ABSTRACTHedonic deficits are linked to protracted dysphoric affect in depression, a disorder characterised by emotion context insensitivity. Recent findings from daily life studies contradict the ECI view. This study longitudinally investigated DA across laboratory and daily life contexts and the conditions associated with discrepancies in DA reactivity. Thirty-three healthy controls and 41 adults with major depressive disorder provided responses to neutral and positive films viewed in the laboratory and daily events recorded over the course of three days using ecological momentary (...) assessment methodology. The current study reports on participants’ appraisals of films and events and their subsequent DA, both rated individually after each task and daily event. Despite large group similarities in appraisals of the positive film and life events, MDDs appraised the neutral film and neutral life events as less important and less pleasant (film: d =... (shrink)

O presente artigo analisa o crescimento das instituições escolares salesianas no Antigo Sul de Mato Grosso no final do século XIX e início do XX e o ideal de um processo civilizador educacional, empreendido pela Igreja Católica, protagonizado pela congregação salesiana a qual atuou para assegurar prerrogativa educacionais ao passo que o Estado brasileiro laicizava-se. Essa análise terá como suporte bibliográfico a obra de Riolando Azzi (1982) que em sua obra Os salesianos no Brasil à luz da História, destaca o (...) papel exercido pelo Manual Civilizador dos salesianos. Como aporte teórico, destacamos a obra de Norbert Elias (1994), O processo civilizador. (shrink)

While proponents of social egg freezing argue that it is liberating for women, opponents contest that the technology provides an individualist solution to a social problem. This article comprises personal and academic reflections on the debate on social egg freezing from four young women studying reproductive technologies. We challenge the promotion of social egg freezing as an empowering option for women and question cultural assumptions about childbearing, the disclosure of risk, failures to consider sexual diversity and socioeconomic status, and the (...) expansion of the market in reproductive tissues. (shrink)

Co-production, in the field of mental health, aims to bring together academic and clinical researchers and those with lived experience. Often, research projects informed by this methodology involve the meeting of opposing attitudes, whether to the legitimacy of psychiatry, determinants of mental ill health, or the most appropriate interventions. This has meant that whilst some have reported positive experiences of co-production, many people with lived experience of mental ill health, sometimes referred to as ‘experts by experience’ (EbE), report harms which (...) have taken place or been perpetuated during co-produced research projects. In the literature, nearly always, this is understood as a kind of epistemic injustice in Miranda Fricker's sense. In this paper, I argue that whilst Fricker's view does provide a plausible explanation of what's at play, we can gain more insight into the structural factors which exclude EbE by applying a framework of epistemic oppression. By highlighting the systemic and structural factors which work to keep certain knowers and their contributions out of our collective epistemic resources, we begin to understand the enormity of the task required to redress injustices in our knowledge production systems. (shrink)

The study of law and politics is one of the foundation stones of the discipline of political science, and it has been one of the productive areas of cross-fertilization between the various subfields of political science and between political science and other cognate disciplines. This Handbook provides a comprehensive survey of the field of law and politics in all its diversity, ranging from such traditional subjects as theories of jurisprudence, constitutionalism, judicial politics and law-and-society to such re-emerging subjects as comparative (...) judicial politics, international law, and democratization. The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics gathers together leading scholars in the field to assess key literatures shaping the discipline today and to help set the direction of research in the decade ahead. (shrink)

The study of law and politics is one of the foundation stones of the discipline of political science, and it has been one of the productive areas of cross-fertilization between the various subfields of political science and between political science and other cognate disciplines. This Handbook provides a comprehensive survey of the field of law and politics in all its diversity, ranging from such traditional subjects as theories of jurisprudence, constitutionalism, judicial politics and law-and-society to such re-emerging subjects as comparative (...) judicial politics, international law, and democratization. The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics gathers together leading scholars in the field to assess key literatures shaping the discipline today and to help set the direction of research in the decade ahead. (shrink)

This article argues that, despite the efforts to expunge race from the European political sphere, racism continues to define the sociality of Europe. The post-war drive to replace race with other signifiers, such as culture or ethnicity, has done little to overcome the effects of the race idea, one less based on naturalist conceptions of hierarchical humanity, and more on fundamental conceptions of Europeanness and non-Europeanness. The silence about race in Europe allows European states to declare themselves non-racist, or even (...) anti-racist, while at the same time continuing to imply an inherent European superiority, which determines both international relationships and relationships with those seen as `in but not of Europe' within its domestic spheres. The article concludes by asking what the repercussions of this are in the context of the contemporary discourse on cohesion and integration that replaces multiculturalism as a possible way of living together in a Europe always less homogeneous in reality than it is commonly imagined to be. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue S1, Page S42-S45, March‐April 2022.

