Essays exploring a rich intersection between phenomenology and idealism with contemporary relevance.

Both bioethics and law have governed human genomics by distinguishing research from clinical practice. Yet the rise of translational genomics now makes this traditional dichotomy inadequate. This paper pioneers a new approach to the ethics of translational genomics. It maps the full range of ethical approaches needed, proposes a “layered” approach to determining the ethics framework for projects combining research and clinical care, and clarifies the key role that return of results can play in advancing translation.

The literature on hybrid masculinity suggests that some men manage subordinate or contradictory forms of masculinity while still maintaining and benefiting from gender inequality. Drawing from 35 in-depth qualitative interviews with religious participants in pornography addiction recovery programs, we expand this literature by illustrating how hybrid masculinity operates through shared cultural knowledge about sex, gender, and sexuality. We find that participants use distinct cultural schemas related to religion and science to explain how men are created by God to be biologically (...) “hard-wired” for pornography addiction. We use the phrase redemptive masculinity to describe a type of hybrid masculinity that upholds the cultural association between hegemonic masculinity and pornography consumption, but allows religious men to describe their avoidance of pornography as a masculine feat. Redemptive masculinity depends upon particular beliefs about gender that give advantage to the religious men who work to overcome pornography addiction. We show how their stories reinforce essentialist differences between male and female bodies that protect the interests and sexual expressions of religious men. In turn, we show how hybrid masculinities may involve gender-flexible practices for men but also how these may ultimately reinforce strict and inflexible beliefs about so-called “opposite” sexes. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: I'm an Mammal, I'm a Reptile, I'm a Tree! Asanas as Earth Democracy in Practice Yogis for the Earth.

Objective: The objective of the current study was to maximise the amount of information children and adolescents understand about the risks and benefits associated with participation in a biomedical research study.Design: Participants were presented with one of six hypothetical research protocols describing how to fix a fractured thigh using either a “standard” cast or “new” pins procedure. Risks and benefits associated with each of the treatment options were manipulated so that for each one of the six protocols there was either (...) a correct or ambiguous choice.Participants and setting: Two hundred and fifty one children, ages 6–15 , and 237 adults were interviewed while waiting for a clinic appointment at the Hospital for Sick Children.Results: Using standardised procedures and questionnaires, it was determined that most participants, regardless of age group, were able to understand the basic purpose and procedures involved in the research, and most were able to choose the “correct” operation. The younger children, however, showed an overall preference for a cast operation, whereas the older participants were more likely to choose the pins.Conclusions: By creating age appropriate modules of information, children as young as six years can understand potentially difficult and complex concepts such as the risks and benefits associated with participation in biomedical research. It appears, however, that different criteria were used for treatment preference, regardless of associated risks; older participants tended to opt for mobility whereas younger participants stayed with the more familiar cast operation. (shrink)

The importance of ethical consumerism to many companies worldwide has increased dramatically in recent years. Ethical consumerism encompasses the importance of non-traditional and social components of a company's products and business process to strategic success - such as environmental protectionism, child labor practices and so on. The present paper utilizes a random utility theoretic experimental design to provide estimates of the relative value selected consumers place on the social features of products.

... The purpose of this paper is to try to clarify the extent to which consumers “value” ethical product features when making purchases by utilizing a distinctive methodology – structured choice experiments ( Louviere et al., 2000) – that What Will Consumers Pay ... Jordan J. Louviere ... \n.

This article considers Beauvoir’s gesture towards fraternité at the end of The Second Sex (1949) by focusing on her fleeting characterisation of this future as ‘an androgynous world’. Generally, either Beauvoir’s call for fraternité is dismissed as an erasure of sexual difference and is thus seen to be politically bankrupt, or fraternité is understood to realise sexual difference. This latter reading suggests that androgyny plays no role in Beauvoir’s solution to women’s oppression, while the other view often sees it as (...) one effect of fraternité. This article takes a different position by arguing that Beauvoir affirms sexual difference and commits to an androgynous future. The article argues that androgyny is an affective mood that is constitutive of an openness in the field of possibility for living sexual difference. Consequently, androgyny plays not only a central role in fraternité, but also gestures to a future beyond dimorphic sexual difference. (shrink)

Neither the range of potential results from genomic research that might be returned to participants nor future uses of stored data and biospecimens can be fully predicted at the outset of a study. Informed consent procedures require clear explanations about how and by whom decisions are made and what principles and criteria apply. To ensure trustworthy research governance, there is also a need for empirical studies incorporating public input to evaluate and strengthen these processes.

This article argues that Maurice Merleau-Ponty advances a queer notion of love. In particular, I argue that his notion of love as an institution, as a hollow fueled by the imaginary dimension of existence, shows that love unhinges petrified ideals of gender. I suggest that the crucial insight to be found in Merleau-Ponty's account of love is that love is a lived openness that invites us to seek out new ways of being.

