Over the past two decades, stories of world-ending catastrophe have featured prominently in film and television. Zombie apocalypses, climate disasters, alien invasions, global pandemics and dystopian world orders fill our screens-typically with a singular figure or tenacious group tasked with saving or salvaging the world. Why are stories of End Times crisis so popular with audiences? And why is the hero so often a white man who overcomes personal struggles and incredible obstacles to lead humanity toward a restored future? This (...) book examines the familiar trope of the hero and the recasting of contemporary anxieties in narratives like The Walking Dead, Snowpiercer and Mad Max: Fury Road. Some have familiar roots in Western cultural traditions yet many question popular assumptions about heroes and heroism to tell new and fascinating stories about race, gender and society and the power of individuals to change the world. (shrink)

One of Martin Heidegger’s enduring philosophical legacies is his overall vision of what it is to be us. We—whoever that turns out to include—are cases of Dasein, and as such we are distinctively open to entities, including others and ourselves. In this essay, I paint a picture of that openness that aims to capture why Heidegger’s vision has so powerfully gripped so many. Drawing on Heidegger’s thought both early and late, I present a synoptic view of us as open to (...) the encounter with entities' bursting forth into presencing. We can be more or less closed off to this upsurge, but we can also allow it in its full power: in philosophical and poetic openness. I draw on Borgmann, Buber, Plato’s Socrates, Rilke, and others to capture our openness at its Heideggerian best—and we ourselves at our best, showing up radiantly for encounter. (shrink)

We have identified a sample of 53 societies outside of the classical Himalayan and Marquesean area that permit polyandrous unions. Our goal is to broadly describe the demographic, social, marital, and economic characteristics of these societies and to evaluate some hypotheses of the causes of polyandry. We demonstrate that although polyandry is rare it is not as rare as commonly believed, is found worldwide, and is most common in egalitarian societies. We also argue that polyandry likely existed during early human (...) history and should be examined from an evolutionary perspective. Our analysis reveals that it may be a predictable response to a high operational sex ratio favoring males and may also be a response to high rates of male mortality and, possibly, male absenteeism. Other factors may contribute, but our within-polyandry sample limits analysis. (shrink)

Social groups—like teams, committees, gender groups, and racial groups—play a central role in our lives and in philosophical inquiry. Here I develop and motivate a structuralist ontology of social groups centered on social structures (i.e., networks of relations that are constitutively dependent on social factors). The view delivers a picture that encompasses a diverse range of social groups, while maintaining important metaphysical and normative distinctions between groups of different kinds. It also meets the constraint that not every arbitrary collection of (...) people is a social group. In addition, the framework provides resources for developing a broader structuralist view in social ontology. (shrink)

How do things persist? Are material objects spread out through time just as they are spread out through space? Or is temporal persistence quite different from spatial extension? This key question lies at the heart of any metaphysical exploration of the material world, and it plays a crucial part in debates about personal identity and survival. This book explores and compares three theories of persistence — endurance, perdurance, and stage theories — investigating the ways in which they attempt to account (...) for the world around us. Having provided valuable clarification of its two main rivals, the book concludes by advocating stage theory. Such a basic issue about the nature of the physical world naturally has close ties with other central philosophical problems. This book includes discussions of change and parthood, of how we refer to material objects at different times, of the doctrine of Humean supervenience, and of the modal features of material things. In particular, it contains new accounts of the nature of worldly vagueness, and of what binds material things together over time, distinguishing the career of a natural object from an arbitrary sequence of events. Each chapter concludes with a reflection about the impact of these metaphysical debates upon questions about our personal identity and survival. (shrink)