One of harm reduction’s most salient features is its pragmatism. Harm reduction purports to distinguish itself from dominant prohibitionist and abstinence-based policy paradigms by being grounded in what is realistic, in contrast with the moralism or puritanism of prohibition and abstention. This is reflected in the meme “harm reduction works”, popular both in institutional and grassroots settings. The idea that harm reduction is realistic and effective has meant different things among the main actors who seek to shape harm reduction policy. (...) Drawing on scholarly literature about harm reduction, as well as examples from recent harm reduction advocacy efforts in relation to drug policy in Canada, this paper argues that harm reduction distinguishes itself through a unique “way of knowing”. Grassroots harm reduction advocates, particularly as they argue through human rights frameworks, do more than simply make claims for the provision of particular services—like needle exchange, safe consumption sites, safe supply and the like—on the basis that these are realistic paths toward the health and well-being of people who use drugs. Rather, as they marshal lived experience in support of these policy changes through peer-driven initiatives in contexts of prohibition, they make particular claims about what constitute valid, methodologically rigorous evidence bases for action in contexts where policies to date have been driven by ideology and have developed in ways that have excluded and marginalized those most affected from policymaking. In doing so, they advocate for the centrality of people who use drugs not only in policy-making processes, but in evidence production itself. (shrink)

The idea of a constitutional freedom of association was embraced by the U.S. Supreme Court in the mid-twentieth century as implicit in the First Amendment. Although initially endorsed by the Court as a fundamental freedom that was necessarily entwined with the freedom of speech when confronted with cases in the 1930s and 1940s of local government officials cracking down on speakers and assemblies discussing strikes and labor unions, the justices were far more divided and skeptical of freedom of association claims (...) in cases from the mid-1940s through the early 1960s when state and national government officials were pursuing a variety of anticommunist measures. This article examines the early jurisprudential development of the constitutional freedom of association and its grounding in the First Amendment, and suggests some of the limits that the notion always carried with it. Politics and jurisprudence combined to limit its applicability in the anticommunism cases. (shrink)

ObjectiveThe Spatial Learning Task of Lhermitte and Signoret is an object-location arbitrary associative learning task. The task was originally developed to evaluate adults with severe amnesia. It is currently used in populations where the memory system either is not yet fully developed or where it has been compromised (e.g. epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, electroconvulsive therapy, cerebrovascular disease and dementia). Normative data have been published for paediatric cohorts and for older adults, however no data exist for the intervening adult years.MethodHere, we (...) address this gap, collecting normative data from 101 adults aged 18–45.ResultsOur data indicate that performance on the Spatial Learning Task is not influenced by age, gender, level of education or overall IQ. Less than 10% of the variance in learning scores is associated with variability in verbal memory. Ninety percent of participants achieved perfect scores on two successive trials (T2Cr) within five or fewer trials on the Spatial Learning Task. A T2Cr score of 6 is suggestive of impairment and a T2Cr score of 7 or more is statistically abnormal.ConclusionThese data expand the clinical utility of the Spatial Learning Task in the adult population. Future work should examine performance in lower IQ cohorts, including intellectual disability, and explore sensitivity to disease factors such as laterality of mesial temporal lobe damage. (shrink)

Radiation therapy therapists face challenging daily tasks that leave them prone to high attrition and burnout and subsequent deficits in performance. Here, we employed an accelerated alpha-theta neurofeedback protocol that is implementable in a busy medical workplace to test if 12 RTTs could learn the protocol and exhibit behavior and brain performance-related benefits. Following the 3-week protocol, participants showed a decrease in subjective cognitive workload and a decrease in response time during a performance task, as well as a decrease in (...) desynchrony of the alpha electroencephalogram band. Additionally, novel microstate analysis for neurofeedback showed a significant decrease in global field power following neurofeedback. These results suggest that the RTTs successfully learned the protocol and improved in perceived cognitive workload following 3 weeks of neurofeedback. In sum, this study presents promising behavioral improvements as well as brain performance-related evidence of neurophysiological changes following neurofeedback, supporting the feasibility of implementing neurofeedback in a busy workplace and encouraging the further study of neurofeedback as a tool to mitigate burnout. (shrink)

