Expectations in the form of promises and concerns contribute to the sense-making and valuation of emerging nanotechnologies. They add up to what we call ‘de facto assessments’ of novel socio-technical options. We explore how de facto assessments of nanotechnologies differ in the application domains of water and food by examining promises and concerns, and their relations in scientific discourse. We suggest that domain characteristics such as prior experiences with emerging technologies, specific discursive repertoires and user-producer relationships, play a key role (...) in framing expectations of nanotechnology-enabled options. The article concludes by suggesting that domain-specific discourses may lead to undesirable lock-ins into specific de facto assessments pre-structuring anticipatory strategies of actors. (shrink)

HAN, Byung-Chul. Sociedade do cansaço. Vozes, Petrópolis: 2017.

Neoliberal ideology and exclusionary policies based on racialized identities characterize the current contexts in North America and Western Europe. Nursing knowledge cannot be abstracted from social, political and historical contexts; the task of examining the influence of race and racial ideologies on disciplinary knowledge and inquiry therefore remains an important task. Contemporary analyses of the role and responsibility of the discipline in addressing race‐based health and social inequities as a focus of nursing inquiry remain underdeveloped. In this article, we examine (...) nursing's engagement with ideas about race and racism and explore the ways in which nursing knowledge and inquiry have been influenced by race‐based ideological discourses. Drawing on Henry and Tator's framework of democratic racism, we consider how strategic discursive responses—the discourses of individualism, multiculturalism, colour‐blindness, political correctness and denial—have been deployed within nursing knowledge and inquiry to reinforce the belief in an essentially fair and just society while avoiding the need to acknowledge the persistence of racist discourses and ideologies. Greater theoretical, conceptual and methodological clarity regarding race, racialization and related concepts in nursing inquiry is needed to address health and social inequities. (shrink)

Feminist philosophers of biology bring the tools of feminist theory, and in particular the tools of feminist philosophy of science, to investigations of the life sciences. While the critical examination of the categories of sex and gender (which will be explained below) takes a central place, the methods, ontological assumptions, and foundational concepts of biology more generally have also enjoyed considerable feminist scrutiny. Through such investigations, feminist philosophers of biology reveal the extent to which the theory and practice of particular (...) scientific disciplines and research programs (and, indeed, their philosophical study) are intertwined with both value judgments and social hierarchies. (shrink)

Against the standard reading of Isaiah Berlin's thought that drives a wedge between his early and subsequent work, this article suggests that his late normative anti-reductionism has roots in the early writings on meaning, semantics and truth. Berlin's anti-reductionist objection to logical positivists in the realm of semantics evince a sensitivity to reductionism, a recognition of the irreducibility of propositional meaning, a plea for the embededness of language in a temporal continuum, an anti-dualist call, and a celebration of the plural (...) and open-ended character of propositions, all of which keep broad affinity with his mature value pluralism in ethics and politics. The unity of concerns in Berlin's work brings about two implications. First, it sheds light on the fact that Berlin's ethical and political pluralism rests on views about semantics and ontology as well. Second, it offers a basis on which to deflect some current moral realist readings of his value pluralism, offering instead a history-laden understanding of his pluralism that provides more compelling grounds to understand the relationship between the latter and liberalism in Berlin's work. (shrink)

This publication features the stories and experiences of pharmacy professionals who identify as members of historically underrepresented groups. This collection of personal essays presents significant events in the lives of those in the pharmacy community whose experiences have been shaped by their race, ethnicity, gender or gender presentation, sexual orientation, ability, language, mental health, or other factors. The perspectives from the narratives highlight the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the healthcare sector. The authors of the narratives also reflect (...) on their experience to consider what they wish would have happened in the experience, to offer advice for others that may be faced with similar situations. Access to these stories will deepen the collective understanding among pharmacy colleagues, patients, and society of the experiences that individuals from historically underrepresented groups within pharmacy have experienced. (shrink)

Theory of Mind (ToM, also referred to as mentalising; Fonagy, 1991; Frith & Frith, 2006) was coined by primatologists, Premack and Woodruff (1978) and adapted in developmental psychology to refer t...