Stereotypes sometimes lead us to make poor judgements of other people, but they also have the potential to facilitate quick, efficient, and accurate judgements. How can we discern whether any individual act of stereotyping will have the positive or negative effect? How Stereotypes Deceive Us addresses this question. It identifies various factors that determine whether or not the application of a stereotype to an individual in a specific context will facilitate or impede correct judgements and perceptions of the individual. It (...) challenges the thought that stereotyping only and always impedes correct judgement when the stereotypes that are applied are inaccurate, failing to reflect social realities. It argues instead that stereotypes that reflect social realities can lead to misperceptions and misjudgements, and that inaccurate but egalitarian social attitudes can therefore facilitate correct judgements and accurate perceptions. The arguments presented in this book have important implications for those who might engage in stereotyping and those who are at risk of being stereotyped. They have implications for those who work in healthcare and those who have mental health conditions. How Stereotypes Deceive Us provides a new conceptual framework-evaluative dispositionalism-that captures the epistemic faults of stereotypes and stereotyping, providing conceptual resources that can be used to improve our own thinking by avoiding the pitfalls of stereotyping, and to challenge other people's stereotyping where it is likely to lead to misperception and misjudgement. (shrink)

Social groups, including racial and gender groups and teams and committees, seem to play an important role in our world. This article examines key metaphysical questions regarding groups. I examine answers to the question ‘Do groups exist?’ I argue that worries about puzzles of composition, motivations to accept methodological individualism, and a rejection of Racialism support a negative answer to the question. An affirmative answer is supported by arguments that groups are efficacious, indispensible to our best theories, and accepted given (...) common sense. Then, I turn to an examination of the features of social groups. I argue that social groups can be divided into two sorts. Groups of Type 1 are organized social groups like courts and clubs. Groups of Type 2 are groups like Blacks, women, and lesbians. While groups of both sorts have some features in common, they also have marked differences in features. Finally, I turn to views of the nature of social groups. I argue that the difference in features provides evidence that social groups do not have a uniform nature. Teams and committees are structured wholes, while race and gender groups are social kinds. (shrink)

Although the principle of fair subject selection is a widely recognized requirement of ethical clinical research, it often yields conflicting imperatives, thus raising major ethical dilemmas regarding participant selection. In this paper, we diagnose the source of this problem, arguing that the principle of fair subject selection is best understood as a bundle of four distinct sub-principles, each with normative force and each yielding distinct imperatives: (1) fair inclusion; (2) fair burden sharing; (3) fair opportunity; and (4) fair distribution of (...) third-party risks. We first map out these distinct sub-principles, and then identify the ways in which they yield conflicting imperatives for the design of inclusion and exclusion criteria, and the recruitment of participants. We then offer guidance for how decision makers should navigate these conflicting imperatives to ensure that participants are selected fairly. (shrink)

Du Châtelet’s 1740 text Foundations of Physics tackles three of the major foundational issues facing natural philosophy in the early eighteenth century: the problem of bodies, the problem of force, and the question of appropriate methodology. This paper offers an introduction to Du Châtelet’s philosophy of science, as expressed in her Foundations of Physics, primarily through the lens of the problem of bodies.

What would Christianity be like without the soul? While most people would expect the Christian bible to reveal a highly traditional opposition of matter and spirit, the spirit forces of the Old and New Testaments are often surprisingly physical, dynamic, and practical, a matter of energy as much as ethics. The Secret History of the Soul examines the forgotten or suppressed models of body, soul, and human consciousness found in the literature, philosophy and scripture of the ancient and classical worlds. (...) It shows how the spirit forces of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the Old and New Testaments tended to be quantities not entities, and to be closely bound up with the dynamic physical flux of the human body, rather than cleanly abstracted in some absolute immaterial realm. Forces such as menos and thymos, nephesh, pneuma and dynamis not only blurred the line between body and soul, but were potent and transferable, being used, in New Testament culture, to effect magical cures or bestow magical power. Related to this surprising lack of body-soul dualism is a lack of dualistic afterlife in either Homer or Hebrew scripture, where Hades and Sheol are the sole post-mortem destinations. The Secret History of the Soul restores the living strangeness of a spirit world filled with potent energy and practical magic, in cultures which had not yet glimpsed the abstracted soul of later Christianity. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a view of groups, things like teams, committees, clubs and courts. I begin by examining features all groups seem to share. I formulate a list of six features of groups that serve as criteria any adequate theory of groups must capture. Next, I examine four of the most prominent views of groups currently on offer—that groups are non-singular pluralities, fusions, aggregates and sets. I argue that each fails to capture one or more of the (...) criteria. Last, I develop a view of groups as realizations of structures. The view has two components. First, groups are entities with structure. Second, since groups are concreta, they exist only when a group structure is realized. A structure is realized when each of its functionally defined nodes or places are occupied. I show how such a view captures the six criteria for groups, which no other view of groups adequately does, while offering a substantive answer to the question, “What are groups?”. (shrink)