Despite the resistance from radical antiracist formations, autonomously organised by racialized minorities and migrants themselves, that can be witnessed in many spaces, the success with which antiracism has been both appropriated and relativized by the state as well as hegemonic activist voices poses a significant threat. The politics of diversity and the consensus around the notion that western societies are post-race contribute to portraying the critique of racism from people of colour as inaccurate, alienating and counter-productive to the achievement of (...) social cohesion. The necessity of dismantling the idea of race as suggested by antiracist activists and scholars has been subverted in the deconstruction of the experience of racism by an ‘antiracialist’—rather than a more radical antiracist—agenda intent on relativizing the struggle against racism as one among many. The consequence of this in the context of postracialism is for racism itself to be departicularized and dissociated from its historical roots. Antiracism needs to reclaim the risk, that Goldberg argues is inherent to it, and rescue it from being universalised into meaninglessness. (shrink)

"First published as Metaphilosophy volume 45, nos. 4-5, except for 'Luck as risk and the lack of control account of luck,' first published in Metaphilosophy volume 46, no. 2 "--Title page vers.

In a recent set of publications Ballantyne :485–503, 2011, Synthese 185:319–334, 2012, Synthese 91:1391–1407, 2013) argues that luck does not have a significant role in understanding the concept of knowledge. The problem, Ballantyne argues, lies in what is commonly thought to be a necessary condition for luck—a significance or value condition :385–398, 2007; Lackey, in Austral J Philos 86:255–267, 2008, Ballantyne, in Can J Philos 41:485–503, 2011). For an event, like forming a true belief, to be lucky then it must (...) be of some significance or value to an agent. Yet, if significance, as it has also been commonly thought, plays a role in determining the degree of luck :485–503, 2011), then this leads to a result similar to an absurd form of pragmatic encroachment. If this problem cannot be avoided, then anti-luck epistemology should be abandoned. However, this paper will argue that with proper considerations about the nature of luck according to at least one theory, no such problem arises. (shrink)

Explanations of productivity differences between men and women in science tend to focus on the academic sector and the individual level. This article examines how variation in organizational logic affects sex differences in scientists' commercial productivity, as measured by patenting. Using detailed data from a sample of academic and industrial life scientists working in the United States, the authors present multivariate regression models of scientific patenting. The data show that controlling for education- and career-history variables, women are less likely to (...) patent than men. However, in biotechnology firms—industrial settings characterized by flatter, more flexible, network-based organizational structures— women scientists are more likely to become patent-holding inventors than in more hierarchically arranged organizational settings in industry or academia. The authors discuss how the organization of scientists'work settings may influence enduring disparities between men and women in science and the implications of these findings for future work. (shrink)

Moral luck, until recently, has been understood either explicitly or implicitly through using a lack of control account of luck. For example, a case of resultant moral luck is a case where an agent is morally blameworthy or more morally blameworthy or praiseworthy for an outcome despite that outcome being significantly beyond that agent's control . Due to a shift in understanding the concept of luck itself in terms of modal robustness, however, other accounts of moral luck have surfaced. Both (...) Duncan Pritchard and Julia Driver have offered an alternative way of understanding moral luck by employing versions of a modal account of luck. This essay considers some problems with these accounts and attempts to resolve them. (shrink)

This article seeks to re-examine two major assumptions in mainstream anti-racist thought of the post-war era. These are culturalism, on the one hand, and human rights on the other, both of which have been offered as potential solutions to the ongoing problem of racism. I argue that both fail to cope with racism as it has been institutionalized in the political and social structures of European societies because they inaccurately theorize ‘race’. Racism is treated as an individual attitude born of (...) prejudice and ignorance and not as a political project that emerged under specific conditions within the context of the European nation-state. A re-examination of this legacy of modernity and a questioning of the structuring principles of anti-racism is necessary in the current context of racism against migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. (shrink)

