In a study of the integration of ethics in an MBA program at an Atlantic Canadian University, we found evidence of discrepancies between students and professors with regards to their perception of the integration of ethics into coursework. In addition, discrepancies were found among the perceptions of some of the students taking the same course. Possible reasons for these discrepancies are explored, as well as some of the examples of marginalization of ethics and some of the barriers to teaching ethics (...) that emerged in this study. Implications for business faculty and administration are discussed. (shrink)

In this rich and detailed study of early modern women's thought, Jacqueline Broad explores the complexity of women's responses to Cartesian philosophy and its intellectual legacy in England and Europe. She examines the work of thinkers such as Mary Astell, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway and Damaris Masham, who were active participants in the intellectual life of their time and were also the respected colleagues of philosophers such as Descartes, Leibniz and Locke. She also illuminates the continuities (...) between early modern women's thought and the anti-dualism of more recent feminist thinkers. The result is a more gender-balanced account of early modern thought than has hitherto been available. Broad's clear and accessible exploration of this still-unfamiliar area will have a strong appeal to both students and scholars in the history of philosophy, women's studies and the history of ideas. (shrink)

This paper explores the reception of Kant's understanding of consciousness by both Romantics and Idealists from 1785 to 1799, and traces its impact on the theory of religion. I first look at Kant's understanding of consciousness as developed in the first Critique, and then looks at how figures such as Fichte, Jacobi, Hölderlin, Novalis, and Schleiermacher received this theory of consciousness and its implications for their understanding of religion.

This is the second of two collections of correspondence written by early modern English women philosophers. In this volume, Jacqueline Broad presents letters from three influential thinkers of the eighteenth century: Mary Astell, Elizabeth Thomas, and Catharine Trotter Cockburn. Broad provides introductory essays for each figure and explanatory annotations to clarify unfamiliar language, content, and historical context for the modern reader. Her selections make available many letters that have never been published before or that live scattered in various archives, (...) obscure manuscripts, and rare books. The discussions range in subject from moral theology and ethics to epistemology and metaphysics; they involve some well-known thinkers of the period, such as John Norris, George Hickes, Mary Chudleigh, John Locke, and Edmund Law. By centering epistolary correspondence, Broad's anthology works to reframe early modern philosophy, the foundation for so much of twentieth-century philosophy, as consisting of collaborative debates that women actively participated in and shaped. Together with its companion volume, Women Philosophers of Eighteenth-Century England: Selected Correspondence is an invaluable primary resource for students, scholars, and those undertaking further research in the history of women's contributions to the formation and development of early modern thought. (shrink)

Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Before Freud : the quarrel of the unconscious in late nineteenth-century France -- Flaubert : hysterical duality, hallucination and writing -- Maupassant, Charcot and the paranormal -- The unconscious female/the female unconscious -- Hypnotism, dual personalities and the popular novel -- Proust, the intellect and the unconscious -- Postscript -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

The history of people--everything that has happened in the past, whether yesterday or thousands of years ago--is a key part of social studies. History is somewhat like a story, but a complicated one. Not only is it the study of past events but also the study of why these events happened. This thought-provoking book will have young historians thinking about the history of their communities and of the wider world. They'll consider causes and effects and make connections with their own (...) lives, both important standards of elementary social studies curricula. (shrink)

Descriptive accounts of the nature of explanation in neuroscience and the global goals of such explanation have recently proliferated in the philosophy of neuroscience and with them new understandings of the experimental practices of neuroscientists have emerged. In this paper, I consider two models of such practices; one that takes them to be reductive; another that takes them to be integrative. I investigate those areas of the neuroscience of learning and memory from which the examples used to substantiate these models (...) are culled, and argue that the multiplicity of experimental protocols used in these research areas presents specific challenges for both models. In my view, these challenges have been overlooked largely because philosophers have hitherto failed to pay sufficient attention to fundamental features of experimental practice. I demonstrate that when we do pay attention to such features, evidence for reduction and integrative unity in neuroscience is simply not borne out. I end by suggesting some new directions for the philosophy of neuroscience that pertain to taking a closer look at the nature of neuroscientific experiments. (shrink)