Highlighting main issues and controversies, this book brings together current philosophical discussions of symmetry in physics to provide an introduction to the subject for physicists and philosophers. The contributors cover all the fundamental symmetries of modern physics, such as CPT and permutation symmetry, as well as discussing symmetry-breaking and general interpretational issues. Classic texts are followed by new review articles and shorter commentaries for each topic. Suitable for courses on the foundations of physics, philosophy of physics and philosophy of science, (...) the volume is a valuable reference for students and researchers. (shrink)

Introduction -- Anselm's classical theism -- The Augustinian legacy -- The purpose, definition, and structure of free choice -- Alternative possibilities and primary agency -- The causes of sin and the intelligibility problem -- Creaturely freedom and God as Creator Omnium -- Grace and free will -- Foreknowledge, freedom, and eternity : part I, the problem and historical background -- Foreknowledge, freedom, and eternity : part II, Anselm's solution -- The freedom of God.

Symmetry considerations dominate modern fundamental physics, both in quantum theory and in relativity. Philosophers are now beginning to devote increasing attention to such issues as the significance of gauge symmetry, quantum particle identity in the light of permutation symmetry, how to make sense of parity violation, the role of symmetry breaking, the empirical status of symmetry principles, and so forth. These issues relate directly to traditional problems in the philosophy of science, including the status of the laws of nature, the (...) relationships between mathematics, physical theory, and the world, and the extent to which mathematics suggests new physics.This entry begins with a brief description of the historical roots and emergence of the concept of symmetry that is at work in modern science. It then turns to the application of this concept to physics, distinguishing between two different uses of symmetry: symmetry principles versus symmetry arguments. It mentions the different varieties of physical symmetries, outlining the ways in which they were introduced into physics. Then, stepping back from the details of the various symmetries, it makes some remarks of a general nature concerning the status and significance of symmetries in physics. (shrink)

Recently several philosophers have argued that racial, gender, and other social generic generalizations should be avoided given their propensity to promote essentialist thinking, obscure the social nature of categories, and contribute to oppression. Here I argue that a general prohibition against social generics goes too far. Given that the truth of many generics require regularities or systematic rather than mere accidental correlations, they are our best means for describing structural forms of violence and discrimination. Moreover, their accuracy, their persistence in (...) the face of counterexamples, and features of the contemporary socio-political context make generics useful linguistic tools in social justice projects. (shrink)

It has been argued that humans can face an ethical/epistemic dilemma over the automatic stereotyping involved in implicit bias: ethical demands require that we consistently treat people equally, as equally likely to possess certain traits, but if our aim is knowledge or understanding our responses should reflect social inequalities meaning that members of certain social groups are statistically more likely than others to possess particular features. I use psychological research to argue that often the best choice from the epistemic perspective (...) is the same as the best choice from the ethical perspective: to avoid automatic stereotyping even when this involves failing to reflect social realities in our judgements. This argument has an important implication: it shows that it is not possible to successfully defend an act of automatic stereotyping simply on the basis that the stereotype reflects an aspect of social reality. An act of automatic stereotyping can be poor from an epistemic perspective even if the stereotype that is activated reflects reality. (shrink)

Some language encourages essentialist thinking. While philosophers have largely focused on generics and essentialism, I argue that nouns as a category are poised to refer to kinds and to promote representational essentializing. Our psychological propensity to essentialize when nouns are used reveals a limitation for anti-essentialist ameliorative projects. Even ameliorated nouns can continue to underpin essentialist thinking. I conclude by arguing that representational essentialism does not doom anti-essentialist ameliorative projects. Rather it reveals that would-be ameliorators ought to attend to the (...) propensities for our representational devices to essentialize and to the complex relationship between essentialism and prejudice. (shrink)