Clinical Ethics, Ahead of Print. ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to assess if a relationship existed between audiologists’ perceptions of moral distress, occupational wellbeing, and patient-practitioner orientation.DesignThe Moral Distress Thermometer, Health and Safety Executive Management Standards Indicator Tool and Patient-Practitioner Orientation Scale was sent out to all audiologists registered with the professional body Audiology Australia.Study sample: A total of 43 audiologists completed the questionnaires.ResultsUsing a multiple linear regression model there was no evidence of a relationship between patient-practitioner orientation and (...) either moral distress or occupational wellbeing. However, an association between higher moral distress and lower occupational wellbeing was demonstrated. The occupational wellbeing subscales of ‘managerial support’, ‘peer support’, ‘relationships’, ‘role’, and ‘change’ were strongly associated with poorer scores on moral distress.ConclusionFor our sample of audiologists, ethical conflict appeared to be linked to reduced job satisfaction. There is a need to consider ways of providing supportive organisational structures in which ethical conflicts can be openly discussed and negotiated in order to improve occupational wellbeing in the profession. (shrink)

Researchers of the Northeast Ethics Education Partnership at Brown University sought to improve an understanding of the ethical challenges of field researchers with place-based communities in environmental studies/sciences and environmental health by disseminating a questionnaire which requested information about their ethical approaches to these researched communities. NEEP faculty sought to gain actual field guidance to improve research ethics and cultural competence training for graduate students and faculty in environmental sciences/studies. Some aspects of the ethical challenges in field studies are not (...) well-covered in the literature. More training and information resources are needed on the bioethical challenges in environmental field research relating to maximizing benefits/reducing risks to local inhabitants and ecosystems from research; appropriate and effective group consent and individual consent processes for many diverse communities in the United States and abroad; and justice considerations of ensuring fair benefits and protections against exploitation through community-based approaches, and cultural appropriateness and competence in researcher relationships. (shrink)

“Additional needs children” is a term often used in the education system to describe children with school-based problems characterised by learning difficulties arising from academic, social and emotional stressors including, but not limited to, clinically diagnosed Neurodevelopmental Disorders (NDD). What has seldom been investigated is what biopsychosocial characteristics and other common comorbid behaviours are associated with academic learning difficulties. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between anxiety levels (Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale- Parent Report), autism traits (...) (Autism Spectrum Quotient – Child Version) and sleep quality (Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children) in ‘additional needs children’ with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Language Impairment or Mixed Diagnosis without an intellectual disability. The results demonstrated that the ASD group reported more impairments associated with comorbid anxiety and sleep compared to the other clinically diagnosed groups. Similarly, greater anxiety level was positively associated with a greater number of autism traits and poorer sleep quality regardless of diagnostic group. This suggests that higher anxiety symptoms are a core biomarker of children who often first come to their teacher’s attention with reading and learning difficulties (i.e. “additional needs”), irrespective of the primary cause of school-based problems. (shrink)

Moral luck, until recently, has been understood either explicitly or implicitly through using a lack of control account of luck. For example, a case of resultant moral luck is a case where an agent is morally blameworthy or more morally blameworthy or praiseworthy for an outcome despite that outcome being significantly beyond that agent's control (Nagel ). Due to a shift in understanding the concept of luck itself in terms of modal robustness, however, other accounts of moral luck have surfaced. (...) Both Duncan Pritchard () and Julia Driver () have offered an alternative way of understanding moral luck by employing versions of a modal account of luck. This essay considers some problems with these accounts and attempts to resolve them. (shrink)

The term ‘identity politics’ is used to refer to a wide range of political movements. In this paper, we look at the theoretical ideas underpinning two strongly, mutually opposed forms of identity politics, and identify some crucial differences between them. We critically compare the identitarian ideology of the New Right with feminist standpoint theory, focusing on two issues: relativism and essentialism. In carrying out this critical comparison we illuminate under-theorized aspects of both new right identitarianism and standpoint theory; demonstrate how (...) the two are distinct; reveal the depth and pervasiveness of the new right ideology’s flaws; and show what a coherent left-wing identity politics could look like. (shrink)