I investigate the reciprocal relationship between social accounts of knowledge production and efforts to increase the representation of women and some minorities in the academy. In particular, I consider the extent to which feminist social epistemologies such as Helen Longino’s critical contextual empiricism can be employed to argue that it is in researchers’ epistemic interests to take active steps to increase gender diversity. As it stands, critical contextual empiricism does not provide enough resources to succeed at this task. However, considering (...) this view through an employment equity lens highlights areas where such theories need to be further developed. I argue that views such as Longino’s ought to attend to nuances of community structure and cultural features that inhibit critical social interactions, if we are to maximize the epistemic as well as the ethical improvements associated with a social approach to knowing. These developments advance these epistemic theories for their own sake. They also help develop these theories into a tool that can be used by those calling for increased diversity in the academy. (shrink)

The reform of the health care system will include a mandate: Individuals are required to purchase health insurance provided that affordable options are available. But what is affordable health insurance? Three accounts of affordability of health coverage have been advanced. The first two accounts are empirical. The third account is needs-based. All three accounts are inadequate. I propose a fourth, the reasonable tradeoff account, according to which individuals should only be required to make reasonable tradeoffs in order to pay for (...) their health coverage. That is, health insurance is affordable if in order to pay for it one does not to have to sacrifice other benefit(s) that are comparable in importance to the benefits of health coverage. (shrink)

In ‘Parental Virtues: A New Way of Thinking about the Morality of Reproductive Actions’ Rosalind McDougall proposes a virtue-based framework to assess the morality of child selection. Applying the virtue-based account to the selection of children with impairments does not lead, according to McDougall, to an unequivocal answer to the morality of selecting impaired children. In ‘Impairment, Flourishing, and the Moral Nature of Parenthood,’ she also applies the virtue-based account to the discussion of child selection, and claims that couples with (...) an impairment are morally justified in selecting a child with the same impairment. This claim, she maintains, reveals that the flourishing of a child should be understood as requiring environment-specific characteristics. I argue that McDougall's argument begs the question. More importantly, it does not do justice to virtue ethics. I also question to what extent a virtue ethics framework can be successfully applied to discussions about the moral permissibility of reproductive actions. (shrink)

O presente trabalho pretende demonstrar o papel da mulher no contexto da acumulação primitiva, com ênfase na transição do sistema feudal para o sistema capitalista, situando a vida sexual e reprodutiva da mulher como objetos do mecanismo de controle do Estado e da Igreja para alcance de seus interesses e perpetuação de seu poder. Analisamos o fenômeno da caça às bruxas dentro da obra Calibã e a Bruxa (2004), de Silvia Federici, pautando a questão da criminalização do aborto na legislação (...) brasileira como resultante da biopolítica e do biopoder.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Criminalização; Aborto; Inquisição; Biopolítica; Biopoder. (shrink)

Nesse trabalho será analisado o tratamento teórico apresentado por Hannah Arendt sobre o tema da desobediência civil em sua obra Crises da República, traçando um paralelo com as práticas do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra no que tange à legitimidade dos seus atos de desobediência civil. Sob esse enfoque a luta pelo acesso a terra se apresenta como uma possibilidade de que seus integrantes integrem-se em comunidade fundando um espaço público e desenvolvendo sua capacidade de ação política, característica essencial da (...) vida humana. (shrink)

ABSTRACT As we strive for a more polyvocal history of science, historians have placed increasing emphasis on local case studies as a way to globalize the field. This tension between the local and the global extends to the practice as well as the content of the history of science, as the field has begun to pay more attention not just to local case studies, but also to local cultures of historiography. Many historians of science want multiple historiographical voices that take (...) seriously the concerns and literatures in different linguistic and national contexts. As more journals urge translation into what are perceived as the dominant languages in “global” humanities discourses and scholars are encouraged to facilitate the Englishing of their historical research, many questions remain: In what ways does it make sense to nationalize or culturally locate individual cultures of the history of science? Is translation a democratic and positive force in the discipline, and/or does it kill local difference? Will it continue to be meaningful to talk about the history of science? A collective dialogue within the field depends on finding a way to take local diversity in historiography and epistemology seriously while translating that local difference into a meaningful common conversation. This essay considers the challenges of embracing multiple ways of knowing that might fall under the purview of the history of science, while wondering what that means for the coherence of the field as we move forward into the next century of work in Isis. (shrink)

