Once described as hermaphrodites and later as intersex people, individuals born with intersex variations are routinely subject to so-called “normalizing” medical interventions, often in childhood. Opposition to such practices has been met by attempts to discredit critics and reasserted clinical authority over the bodies of women and men with “disorders of sex development.” However, claims of clinical consensus have been selectively constructed and applied and lack evidence. Limited transparency and lack of access to justice have helped to perpetuate forced interventions. (...) At the same time, associated with the diffusion of distinct concepts of sex and gender, intersex has been constructed as a third legal sex classification, accompanied by pious hopes and unwarranted expectations of consequences. The existence of intersex has also been instrumentalized for the benefit of other, intersecting, populations. The creation of gender categories associated with intersex bodies has created profound risks: a paradoxically narrowed and normative gender binary, maintenance of medical authority over the bodies of “disordered” females and males, and claims that transgressions of social roles ascribed to a third gender are deceptive. Claims that medicalization saves intersex people from “othering,” or that legal othering saves intersex people from medicalization, are contradictory and empty rhetoric. In practice, intersex bodies remain “normalized” or eliminated by medicine, while society and the law “others” intersex identities. That is, medicine constructs intersex bodies as either female or male, while law and society construct intersex identities as neither female nor male. Australian attempts at reforms to recognize the rights of intersex people have either failed to adequately comprehend the population affected or lacked implementation. An emerging human rights consensus demands an end to social prejudice, stigma, and forced medical interventions, focusing on the right to bodily integrity and principles of self-determination. (shrink)

Some popular views of Ernst Mach cast him as a philosopher-scientist averse to imaginative practices in science. The aim of this analysis is to address the question of whether or not imagination is compatible with Machian philosophy of science. I conclude that imagination is not only compatible, but essential to realizing the aim of science in Mach’s biologico-economical view. I raise the possible objection that my conclusion is undermined by Mach’s criticism of Isaac Newton’s famous “bucket experiment.” I conclude that (...) Mach’s issue lies not with thought experimentation, tout court, but with the improper use of thought experimentation as it relates to the aim of the biologico-economical development of science. (shrink)

We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality. Participation in such activities requires not only especially powerful forms of intention reading and cultural learning, but also a unique motivation to share psychological states with others and unique forms of cognitive representation for doing so. The result of participating in these activities is species-unique forms of cultural cognition and (...) evolution, enabling everything from the creation and use of linguistic symbols to the construction of social norms and individual beliefs to the establishment of social institutions. In support of this proposal we argue and present evidence that great apes understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention. Human children's skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14 months of life as two ontogenetic pathways intertwine: the general ape line of understanding others as animate, goal-directed, and intentional agents; and a species-unique motivation to share emotions, experience, and activities with other persons. The developmental outcome is children's ability to construct dialogic cognitive representations, which enable them to participate in earnest in the collectivity that is human cognition. Key Words: collaboration; cooperation; cultural learning; culture; evolutionary psychology; intentions; shared intentionality; social cognition; social learning; theory of mind; joint attention. (shrink)

Along with potential benefits to healthcare delivery, machine learning healthcare applications raise a number of ethical concerns. Ethical evaluations of ML-HCAs will need to structure th...

Some popular views of Ernst Mach cast him as a philosopher-scientist averse to imaginative practices in science. The aim of this analysis is to address the question of whether or not imagination is compatible with Machian philosophy of science. I conclude that imagination is not only compatible but essential to realizing the aim of science in Mach’s biologico-economical view. I raise the possible objection that my conclusion is undermined by Mach’s criticism of Isaac Newton’s famous “bucket experiment.” I conclude that (...) Mach’s issue lies not with thought experimentation, tout court, but with the improper use of thought experimentation as it relates to the aim of the biologico-economical development of science. (shrink)

Aristotle bequeathed to us a powerful metaphysical picture, of substances in which properties inhere. The picture has turned out to be highly problematic in many ways; but it is nevertheless a picture not easy to dislodge. Less obvious are the normative tones implicit in the picture and the way these permeate our system of values, especially when thinking of ourselves and our ambitions, hopes and fears. These have proved, if anything, even harder to dislodge than the metaphysical picture which supports (...) them. This paper first draws out the ethics suggested by a conception of being as individual substances, and finds both inner tensions among these values—expressed in divergent characteristics in the history of philosophy—and a neglect of a significant set of values. Substance metaphysics prefers freedom, independence and autonomy over relational and reciprocal values, which can even be regarded as existentially threatening. A prominent attempt to accommodate both sorts of values without eschewing substantialist metaphysics is briefly considered, before turning to examine an alternative metaphysics and the values it implies. A metaphysics which takes being as becoming, it is argued, supports an ethics centred on relational values, and their associated virtues of care. (shrink)

