We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

In Moral Passages, Kathryn Pyne Addelson presents an original moral theory suited for contemporary life and its moral problems. Her basic principle is that knowledge and morality are generated in collective action, and she develops it through a critical examination of theories in philosophy, sociology and women's studies, most of which hide the collective nature and as a result hide the lives and knowledge of many people. At issue are the questions of what morality is, and how moral theories (...) (whether traditional or feminist) are implemented. Addelson takes up a large number of historical cases and contemporary social problems, including teen pregnancy, contraception and abortion, and gay rights. These cases allow her to see how the knowledge and lives of some people are declared deviant or immoral, while those of others appear to show the public consensus. One case she uses throughout the book is Margaret Sanger's early work on birth control with the anarcho-syndicalist movement--a revisionist history that reveals rather than hides the collective nature of morality and knowledge. Addelson shows how the usual individualist philosophies promote theories which hide the authority of the professionals who make them. A collectivist approach, she argues, must show the part professionals play in collective action. Her aim is to allow professional knowledge makers to be morally and intellectually responsible. Based on Addelson's twenty years of work in feminist philosophy and interactionist sociology as well as her long-standing involvement in women's community organization, Moral Passages investigates how morality and knowledge are collectively enacted in today's world. (shrink)

If the Anthropocene represents a new epoch of thought, it also represents a new form of materiality and historicity for the human as strata and stratigrapher of the geologic record. This collision of human and inhuman histories in the strata is a new formation of subjectivity within a geologic horizon that redefines temporal, material, and spatial orders of the human. I argue that the Anthropocene contains within it a form of Anthropogenesis – a new origin story and ontics for man (...) – that radically rewrites material modes of differentiation and concepts of life, from predominantly biopolitical notions of life toward an understanding of life’s geophysical origination. Here, I use the term Anthropogenesis to suggest that two things explicitly happen in the nomination of the Anthropocene: 1) the production of a mythic Anthropos as geologic world-maker/destroyer of worlds, and 2) a material, evolutionary narrative that re-imagines human origins and endings within a geologic rather than an exclusively biological context. In contrast to the homogeneous geomorphizing of the Anthropocene, I suggest that socializing the strata needs a more nuanced notion of ‘geologic life’ that challenges the construction of the Anthropocene as an undifferentiated social stratification. (shrink)

Indeterminate Bodies organizes a number of theoretical and empirical studies around the concept and actuality of indeterminacy, as it relates to body and society. Located within the struggle to apprehend different categories of ‘body’ in the volatile flows of late-capital, indeterminacy is considered through such multiple incarnations as economy, contingency, inheritance, question, force, uncertainty, materiality and affective resistance to determination. While indeterminacy is often positioned as the ‘trouble’ or friction in subject/object knowledge-formation (framed as ontological or empirical challenge), it also (...) engenders affects such that some subjects are both in and out of recognition. Questions of indeterminacy overlap with work on imperceptibility, giving rise to interlocked questions about the modes of representation, categorization, inclusion, exclusion and sensibility in the production of bodies. We address the hesitancies, difficulties and necessities of working with and through indeterminacy in order open up new descriptions, visions and modes of political work. (shrink)

There is conflicting experimental evidence about whether the “stakes” or importance of being wrong affect judgments about whether a subject knows a proposition. To date, judgments about stakes effects on knowledge have been investigated using binary paradigms: responses to “low” stakes cases are compared with responses to “high stakes” cases. However, stakes or importance are not binary properties—they are scalar: whether a situation is “high” or “low” stakes is a matter of degree. So far, no experimental work has investigated the (...) scalar nature of stakes effects on knowledge: do stakes effects increase as the stakes get higher? Do stakes effects only appear once a certain threshold of stakes has been crossed? Does the effect plateau at a certain point? To address these questions, we conducted experiments that probe for the scalarity of stakes effects using several experimental approaches. We found evidence of scalar stakes effects using an “evidence seeking” experimental design, but no evidence of scalar effects using a traditional “evidence-fixed” experimental design. In addition, using the evidence-seeking design, we uncovered a large, but previously unnoticed framing effect on whether participants are skeptical about whether someone can know something, no matter how much evidence they have. The rate of skeptical responses and the rate at which participants were willing to attribute “lazy knowledge”—that someone can know something without having to check—were themselves subject to a stakes effect: participants were more skeptical when the stakes were higher, and more prone to attribute lazy knowledge when the stakes were lower. We argue that the novel skeptical stakes effect provides resources to respond to criticisms of the evidence-seeking approach that argue that it does not target knowledge. (shrink)