Psychedelics such as psilocybin reliably produce significantly altered states of consciousness with a variety of subjectively experienced effects. These include certain changes to perception, cognition, and affect,1 which we refer to here as the acute subjective effects of psychedelics. In recent years, psychedelics such as psilocybin have also shown considerable promise as therapeutic agents when combined with talk therapy, for example, in the treatment of major depression or substance use disorder.2 However, it is currently unclear whether the aforementioned acute subjective (...) effects are necessary to bring about the observed therapeutic effects of psilocybin and other psychedelics. This uncertainty has sparked a lively—though still largely hypothetical—debate on whether psychedelics without subjective effects (“nonsubjective psychedelics” or “non-hallucinogenic psychedelics”) could still have the same therapeutic impact, or whether the acute subjective effects are in fact necessary for this impact to be fully realized.3,4,5. (shrink)

Findings from the cognitive sciences suggest that the cognitive mechanisms responsible for some memory errors are adaptive, bringing benefits to the organism. In this paper we argue that the same cognitive mechanisms also bring a suite of significant epistemic benefits, increasing the chance of an agent obtaining epistemic goods like true belief and knowledge. This result provides a significant challenge to the folk conception of memory beliefs that are false, according to which they are a sign of cognitive frailty, indicating (...) that a person is less reliable than others or their former self. Evidence of memory errors can undermine a person’s view of themselves as a competent epistemic agent, but we show that false memory beliefs can be the result of the ordinary operation of cognitive mechanisms found across the species, which bring substantial epistemic benefits. This challenge to the folk conception is not adequately captured by existing epistemological theories. However, it can be captured by the notion of epistemic innocence, which has previously been deployed to highlight how beliefs which have epistemic costs can also bring significant epistemic benefits. We therefore argue that the notion of epistemic innocence should be expanded so that it applies not just to beliefs but also to cognitive mechanisms. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Psychedelics, including psilocybin, and other consciousness-altering compounds such as 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), currently are being scientifically investigated for their potential therapeutic uses, with a primary focus on measurable outcomes: for example, alleviation of symptoms or increases in self-reported well-being. Accordingly, much recent discussion about the possible value of these substances has turned on estimates of the magnitude and duration of persisting positive effects in comparison to harms. However, many have described the value of a psychedelic experience with little or no reference (...) to such therapeutic benefits, instead seeming to find the experience valuable in its own right. How can we make sense of such testimony? Could a psychedelic experience be valuable even if there were no persisting beneficial effects? If so, how? Using the concept of psychological richness, combined with insights from the philosophy of aesthetics and the enhancement literature, this essay explores potential sources of value in the acute subjective experience, apart from the value derived from persisting beneficial effects. (shrink)

Symmetry, intended as invariance with respect to a transformation (more precisely, with respect to a transformation group), has acquired more and more importance in modern physics. This Chapter explores in 8 Sections the meaning, application and interpretation of symmetry in classical physics. This is done both in general, and with attention to specific topics. The general topics include illustration of the distinctions between symmetries of objects and of laws, and between symmetry principles and symmetry arguments (such as Curie's principle), and (...) reviewing the meaning and various types of symmetry that may be found in classical physics, along with different interpretative strategies that may be adopted. Specific topics discussed include the historical path by which group theory entered classical physics, transformation theory in classical mechanics, the relativity principle in Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, general covariance in his General Theory of Relativity, and Noether's theorems. In bringing these diverse materials together in a single Chapter, we display the pervasive and powerful influence of symmetry in classical physics, and offer a possible framework for the further philosophical investigation of this topic. (shrink)

This essay, written by a biologist, a microbial ecologist, a biological anthropologist, and an anthropologist‐historian, examines tensions and translations in microbiome research on animals in the laboratory and field. The authors trace how research questions and findings in the laboratory are extrapolated into the field and vice versa, and the shifting evidentiary standards that these research settings require. Showing how complexities of microbiomes challenge traditional standards of causation, the authors contend that these challenges require new approaches to inferences used in (...) ecology, anthropology, and history. As social scientists incorporate investigations of microbial life into their human studies, microbiome researchers venture into field settings to develop mechanistic understandings about the functions of complex microbial communities. These efforts generate new possibilities for cross‐fertilizations and inference frameworks to interpret microbiome findings. Microbiome research should integrate multiple scales, levels of variability, and other disciplinary approaches to tackle questions spanning conditions from the laboratory to the field. (shrink)