Plato articulates a deep perplexity about inquiry in ?Meno's Paradox??the claim that one can inquire neither into what one knows, nor into what one does not know. Although some commentators have wrestled with the paradox itself, many suppose that the paradox of inquiry is special to Plato, arising from peculiarities of the Socratic elenchus or of Platonic epistemology. But there is nothing peculiarly Platonic in this puzzle. For it arises, too, in classical Indian philosophical discussions, where it is formulated with (...) great clarity, and analysed in a way that casts it in a new light. We present three treatments of the puzzle in Indian philosophy, as a way of refining and sharpening our understanding of the paradox, before turning to the most radical of the Indian philosophers to tackle it. The Indian philosophers who are optimistic that the paradox can be resolved appeal to the existence of prior beliefs, and to the resources embedded in language to explain how we can investigate, and so move from ignorance to knowledge. Highlighting this structural feature of inquiry, however, allows the pessimist philosopher to demonstrate that the paradox stands. The incoherence of inquiry is rooted in the very idea of aiming our desires at the unknown. Asking questions and giving answers rests on referential intentions targeting objects in a region of epistemic darkness, and so our ?inquiry sceptic? also finds structurally similar forms of incoherence in the pragmatics of interrogative discourse. (shrink)

In _Death in Documentaries: The Memento Mori Experience_, Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter suggests that documentaries are an especially apt form of contemporary _memento mori_; that is, documentaries offer transformative experiences for a viewer to renew one’s consciousness of mortality.

Exploring long-term educational change, we investigate our re/construction of research methodology as we moved from a positivist framework to working with ideas drawn from Deleuze and Guattari. We reveal our becoming rhizomatic in data analysis in the metamodelling of the richness flowing horizontally through our practices. We tell of our struggles to escape hierarchical thinking and relations researching between the smooth and striated. A space of interactions, conversations and writings created relations between polyphonic voices, leading us to an emergent methodology. (...) Our struggle against hierarchies in data analysis yielded rich educational possibilities for becoming that Deleuzo-Guattarian thinking offers us. (shrink)

Machine learning is fundamental to multiple visions of health care’s future, from precision medicine 2020) to a model of health delivery and research...

Answering the design questions inherent to building and deploying machine learning tools —based on algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on large data sets without being explicitl...

The misleading and propagandistic tendencies in American news reporting have been a part of public discussion from its earliest days as a republic (Innis, 2007;Sheppard, 2007). “Fake news” is hardly new (McKernon, 1925), and the term has been applied to a variety of distinct phenomenon ranging from satire to news, which one may find disagreeable (Jankowski, 2018;Tandoc et al., 2018). However, this problem has become increasingly acute in recent years with the Macquarie Dictionary declaring “fake news” the word of the (...) year in 2016 (Lavoipierre, 2017). The international recognition of fake news as a problem (Pomerantsev and Weiss, 2014;Applebaum and Lucas, 2016) has led to a number of initiatives to mitigate perceived causes, with varying levels of success (Flanagin and Metzger, 2014;Horne and Adali, 2017;Sample et al., 2018). The inability to create a holistic solution continues to stymie researchers and vested parties. A significant contributor to the problem is the interdisciplinary nature of digital deception. While technology enables the rapid and wide dissemination of digitally deceptive data, the design and consumption of data rely on a mixture of psychology, sociology, political science, economics, linguistics, marketing, and fine arts. The authors for this effort discuss deception’s history, both old and new, from an interdisciplinary viewpoint and then proceed to discuss how various disciplines contribute to aiding in the detection and countering of fake news narratives. A discussion of various fake news types (printed, staged events, altered photographs, and deep fakes) ensues with the various technologies being used to identify these; the shortcomings of those technologies and finally the insights offered by the other disciplines can be incorporated to improve outcomes. A three-point evaluation model that focuses on contextual data evaluation, pattern spread, and archival analysis of both the author and publication archives is introduced. While the model put forth cannot determine fact from fiction, the ability to measure distance from fact across various domains provides a starting point for evaluating the veracity of a new story. (shrink)

Last year the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its report on the unprecedented amassing of biodata by the People’s Republic of China, the profit to be had through accumulati...

