The plays written about AIDS in the past dozen years form a radical canon establishing gay men as the locus for public attention. These plays have been all but silent in their representation of women with AIDS. This article examines the marginalized women in early plays such as The Normal Heart and As Is, and the women more central to later plays such as The Baltimore Waltz, Before It Hits Home, and Patient A. It foregrounds some of the most problematic (...) issues surrounding the AIDS virus: the perception of women as vectors of disease for men and unborn children, the insistent representation of women as mothers and caregivers, and the denial of patterns of abuse, sexual exploitation, and poverty which contribute to the marginalization of woman and people of color. (shrink)

Taking Parenting Public makes a compelling case that parenting has become dangerously undervalued in America today. It calls for a new investment—both personal and public—into the work of raising children and argues that we are all "stockholders" in the next generation. With a foreword by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West, Taking Parenting Public crosses boundaries to bring together thinkers from diverse fields spanning the political spectrum. It features contributions from distinguished experts in economics, political science, public policy, child development, (...) public health, history, and the media. While recent books have focused on working mothers or absent fathers, Taking Parenting Public is the first volume to take a comprehensive look at the common struggles of parents. These essays go beyond the usual chest-beating about busy parents torn between work and family demands to suggest bold solutions. Instead of the typical call for "parent replacement"—more child care, more after school programs and more mentors—the contributors offer fresh strategies for "parent replenishment," ways to put mothers and fathers back into the lives of their children not only as economic providers, but also as emotional and moral providers. (shrink)

Ann Whittle offers a fresh approach to questions about whether our actions are free and whether we are morally responsible for them. She argues that the answers to these questions depend on the contexts in which we make claims about our abilities and our control over our actions.

The essence of religion was once widely thought to be a unique form of experience that could not be explained in neurological, psychological, or sociological terms. In recent decades scholars have questioned the privileging of the idea of religious experience in the study of religion, an approach that effectively isolated the study of religion from the social and natural sciences. Religious Experience Reconsidered lays out a framework for research into religious phenomena that reclaims experience as a central concept while bridging (...) the divide between religious studies and the sciences. Ann Taves shifts the focus from "religious experience," conceived as a fixed and stable thing, to an examination of the processes by which people attribute meaning to their experiences. She proposes a new approach that unites the study of religion with fields as diverse as neuroscience, anthropology, sociology, and psychology to better understand how these processes are incorporated into the broader cultural formations we think of as religious or spiritual. Taves addresses a series of key questions: how can we set up studies without obscuring contestations over meaning and value? What is the relationship between experience and consciousness? How can research into consciousness help us access and interpret the experiences of others? Why do people individually or collectively explain their experiences in religious terms? How can we set up studies that allow us to compare experiences across times and cultures? Religious Experience Reconsidered demonstrates how methods from the sciences can be combined with those from the humanities to advance a naturalistic understanding of the experiences that people deem religious. (shrink)

Michel Foucault’s _History of Sexuality_ has been one of the most influential books of the last two decades. It has had an enormous impact on cultural studies and work across many disciplines on gender, sexuality, and the body. Bringing a new set of questions to this key work, Ann Laura Stoler examines volume one of _History of Sexuality_ in an unexplored light. She asks why there has been such a muted engagement with this work among students of colonialism for whom (...) issues of sexuality and power are so essential. Why is the colonial context absent from Foucault’s history of a European sexual discourse that for him defined the bourgeois self? In _Race and the Education of Desire, _Stoler challenges Foucault’s tunnel vision of the West and his marginalization of empire. She also argues that this first volume of _History of Sexuality_ contains a suggestive if not studied treatment of race. Drawing on Foucault’s little-known 1976 College de France lectures, Stoler addresses his treatment of the relationship between biopower, bourgeois sexuality, and what he identified as “racisms of the state.” In this critical and historically grounded analysis based on cultural theory and her own extensive research in Dutch and French colonial archives, Stoler suggests how Foucault’s insights have in the past constrained—and in the future may help shape—the ways we trace the genealogies of race. _Race and the Education of Desire_ will revise current notions of the connections between European and colonial historiography and between the European bourgeois order and the colonial treatment of sexuality. Arguing that a history of European nineteenth-century sexuality must also be a history of race, it will change the way we think about Foucault. (shrink)