Slurs are expressions that can be used to demean and dehumanize targets based on their membership in racial, ethnic, religious, gender, or sexual orientation groups. Almost all treatments of slurs posit that they have derogatory content of some sort. Such views—which I call content-based—must explain why in cases of appropriation slurs fail to express their standard derogatory contents. A popular strategy is to take appropriated slurs to be ambiguous; they have both a derogatory content and a positive appropriated content. However, (...) if appropriated slurs are ambiguous, why can only members in the target group use them to express a non-offensive/positive meaning? Here, I develop and motivate an answer that could be adopted by any content-based theorist. I argue that appropriated contents of slurs include a plural fi rst-person pronoun. I show how the semantics of pronouns like ‘we’ can be put to use to explain why only some can use a slur to express its appropriated content. Moreover, I argue that the picture I develop is motivated by the process of appropriation and helps to explain how it achieves its aims of promoting group solidarity and positive group identity. (shrink)

This book has two main and connected themes - the conception and articulation of time in the Greek world and the creation of history, especially in the context of the Greek city. Both how time is expressed and how the past is presented have often been seen as reflections of society. By looking at the construction of the past through the medium of local historiography, where we can view these issues in the relatively restricted world of individual city-states, we can (...) gain a clearer insight into how different versions of the past and different constructions of time were offered to the community for approval. In this way, the citizens were able to negotiate time past and indeed their own history, and thereby to express their values and aspirations. (shrink)

In a recent paper in this journal, Kosso ([2000]) discussed the observational status of continuous symmetries of physics. While we are in broad agreement with his approach, we disagree with his analysis. In the discussion of the status of gauge symmetry, a set of examples offered by 't Hooft ([1980]) has influenced several philosophers, including Kosso; in all cases the interpretation of the examples is mistaken. In this paper, we present our preferred approach to the empirical significance of symmetries, re-analysing (...) the cases of gauge symmetry and general covariance. Direct and indirect empirical significance Global and local continuous symmetries Gauge symmetry 3.1 Local gauge symmetry 3.1.1 Discussion of the first claim 3.1.2 Discussion of the second claim 3.2 Global gauge symmetry Space-time symmetries Direct and indirect empirical significance again Conclusion. (shrink)

Katherine Clarke explores three authors who wrote about the rise of the Roman Empire - Polybius, Posidonius, and Strabo. She examines the overlap between geography and history in their work, and considers how pre-existing traditions were used but transformed in order to describe the new world of Rome.

Predicate nominals (e.g., “is a female”) seem to label or categorize their subjects, while their adjectival correlates (e.g., “is female”) merely attribute a property. Predicate nominals also elicit essentializing inferential judgments about inductive potential and stable explanatory membership. Data from psychology and semantics support that this distinction is robust and productive. I argue that while the difference between predicate nominals and predicate adjectives is elided by standard semantic theories, it ought not be. I then develop and defend a psychologically motivated (...) semantic account on which predicate nominals attribute kind membership and trigger a presupposition that underpins our essentialist judgments. (shrink)

Perceptual grouping has traditionally been thought to be governed by innate, universal principles. However, recent work has found differences in Japanese and English speakers' non-linguistic perceptual grouping, implicating language in non-linguistic perceptual processes (Iversen, Patel, & Ohgushi, 2008). Two experiments test Japanese- and English-learning infants of 5-6 and 7-8 months of age to explore the development of grouping preferences. At 5-6 months, neither the Japanese nor the English infants revealed any systematic perceptual biases. However, by 7-8 months, the same age (...) as when linguistic phrasal grouping develops, infants developed non-linguistic grouping preferences consistent with their language's structure (and the grouping biases found in adulthood). These results reveal an early difference in non-linguistic perception between infants growing up in different language environments. The possibility that infants' linguistic phrasal grouping is bootstrapped by abstract perceptual principles is discussed. (shrink)

Scientific researchers welcome disagreement as a way of furthering epistemic aims. Religious communities, by contrast, tend to regard it as a potential threat to their beliefs. But I argue that religious disagreement can help achieve religious epistemic aims. I do not argue this by comparing science and religion, however. For scientific hypotheses are ideally held with a scholarly neutrality, and my aim is to persuade those who arecommittedto religious beliefs that religious disagreement can be epistemically beneficial for them too.