We use recent developments within philosophy of science and within certain strands of linguistic research to throw light on each other. According to Ronald Giere's perspectivist philosophy of science, the scientific understanding of reality must proceed along different, mutually irreducible lines of approach. Giere's proposal, however, leaves unresolved the problem of how to integrate the ever‐growing multitude of highly diverse scientific accounts of what is, after all, one and the same world. We propose a technique for the alignment of different (...) perspectives that will permit cross‐perspectival explanation, and thus allow for a more holistic picture of reality to emerge. With respect to modern linguistics, however, Giere's perspectivism merely legalises a de facto state of affairs, as this discipline displays the peaceful coexistence of a multitude of different theoretical perspectives. Still, this makes it all the more important to show how the different aspects of language picked out by these different perspectives combine to form one single complex reality. During our investigation, a largely overlooked type of reduction within linguistics comes to light, prevalent in classical as well as current work within speech act theory and politeness theory. We suggest how a more holistic understanding of language can be attained through our technique for integrating different perspectives. (shrink)

Dans ce monde ultrarapide, qui honnit le silence et l'absence, l'éloge de l'attente... qu'on n'attendait plus! Un ouvrage éclairé, étayé par de magnifiques références littéraires, d'Homère à Buzatti. Une suspension vitale par l'une des grandes auteures spirituelles d'aujourd'hui. " Heureux ceux qui connaissent encore la joie d'attendre - une lettre, une rencontre, une éclaircie, voire la vie éternelle.0" Qu'y a-t-il de commun entre le peuple hébreu marchant dans le désert pendant quarante ans, la reine Pénélope dont l'époux, Ulysse, est absent (...) depuis si longtemps, la Belle au bois dormant, l'arpenteur de Kafka, la sentinelle de Buzzati? ou encore l'amour lointain chanté par les troubadours et le long désir qui brûle les mystiques? Ici et là se manifeste une manière d'attendre - dans la paix, la détermination ou le doute, dans la confiance et la ferveur, avec parfois une joie intense.0Immense et mystérieuse, l'attente tisse toute une existence et elle élève l'être humain jusqu'à l'infini. Un livre empli d'espérance. Ecrivain, Jacqueline Kelen a publié de nombreux livres qui étudient les grands mythes de l'Occident, les figures de la mystique et les richesses de la vie intérieure. Aux Editions du Cerf ont paru Le diable préfère les saints, Les compagnons de sainteté, et Histoire de celui qui dépensa tout et ne perdit rien (prix de la liberté intérieure 2020). (shrink)

People with mental illness are treated, in research, as a ‘class’ or category who are vulnerable, without always being clear why they should be treated as such, not why an individual, rather than the class, is vulnerable. The two main reasons given are lack of competence and power imbalance. Competence issues include incapacity and legislation, assessment and the impact of the illness in decisions. Power issues cover the role of mental health legislation, coercion, protectiveness and paternalism, stigma and discrimination and (...) the ‘well’ and ‘ill’ self. These are examined within a framework of risk assessment, both to the patient and to others. Over-concern to protect the vulnerable can lead to gate-keepers preventing their inclusion in studies at various stages of the research. This denies such groups a voice in the research process.It is suggested that ethical scrutiny of research is not only to prevent harm to the vulnerable, but also to provide a framework to empower such people to take part in research. To do otherwise is to further stigmatize and marginalize them. One way forward is to look at the risk presented by different types of research, from clinical intervention trials to non-therapeutic, qualitative studies and to modify capacity and access requirements in the light of the risks presented. (shrink)

Guilt and forgiveness, with their attendant philosophical and religious ramifications, permeate writing on the Holocaust and can also be related to South Africa’s recent history and present situation. Two controversial and provocative books (both possibly autobiographical) which tackle the question of guilt and forgiveness head on are Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower and Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader, both of which have led to much debate. The central event in both texts is the slaughter of innocents, burned to death in a building (...) during World War II, while the perpetrators (an SS officer who tells his story in The Sunflower and a concentration camp warder who refuses to tell hers in The Reader) either kill those trying to escape or totally ignore the screams of the victims. The reader has to decide whether it is plausible that years later these murderers feel genuine guilt and, if so, whether they should be forgiven – and by whom. The Reader can be seen as the obverse of The Sunflower. The two should be read in conjunction for an intriguing view of the human psyche, the dichotomy in the soul of a person preceding and succeeding his/her horrific deeds, and the questions arising of whether death can be faced by the wicked with a clear conscience, whether the fear of meeting one’s Maker engenders belated remorse, whether one changes if found out, and whether ignorance of mind betokens evil of soul which can be overcome with learning and insight. (shrink)

This book explores how a sense of wonder and the musicality of silence can be a rehumanizing force in education, health and welfare, countering overly anthropocentric and instrumental worldviews. Wonder - in an aesthetic, philosophical, and spiritual sense - brings human beings in resonance with the world again.