This article argues that Maurice Merleau-Ponty advances a queer notion of love. In particular, I argue that his notion of love as an institution, as a hollow fueled by the imaginary dimension of existence, shows that love unhinges petrified ideals of gender. I suggest that the crucial insight to be found in Merleau-Ponty's account of love is that love is a lived openness that invites us to seek out new ways of being.

This article suggests that Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex offers an important contribution to a feminist phenomenology of temporality. In contrast to readings of The Second Sex that focus on the notion of “becoming” as the main claim about the relation between “woman” and time, this article suggests that Beauvoir's discussion of temporality in volume II of The Second Sex shows that Beauvoir understands the temporality of waiting, or a passive present, to be an underlying structure of women's existence (...) and subordination. Accordingly, I argue that Beauvoir does not see “woman” as a mere becoming, as that which unfolds in time, but instead understands becoming a woman to be realized as lived time. As such, Beauvoir's account shows that gender and temporality are deeply entangled, and thus she challenges the classic phenomenological account of temporality as a general, given structure of human existence. More specifically, I argue that her account shows how a particular experience of time is an underlying structure of sexual objectification, a claim that expands on the feminist phenomenological claim that a particular relation to space becomes a way in which women take up and negotiate their own subordination and objectification. (shrink)

The informed consent process for genetic testing does not commonly address preferences regarding disclosure of results in the event of the patient's death. Adults being tested for familial colorectal cancer were asked whether they want their exome sequencing results disclosed to another person in the event of their death prior to receiving the results. Of 78 participants, 92% designated an individual and 8% declined to. Further research will help refine practices for informed consent.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 10, Page 9-10, October 2012.

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;This thesis proposes that the death of the author is neither a desirable, nor properly attainable goal of criticism, and that the concept of the author remained profoundly active even--and especially--as its disappearance was being articulated. ;As the phrase implies, the death of the author is seen to repeat the Nietzschean deicide. In Barthes, the idea of the author is explicitly connected to that of God, for Foucault and (...) Derrida, to that of the transcendental subject of knowledge. Nowhere, however, is any demonstration forwarded as to why we must conceive author, transcendental subject, and divinity as specifications of the same subject, and therefore implicated in a common closure. Always and everywhere, the death of the author proceeds on the basis of an idealized conception of authorship. ;In practical terms, such are the pressures exerted upon critical discourse by the death of the author that the author is implied from the outset. Barthes will insist that the authorial subject is constituted in and through language, whilst also recommending that we should regard certain authors as "founders of languages". With Foucault, the requisite transindividuality of archaeology is subverted by the absolutely privileged, metahistorical status it bestows upon Nietzsche. Derrida's history of logocentrism denies the author precisely because of the exorbitant recourse it must make to Rousseau as the single systematized instance of an age of logocentric metaphysics. ;The placement of the author reflects the experience of these critics in writing their texts. In Barthes, the return of the author is inseparable from his own autobiographical project; with Foucault, it relates to the rejection of the transcendental detachment of the archaelogist in favour of the engaged subjectivity of the genealogist; in Derrida, authorial reinscription coincides with his attempt to move beyond critical reading toward autobiographical literature. With hindsight, it appears that it is the becoming-author of the critic that is actually at issue. ;However, this revisionary phase has been largely neglected, and Barthes, Foucault and Derrida are continually invoked to underwrite critical resistance to the author. From the Russian Formalists onward, literary theory has shown itself incapable of accommodating authorial subjectivity. As such, the question of the author increasingly presents itself as the question of theory, of its adequacy as a descriptive science of literature and discourse in general. (shrink)