This volume provides a much needed, historically accurate narrative of the development of theories of space up to the beginning of the eighteenth century. It studies conceptions of space that were implicitly or explicitly entailed by ancient, medieval and early modern representations of the cosmos. The authors reassess Alexandre Koyré’s groundbreaking work From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe and they trace the permanence of arguments to be found throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. By adopting a long timescale, (...) this book sheds new light on the continuity between various cosmological representations and their impact on the ontology and epistemology of space. Readers may explore the work of a variety of authors including Aristotle, Epicurus, Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, John Wyclif, Peter Auriol, Nicholas Bonet, Francisco Suárez, Francesco Patrizi, Giordano Bruno, Libert Froidmont, Marin Mersenne, Pierre Gassendi, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Samuel Clarke. We see how reflections on space, imagination and the cosmos were the product of a plurality of philosophical traditions that found themselves confronted with, and enriched by, various scientific and theological challenges which induced multiple conceptual adaptations and innovations. This volume is a useful resource for historians of philosophy, those with an interest in the history of science, and particularly those seeking to understand the historical background of the philosophy of space. (shrink)

Nowadays, it seems easy to regard some of the values and purposes that have led us to the society we live in today as dysfunctional. However, searching for a villain that justifies all our pain and confusion in recent years is a vain undertaking. It is imperative to protect the good in our society and to discover what we need to improve and accomplish. In this sense, spirituality is our unresolved issue. The purpose of this article is to survey the (...) different deliberations about capital as a measurable value of companies and to explore whether spiritual capital can be a new one, or even more importantly, an important one. (shrink)

Understanding the role of emotion in moral judgment has been an active area of investigation and debate. Here we comment on this topic by examining the interaction between emotion and moral judgment in certain psychopathological groups that are characterized by abnormalities in emotion processing, such as psychopaths and sexual offenders with paraphilic disorders.

If the aura has been interpreted as a result of the artwork or its enactment, it is possible to think the aura as the work that the artwork produces: the artwork acts, interacts with the Other or identifies it. Can the aura be identified in this relationship between moods and emotions, between the artwork and the viewer? Where to place the path that opens a gap to establish a connection between Self and Other? The aura of the artwork is this (...) Otherness, this Other that remains to be seen, to be listened and traced: the Other that still cannot be heard, which remains silent or speaks through tensions, plots and tracks. The relationship between trauma (shock) and experience, memory and consciousness, between what is remembered and what is hard to remember, is the question addressed in these pages. (shrink)

If the aura has been interpreted as a result of the artwork or its enactment, it is possible to think the aura as the work that the artwork produces: the artwork acts, interacts with the Other or identifies it. Can the aura be identified in this relationship between moods and emotions, between the artwork and the viewer? Where to place the path that opens a gap to establish a connection between Self and Other? The aura of the artwork is this (...) Otherness, this Other that remains to be seen, to be listened and traced: the Other that still cannot be heard, which remains silent or speaks through tensions, plots and tracks. The relationship between trauma (shock) and experience, memory and consciousness, between what is remembered and what is hard to remember, is the question addressed in these pages. (shrink)

This paper discusses the legal implications of setting up two new biobanks in Belgium. The first is hospital-based and will archive tissue from patients with haematologic cancer, whereas the second is linked to a general practice based morbidity registry and will involve storage of blood samples. To date, Belgium has no specific legislation that regulates storage of human tissue and related databases. Several issues concerning the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal medical data are discussed from (...) the existing privacy legislation. We will address the principle of consent (broad versus specific) and the type of data recorded (anonymous, encoded and identifiable) for both biobanks. (shrink)

