociological and psychological impacts of genetic enhancement in the realm of communicative action. It is this lack of theoretical clarity, which seems to render Habermas vulnerable to some of the critique which has been raised against his theory from a number of different scientific disciplines and areas of research. Hence, the first part of the paper provides some examples of the nature and variety of this critique, the second part presents Habermas’ own critique of genetic enhancement in the context of a dispute between so-called ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ arguments, and finally, the third part discusses the limits and possibilities of his position in a future debate about genetic enhancement. (shrink)

Andreas Christiansen,Karin Jonch-Clausen,Klemens Kappel | : Many instances of new and emerging science and technology are controversial. Although a number of people, including scientific experts, welcome these developments, a considerable skepticism exists among members of the public. The use of genetically modified organisms is a case in point. In science policy and in science communication, it is widely assumed that such controversial science and technology require public participation in the policy-making process. We examine this view, which we call (...) the Public Participation Paradigm, using the case of GMOs as an example. We suggest that a prominent reason behind the call for public participation is the belief that such participation is required for democratic legitimacy. We then show that the most prominent accounts of democratic legitimacy do not, in fact, entail that public participation is required in cases of controversial science in general, or in the case of GMOs in particular. | : Beaucoup d’avancées scientifiques et de technologies émergentes sont controversées. Bien qu’un certain nombre de personnes, incluant des experts scientifiques, sont favorables à ces développements, la population demeure largement sceptique. Le recours aux organismes génétiquement modifiés illustre une telle situation. Dans les politiques et communications scientifiques, il est largement tenu pour acquis que de telles controverses scientifiques et technologiques requièrent la participation publique dans le processus de prise de décision politique. Nous examinons ce point de vue, que nous appelons le paradigme de la participation publique [Public Participation Paradigm], en nous servant du cas des OGM. Nous suggérons qu’une raison centrale en faveur de l’appel à la participation publique se situe dans la croyance qu’une telle participation est requise par la légitimité démocratique. Nous montrons ensuite que la plupart des principales conceptions de la légitimité démocratique n’impliquent pas, en fait, que la participation publique puisse être requise pour les controverses scientifiques en général, et pour les OGM en particulier. (shrink)

Driven by interests in workforce planning and patient safety, a growing body of literature has begun to identify the reality and the prevalence of missed nursing care, also specified as care left undone, rationed care or unfinished care. Empirical studies and conceptual considerations have focused on structural issues such as staffing, as well as on outcome issues – missed care/unfinished care. Philosophical and ethical aspects of unfinished care are largely unexplored. Thus, while internationally studies highlight instances of covert rationing/missed care/care (...) left undone – suggesting that nurses, in certain contexts, are actively engaged in rationing care – in terms of the nursing and nursing ethics literature, there appears to be a dearth of explicit decision-making frameworks within which to consider rationing of nursing care. In reality, the assumption of policy makers and health service managers is that nurses will continue to provide full care – despite reducing staffing levels and increased patient turnover, dependency and complexity of care. Often, it would appear that rationing/missed care/nursing care left undone is a direct response to overwhelming demands on the nursing resource in specific contexts. A discussion of resource allocation and rationing in nursing therefore seems timely. The aim of this discussion paper is to consider the ethical dimension of issues of resource allocation and rationing as they relate to nursing care and the distribution of the nursing resource. (shrink)

The gamer’s dilemma :31–36, 2009) asks whether any ethical features distinguish virtual pedophilia, which is generally considered impermissible, from virtual murder, which is generally considered permissible. If not, this equivalence seems to force one of two conclusions: either both virtual pedophilia and virtual murder are permissible, or both virtual pedophilia and virtual murder are impermissible. In this article, I attempt, first, to explain the psychological basis of the dilemma. I argue that the two different action types picked out by “virtual (...) pedophilia” and “virtual murder” set very different expectations for their token instantiations that systematically bias judgments of permissibility. In particular, the proscription of virtual pedophilia rests on intuitions about immoral desire, sexual violations, and a schematization of a powerful adult offending against an innocent child. I go on to argue that these differences between virtual pedophilia and virtual murder may be ethically relevant. Precisely because virtual pedophilia is normally aversive in a way that virtual murder is not, we plausibly expect virtual pedophilia to invite abnormal and immorally desirous forms of engagement. (shrink)