Katherine Hawley explores and compares three theories of persistence -- endurance, perdurance, and stage theories - investigating the ways in which they attempt to account for the world around us. Having provided valuable clarification of its two main rivals, she concludes by advocating stage theory.

The essays in Object-Oriented Feminism explore OOF: a feminist intervention into recent philosophical discourses--like speculative realism, object-oriented ontology (OOO), and new materialism--that take objects, things, stuff, and matter as primary. Object-oriented feminism approaches all objects from the inside-out position of being an object too, with all of its accompanying political and ethical potentials. This volume places OOF thought in a long history of ongoing feminist work in multiple disciplines. In particular, object-oriented feminism foregrounds three significant aspects of feminist thinking in (...) the philosophy of things: politics, engaging with histories of treating certain humans (women, people of color, and the poor) as objects; erotics, employing humor to foment unseemly entanglements between things; and ethics, refusing to make grand philosophical truth claims, instead staking a modest ethical position that arrives at being "in the right" by being "wrong." Seeking not to define object-oriented feminism but rather to enact it, the volume is interdisciplinary in approach, with contributors from a variety of fields, including sociology, anthropology, English, art, and philosophy. Topics are frequently provocative, engaging a wide range of theorists from Heidegger and Levinas to Irigaray and Haraway, and an intriguing diverse array of objects, including the female body as fetish object in Lolita subculture; birds made queer by endocrine disruptors; and truth claims arising in material relations in indigenous fiction and film. Intentionally, each essay can be seen as an "object" in relation to others in this collection. Contributors: Irina Aristarkhova, University of Michigan; Karen Gregory, University of Edinburgh; Marina Gržinic, Slovenian Academy of Science and Arts; Frenchy Lunning, Minneapolis College of Art and Design; Timothy Morton, Rice University; Anne Pollock, Georgia Tech; Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Columbia University; R. Joshua Scannell, CUNY Graduate Center; Adam Zaretsky, VASTAL. (shrink)

Findings from the cognitive sciences suggest that the cognitive mechanisms responsible for some memory errors are adaptive, bringing benefits to the organism. In this paper we argue that the same cognitive mechanisms also bring a suite of significant epistemic benefits, increasing the chance of an agent obtaining epistemic goods like true belief and knowledge. This result provides a significant challenge to the folk conception of memory beliefs that are false, according to which they are a sign of cognitive frailty, indicating (...) that a person is less reliable than others or their former self. Evidence of memory errors can undermine a person’s view of themselves as a competent epistemic agent, but we show that false memory beliefs can be the result of the ordinary operation of cognitive mechanisms found across the species, which bring substantial epistemic benefits. This challenge to the folk conception is not adequately captured by existing epistemological theories. However, it can be captured by the notion of epistemic innocence, which has previously been deployed to highlight how beliefs which have epistemic costs can also bring significant epistemic benefits. We therefore argue that the notion of epistemic innocence should be expanded so that it applies not just to beliefs but also to cognitive mechanisms. (shrink)

Several prominent debates in biology, such as those surrounding adaptationism, group selection, and punctuated equilibrium, have focused on disagreements about the relative importance of a cause in producing a phenomenon of interest. Some philosophers, such as John Beatty have expressed scepticism about the scientific value of engaging in these controversies, and Karen Kovaka has suggested that their value might be limited. In this paper, I challenge that scepticism by giving a novel analysis of relative significance controversies, showing that there are (...) three forms they can take. I argue that these controversies can have significant epistemic upshots, in that they help scientists form predictions about new instances of the phenomenon of interest. Finally, using two historical examples, I show how engaging in these controversies can improve our understanding of causal relationships. (shrink)