Highlights: -/- • -/- Proposes forward-looking approach to studying climate collapse risks. • -/- Suggests diminishing returns on climate adaptation as a collapse mechanism. • -/- Suggests strategies for sustainable adaptation pathways in face of climate change. • -/- Illustrates analysis with examples of small island states and global food security. -/- Abstract: -/- This article proposes a forward-looking approach to studying societal collapse risks related to climate change. Such an approach should indicate how to study emerging collapse risks and (...) suggest strategies for adapting to them. Our approach is based on three postulates that facilitate a forward-looking approach: (1) collapse, if it occurred, would be a lengthy process rather than an abrupt event; (2) significant collapse risks already exist in some places; and (3) diminishing returns on adaptation to intensifying climate impacts are a key driver of collapse risks. The first two postulates suggests that collapse risks can be studied in process, while the third points to strategies for adaptation pathways that avoid unsustainable diminishing returns. Applying diminishing returns to climate change adaptation, rather than sociopolitical complexity or resource extraction, is also a novel theoretical contribution to collapse literature. [Open access]. (shrink)

Crossing the Stream, Leaving the Cave brings philosophers from two of the world's great philosophical traditions--Platonic and Indian Buddhist--into joint inquiry on topics in metaphysics, epistemology, mind, language, and ethics. An international team of scholars address selected questions of mutual concern to Buddhist and Platonist: How can knowledge of reality transform us? Will such transformation leave us speechless, or disinterested in the world around us? What is cause? What is self-knowledge? And how can dreams shed light on waking cognition? What (...) do the paradoxes thrown up by abstract thought about fundamental notions such as being and unity reveal? Is it possible to attain unity in ourselves, and should we even try? Would doing so make us happy--and is such happiness consistent with both contemplation of reality and action in the world? With close readings of texts by Buddhaghosa, Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Dignaga, Bhaviveka, Santideva; by Plato, Plotinus, Porphyry, Olympiodorus, and Damascius (among others), these studies consider not just the different answers Buddhists and Platonists might give to these questions, but also the criticisms they might bring to each other's positions, the sort of arguments they use, and the use they put these arguments to. Bringing Platonic and the Buddhist perspectives jointly to bear creates a cosmopolitan philosophical exchange which yields greater conceptual clarity on the questions and the terms in which they are cast, reveals unnoticed conceptual connections, and opens up new possibilities for addressing central philosophical concerns. (shrink)

Contemporary responses to Plato’s Republic rarely examine its complex relationship to festivals and sacrifice. Recovering the importance of the festival to Plato’s concerns, this article reveals Plato’s displacement of the sacrificial violence of ancient Greek festivals with the language and possibilities of money. The first section introduces, through the opening scenes of the Republic, the significance of money in Ancient Greece, particularly its affiliation with the ritual dynamics of the festival. The second section focuses on animal sacrifice, developing the central (...) claim that much of the Republic imagines replacing the power of sacrifice to hold a conflicted polis together with the logic of money to organize and maintain the city. To explore the ramifications of this shift, the third section of the essay turns to the problems of visibility and sacrifice, arguing that the shift from festival to monetary political practice obscures the violence of political and monetary life; an obscurity reproduced in Giorgio Agamben’s neglect of ancient Greece in his account of the relationship between sacrifice and political status. This reading provokes an engagement with the contemporary acceptance of monetary violence leading to the conclusion that the violence and death resulting from monetary practice should be considered political violence, not sacrifice. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung. Im Wandel vom paternalistischen zum partnerschaftlichen Arzt-Patient-Verhältnis werden auch Konfliktsituationen am Ende des Lebens aus einem anderen Blickwinkel gesehen. Der Fortschritt der Intensivmedizin und die zunehmende Zahl chronisch Kranker schaffen hier neue ethische Probleme. Am Fall eines Patienten, der an einer Amyotrophen Lateralsklerose litt, wird der Autonomiekonflikt zwischen Selbst- und Fremdbestimmung verdeutlicht. Juristische, medizinische und ethische Argumente werden fallbezogen dargestellt und der Stellenwert von Patientenverfügungen und das derzeitige deutsche Betreuungsrecht diskutiert.