In order to fulfill ABET requirements, Northern Arizona University’s Civil and Environmental engineering programs incorporate professional ethics in several of its engineering courses. This paper discusses an ethics module in a 3rd year engineering design course that focuses on the design process and technical writing. Engineering students early in their student careers generally possess good black/white critical thinking skills on technical issues. Engineering design is the first time students are exposed to “grey” or multiple possible solution technical problems. To identify (...) and solve these problems, the engineering design process is used. Ethical problems are also “grey” problems and present similar challenges to students. Students need a practical tool for solving these ethical problems. The step-wise engineering design process was used as a model to demonstrate a similar process for ethical situations. The ethical decision making process of Martin and Schinzinger was adapted for parallelism to the design process and presented to students as a step-wise technique for identification of the pertinent ethical issues, relevant moral theories, possible outcomes and a final decision. Students had greatest difficulty identifying the broader, global issues presented in an ethical situation, but by the end of the module, were better able to not only identify the broader issues, but also to more comprehensively assess specific issues, generate solutions and a desired response to the issue. (shrink)

Censorship in the area of public health has become increasingly important in many parts of the world for a number of reasons. Groups with vested interest in public health policy are motivated to censor material. As governments, corporations, and organizations champion competing visions of public health issues, the more incentive there may be to censor. This is true in a number of circumstances: curtailing access to information regarding the health and welfare of soldiers in the Kuwait and Iraq wars, poor (...) health conditions in Aboriginal communities, downplaying epidemics to bolster economies, and so forth. This paper will look at the use of a computer worm (the benevolent health worm) to disseminate vital information in␣situations where public health is threatened by government censorship and where there is great risk for those who ‹speak out’. The discussion of the benevolent health worm is focused on the Peoples’ Republic of China (China) drawing on three public health crises: HIV/AIDS, SARS and Avian Influenza. Ethical issues are examined first in a general fashion and then in a specific manner which uses the duty-based moral philosophy of Confucianism and a Western human rights-based analysis. Technical, political and legal issues will also be examined to the extent that they better inform the ethical debate. (shrink)