This radical, profoundly scholarly book explores the purposes and nature of proof in a range of historical settings. It overturns the view that the first mathematical proofs were in Greek geometry and rested on the logical insights of Aristotle by showing how much of that view is an artefact of nineteenth-century historical scholarship. It documents the existence of proofs in ancient mathematical writings about numbers and shows that practitioners of mathematics in Mesopotamian, Chinese and Indian cultures knew how to prove (...) the correctness of algorithms, which are much more prominent outside the limited range of surviving classical Greek texts that historians have taken as the paradigm of ancient mathematics. It opens the way to providing the first comprehensive, textually based history of proof. (shrink)

Memory is fleeting. New material rapidly obliterates previous material. How, then, can the brain deal successfully with the continual deluge of linguistic input? We argue that, to deal with this “Now-or-Never” bottleneck, the brain must compress and recode linguistic input as rapidly as possible. This observation has strong implications for the nature of language processing: (1) the language system must “eagerly” recode and compress linguistic input; (2) as the bottleneck recurs at each new representational level, the language system must build (...) a multilevel linguistic representation; and (3) the language system must deploy all available information predictively to ensure that local linguistic ambiguities are dealt with “Right-First-Time”; once the original input is lost, there is no way for the language system to recover. This is “Chunk-and-Pass” processing. Similarly, language learning must also occur in the here and now, which implies that language acquisition is learning to process, rather than inducing, a grammar. Moreover, this perspective provides a cognitive foundation for grammaticalization and other aspects of language change. Chunk-and-Pass processing also helps explain a variety of core properties of language, including its multilevel representational structure and duality of patterning. This approach promises to create a direct relationship between psycholinguistics and linguistic theory. More generally, we outline a framework within which to integrate often disconnected inquiries into language processing, language acquisition, and language change and evolution. (shrink)

How does science create knowledge? Epistemic cultures, shaped by affinity, necessity, and historical coincidence, determine how we know what we know. In this book, Karin Knorr Cetina compares two of the most important and intriguing epistemic cultures of our day, those in high energy physics and molecular biology. The first ethnographic study to systematically compare two different scientific laboratory cultures, this book sharpens our focus on epistemic cultures as the basis of the knowledge society.

The scientific evidence is reviewed for claims that a global transition to “green” fuels and technologies by global treaty obligations is needed. The likely equity implications of these efforts are discussed, and it is argued that this evidence remains shaky. Measures based on this contested knowledge cannot be defended on grounds of either environmental effectiveness or equity. Rather, they rely on commercial expectations and promises of secondary benefits usually requiring state intervention. Poorer groups and nations are unlikely to benefit from (...) proposals to redirect energy policies to “combat global warming.” The advocated decarbonization of global energy supplies is more likely to increase political instability than prevent climatic change. To support this argument, three areas of knowledge are consulted: controversies about the causation and likely impacts of global warming, advocated technical and fiscal solutions, and the interests of technical, commercial, and political elites. (shrink)

Resumen La pretensión de que la violencia es un fenómeno apto para el abordaje objetivo es altamente cuestionable. En este artículo se indicarán algunos aspectos que subyacen en los enfoques más clásicos sobre tal tópico y se destacará el potencial violentogénico que encapsulan. El núcleo de las ideas expuestas apunta a plantear que la epistemología objetivista induce a una violencia simbólica enquistada en el principio del tercero excluido. En consecuencia, los esfuerzos por convertir a la violencia en un tema de (...) investigación objetiva terminan transformándose en una flagrante retroalimentación de la misma violencia que se proponen observar. Ahora bien, en contraste con esa anquilosada postura objetivista, se explorará un enfoque epistemológico de corte socio-construccionista que complejiza el abordaje de la violencia al enmarcarla dentro de una "investigación de segundo orden".The claim that violence is a phenomenon suitable for the objective approach is highly questionable. In this article, some aspects underlying the more classical approaches about such topic will be indicated, and their intrinsic violent potential will be emphasized. The core of the ideas that aims to raise the objectivist epistemology leads to a symbolic violence entrenched in the principle of the excluded middle. Consequently, efforts to make violence a topic of objective research end up becoming a flagrant feedback of the same violence they intend to observe. However, in contrast to the ossified objectivist position, a socio-constructionist epistemological approach will be explored. It focuses on violence as a complex reality, by framing it within a "Second-Order Research". (shrink)

In this review article, Christiansen provides a historical perspective on the two research traditions, implicit learning and statistical learning, thus nicely setting the scene for this special issue of Topics in Cognitive Science. In this “tale of two literatures”, he first traces the history of both literatures before sketching a framework that provides a basis for understanding implicit learning and statistical learning as a unified phenomenon.