In this chapter I investigate the kinds of changes that psychiatric kinds undergo when they become explanatory targets of areas of sciences that are not “mature” and are in the early stages of discovering mechanisms. The two areas of science that are the targets of my analysis are cognitive neuroscience and cognitive neurobiology.

This paper explores three important criticisms of Kant's ethics by Friedrich Schleiermacher, all having to do with Kant's alleged failure to account for the value of the individual. These are: (1) Kant's formalism precludes him from specifying ends for the will, and without such ends, the moral perfection of the individual, and the genuine appreciation of the other in his or her individuality cannot become my end; (2) Kant cannot provide an adequate metaphysical grounding of the value of the individuals (...) comprising a community; (3) Kant cannot give an account of why members of a community should value the individual qua individual in relation to the community. In this paper I discuss these criticisms and their validity in detail. I show that understood properly, Kant has the resources to answer Schleiermacher's first criticism, and I show how Schleiermacher's own system sought to avoid the second and third problems. (shrink)

This paper offers a critique of an account of explanatory integration that claims that explanations of cognitive capacities by functional analyses and mechanistic explanations can be seamlessly integrated. It is shown that achieving such explanatory integration requires that the terms designating cognitive capacities in the two forms of explanation are stable but that experimental practice in the mind-brain sciences currently is not directed at achieving such stability. A positive proposal for changing experimental practice so as to promote such stability is (...) put forward and its implications for explanatory integration are briefly considered. (shrink)

What does the history of Christian views of economic life mean for economic life in the twenty-first century? Here Daniel Finn reviews the insights provided by a large number of texts, from the Bible and the early church, to the Middle Ages and the Protestant Reformation, to treatments of the subject in the last century. Relying on both social science and theology, Finn then turns to the implications of this history for economic life today. Throughout, the book invites (...) the reader to engage the sources and to develop an answer to the volume's basic question. (shrink)

Women are underrepresented in philosophy. And pregnancy is under-researched in philosophy. Can a connection be made between the two? I will argue that whilst the counterfactual of ‘had women historically been better represented in philosophy then pregnancy would have been too’ may be true, it is not necessarily the case that we can now, in the present day, expect (or desire) a correlation. In order to understand the gap between these two areas of underrepresentation, one need only adopt a non- (...) essentialist understanding of women so as to recognise that not all women experience pregnancy or are interested in pregnancy (philosophically or otherwise). Nevertheless, given the historical silence(ing) of women in philosophy on the topic of pregnancy, it is important now to redress that imbalance by tackling both issues of underrepresentation simultaneously. To demonstrate further I refer to the difference between representational diversity and substantive diversity (which is related to the more commonly known distinction between descriptive representation and substantive representation). This will be the topic of the first section of the paper. Then, in the second and third sections of the paper I will explore the underrepresentation and misrepresentation of women in philosophy, regarding not only the lack of women numerically speaking but also how women, as a general ‘kind’, are (misogynistically) described in philosophy historically. I will then apply the same treatment to pregnancy in the fourth and fifth sections of the paper, exploring both its underrepresentation as a topic of philosophical endeavour and misrepresentation within society at large. The analysis contains a review of the literature, and cites statistical quantitative data and qualitative grounded interviews, to provide evidence for my claims. I will end by hypothesising about the relationship between these under- and mis- representations, and will provide musings on the future for women and pregnancy in philosophy. (shrink)

This volume is the first to undertake a large-scale, longue durée study of pain in antiquity across multiple contexts, cultures and genres, providing a close analysis of the articulation of pain experiences, both mental and physical.