This article argues that cruelty, as a willingness to see or orchestrate the suffering of others, is not an unfortunate side-effect of neoliberal theories put into practice but is constitutive of the neoliberal project from its theoretical inception. Drawing on Lisa Duggan’s concept of ‘optimistic cruelty’ and treating the canonical texts of neoliberal economic theory as literary artefacts, the article develops this argument through a close reading of one of the central architects of the neoliberal project, the philosopher and economist (...) Friedrich Hayek. The first part of the article examines how Hayek attempts to justify the brutality of the market order he imagines – the catallaxy – by arguing that this brutality is the natural consequence of the spontaneous evolutionary processes that move civilisation forward. The second part brings to the fore the eugenicist undertones that suffuse this vision, despite Hayek’s apparent rejection of Social Darwinism. I analyse how Hayek’s market order operates through a series of disciplinary and biopolitical technologies that use pain, frustration, punishment and stigmatisation to eliminate bad habits, practices and subjectivities. These cruel mechanisms enable the catallaxy to sort between productive and unproductive lives to ensure that available resources are directed towards the former – even if it means that the others might be left to die. As such, cruelty is an affective atmosphere that permeates the catallaxy. (shrink)

Thought experiments play an important epistemic, rhetorical and didactic function in Galileo’s dialogues. In some cases, Salviati, Sagredo and Simplicio agree about what would happen in an imaginary scenario and try to understand whether the predicted outcome is compatible with their respective theoretical assumptions. There are, however, also situations in which the predictions of the three interlocutors turn out to be theory-laden. Salviati, Sagredo and Simplicio not only disagree about what would happen, but they reject each other’s solutions as question-begging (...) and somtimes even dismiss each other’s thought experiments as misleading or nonsensical. (shrink)

This study presents the first neuroimaging investigation of female psychopathy in an incarcerated population. Prior studies have found that male psychopathy is associated with reduced limbic and paralimbic activation when processing emotional stimuli and making moral judgments. The goal of this study was to investigate whether these findings extend to female psychopathy. During fMRI scanning, 157 incarcerated and 46 non-incarcerated female participants viewed unpleasant pictures, half which depicted moral transgressions, and neutral pictures. Participants rated each picture on moral transgression severity. (...) Psychopathy was assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) in all incarcerated participants. Non-incarcerated participants were included as a control group to derive brain regions of interest associated with viewing unpleasant vs. neutral pictures (emotion contrast), and unpleasant pictures depicting moral transgressions vs. unpleasant pictures without moral transgressions (moral contrast). Regression analyses in the incarcerated group examined the association between PCL-R scores and brain activation in the emotion and moral contrasts. Results of the emotion contrast revealed a negative correlation between PCL-R scores and activation in the right amygdala and rostral anterior cingulate. Results of the moral contrast revealed a negative correlation between PCL-R scores and activation in the right temporo-parietal junction. These results indicate that female psychopathy, like male psychopathy, is characterized by reduced limbic activation during emotion processing. In contrast, reduced temporo-parietal activation to moral transgressions has been less observed in male psychopathy. These results extend prior findings in male psychopathy to female psychopathy, and reveal aberrant neural responses to morally-salient stimuli that may be unique to female psychopathy. (shrink)

While foregrounding the historiography of HIV and AIDS in the South African context, this article analyses AIDS as simultaneously existing in three spheres: first, virtually – as the subject matter of electronically measurable research; second, academically – as a topic of research in the discipline of History; and third, actually – as a complex health concern and signifier that, via the field of Medical and Health Humanities, could allow for new collaborations between historians and others interested in understanding AIDS. Throughout, (...) the central focus is the discipline of History and the global trends that become evident when examining metrics about AIDS research, particularly those that show the hierarchies of knowledge ‘production’, the reinforcement of disciplinary boundaries, and the discrepancy between the amount of research ‘produced’ by scientific and humanities disciplines. Overall, the article suggests that ‘post-AIDS’ is not currently helpful to health historians working on South African and other majority world contexts. More specifically, the article reflects on what AIDS histories still need to be written, and I argue that Medical and Health Humanities could provide a space for historians to work within and across disciplinary boundaries given the ever evolving remit of AIDS histories, temporalities, and narratives. (shrink)