Clare, the titular character of The Time Traveller's Wife, reflects that "Everything seems simple until you think about it." This might well be a mantra for the whole of philosophy, but a fair few terms tend to stick out. "Knowledge", "goodness" and "happiness" for example, are all pervasive everyday terms that undergo significant philosophical analysis. "Luck", I think, is another one of these terms. Wishing someone good luck in their projects, and cursing our bad luck when success seems so close (...) to our reach or failure could have so easily been otherwise, happens so often that we rarely stop to reflect on what we really mean. Philosophical reflection on the nature of luck has a rich tradition, that is by no stretch confined to the Western philosophical canon. However, it has only very recently become one of the goals of philosophy to provide a clear account of what luck actually amounts to. This, in part, is the goal of this thesis. The thesis has two primary motivations. The first is to offer and defend a general account of luck that overcomes the problems faced by the current accounts of luck that are available in the current philosophical literature. The second is to apply this general account of luck to the areas of metaethics and epistemology where luck has been a pervasive and problematic concept, and demonstrate how this account of luck may resolve or further illuminate some of the problems that the notion has generated. The thesis is roughly split into two parts. The first half of the thesis focuses on the former objective of offering an account of luck. Chapter 1 offers a selected history of the philosophy of luck that spans from the Ancient Greeks to the present day, so that we might properly situate the current work on luck as part of the broader historical importance of the concept. Chapter 2 will set out the major rival to the theory of luck that I will offer - the lack of control account of luck. LCAL has various iterations across the literature, but is most clearly articulated by Wayne Riggs and E.J. Coffman. Both Coffman and Riggs add and adapt their own conditions to LCAL specifically so that the account may overcome several problems that have been levied against it. These further conditions are not incompatible so, to provide the strongest lack of control account possible, I have combined them to form a lack of control account I have called Combined LCAL - LCAL. The latter part of the chapter pits LCAL against some of the problems that have been raised against LCAL. However, despite the efforts of both Riggs and Coffman, even LCAL fails to counter some of these objections. For these reasons I have rejected LCAL has a viable candidate for an account of luck. Chapter 3 sets out a modal account of luck, as argued for by Pritchard, where an event is lucky only if it occurs in the actual world, but not in a relevant set of nearby possible worlds. Here I further elaborate on how we should understand the modal distances using Lewisian possible world semantics, and what worlds should be taken into consideration when fixing the relevant set of nearby possible worlds. I argue that these relevant sets of worlds should be fixed according to the domain of inquiry of which the luck is being applied - this I call the type of luck. Examples of this is the current literature are resultant luck - the type of luck concerned with the results of our actions, and veritic luck - the type of luck concerned with the modal safety of our belief formation. Due to the multitude of types of luck across disciplinary areas, a general modal account of luck requires flexibility in what factors should fix the relevant sets of possible worlds. I achieve this by providing a [TYPE] function for the general modal account of luck, which is used as a mean of inserting the relevant fixing conditions for any domain of inquiry. Chapter 3, in a similar vein to Chapter 2, pits the general modal account of luck against some of the problems that have been levied against MAL, specifically the Buried Treasure problem raised by Lackey and the agent causation problem as raised by Levy. More successfully, the modal account offered stands up against these criticisms. For these reasons, the modal condition understood with the [TYPE] function and Lewisian semantics concerning modal distances, will be adopted to make up one half of the conditions for my account of luck. Chapter 4 will look at the second condition for an account of luck - the significance condition. The chapter will set out the reasons for adopting a significance condition at all, and some of the ways in which the condition has been articulated by Rescher, Pritchard and Ballantyne. All of these current views of the significance condition will be found wanting due to their inability to make sense of certain kinds of luck in specific normative domains. For example, Ballantyne's account of significance focuses on the interests of an agent, yet for certain types of moral luck, the interests of the agent are irrelevant. Instead, I propose a relativised significance condition, where the value of the event is relative to the value of the normative domain in which the luck is being ascribed. Epistemic luck requires a focus on the epistemic significance of the event for the agent, moral luck requires a focus on the moral or ethical significance of the event for the agent, and so on. This I call the kind of luck. Similar to the [TYPE] function for the modal condition for luck, the significance condition requires a [NORMATIVE DOMAIN] function where the relevant normative domain can be inserted depending on the kind of luck. This version of the significance condition will be conjoined with the modal condition as set out in Chapter 3 to form the correct general account of luck. Chapter 5 is the first chapter of the second half of the thesis that concerns applying the account of luck set out in part 1 to more specific domains of inquiry. Chapter 5 concerns moral luck, more specifically, resultant moral luck. Moral luck has traditionally been understood in terms of lack of control. This chapter looks at how Pritchard and Driver have attempted to understand moral luck using modal conditions. However, it is argued that these attempts would be more successful if we adopted the account of luck that I have offered in previous chapters. The chapter will go on to look at two possible problems that may be faced by this modal account of luck, and how it may resolve these problems. Chapter 6, the final chapter, looks at epistemic luck, specifically how the adoption of the modal account I have offered resolves a particular problem targeted at anti-luck epistemology by Ballantyne. The problem, Ballantyne argues, is that given that luck requires a significance condition, the degree of significance affects the degree of luck and that the degree of luck involved in our belief formation affects whether we are in a position to know the target proposition, that the result is that degree of significance affects our ability to know. For at least some instances of this - such as the aesthetic significance that we assign to the target proposition - the result will be that non-epistemic factors that have no relevance at all whether an agent is in a position to know will affect that agent's position to know. The resolution to this problem can be found in a two part solution. The first part is to demonstrate that any degree of veritic epistemic luck results in the agent failing to know. The second is that through the relativisation of the significance condition, any type of value will not affect an agent's position to know, only the epistemic value. With these two considerations in mind, the latter of which that can only be held through the adoption of the modal account of luck I have offered, the problem may be resolved. (shrink)

In this chapter, we offer an account of fear and risk in anticipation of catastrophe. We draw on the narrative response to the Mount Enta volcano in medieval Sicily to frame an evaluation of how fear can be seen to impact the understanding of risk when the event of that risk is the catastrophic suffering of an entire community. We aim to demonstrate how an exploration of the philosophical questions surrounding the emotion of fear and the understanding of risk can (...) contribute to broader, interdisciplinary dialogue on the experience of the disastrous and deadly. (shrink)