Autoethnographers have grappled with how to represent others in the stories they tell. However, very few have written about the need to protect themselves in the process of doing autoethnographic writing. In this paper, I explore the ethical challenges faced when writing about a potentially-ongoing disorder, such as anorexia, when the research process triggers previously disengaged unhealthy thinking or behaviors for those involved. In the story-writing process, I felt a strong pull to go back into anorexia, as I immersed myself (...) in my research on this topic. The compulsion to publish became intertwined with the compulsion of my anorexia, illustrated by the need to control both and present a certain "face" as a researcher. Using a meta-autoethnographic format, I walk the reader through the choices I made in an attempt to protect myself as a researcher in the process of publishing an autoethnography about anorexia. I also explain the lessons I learned, which can be applied to persons doing autoethnographies on topics that may affect their own personal well-being. This paper reveals the importance of writing through our pain in an ethical fashion and that the ethics of doing autoethnography is not just about protecting those implicated in our stories, but also ourselves. (shrink)

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) hold considerable promise for maintaining aging adults’ mobility as they develop impairments in driving skill. Nonetheless, attitudes can be a significant barrier to adoption as has been shown for other technologies. We investigated how different introductions to AV, video with a driver in the front seat, the rear seat, and a written description, affected attitudes, as well as how individual difference variables such as age, gender, prior knowledge, and personality traits predict attitudes within a middle-aged (Median age (...) = 34, IQR = 20, n = 441) Amazon Mechanical Turk sample. The 16-item attitude survey uncovered three factors: Concern with AV, Eagerness to Adopt AV technology, and Willingness to Relinquish Driving Control. ANOVAs showed that only age (younger less concerned) and gender, (females more concerned) were significant factors in Concern with AV. Only gender affected Willingness to Relinquish Driving Control, with males more willing. Multiple regressions that included previous knowledge level and personality traits showed a different pattern. Female gender and greater conscientiousness were associated with greater Concern about AV. Prior knowledge of AV was associated with less concern. Emotional stability and openness to experience were positive predictors of Eagerness to Adopt AV, whereas conscientiousness was a negative predictor. Prior knowledge and openness to experience, positively, and extraversion, negatively, were associated wi... (shrink)

Zusammenfassung. Im Wandel vom paternalistischen zum partnerschaftlichen Arzt-Patient-Verhältnis werden auch Konfliktsituationen am Ende des Lebens aus einem anderen Blickwinkel gesehen. Der Fortschritt der Intensivmedizin und die zunehmende Zahl chronisch Kranker schaffen hier neue ethische Probleme. Am Fall eines Patienten, der an einer Amyotrophen Lateralsklerose litt, wird der Autonomiekonflikt zwischen Selbst- und Fremdbestimmung verdeutlicht. Juristische, medizinische und ethische Argumente werden fallbezogen dargestellt und der Stellenwert von Patientenverfügungen und das derzeitige deutsche Betreuungsrecht diskutiert.

When people use the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus,” how does one explain its significance? Normally attributed to evangelical Protestant Christians, use of the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus” is a complicated phenomenon, and an explanation of it requires drawing upon resources from across multiple disciplines rather than a single discipline only. Attempts to explain exactly what the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus” means frequently can be mystifying, on the one hand, or dismissive and simplistic, on the other hand. This (...) article moves potentially toward a better context for understanding use of the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus” by drawing upon insights from multiple disciplines, including rhetorical and cultural-historical studies, evolutionary and cognitive psychology, and biological/behavioral and social/anthropological studies in order to set forth some basic lines of explanation for use of the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus.” The article concludes with some possible testable statements for future empirical studies. (shrink)

When people use the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus,” how does one explain its significance? Normally attributed to evangelical Protestant Christians, use of the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus” is a complicated phenomenon, and an explanation of it requires drawing upon resources from across multiple disciplines rather than a single discipline only. Attempts to explain exactly what the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus” means frequently can be mystifying, on the one hand, or dismissive and simplistic, on the other hand. This (...) article moves potentially toward a better context for understanding use of the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus” by drawing upon insights from multiple disciplines, including rhetorical and cultural-historical studies, evolutionary and cognitive psychology, and biological/behavioral and social/anthropological studies in order to set forth some basic lines of explanation for use of the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus.” The article concludes with some possible testable statements for future empirical studies. (shrink)