Background Ethical decision making in intensive care is a demanding task. The need to proceed to ethical decision is considered to be a stress factor that may lead to burnout. The aim of this study is to explore the ethical problems that may increase burnout levels among physicians and nurses working in Portuguese intensive care units . A quantitative, multicentre, correlational study was conducted among 300 professionals.Results The most crucial ethical decisions made by professionals working in ICU were related to (...) communication, withholding or withdrawing treatments and terminal sedation. A positive relation was found between ethical decision making and burnout in nurses, namely, between burnout and the need to withdraw treatments , to withhold treatments and to proceed to terminal sedation . This did not apply to physicians. Emotional exhaustion was the burnout subdimension most affected by the ethical decision. The nurses' lack of involvement in ethical decision making was identified as a risk factor. Nevertheless, in comparison with nurses , it was the physicians who more keenly felt the need to proceed to ethical decisions in ICU.Conclusions Ethical problems were reported at different levels by physicians and nurses. The type of ethical decisions made by nurses working in Portuguese ICUs had an impact on burnout levels. This did not apply to physicians. This study highlights the need for education in the field of ethics in ICUs and the need to foster inter-disciplinary discussion so as to encourage ethical team deliberation in order to prevent burnout. (shrink)

This article explores twelve short narrative films created by women and trans people living with disabilities and embodied differences. Produced through Project Re•Vision, these micro documentaries uncover the cultures and temporalities of bodies of difference by foregrounding themes of multiple histories: body, disability, maternal, medical, and/or scientific histories; and divergent futurities: contradictory, surprising, unpredictable, opaque, and/or generative futures. We engage with Alison Kafer's call to theorize disability futurity by wrestling with the ways in which “the future” is normatively deployed in (...) the service of able-bodiedness and able-mindedness, a deployment used to render bodies of difference as sites of “no future”. By re-storying embodied difference, the storytellers illuminate ongoing processes of remaking their bodily selves in ways that respond to the past and provide possibilities for different futures; these orientations may be configured as “dis-topias” based not on progress, but on new pathways for living, uncovered not through evoking the familiar imaginaries of curing, eliminating, or overcoming disability, but through incorporating experiences of embodied difference into time. These temporalities gesture toward new kinds of futures, giving us glimpses of ways of cripping time, of cripping ways of being/becoming in time, and of radically re-presencing disability in futurity. (shrink)

Climate change is confronting African farmers with growing uncertainties. Advances in seasonal climate predictions offer potential for assisting farmers in dealing with climate risk. Experimental cases of forecast dissemination to African rural communities suggest that participatory approaches can facilitate understanding and use of uncertain climate information. But few of these studies integrate critical reflections on participation that have emerged in the last decade which reveal how participatory approaches can miss social dynamics of power at the community level and in the (...) broader context. Furthermore, neither climate application research nor theoretical critiques of participation fully examine the culturally constructed nature of participation. Drawing on sociolinguistic analysis, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic observation, this paper examines how Ugandan farmers engage in participation in the context of discussions of seasonal climate forecasts. Forecasts were presented to farmers groups whose members were then asked to discuss the forecast among themselves. In doing so, groups sought to develop a common understanding of the forecast and consensual plans for response strategies. Focusing on one particular group meeting as an example, we show how different cultural styles of participation affect the interpretation of the forecast and the formulation of response strategies. Group interaction is shown to be mostly structured around two styles of participation. On the one hand, there is the “Western” style advocated by NGOs and the government, which centers on ensuring that all individuals who are present have opportunities to speak during discussion and to vote on group decisions. On the other hand, a “Kiganda” style of participation emphasizes the importance of affirming ties to a collectivity, respect for social hierarchy, deployment of good manners, and consensus building. The case study illuminates how the performance of different styles of participation is grounded in localized frameworks of language and culture but also draw on political and policy discourses at the national level. Although a cultural high value on consensus may work in favor of prominent members, the availability of multiple styles of participation also enables group members to exercise their agency in positive ways. Attention to the interplay of different styles of participation throws light on the subtle social processes that shape how knowledge is assessed, which sources are trusted, which and whose interpretations prevail, what options are deemed viable, how costs and benefits are calculated, and whose resources are mobilized in the effort to reduce vulnerability to climate risk. These are key questions for an assessment of the role of boundary organizations, such as farmer associations, in the communication and application of climate forecasts in agriculture. (shrink)