In this chapter, we offer an account of fear and risk in anticipation of catastrophe. We draw on the narrative response to the Mount Enta volcano in medieval Sicily to frame an evaluation of how fear can be seen to impact the understanding of risk when the event of that risk is the catastrophic suffering of an entire community. We aim to demonstrate how an exploration of the philosophical questions surrounding the emotion of fear and the understanding of risk can (...) contribute to broader, interdisciplinary dialogue on the experience of the disastrous and deadly. (shrink)

Feminist epistemologies hold that differences in the social locations of inquirers make for epistemic differences, for instance, in the sorts of things that inquirers are justified in believing. In this paper we situate this core idea in feminist epistemologies with respect to debates about social constructivism. We address three questions. First, are feminist epistemologies committed to a form of social constructivism about knowledge? Second, to what extent are they incompatible with traditional epistemological thinking? Third, do the answers to these questions (...) raise serious problems for feminist epistemologies? We argue that some versions of two of the main strands in feminist epistemology – feminist standpoint theory and feminist empiricism – are committed to a form of social constructivism, which requires certain departures from traditional epistemological thinking. But we argue that these departures are less problematic than one might think. Thus, (some) feminist epistemologies provide a plausible way of understanding how (some) knowledge might be socially constructed. (shrink)

Interview on the commodified body with Donna Dickenson by Alana Cattapan.

In this paper I make the case for a feminist hinge epistemology in three steps. My first step is to explain hinge epistemologies as contemporary epistemologies that take Wittgenstein’s work in On Certainty as their starting point. My second step is to make three criticisms of this literature as it currently stands. My third step is to introduce feminist epistemologies, which argue that social factors like race and gender affect what different people and groups justifiably believe, and argue that developing (...) a feminist hinge epistemology is both plausible and desirable. (shrink)

This article traces how embryo research has been theorized in Canada from the late 1980s to the current day. We find that research on human embryos has gradually come to be viewed in dichotomous terms, with scientific research pulled apart from experimentation to improve assisted reproduction procedures within fertility clinics. This distinction has been made manifest most clearly in the federal government’s 2007 consent regulations. The distinction between ‘improvement of assisted reproduction procedures’ and ‘research’ is problematic on two accounts. First, (...) interviews reveal that many Canadian IVF patients do not distinguish between the improvement of assisted reproduction and broader conceptions of ‘research’. This suggests that patients may be consenting to participate in embryo experimentation even where they do not understand its purposes. Second, the dichotomy may allow researchers and clinicians to evade research protocols that might otherwise apply in Canadian law. This could permit fertility clinics to conduct what might in other contexts fall under the category of ‘research’ without prescribed oversight, and may even enable clinicians and researchers to engage in practices that policymakers deliberately sought to proscribe. We call for a re-evaluation of the legal distinctions on embryo experimentation built into Canadian law, and indeed built into broader discussions of embryo research. (shrink)

The potential benefits of embryonic stem cell research have been clarified by the last ten years of research so that it is necessary to re-examine the foundations for the restrictions imposed on this research. Those who believe that life begins at the moment of fertilization and is imbued with a full complement of human rights have opposed all embryonic research. As one who accepts this premise, I will demonstrate that there are certain limited circumstances in which parents may donate embryos (...) to establish stem cell lines that fully respect the rights of the embryonic person. In these circumstances, their action is morally equivalent to organ donation from a dying child to save the lives of others. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the relationship between social epistemology and relativism in the context of feminist epistemology. I do this by focusing on one particular branch of feminist epistemology - a branch known as standpoint theory - and investigating the connection between this view and epistemic relativism. I begin by defining both epistemic relativism and standpoint theory, and by briefly recounting the standard way that the connection between these two views is understood. The literature at the moment focuses on (...) an aspect of standpoint theory called the epistemic advantage thesis, and on an aspect of relativism which has been called equality. I then show that the connection between relativism and standpoint theory actually turns on a different aspect of standpoint theory, known as the standpoint thesis, and on an aspect of relativism which has been called non-neutrality. I argue that shifting our attention to these other aspects reveals that standpoint theory is clearly and unavoidably relativist, but that this isn’t a problem - standpoint theory can capture everything that it set out to, even on a relativist understanding of the view. (shrink)