This handbook presents a comprehensive introduction to the core areas of philosophy of education combined with an up-to-date selection of the central themes. It includes 95 newly commissioned articles that focus on and advance key arguments; each essay incorporates essential background material serving to clarify the history and logic of the relevant topic, examining the status quo of the discipline with respect to the topic, and discussing the possible futures of the field. The book provides a state-of-the-art overview of philosophy (...) of education, covering a range of topics: Voices from the present and the past deals with 36 major figures that philosophers of education rely on; Schools of thought addresses 14 stances including Eastern, Indigenous, and African philosophies of education as well as religiously inspired philosophies of education such as Jewish and Islamic; Revisiting enduring educational debates scrutinizes 25 issues heavily debated in the past and the present, for example care and justice, democracy, and the curriculum; New areas and developments addresses 17 emerging issues that have garnered considerable attention like neuroscience, videogames, and radicalization. The collection is relevant for lecturers teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of education as well as for colleagues in teacher training. Moreover, it helps junior researchers in philosophy of education to situate the problems they are addressing within the wider field of philosophy of education and offers a valuable update for experienced scholars dealing with issues in the sub-discipline. Combined with different conceptions of the purpose of philosophy, it discusses various aspects, using diverse perspectives to do so. Contributing Editors: Section 1: Voices from the Present and the Past: Nuraan Davids Section 2: Schools of Thought: Christiane Thompson and Joris Vlieghe Section 3: Revisiting Enduring Debates: Ann Chinnery, Naomi Hodgson, and Viktor Johansson Section 4: New Areas and Developments: Kai Horsthemke, Dirk Willem Postma, and Claudia Ruitenberg. (shrink)

AI has numerous applications and in various fields, including the military domain. The increase in the degree of autonomy in some decision-making systems leads to discussions on the possible future use of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS). A central issue in these discussions is the assignment of moral responsibility for some AI-based outcomes. Several authors claim that the high autonomous capability of such systems leads to a so-called “responsibility gap.” In recent years, there has been a surge in philosophical literature (...) around the concept of responsibility gaps and different solutions have been devised to close or bridge these gaps. In order to move forward in the research around LAWS and the problem of responsibility, it is important to increase our understanding of the different perspectives and discussions in this debate. This paper attempts to do so by disentangling the various arguments and providing a critical overview. After giving a brief outline of the state of the technology of LAWS, I will review the debates over responsibility gaps using three differentiators: those who believe in the existence of responsibility gaps versus those who do not, those who hold that responsibility gaps constitute a new moral problem versus those who argue they do not, and those who claim that solutions can be successful as opposed to those who believe that it is an unsolvable problem. (shrink)

Although moral distress is now a well-recognized phenomenon among all of the healthcare professions, few evidence-based strategies have been published to address it. In morally distressing situations, the “presenting problem” may be a particular patient situation, but most often signals a deeper unit- or system-centered issue. This article describes one institution’s ongoing effort to address moral distress in its providers. We discuss the development and evaluation of the Moral Distress Consultation Service, an interprofessional, unit/system-oriented approach to addressing and ameliorating moral (...) distress. (shrink)