Why are children better language learners than adults despite being worse at a range of other cognitive tasks? Here, we explore the role of multiword sequences in explaining L1–L2 differences in learning. In particular, we propose that children and adults differ in their reliance on such multiword units in learning, and that this difference affects learning strategies and outcomes, and leads to difficulty in learning certain grammatical relations. In the first part, we review recent findings that suggest that MWUs play (...) a facilitative role in learning. We then discuss the implications of these findings for L1–L2 differences: We hypothesize that adults are both less likely to extract MWUs and less capable of benefiting from them in the process of learning. In the next section, we draw on psycholinguistic, developmental, and computational findings to support these predictions. We end with a discussion of the relation between this proposal and other accounts of L1–L2 difficulty. (shrink)

In feminist media studies, the growing body of research on media production has indicated that journalism remains divided along gender lines. The purpose of this study is to address the lack of relevant multi-method research on gender inequality in journalism. To assess the structural position of women in the journalistic workforce, the authors conducted a large-scale survey of journalists in Belgium. The survey results were explored in more depth by conducting qualitative interviews with 19 female journalists. The analysis confirms the (...) existence of all traditional barriers that women journalists experience. The added value of this study is that it enumerates several additional difficulties, and offers insight into the strategies that the respondents use to deal with gender-related career obstacles. These strategies were associated with the degree of flexibility in the newsroom for journalists with children, the choice to work part-time or freelance, and the use of new communication technologies. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that human learning and the structure of human languages are intimately related. This relationship is frequently suggested to derive from a language-specific biological endowment, which encodes universal, but communicatively arbitrary, principles of language structure (a Universal Grammar or UG). How might such a UG have evolved? We argue that UG could not have arisen either by biological adaptation or non-adaptationist genetic processes, resulting in a logical problem of language evolution. Specifically, as the processes of language change (...) are much more rapid than processes of genetic change, language constitutes a both over time and across different human populations, and, hence, cannot provide a stable environment to which language genes could have adapted. We conclude that a biologically determined UG is not evolutionarily viable. Instead, the original motivation for UG arises because language has been shaped to fit the human brain, rather than vice versa. Following Darwin, we view language itself as a complex and interdependent which evolves under selectional pressures from human learning and processing mechanisms. That is, languages themselves are shaped by severe selectional pressure from each generation of language users and learners. This suggests that apparently arbitrary aspects of linguistic structure may result from general learning and processing biases deriving from the structure of thought processes, perceptuo-motor factors, cognitive limitations, and pragmatics. (shrink)

L'oeuvre de Pic de la Mirandole offre un terrain d'expansion très large à la notion de métamorphose en même temps qu'elle l'investit au profit de la notion de dignité humaine cristallisée autour d'une liberté créatrice qui est tout d'abord libération de la pensée.

Establishing and maintaining mutual understanding in everyday conversations is crucial. To do so, people employ a variety of conversational devices, such as backchannels, repair, and linguistic entrainment. Here, we explore whether the use of conversational devices might be influenced by cross‐linguistic differences in the speakers’ native language, comparing two matched languages—Danish and Norwegian—differing primarily in their sound structure, with Danish being more opaque, that is, less acoustically distinguished. Across systematically manipulated conversational contexts, we find that processes supporting mutual understanding in (...) conversations vary with external constraints: across different contexts and, crucially, across languages. In accord with our predictions, linguistic entrainment was overall higher in Danish than in Norwegian, while backchannels and repairs presented a more nuanced pattern. These findings are compatible with the hypothesis that native speakers of Danish may compensate for its opaque sound structure by adopting a top‐down strategy of building more conversational redundancy through entrainment, which also might reduce the need for repairs. These results suggest that linguistic differences might be met by systematic changes in language processing and use. This paves the way for further cross‐linguistic investigations and critical assessment of the interplay between cultural and linguistic factors on the one hand and conversational dynamics on the other. (shrink)

Generality is a key value in scientific discourses and practices. Throughout history, it has received a variety of meanings and of uses. This collection of original essays aims to inquire into this diversity. Through case studies taken from the history of mathematics, physics and the life sciences, the book provides evidence of different ways of understanding the general in various contexts. It aims at showing how individuals have valued generality and how they have worked with specific types of "general" entities, (...) procedures, and arguments. (shrink)