Social groups seem to be entities that are dependent on us. Given their apparent dependence, one might adopt Social Creationism—the thesis that all social groups are social objects created through (some specific types of) thoughts, intentions, agreements, habits, patterns of interaction, and practices. Here I argue that not all social groups come to be in the same way. This is due, in part, to social groups failing to share a uniform nature. I argue that some groups (e.g., racial and gender (...) groups) are social kinds. They either falsify Social Creationism or are created as mere byproducts of property instantiation. In contrast, I argue that other groups (e.g., teams and committees) are social objects. When restricted to groups like these, Social Creationism holds. The conclusions have more than just metaphysical import. The differences between groups and how they come to be help to explain why some groups appear to be natural, why some fail to rely on intentions, and why certain sorts of groups are widespread and persistent. (shrink)

In their article on the limited duty to reinterpret genetic variants, Watts and Newson argue that clinical labs are not morally obligated to conduct routine reinterpretation despite its potential clinical and personal value.1 We endorse the authors’ argument for a circumscribed duty to reclassify genomic variants in certain cases, including to promote diagnostic equity for racial and ethnic minority populations that have been historically excluded from and exploited by genomic research and medicine. However, given the history and resilience of scientific (...) racism, the use of socially constructed racial and ethnic categories to enhance diagnostic equity raises several ethical and practical challenges. In the short term, using socially constructed racial and ethnic categories to identify patients for variant reclassification is a practical approach for addressing concerns of diagnostic equity. In contrast, diagnostic accuracy depends on patients’ genetic similarity to reference genomes, rather than their socially determined race or ethnicity.2 Thus, in the long term, securing both diagnostic equity and diagnostic accuracy through targeted variant reclassification will require a shift away from relying on race and ethnicity and towards assessing genetic similarity. Critically, the identification of patients for genomic variant reclassification using socially constructed race or ethnicity runs the risk of perpetuating the harmful …. (shrink)

This paper focuses on how experiences of trauma can lead to generalized fear of people, objects and places that are similar or contextually or conceptually related to those that produced the initial fear, causing epistemic, affective, and practical harms to those who are unduly feared and those who are intimates of the victim of trauma. We argue that cases of fear generalization that bring harm to other people constitute examples of injustice closely akin to testimonial injustice, specifically, mnemonic injustice. Mnemonic (...) injustice is a label that has been introduced to capture how injustice can occur via the operation of human memory systems when stereotypes shape what is remembered. Here we argue that injustices can also occur via memory systems when trauma leads to a generalized fear. We also argue that this calls for a reformulation of the notion of mnemonic injustice. (shrink)

Where there is trust, there is also vulnerability, and vulnerability can be exploited. Epistemic trust is no exception. This chapter maps the phenomenon of the exploitation of epistemic trust. I start with a discussion of how trust in general can be exploited; a key observation is that trust incurs vulnerabilities not just for the party doing the trusting, but also for the trustee (after all, trust can be burdensome), so either party can exploit the other. I apply these considerations to (...) epistemic trust, specifically in testimonial relationships. There, we standardly think of a hearer trusting a speaker. But we miss an important aspect of this relationship unless we consider too that the speaker standardly trusts the hearer. Given this mutual trust, and given that both trustees and trusters can exploit each other, we have four possibilities for exploitation in epistemic-trust relationships: a speaker exploiting a hearer (a) by accepting his trust or (b) by imposing her trust on him, and a hearer exploiting a speaker (c) by accepting her trust or (d) by imposing his trust on her. One result is that you do not need to betray someone to exploit him – you can exploit him just as easily by doing what he trusts you for. (shrink)

Research on value congruence rests on the assumption that values denote desirable behaviors and ideals that employees and organizations strive to approach. In the present study, we develop and test the argument that a more complete understanding of value congruence can be achieved by considering a second type of congruence based on employees’ and organizations’ counter-ideal values. We examined this proposition in a time-lagged study of 672 employees from various occupational and organizational backgrounds. We used difference scores as well as (...) polynomial regression and response surface analyses to test our hypotheses. Consistent with our hypotheses, results reveal that counter-ideal value congruence has unique relations to employees’ trust in the organization that go beyond the effects of ideal value congruence. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of this expanded perspective on value congruence. (shrink)