BackgroundClinical ethics consultations can be complex interventions, involving multiple methods, stakeholders, and competing ethical values. Despite longstanding calls for rigorous evaluation in the field, progress has been limited. The Medical Research Council proposed guidelines for evaluating the effectiveness of complex interventions. The evaluation of CEC may benefit from application of the MRC framework to advance the transparency and methodological rigor of this field. A first step is to understand the outcomes measured in evaluations of CEC in healthcare settings. ObjectiveThe primary (...) objective of this review was to identify and map the outcomes reported in primary studies of CEC. The secondary objective was to provide a comprehensive overview of CEC structures, processes, and roles to enhance understanding and to inform standardization.MethodsWe searched electronic databases to identify primary studies of CEC involving patients, substitute decision-makers and/or family members, clinicians, healthcare staff and leaders. Outcomes were mapped across five conceptual domains as identified a priori based on our clinical ethics experience and preliminary literature searches and revised based on our emerging interpretation of the data. These domains included personal factors, process factors, clinical factors, quality, and resource factors. ResultsForty-eight studies were included in the review. Studies were highly heterogeneous and varied considerably regarding format and process of ethical intervention, credentials of interventionist, population of study, outcomes reported, and measures employed. In addition, few studies used validated measurement tools. The top three outcome domains that studies reported on were quality, process factors, and clinical factors. The majority of studies examined multiple outcome domains. All five outcome domains were multidimensional and included a variety of subthemes.ConclusionsThis scoping review represents the initial phase of mapping the outcomes reported in primary studies of CEC and identifying gaps in the evidence. The confirmed lack of standardization represents a hindrance to the provision of high quality intervention and CEC scientific progress. Insights gained can inform the development of a core outcome set to standardize outcome measures in CEC evaluation research and enable scientifically rigorous efficacy trials of CEC. (shrink)

Fan culture has grown immensely over the past few years. People are constantly looking up to celebrities and personalities as role models for their fashion, identity, and success. During the stage of adolescence, it is normal for teenagers to admire well- known people and form fan attachments as part of their identity formation. However, this admiration of a specific media figure can be associated with one's personality, cognitive processes, and psychological well-being. Thus, the current study aims to investigate the correlation (...) between celebrity admiration and the self-esteem of 238 Filipino male teenagers. The research instruments, namely Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) were both utilized through google forms. Results have shown high scores on celebrity admiration and the normal range of self-esteem of the participants. Using Pearson’s r correlation coefficient, it was found that celebrity admiration and self-esteem of Filipino male teenagers have a significant relationship that exists in a negative direction. (shrink)

The possible future use of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) and the challenges associated with assigning moral responsibility leads to several debates. Some authors argue that the highly autonomous capability of such systems may lead to a so-called responsibility gap in situations where LAWS cause serious violations of international humanitarian law. One proposed solution is the doctrine of command responsibility. Despite the doctrine’s original development to govern human interactions on the battlefield, it is worth considering whether the doctrine of command (...) responsibility could provide a solution by applying the notion analogously to LAWS. A fundamental condition underpinning the doctrine’s application is the control requirement, stipulating that a superior must exert some degree of control over subordinates. The aim of this article is to provide an in-depth analysis of this control condition and assess whether it leads to the impossibility of applying the doctrine of command responsibility to LAWS. To this end, the first section briefly introduces the topic of LAWS and responsibility gaps. The subsequent section provides a concise overview of the doctrine itself and the conditions typically necessitated for its application. In the third section, a comprehensive scrutiny of the control requirement is undertaken through examination of key case law, examining how the concept has been interpreted. Finally, the fourth section delves into the evaluation of commanders’ potential to exert effective control over their (non-human) subordinates. Based on this, the feasibility of considering command responsibility as a viable solution is assessed, aiming to determine whether its application should be prima facie excluded or warrants further exploration. (shrink)

Theories of perception have traditionally dismissed the sense of smell as a notoriously variable and highly subjective sense, mainly because it does not easily fit into accounts of perception based on visual experience. So far, philosophical questions about the objects of olfactory perception have started by considering the nature of olfactory experience. However, there is no philosophically neutral or agreed conception of olfactory experience: it all depends on what one thinks odors are. We examine the existing philosophical methodology for addressing (...) our sense of smell: on the one hand appeals to phenomenology that focus on the experiential dimensions of odor perception and on the other approaches that look at odor sources and their material dimensions. We show that neither strategy provides enough information to account for the human sense of smell and argue that the inclusion of the missing dimension of biology, with its concern for the function (or functions) of olfaction, provides the means to develop a satisfactory and empirically informed philosophy of smell. (shrink)