The social licence to operate concept is little developed in the academic literature so far. Deployment of the term was made by the United National Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the UN ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework, which apply SLO as an argument for responsible business conduct, connecting to social expectations and bridging to public regulation. This UN guidance has had a significant bearing on how public regulators seek to influence business conduct beyond Human Rights to broader (...) Corporate Social Responsibility concerns. Drawing on examples of such public regulatory governance, this article explores and explains developments towards a juridification of CSR entailing efforts by public regulators to reach beyond jurisdictional and territorial limitations of conventional public law to address adverse effects of transnational economic activity. Through analysis of an expansion of law into the normative framing of what constitutes responsible business conduct, we demonstrate a process of juridification entailing a legal framing of social expectations of companies, a proliferation of law into the field of business ethics, and an increased regulation by law of social actors or processes. (shrink)

Human science researchers tend to be targeted for critique on the grounds that their approach is too individualistic to take due cognisance of societal and political influences. What is accordingly advocated is that the phenomenological and so-called romantic theories should be abandoned in favour of analytic or continental theories that have as their main focus the system, the group, the society, and the various influences of the social world on the existential reality of the individual.Without trying to invalidate these social (...) science strategies, this paper attempts to show that it is not necessary to surrender phenomenology in order to understand not only the individual, but also the social world in which individuals live. It is argued that the desired goal of a less individualistic human science’s theoretical basis can still be founded in phenomenology, in that Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, which has its origin in Husserlian phenomenology, provides us with an adequate ontology for understanding human existence more comprehensively. Merleau-Ponty’s ontological philosophy elucidates the in-between world, that structure of existence where the individual cannot be separated from her/his world context. In his exploration of the reversibility of existence, Merleau-Ponty demonstrates that there is no ontological gulf between the individual and the social world. Instead, the world is ‘in’ the individual as much as the individual is ‘in’ the world. With this phenomenological epistemology, it is argued, it is possible to generate research that is capable “of more than a frozen existence”, as Merleau-Ponty puts it. (shrink)

In the generative tradition, the language faculty has been shrinking—perhaps to include only the mechanism of recursion. This paper argues that even this view of the language faculty is too expansive. We first argue that a language faculty is difficult to reconcile with evolutionary considerations. We then focus on recursion as a detailed case study, arguing that our ability to process recursive structure does not rely on recursion as a property of the grammar, but instead emerge gradually by piggybacking on (...) domain-general sequence learning abilities. Evidence from genetics, comparative work on non-human primates, and cognitive neuroscience suggests that humans have evolved complex sequence learning skills, which were subsequently pressed into service to accommodate language. Constraints on sequence learning therefore have played an important role in shaping the cultural evolution of linguistic structure, including our limited abilities for processing recursive structure. Finally, we re-evaluate some of the key considerations that have often been taken to require the postulation of a language faculty. (shrink)

Investigates the intellectual affinities of Adorno and Nietzsche, culminating in a discussion of their readings of Wagner, who serves as a medium and supplement for their critiques of modern culture.

Classical conceptual distinctions in philosophy of education assume an individualistic subjectivity and hide the learning that can take place in the space between child and adult. Grounded in two examples from experience I develop the argument that adults often put metaphorical sticks in their ears in their educational encounters with children. Hearers’ prejudices cause them to miss out on knowledge offered by the child, but not heard by the adult. This has to do with how adults view education, knowledge, as (...) much as child, and is even more extreme when child is also black. The idea is what Miranda Fricker calls ‘epistemic injustice’ which occurs when someone is wronged specifically in their capacity as a knower. Although her work concerns gender and race, I extrapolate her radical ideas to child. Awareness of the epistemic injustice that is done to children and my proposal for increased epistemic modesty and epistemic equality could help transform pedagogical spaces to include child subjects as educators. A way forward is suggested that involves ‘cracking’ the concept of child and a different non-individualised conception of education. (shrink)

Tracing efforts to control unwanted sound--the noise of industry, city traffic, gramophones and radios, and aircraft--from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century.