Background: Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease in which the progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons leads to initially sporadic and eventually widespread damage of the nervous system resulting in significant musculoskeletal and cognitive deterioration. Loss of motor function alongside increasing cognitive impairment is part of the natural disease progression. Gait is often considered an automatic activity; however, walking is the result of a delicate balance of multiple systems which maintain the body’s center of mass over an ever-changing base of support. (...) It is a complex motor behavior that requires components of attention and memory to prevent falls and injury. In addition, evidence points to the critical role of salient visual information to gait adaptability. There is a growing understanding that treatment for PD needs to address movement as it occurs naturally and walking needs to be practiced in more complex environments than traditional therapy has provided.MethodsIn this single-blinded randomized-controlled pilot study, an immersive treadmill training was piloted to determine feasibility and preliminary efficacy on gait and cognition in people with PD. Eighteen participants with Hoehn and Yahr stages I-III PD were randomized to either an intervention or a waitlist control group. Following baseline data collection, the intervention group trained for 30 min, three times/week for 4 weeks on a split belt treadmill combined with a first-person immersive video game targeting visuospatial skills and working memory. Assessment was repeated after 4 weeks of training for the experimental group and 1-month after baseline for the control group. Primary motor outcomes were captured with the APDM Opal sensors during 6 MWT, TUG, and TUG Cognitive. Secondary outcomes of cognition were measured with the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, Verbal Fluency and the Symbol Digit Modality Test. Within subject differences were calculated using the Wilcoxon Signed Ranked Test and between subject comparisons were analyzed using the Mann Whitney U-test.ResultsThis novel treadmill training program was well-tolerated with all participants in the intervention group completing 4 weeks of training three times a week without any adverse effects. After immersive cognitive motor training, the experimental group made clinically relevant improvements in gait speed and walking distance during the 6 MWT while members of the control group showed no change or decreased gait speed and walking distance over the 1-month trial. In addition, the experimental group demonstrated significant improvement for the TUG Cognitive and those changes were greater than the control group. The experimental group also improved scores on MoCA and SDMT cognitive outcome measures while the control group did not.ConclusionThe use of immersive gaming technology to engage specific areas of cognition related to gait is feasible in PD. The treadmill training program paired with a customized interactive video game improved walking velocity in addition to non-significant but consistent improvements in other gait measures and cognitive performance in participants with early to mid-stage PD. (shrink)

Aggleton & Brown have built a convincing case that hippocampus-related circuits may be involved in thalamic amnesia. It remains to be established, however, that their model represents a distinct neurological system, that the distinction between recall and familiarity captures the roles of these pathways in episodic memory, or that there are no other systems that contribute to the signs of amnesia associated with thalamic disease.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Anonymous Temporality and Gender:Rereading Merleau-PontyMegan M. BurkeThis Essay Provides a Feminist reading of Merleau-Ponty’s notion of anonymity in order to show that it is a critical resource for a feminist account of gender. For Merleau-Ponty, anonymity is a structure of temporality that is prior to the cogito; it is a time that actualizes the reflective self. It gestures away from ontological commitments rooted in presence and calls attention to (...) how senses inform and actualize one’s reflective experience, which illuminates how it is that certain habits become sedimented or deeply rooted into the structure of one’s lived experience. As such, anonymity provides a useful framework for understanding how and in what ways gender normativity is taken up and resisted in experience. Yet feminist readings of Merleau-Ponty and anonymity are divided. On the one hand, there is a strong criticism of his work in general and anonymity in particular and, on the other hand, there is an effort to recuperate aspects of his project, including anonymity. Four examples can help frame this disparate feminist reception of his work:1. Merleau-Ponty neglects sexual difference. For example, Elizabeth Grosz suggests, “Merleau-Ponty leaves out—indeed, is unable to address—the questions of sexual difference, the question of what kind of human body he is discussing, what kind of perceptual functions, and what kind of sexual desire result from the sexual morphology and particularity of the subject” (Grosz 1994, 10). [End Page 138]2. Anonymity neglects sexual difference. Shannon Sullivan is representative of this point, claiming, “Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the anonymous or impersonal body … leads one to overlook” difference; “Merleau-Ponty fails to realize” difference; “He is wrong” (Sullivan 2001, 71).3. Anonymity illuminates sexual difference. For Silvia Stoller “[W]ith the help of Merleau-Ponty … sexual difference presupposes an anonymous sexuality which underlies gender identifications,” making anonymity important to a phenomenological account of sexual difference (Stoller 2013).4. Merleau-Ponty’s account of embodied subjectivity provides insight into the lived experience of femininity. Feminist analyses of female body comportment, such as those of Iris Marion Young and Sandra Bartky, suggest that gender is a process of sedimentation (Young 1990; Bartky 1990). More specifically, they suggest gender becomes a lived experience through the repetition of particular behaviors and actions such that they become a deeply habituated part of one’s being in the world.While the feminist criticisms of Merleau-Ponty are important insofar as they caution against the acceptance of universal claims about existence, they also overlook anonymity’s relationship to time. Given that Merleau-Ponty’s characterization of anonymity is temporal through and through, this oversight is problematic. Without an account of anonymity as a kind of temporality, we miss the value of anonymity and the further insight that can be drawn from it in relation to gender. In what follows, then, I propose a solution to the disparate reception of his work. I suggest that reading anonymity as a structure of temporality illuminates how gender is taken up in lived experience. And, I suggest that anonymity can provide a strong account of gender normativity when one understands the parallels between sedimentation and anonymity with respect to temporality. By showing the strong connection between sedimentation and anonymous temporality, I suggest that it is ontologically and politically helpful to understand gender as a lived time.In the first section of this paper, I will address the main criticisms of anonymity provided by Shannon Sullivan and Luce Irigaray, while also paying attention to those from Elizabeth Grosz, Judith Butler, and Beata Stawarska. For Sullivan, Grosz, and Butler, Merleau-Ponty’s anonymous body is a neutral body, a body that fails to account for gender differences. Irigaray and Stawarska suggest that anonymity is the mark of patriarchy, making ethical and ontological solipsism fundamental to Merleau-Ponty’s work. In each of these cases, anonymity provides nothing useful for and is, in fact, a detriment to feminist projects.In the second section of this paper, I turn to Stoller’s positive reading of anonymity. For Stoller, anonymity is a political and ethical resource that challenges gender norms because it can allow for transformation in... (shrink)

