In this paper, we examine how polycystic ovary syndrome is racialized in biomedical research. Drawing from Star’s seminal concept of triangulation, we analyze how the diagnostic criteria for PCOS combine two different biomarkers: body hair and testosterone. Hair and hormones are both haunted by their use in eugenic research, and as clinical measures, they can carry forward powerful narratives of biological difference. PCOS researchers circulate strong claims about racial difference in hirsutism as if they were established knowledge, sometimes calling for (...) race-specific diagnostic thresholds. Tracing the links between race and hirsutism, hirsutism and testosterone, and testosterone and race, we find that these connections are all conceptualized in ambiguous and inconsistent ways. Through triangulation, the uncertainty clouding each link is mitigated by the apparent strength of the chain as a whole. The logic linking race to disease is attenuated, allowing race to persist as a ghost variable. As PCOS is increasingly reframed as a risk factor for other conditions, racial stratification is submerged, implicit but actionable, at every stage of the life course cascade of risk. (shrink)

This book provides the foundation for understanding ethical language as well as probing the tensions in problem solving and ethical decision-making.

The paper deals with the source of Porphyry’s concept of a γνῶσις ἀπόλυτος, which is ascribed to the One in the commentary on Plato’s Parmenides. It will be argued, that Porphyry employs a specific, formal understanding of absoluteness, which can be traced back to Plotinus’ Enneads. Furthermore, as a careful reader of his master’s writings, Porphyry may have been inspired by Plotinus’ teachings not only concerning the formal understanding of absoluteness but also in content. This thesis is spelt out in (...) the second part of the paper, which deals with Plotinus’ scarce and cautious reflections about the possibility to conceive of the highest principle as intellection (νόησις). (shrink)

Given the Corpus Hermeticum’s history of formation, it has prompted the attempt to separate layers or groups of writings within the collection of treatises. This process of division, which was for the most part undertaken on criteria of content (dualism, pantheism, etc.), has been viewed rather negatively by the more recent research, on grounds of method. Given the discovery of numerous doctrinal contents that remain constant across different treatises, increased efforts are being made to reconstruct the Corpus’s moments of unity. (...) The present paper aims, in this spirit, to provide a more precise identification of the overarching forms of theological thought in the Hermetic writings. The reflections that follow aim to make it plausible that the defining form of theological thought in the Corpus Hermeticum can be classified as panentheism. In addition, the distinctive form of this influential theological paradigm in the Hermetic writings will be considered. (shrink)

The present paper deals with a syntactic ambiguity in Numenius’ Fr. 30, 9 and proposes a new reading. According to most scholars, in this fragment Numenius tries to identify Egyptian gods and human souls descending into generation. Instead, I argue that, since theology and psychology are different topics in Fr. 3, Numenius is rather talking about the interrelation of gods and souls in the process of metempsychosis.

The framework of the ‘social ontology of the internet’ is applied to music recommendation platforms. Those websites provide individual suggestions of music to users, creating new dynamics of taste that are no longer based on human-to-human interaction and verbalized judgments. An exemplary analysis of three platforms shows that different conceptions of musical tastes are represented by technical systems: situational emotional preferences, a formalist aesthetics, and social proximity based on tastes. The platforms share certain assumptions about the ontology of musical entities (...) and of course the constitutive act of recommending. We discuss how this act can be ascribed to technical systems. Theses on the platforms’ effects on the social structure of musical tastes are developed. (shrink)

The question of emotion in music is addressed from a linguistic perspective, providing a typology of statements that can be made about that topic. In particular, it is analyzed how an interlocutor could react to such statements uttered by another person, and whether or how the content of the statements could be refuted by the listener, and possibly corroborated by the speaker. Furthermore, it is briefly discussed which theories of emotion in music are compatible with the respective types of statement (...) and what illocutionary and perlocutionary function they may serve. (shrink)