Cultural accounts of scientific ideas and practices have increasingly come to be welcomed as a corrective to previous—and still widely held—theories of scientific knowledge and practices as universal. The editors caution, however, against the temptation to overgeneralize the work of culture, and to lapse into a kind of essentialism that flattens the range and variety of scientific work. The book refers to this tendency as culturalism. The contributors to the volume model a new path where historicized and cultural accounts of (...) scientific practice retain their specificity and complexity without falling into the traps of culturalism. They examine, among other issues, the potential of using notions of culture to study behavior in financial markets; the ideology, organization, and practice of earthquake monitoring and prediction during China's Cultural Revolution; the history of quadratic equations in China; and how studying the "glass ceiling" and employment discrimination became accepted in the social sciences. Demonstrating the need to understand the work of culture as a fluid and dynamic process that directly both shapes and is shaped by scientific practice, Cultures without Culturalism makes an important intervention in science studies. Contributors. Bruno Belhoste, Karine Chemla, Caroline Ehrhardt, Fa-ti Fan,Kenji Ito, Evelyn Fox Keller, Guillaume Lachenal, Donald MacKenzie, Mary S. Morgan, Nancy J. Nersessian, David Rabouin, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Claude Rosental, Koen Vermeir. (shrink)

Jock Young, em “A sociedade excludente: Exclusão social, criminalidade e diferença na modernidade recente” nos convida a examinar as circunstâncias que contribuíram para a transição da modernidade para a modernidade recente, ou seja, a transição que ocorreu no Primeiro Mundo entre os “anos dourados” do pós-guerra e o período de crise a partir do final dos anos 1960. Ao longo do livro, Young busca evidenciar as mudanças dramáticas que ocorreram nos níveis de criminalidade, na natureza do desvio e nas mudanças (...) materiais ocorridas nas esferas de produção e do consumo, estabelecendo um contraste material e cultural na Europa Ocidental e nos Estados Unidos. (shrink)

One theme of this special issue is an incitement to reconsider the relationship between pragmatism and critical realism. While their advocates sometimes come into conflict, there are also clearly b...

Our understanding of language, its origins and subsequent evolution, is shaped not only by data and theories from the language sciences, but also fundamentally by the biological sciences. Recent developments in genetics and evolutionary theory offer both very strong constraints on what scenarios of language evolution are possible and probable, but also offer exciting opportunities for understanding otherwise puzzling phenomena. Due to the intrinsic breathtaking rate of advancement in these fields, and the complexity, subtlety, and sometimes apparent non-intuitiveness of the (...) phenomena discovered, some of these recent developments have either being completely missed by language scientists or misperceived and misrepresented. In this short paper, we offer an update on some of these findings and theoretical developments through a selection of illustrative examples and discussions that cast new light on current debates in the language sciences. The main message of our paper is that life is much more complex and nuanced than anybody could have predicted even a few decades ago, and that we need to be flexible in our theorizing instead of embracing a priori dogmas and trying to patch paradigms that are no longer satisfactory. (shrink)

This article investigates the nature and appeal of morally ambiguous protagonists, or anti-heroes, through an evolutionary lens. It argues that morally ambiguous protagonists navigate conflicts between prosocial and antisocial motivational pulls. In so doing they present audiences with a window onto the conflicts inherent in human sociality. Working from this premise, the article analyzes the morally ambiguous protagonist Walter White from the TV series Breaking Bad, complementing the analysis with survey results. The article finally discusses critically the role of moral (...) disengagement in enjoyment of stories with morally ambiguous protagonists. (shrink)

The ArgumentTo highlight speculative trends specific to the mathematical tradition that developed in China, the paper analyzes an excerpt of a third-century commentary on a mathematical classic, which arguably contains a proof. The paper shows that the following three tasks cannot be dissociated one from the other: (1) to discuss how the ancient text should be read; (2) to describe the practice of mathematical proof to which this text bears witness; (3) to bring to light connections between philosophy and mathematics (...) that it demonstrates were established in China. To this end the paper defines its use of the word “proof” and outlines a program for an international history of mathematical proof. It describes the sense in which the text conveys a proof and shows how it simultaneously fulfills algorithmic ends, bringing to light a formal pattern that appears to be fundamental both for mathematics and for other domains of reality. The interest in transformations that mathematical writings demonstrate in China at that time seems to have been influenced by philosophical developments based onThe Book of Changes (Yi-jing), which the excerpt quotes. This quotation within a mathematical context makes it possible to suggest an interpretation for a rather difficult philosophical statement. (shrink)

Esse artigo tem por objetivo entender a conexão entre democracia, educação e ciência em Dewey. Primeiramente apresenta-se a proposta de democracia como um modo de vida associada que pressupõe interesses em comum e liberdade. Algo que representa um equilíbrio desejável. Em um segundo momento, destaca-se o histórico da formação da democracia americana e a educação como um elemento que promove a manutenção da sociedade democrática e como essa forma de vida e de governo é impactada pela economia e pela ciência. (...) Diante disso, é possível vislumbrar a atualidade do pensamento deweyano sobre a necessidade vigilância para a manutenção da democracia. (shrink)