Volontiers pluridisciplinaire, le présent ouvrage multiplie les regards susceptibles d’éclairer l’insidieux changement de paradigme en cours qui affecte le mouvement Droit & Littérature et il prépare ainsi une espérée « théorie narrative du Droit ». L’être social fut naguère un être de Droit. Le voici aujourd’hui cerné de toutes parts - étouffé même - par les normes, les règles et les nudges qui déferlent sur lui en flux continus, issus de mille sources et transportés de mille manières. Pareille avalanche entraîne (...) de nouvelles modalités narratives qui se bousculent les unes les autres, dans un tourbillon où se dissout le Droit tel qu’il nous a longtemps été familier. (shrink)

Paraspeckles are nuclear condensates, or membranelees organelles, that are built on the long noncoding RNA, NEAT1, and have been linked to many diseases. Although originally described as constitutive structures, here, in reviewing this field, we develop the hypothesis that cells increase paraspeckle abundance as part of a general stress response, to aid pro‐survival pathways. Paraspeckles increase in many scenarios: when cells transform from one state to another, become infected with viruses and bacteria, begin to degenerate, under inflammation, in aging, and (...) in cancer. Cells increase paraspeckles by increasing transcription of NEAT1 and adjusting its RNA processing. These increases in NEAT1 are driven by numerous stress‐sensing signaling pathways, including signaling to mitochondria and stress granules, revealing crosstalk between the cytoplasm and nucleoplasm in the stress response. Thus, paraspeckles are an important piece of the puzzle in cellular homeostasis, and could be considered RNA‐scaffolded nuclear equivalents of dynamic stress‐induced structures that form in the cytoplasm. We speculate that, in general, cells rely on phase‐separated paraspeckles to transiently tweak gene regulation in times of cellular flux. (shrink)

Part of the nonfiction Orca Think series, this book gives young readers the tools to think about the physical, social and emotional needs of pets, farm animals and wild animals using the Five Freedoms.

Žene su nedovoljno zastupljene u filozofiji, a trudnoća je nedovoljno istražena u filozofiji. Može li se uspostaviti veza između ta dva fenomena? Tvrdit ću da, iako je kontrafaktična tvrdnja "da su žene bile povijesno bolje zastupljene u filozofiji, trudnoća bi bila također zastupljena" možda istinita, to ne znači nužno da sada, u sadašnjosti, možemo očekivati (ili poželjeti) da postoji korelacija. Kako bismo shvatili jaz između ovih dvaju područja nedovoljne zastupljenosti, dovoljno je usvojiti ne-esencijalističko shvaćanje žena kako bismo prepoznali da neke (...) žene ne doživljavaju trudnoću ili nisu zainteresirane za trudnoću (filozofski ili na drugi način). Ipak, s obzirom na povijesno šutnju o trudnoći u filozofiji koju su proživljavale žene, važno je sada ispraviti tu neravnotežu istovremeno obrađujući obje teme nedovoljne zastupljenosti. Kako bih to dalje dokazala, upućujem na razliku između reprezentativne raznolikosti i suštinske raznolikosti (što je povezano s poznatijom razlikom između deskriptivne reprezentacije i suštinske reprezentacije). To će biti tema prvog dijela rada. Zatim, u drugom i trećem dijelu rada, istražit ću nedovoljnu zastupljenost i pogrešno predstavljanje žena u filozofiji, ne samo u smislu nedovoljnog broja žena, već i u smislu načina na koji su žene, kao opći "rod", (mizogino) opisivane u filozofiji kroz povijest. Isti postupak primijenit ću na trudnoću u četvrtom i petom dijelu rada, istražujući kako se tretira kao tema filozofskog istraživanja te kako je pogrešno predstavljena u društvu općenito. Kako bi se pružili dokazi za moje tvrdnje, analiza sadrži pregled literature i navodi statističke kvantitativne podatke i kvalitativno utemeljene intervjue. Završit ću hipotezom o odnosu između ovih nedovoljnih i pogrešnih predstavljanja, te ću ponuditi razmišljanja o budućnosti za žene i trudnoću u filozofiji. (shrink)

Business ethics can be taught as a stand-alone course or be woven throughout a curriculum. There is a debate over whether to teach ethics in the form of theory or real-world connectedness or both. A moral-judgment gap exists, and many believe Business education should promote knowledge and skills that enable ethical intentions to be followed with ethical behaviors. This conceptual paper diagrams where the gap exists in Business Ethics education and theorizes how multi-modal, learning-centered ethics teaching can bridge this shortfall. (...) Literature from the field of Education is drawn upon for pedagogies that promote learning and application. Case studies, constructed narratives, and simulations function as several key components useful for developing complex skills needed for applying ethical reasoning. Additional components and strategies that undergird and reinforce the case studies and other active learning components are laid out in pyramid form toward an overall best-practices approach to developing principled moral reasoning in Business Ethics. (shrink)