The notion of virtue in general, and courage in particular, has had a hard time integrating itself into the everyday lexicon of bioethics. Following the lead of enlightenment moral philosophy, which concentrates on the theory of right action as opposed to the ancient Greeks' emphasis on the development of good character, bioethics, with some notable exceptions, has tended to relegate consideration of the virtues to the sidelines of moral argument. Recently, however, there have been calls for the necessity of “moral (...) courage” in the context of clinical ethics. As nurses, physicians, and other health care professionals confront a variety of moral contexts in which the virtue of courage is invoked to "do the right thing," stand up for patients' rights, and uphold the ethical standards of their professions, they are increasingly reminded of their moral duty to exhibit courage in the face of institutional obstacles to the proper care of their patients. For example, a nurse's hesitation to approach a physician to request increased sedation for an agitated patient out of fear of retaliation is represented in one article as a lack of courage.In this paper we offer a critical assessment of such invocations of courage. While we find courage to be an indispensable virtue in some challenging contexts, in other settings we find invocations of courage to be both an unfortunate endorsement of an oppressive status quo that can divert attention from the real problems and an undesirable and potentially destructive strategy within health care institutions whose goal is medically excellent and morally good clinical practice. As we shall argue, a call to virtuousness is not always virtuous. (shrink)

The history of note?taking has only begun to be written. On the one hand, the basic functions of selecting, summarizing, storing and sorting information garnered from reading, listening, observing and thinking can be identified in most literate contexts in some form or other. On the other hand, Renaissance humanists emphasized with unprecedented success the virtues of stockpiling notes on large scales and for the long term, thanks to the availability of paper and a new abundance of books, but also to (...) their ability to transmit their own keen motivation to avoid any future loss of learning. We continue to share many early modern ideals for insuring the collection and retrievability of information and have built on early modern practices that facilitate the accumulation and the organization of information, including collaborative work and the use of rearrangeable slips. (shrink)

Background:Intensive care unit nurses are providing care to COVID-19 patients in a stressful environment. Understanding intensive care unit nurses’ sources of distress is important when planning interventions to support them.Purpose:To describe Canadian intensive care unit nurse experiences providing care to COVID-19 patients during the second wave of the pandemic.Design:Qualitative descriptive component within a larger mixed-methods study.Participants and research context:Participants were invited to write down their experiences of a critical incident, which distressed them when providing nursing care. Thematic analysis was used (...) to analyze the data.Ethical considerations:The study was approved by the ethics committee at the researchers’ university in eastern Canada.Results:A total of 111 critical incidents were written by 108 nurses. Four themes were found: (1) managing the pandemic, (2) witness to families’ grief, (3) our safety, and (4) futility of care. Many nurses’ stories also focused on the organizational preparedness of their institutions and concerns over their own safety.Discussion:Nurses experienced moral distress in relation to family and patient issues. Situations related to insufficient institutional support, patient, and family traumas, as well as safety issues have left nurses deeply distressed.Conclusion:Identifying situations that distress intensive care unit nurses can lead to targeted interventions mitigating their negative consequences by providing a safe work environment and improving nurses’ well-being. (shrink)

Life comes from physical or biological survival. But the good life comes from what we care about, what we value, what we think truly important, as distinguished from what we think merely trivial. What we care about is the source of the criteria we use to evaluate ideas, ideals, persons, events, things, and their importance in our lives. And it is these criteria that determine the judgments we make in our everyday lives. In the second edition of Thinking in Education, (...) Matthew Lipman has indicated the importance of fostering critical, creative and caring thinking in children, if one is to prepare them to make better judgments and live qualitatively better lives. He tells us that caring thinking is appreciative thinking, active thinking, normative thinking, affective thinking and empathetic thinking and then goes on to list a number of mental acts under each of these categories. Maybe it is because ‘caring thinking’ is not as common a term as ‘critical thinking’ and ‘creative thinking’ in everyday educational language that we stop for pause when we hear it. However when we read what Lipman says about caring thinking, we find ourselves nodding and saying to ourselves, ‘Yes, that makes sense. To think caringly means to think ethically, affectively, normatively, appreciatively and to actively participate in society with a concern for the common good’. In a real sense what we care about is manifest in how we perform, participate, build, contribute and how we relate to others. It is thinking that reveals our ideals as well as what we think is valuable, what we are willing to fight and suffer for. (shrink)