Discusses some of the philosophical ideas about knowledge and applies them to organizational design and information processing in order to create new ideas and new ways of thinking. Explains how this can be achieved by a discussion of the issues surrounding organizational design and the impact of design on information processing. Reviews the ideas concerning the theory of knowledge proposed by rationalists, such as Descartes and empiricists, such as Locke and how these relate to other epistemological theories such as historicism (...) and pragmatism. Concludes by discussing the means by which philosophical theories of knowledge can assist towards new considerations of information processing. (shrink)

The last decade has seen a slow but steady increase in the number of postdoctoral scholars employed in faculties of education. In this article, seven postdoctoral scholars who worked in the same Ca...

Widespread concerns about the long-term fiscal gap in Social Security have prompted various proposals for structural reform, with individual accounts as the centerpiece. Carving out individual accounts from the existing system would shift significant risks and responsibilities to individual workers. A parallel development has already occurred in the area of private pensions. Experience with 401 plans indicates that many workers will have difficulty making prudent decisions concerning investment and withdrawal of funds. Moreover, in implementing any system of voluntary individual accounts, (...) it will be important to design default settings that provide appropriate guidance for workers with heterogeneous levels of financial sophistication and risk tolerance. The central goal of Social Security reform should be to close the fiscal gap in a way that preserves rather than undermines the existing system of mandatory defined benefits for all workers. (shrink)

Documents as we encounter them in everyday life are complex and diverse things, whether on paper, computer disk or on the World Wide Web. They play many roles vis-à-vis human beings, and the humans engaged with them have diverse responsibilities that are not always easy to fulfil. Added to this is the issue of how a document or literary work can change and yet retain its identity, as found in maintenance, drafting and versioning of documents. This paper explores how the (...) meaning-oriented philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd may be used to understand the complex nature of documents, to throw light on the roles, responsibilities and culture surrounding them, and to tackle issues of identity and change. (shrink)

Extensive research has demonstrated that rs1360780, a common single nucleotide polymorphism within the FKBP5 gene, interacts with early-life stress in predicting psychopathology. Previous results suggest that carriers of the TT genotype of rs1360780 who were exposed to child abuse show differences in structure and functional activation of emotion-processing brain areas belonging to the salience network. Extending these findings on intermediate phenotypes of psychopathology, we examined if the interaction between rs1360780 and child abuse predicts resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) between the amygdala (...) and other areas of the salience network. We analyzed data of young European adults from the general population (N = 774; mean age = 18.76 years) who took part in the IMAGEN study. In the absence of main effects of genotype and abuse, a significant interaction effect was observed for rsFC between the right centromedial amygdala and right posterior insula (p <.025, FWE-corrected), which was driven by stronger rsFC in TT allele carriers with a history of abuse. Our results suggest that the TT genotype of rs1360780 may render individuals with a history of abuse more vulnerable to functional changes in communication between brain areas processing emotions and bodily sensations, which could underlie or increase the risk for psychopathology. (shrink)

This paper argues that professionals who make boundary-related decisions should be guided by relationship-based practice. In our roles as service users and professionals, drawing from our lived experiences of professional relationships, we argue we need to move away from distance-based practice. This includes understanding the boundary stories and narratives that exist for all of us – including the people we support, other professionals, as well as the organisations and systems within which we work. When we are dealing with professional boundary (...) issues, we should centre relationship-building skills that are central to many other aspects of our work. Skills that foster relationships at all levels – between professionals, service users, and services – need to be revalued. Our final recommendation is to create, develop, and foster safer spaces within and outside of organisations, as well as inter-professionally, for the discussion and exploration of boundary-related issues and practice. We are interested in hearing from those with experiences of being marginalised by boundaries so that they can inform a reshaping of our collective ideas around boundary related practices. To foster relationship-based practices in organisations, we have outlined several recommendations here; however, we recognize that these do not go far enough, and that collective action is needed to inform systemic change. (shrink)