Neuroscience is a laboratory-based science that spans multiple levels of analysis from molecular genetics to behavior. At every level of analysis experiments are designed in order to answer empirical questions about phenomena of interest. Understanding the nature and structure of experimentation in neuroscience is fundamental for assessing the quality of the evidence produced by such experiments and the kinds of claims that are warranted by the data. This article provides a general conceptual framework for thinking about evidence and experimentation in (...) neuroscience with a particular focus on two research areas: cognitive neuroscience and cognitive neurobiology. (shrink)

Transitive proxy voting (or "liquid democracy") is a novel form of collective decision making, often framed as an attractive hybrid of direct and representative democracy. Although the ideas behind liquid democracy have garnered widespread support, there have been relatively few attempts to model it formally. This paper makes three main contributions. First, it proposes a new social choice-theoretic model of liquid democracy, which is distinguished by taking a richer formal perspective on the process by which a voter chooses a proxy. (...) Second, it examines the model from an axiomatic perspective, proving (a) a proxy vote analogue of May's Theorem and (b) an impossibility result concerning monotonicity properties in a proxy vote setting. Third, it explores the topic of manipulation in transitive proxy votes. Two forms of manipulation specific to the proxy vote setting are defined, and it is shown that manipulation occurs in strictly more cases in proxy votes than in classical votes. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that scientific practice in the neurosciences of cognition is not conducive to the discovery of natural kinds of cognitive capacities. The “neurosciences of cognition” include cognitive neuroscience and cognitive neurobiology, two research areas that aim to understand how the brain gives rise to cognition and behavior. Some philosophers of neuroscience have claimed that explanatory progress in these research areas ultimately will result in the discovery of the underlying mechanisms of cognitive capacities. Once such mechanistic understanding (...) is achieved, cognitive capacities purportedly will be relegated into natural kind categories that correspond to real divisions in the causal structure of the world. I provide reasons here, however, in support of the claim that the neurosciences of cognition currently are not on a trajectory for discovering natural kinds. As I explain, this has to do with how mechanistic explanations of cognitive capacities are developed. Mechanistic explanations and the kinds they explain are abstract representational byproducts of the conceptual, experimental and integrative practices of neuroscientists. If these practices are not coordinated towards developing mechanistic explanations that mirror the causal structure of the world, then natural kinds of cognitive capacities will not be discovered. I provide reasons to think that such coordination is currently lacking in the neurosciences of cognition and indicate where changes in these practices appropriate to the natural kinds ideal would be required if achieving this ideal is indeed the goal. However, I suggest that an evaluation of current practices in these research areas is suggestive that discovering natural kinds of cognitive capacities is not the goal. (shrink)

L'ouvrage revient sur le projet de l'esthétique dite "scientifique", qui se constitue comme telle dans la 2e moitié du XIXe siècle : dépasser les postulats kantiens et spiritualistes au nom d'un rapprochement de l'esthétique avec les sciences expérimentales de son temps (psychologie, physiologie, psychophysique, anthropologie...). Croisant les approches de la philosophie et de l'histoire de l’art, l'ouvrage étudie en outre l'articulation de cette esthétique avec l'art de son temps, du néo-impressionnisme aux débuts de l'abstraction, de l'art nouveau à la géométrie (...) sensible des puristes, et des réformateurs des arts du geste et de la danse aux zélateurs des synesthésies et de l'oeuvre d'art totale. (shrink)

Autonomy is considered to be an important feature of professionals and to provide a necessary basis for their informed judgments. In this article these notions will be challenged. In this article I use Michel Foucault's deconstruction of the idea of the autonomous citizen, and his later attempts to reconstruct that idea, in order to bring some new perspectives to the discussion about the foundation of professionalism. The turning point in Foucault's discussion about autonomy is to be found in his proposal (...) for an ethics of the self. This ethics invites a break with the normalising discourses of modernity. As I see it, this makes it particularly relevant to a discussion about the principles of professionalism. The conception of parrhesia is central. I use the role of the teacher to illustrate my arguments. (shrink)

This collection of papers investigates the most recent debates about individualism and holism in the philosophy of social science. The debates revolve mainly around two issues: firstly, whether social phenomena exist sui generis and how they relate to individuals. This is the focus of discussions between ontological individualists and ontological holists. Secondly, to what extent social scientific explanations may and should, focus on individuals and social phenomena respectively. This issue is debated amongst methodological holists and methodological individualists. -/- In social (...) science and philosophy, both issues have been intensively discussed and new versions of the dispute have appeared just as new arguments have been advanced. At present, the individualism/holism debate is extremely lively and this book reflects the major positions and perspectives within the debate. This volume is also relevant to debates about two closely related issues in social science: the micro-macro debate and the agency-structure debate. -/- This book presents contributions from key figures in both social science and philosophy, in the first such collection on this topic to be published since the 1970s. -/- . (shrink)