AI has numerous applications and in various fields, including the military domain. The increase in the degree of autonomy in some decision-making systems leads to discussions on the possible future use of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS). A central issue in these discussions is the assignment of moral responsibility for some AI-based outcomes. Several authors claim that the high autonomous capability of such systems leads to a so-called “responsibility gap.” In recent years, there has been a surge in philosophical literature (...) around the concept of responsibility gaps and different solutions have been devised to close or bridge these gaps. In order to move forward in the research around LAWS and the problem of responsibility, it is important to increase our understanding of the different perspectives and discussions in this debate. This paper attempts to do so by disentangling the various arguments and providing a critical overview. After giving a brief outline of the state of the technology of LAWS, I will review the debates over responsibility gaps using three differentiators: those who believe in the existence of responsibility gaps versus those who do not, those who hold that responsibility gaps constitute a new moral problem versus those who argue they do not, and those who claim that solutions can be successful as opposed to those who believe that it is an unsolvable problem. (shrink)

Nursing is a complicated and multifaceted profession that sets high demands in preparing nursing students for the profession. In today's education, the emphasis is often on knowledge and skills, that is, epistemology. In caring science another approach is sought, an approach based on human sciences in which knowledge will serve a more profound understanding, that is, the ontology. Consequently, the question of what this ‘understanding’ in clinical education is and how it is promoted in clinical nursing education becomes important to (...) clarify. Therefore, the aim here is to explicate the phenomenon of understanding in clinical education as experienced by third‐year undergraduate nursing students ready for graduation. This study, with a hermeneutic approach, is based on a secondary analysis of focus group interviews with undergraduate nursing students. The analytical expansion of the original material suggests three interrelated themes that illuminate the phenomenon of understanding in clinical education. These findings are deepened and enriched through philosophical abstraction. In the process of understanding, episteme, techne and phronesis can be viewed as inherent parts of the structure of thought in nursing. The perspective advanced in this study adds new aspects to the phenomenon of understanding and its meaning and significance in the dynamic process of formation and becoming in clinical education. The focus in clinical nursing education should be on learning reflective, critical thinking and the ways of being a nurse, rather than drilling students on particular skills. In the rapidly changing world of the 21st century, an understanding‐based education is needed as a more meaningful and authentic approach. Therefore, an ontological turn in nursing education, through which the main focus shifts from a traditional epistemology to an epistemology in the service of ontology, is suggested. Further studies are needed in the development and implementation of an understanding‐based, interpretative education in nursing. (shrink)

This article surveys some of the ways in which early modern scholars responded to what they perceived as an overabundance of books. In addition to owning more books and applying selective judgment as well as renewed diligence to their reading and note-taking, scholars devised shortcuts, sometimes based on medieval antecedents. These shortcuts included the use of the alphabetical index, whether printed or handmade, to read a book in parts, and the use of reference books, amanuenses, abbreviations, or the cutting and (...) pasting from printed or manuscript sources to save time and effort in note-taking. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper, I shall explore the relationship between the control required for action and the control required for moral responsibility. I shall argue that there is an incongruity between Frankfurt’s account of guidance control presented in his theory of action and his commitment to the claim that alternative possibilities are not required for moral responsibility. This inconsistency centres around the role of abilities to do otherwise in our analyses of action and moral responsibility. After outlining the problem for (...) Frankfurt, I shall then motivate one way of resolving this tension. This solution provides a unified role for abilities to do otherwise in our analyses of control. (shrink)