Despite its centrality in the philosophy of cognitive science, there has been little prior philosophical work engaging with the notion of representation in contemporary NLP practice. This paper attempts to fill that lacuna: drawing on ideas from cognitive science, I introduce a framework for evaluating the representational claims made about components of neural NLP models, proposing three criteria with which to evaluate whether a component of a model represents a property and operationalising these criteria using probing classifiers, a popular analysis (...) technique in NLP (and deep learning more broadly). The project of operationalising a philosophically-informed notion of representation should be of interest to both philosophers of science and NLP practitioners. It affords philosophers a novel testing-ground for claims about the nature of representation, and helps NLPers organise the large literature on probing experiments, suggesting novel avenues for empirical research. (shrink)

A 2017 Nature report was widely touted as hailing the arrival of the artificial womb. But the scientists involved claim their technology is merely an improvement in neonatal care. This raises an under-considered question: what differentiates neonatal incubation from artificial womb technology? Considering the nature of gestation—or metaphysics of pregnancy—(a) identifies more profound differences between fetuses and neonates/babies than their location (in or outside the maternal body) alone: fetuses and neonates have different physiological and physical characteristics; (b) characterizes birth as (...) a physiological, mereological and topological transformation as well as a (morally relevant) change of location; and (c) delivers a clear distinction between neonatal incubation and ectogestation: the former supports neonatal physiology; the latter preserves fetal physiology. This allows a detailed conceptual classification of ectogenetive and ectogestative technologies according to which the 2017 system is not just improved neonatal incubation, but genuine ectogestation. But it is not an artificial womb, which is a term that is better put to rest. The analysis reveals that any ethical discussion involving ectogestation must always involve considerations of possible risks to the mother as well as her autonomy and rights. It also adds a third and potentially important dimension to debates in reproductive ethics: the physiological transition from fetus/gestateling to baby/neonate. (shrink)

How has feminism changed in the UK since the 1960s? This was the question I set out to explore in my research on the British Women’s Liberation Movement, published as Radical Feminism: Feminist Activism in Movement. I found that the motivations and aspirations of activists today were similar to those reported by feminists of the Second Wave; but the methods and tactics were more professionalized and there was less of a focus on women-only space.

One might be inclined to assume, given the mouse donning its cover, that the behavior of interest in Nicole Nelson's book Model Behavior (2018) is that of organisms like mice that are widely used as “stand-ins” for investigating the causes of human behavior. Instead, Nelson's ethnographic study focuses on the strategies adopted by a community of rodent behavioral researchers to identify and respond to epistemic challenges they face in using mice as models to understand the causes of disordered human behaviors (...) associated with mental illness. Although Nelson never explicitly describes the knowledge production activities in which her behavioral geneticist research subjects engage as “exemplary”, the question of whether or not these activities constitute “model behavior(s)”—generalizable norms for engaging in scientific research—is one of the many thought-provoking questions raised by her book. As a philosopher of science interested in this question, I take it up here. (shrink)

As reproductive genetic technologies advance, families have more options to choose what sort of child they want to have. Using preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), for example, allows parents to evaluate several existing embryos before selecting which to implant via in vitro fertilization (IVF). One of the traits PGD can identify is genetic deafness, and hearing embryos are now preferentially selected around the globe using this method. Importantly, some Deaf families desire a deaf child, and PGD–IVF is also an option for (...) them. Selection for genetic deafness, however, encounters widespread disapproval in the hearing community, including mainstream philosophy and bioethics. In this paper I apply Elizabeth Barnes’ value-neutral model of disability as mere-difference to the case of selecting for deafness. I draw on evidence from Deaf Studies and Disability Studies to build an understanding of deafness, the Deaf community, and the circumstances relevant to reproductive choices that may obtain for some Deaf families. Selection for deafness, with deafness understood as mere-difference and valued for its cultural identity, need not necessitate impermissible moral harms. I thus advocate that it is sometimes morally permissible to select for deafness in one’s child. (shrink)