At the UN, important projects laying down transnational corporations' (TNCs) human rights responsibilities have been launched without ever clarifying the relevant theoretical foundations. One of the consequences is that the human rights principles in projects like the 2000 UN Global Compact and the 2003 Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights can be understood in different ways, which should not cause surprise given that their authors come from diverse backgrounds, including economics (...) and public policy. An examination of these projects and the views of their authors reveals that, although they are superficially linked to international human rights law, they go well beyond it and attempt to deal with corporate social responsibility issues in ways that elude neat classification as fitting neatly in either legal or non-legal categories. Too little attention has been paid to how in the course of developing these projects the legal and ethical dimensions have become entwined and how lines have gotten blurred. Meanwhile, there has been recognition that these UN projects have emerged simply as ad hoc responses to practical concerns about the sustainability of globalization. The lack of any foundational theory or normative framework should be addressed; it is time to bring together specialists from different fields concerned with the human rights responsibilities of corporations to see if it is possible to define a coherent overarching theory for these UN projects. (shrink)

A decade ago, conventional wisdom in the medical establishment was that physicians treating chronic pain with opioid analgesics were at a substantial risk of being sanctioned for overprescribing by state medical regulatory boards. Dozens of articles written since have alluded to this risk as an obstacle to effective pain re1ief. In the early 1990s, a number of high profile cases in which physicians were disciplined by regulatory boards for overprescribing to patients with chronic pain were reported in the press. Although (...) the board actions in many of these cases were eventually overturned by state judiciaries, the publicity heightened practitioners’. sensitivity to the regulatory risks associated with prescribing opioids.A review of the available data on state medical board actions nationwide for the period from 1990 to 1996 reveals that the perception of regulatory risk far exceeds the reality. Indeed, relatively few of the disciplinary actions taken for overprescribing by state medical boards in any given year directly concern the treatment of chronic pain—malignant or nonmalignant—in patients. (shrink)

The causal theory of properties is standardly combined with a realist's ontology of universals or tropes. In this paper, I consider an uncharted alternative – a nominalist causal theory of properties. I discuss advantages and disadvantages of the resulting theory of properties, and explore the Rylean understanding of causal powers that emerges.

This chapter contains sections titled: What is Sexism? Background: Language, Experience, and Recognition Levels of Sexism Two Feminist Views of Sexism Objections.

This article provides a critical realist take on comparative methodology. Heeding the call for greater attention to the ontological presuppositions inherent in all methods, it first outlines comparative methods as they have traditionally been conceived and practised. Discerning two important aspects of these approaches - their notion of causality and their reliance on inductive inferences - the discussion moves on to consider their applicability within a critical realist social science. Arguing that the ontological presuppositions of traditional approaches to comparative methodology (...) are not compatible with the ontology of critical realism, it seeks to specify some initial steps in the direction of designing a new approach securing this compatibility. Important to this new approach is theoretical, or abductive, comparison and the need to be context-sensitive. (shrink)

Is the sense of smell a source of aesthetic perception? Traditional philosophical aesthetics has centered on vision and audition but eliminated smell for its subjective and inherently affective character. This article dismantles the myth that olfaction is an unsophisticated sense. It makes a case for olfactory aesthetics by integrating recent insights in neuroscience with traditional expertise about flavor and fragrance assessment in perfumery and wine tasting. My analysis concerns the importance of observational refinement in aesthetic experience. I argue that the (...) active engagement with stimulus features in perceptual processing shapes the phenomenological content, so much so that the perceptual structure of trained smelling varies significantly from naive smelling. In a second step, I interpret the processes that determine such perceptual refinement in the context of neural decision-making processes, and I end with a positive outlook on how research in neuroscience can be used to benefit philosophical aesthetics. (shrink)

The existing literature on gender differences and stereotyping is reviewed in this article. Three theoretical perspectives are discussed: person-centred, organization-centred, and gender context, followed by a review concerning both the findings of the research, a critique of the research methodologies used, and suggestions for future research. The article concludes by suggesting other areas in the field of women in management to which little if any attention has been drawn and recommending some research methodologies which would be applied.

The notion of representation figures centrally both in Descartes’ scientific theorizing about sense in humans and in his conceptual speculations about the nature of human cognition.Descartes’ philosophical innovation in the Dioptrics is the claim that sensing in humans is a kind of representing rather than a kind of resembling. This provides the cornerstone for his attack on traditional theories of sense, and it underwrites his own position that sensing is a kind of thinking, ascribable to the rational soul rather than (...) to any Aristotelean sensitive soul. (shrink)

I consider a grand, yet neglected proposal put forward by Shoemaker—a functionalist theory of all properties. I argue that two possible ways of developing this proposal meet with substantial objections. However, if we are prepared to endorse an ontology of tropes, one of these functionalist analyses can be developed into an original and informative theory of properties.

How likely is it that traumatic childhood events are misremembered or forgotten? Research on children′s recollections of painful or frightening medical procedures may help answer this question by identifying predictors of accurate versus inaccurate memory. In the present study, 46 3- to 10-year-old children were interviewed after undergoing a stressful medical procedure involving urethral catheterization. Age differences in memory emerged, especially when comparing 3- to 4-year-olds with older children. Children′s understanding of the event, parental communication and emotional support, and children′s (...) own emotional reactions also predicted accuracy. Memory did not reliably vary for children who endured the medical procedure once versus multiple times. Results are discussed in relation to possible precursors of accurate and false memories, and forgetting, of traumatic events experienced in childhood. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to rethink classic issues of freedom and moral responsibility in the context of feminist and antiracist theories of male and white domination. If personal identities are socially constructed by gender, race and ethnicity, class and sexual orientation, how are social change and moral responsibility possible? An aspects theory of selfhood and three reinterpretations of identity politics show how individuals are morally responsible and nonessentialist ways to resist social oppression.

In 1991, Linda Buck and Richard Axel identified the multigene family expressing odor receptors. Their discovery transformed research on olfaction overnight, and Buck and Axel were awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Behind this success lies another, less visible study about the methodological ingenuity of Buck. This hidden tale holds the key to answering a fundamental question in discovery analysis: What makes specific discovery tools fit their tasks? Why do some strategies turn out to be more fruitful (...) than others? The fit of a method with an experimental system often establishes the success of a discovery. However, the underlying reasoning of discovery is hard to codify. These difficulties point toward an element of discovery analysis routinely sidelined as a mere biographical element in the philosophical analysis of science: the individual discoverer’s role. I argue that the individual researcher is not a replaceable epistemic element in discovery analysis. This article draws on contemporary oral history, including interviews with Buck and other actors key to developments in late 1980s olfaction. (shrink)

Montaigne’s _Essays_ are rightfully studied as giving birth to the literary form of that name. Ann Hartle’s _Montaigne and the Origins of Modern Philosophy_ argues that the essay is actually the perfect expression of Montaigne as what he called "a new figure: an unpremeditated and accidental philosopher." Unpremeditated philosophy is philosophy made sociable—brought down from the heavens to the street, where it might be engaged in by a wider audience. In the same philosophical act, Montaigne both transforms philosophy and invents (...) "society," a distinctly modern form of association. Through this transformation, a new, modern character emerges: the individual, who is neither master nor slave and who possesses the new virtues of integrity and generosity. In Montaigne’s radically new philosophical project, Hartle finds intimations of both modern epistemology and modern political philosophy. (shrink)

My aim … is to show that the celestial machine is likened not to a kind of divine living being but rather to a clockwork. I consider the human body to be a machine … Although it may exaggerate to say that Descartes fathered the mechanization of biology, it is true that his Treatise of Man provided the first systematic development of the idea that a complete understanding of all the phenomena of life, including all abilities and behaviour of animals, (...) can be achieved by viewing living things as machines. To make this out, Decartes had to learn to think about living things in a new way. My first aim here is to identify the fundamental conceptual innovations at work in Descartes’ attempt to extend the new mechanics to include biology. My second aim is to locate the point at which Descartes’ mechanical imagination runs out. This requires study of Descartes’ scientific work on sense. (shrink)