The nature of moral action versus moral judgment has been extensively debated in numerous disciplines. We introduce Virtual Reality (VR) moral paradigms examining the action individuals take in a high emotionally arousing, direct action-focused, moral scenario. In two studies involving qualitatively different populations, we found a greater endorsement of utilitarian responses–killing one in order to save many others–when action was required in moral virtual dilemmas compared to their judgment counterparts. Heart rate in virtual moral dilemmas was significantly increased when compared (...) to both judgment counterparts and control virtual tasks. Our research suggests that moral action may be viewed as an independent construct to moral judgment, with VR methods delivering new prospects for investigating and assessing moral behaviour. (shrink)

The Anthropocene marks a moment of wild destratification of the planet that requires analysis of the relations between geologic forces and social practices. Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of strata is examined in order to develop a geophilosophy for the Anthropocene. Establishing a model of strata that conjoins earth and social flows together into planes of interrelated production highlights how the fossil substratum subtends contemporary forms of social relations. Stratifications, it is argued, are planes of social reproduction that both constrain and (...) are expressive of possible modes of expression. If power, according to Foucault, is a relation between forces, geosocial strata conceptualizes how stratifications organize and capture forces into political geology. Concentrating on diagramming moments of crossing strata, it is suggested that Anthropocene geopolitics needs to be located at the intersection of geosocial formations and processes of fossilization, rather than through a new assemblage of planetary scale. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Queer Coal:Genealogies in/of the BloodKathryn YusoffIntroductionAn inhuman equationA genealogical account of coal ± a solar line of descentSolar -/- plant -/- coal ≤ plant minor/miner ≠ bloodlineFossil fuels are dark and patient and have a history that is in/of the blood. Fossil fuels are pockets of sunshine that have a solar line of descent. Fossil fuels are a chemical “blood knowledge” (Cixous 1991, 103) that coheres at the seam, (...) coal face, plant, and picket line.A genealogical account of coal in the Anthropocene must go in two directions: into the specificities of bodies, sites, and political formations in which coal comes to matter and through inhuman agency and its continuance notwithstanding the human (as if the human, like Bataille has claimed, is a roundabout for energy, a mere diversion of the forces of the cosmos). If the global claim for geologic force in the Anthropocene is realised through the liberation of vast standing stocks of fossil fuels by major powers, then slicing through Anthropocenic monumentality requires a deliberately minor/miner cut, which is made here through underground passages, sexual politics, and queer solidarities to explore the inter-implications of substances and subjects in coal mining; explicitly, mining is considered as an aesthetics, method, and epistemology that elaborates on an inhuman sociality of the blood; it is a sociality whose passages are specifically located within the 1984–85 miners’ strike in Britain. I focus on these minor (Deleuze and Guattari 1983) stories of solidarity and violence amidst the broader landscape of coal as a defining social materiality in political, judicial, and class powers. While Anthropocenic [End Page 203] discourses claim a global instantiation on behalf of humanity, the planet, and the species-being, this blood knowledge of coal can be considered as an instantiation or a fleshy reminder of the geontological forces of black rocks and their inheritances; what René Char called “its reality of earth, its matter-emotion” (Char quoted in Blanchot 1995, 108) in the corporeal impregnation of an incorporeal universe. In these messy personal-political subjectivities that are entangled with fossil fuels, something might be said about how to begin to apprehend the geontological coordinates of the Anthropocene and the possible forms of sociality that the inhuman enacts (and incites) in ways that eschew its universalising claims.In this process of joining coal to its somewhat unexpected sociopolitical formations—in terms of queer and minoritarian support for the British coal miners—I want to say something about a biopolitics that is subtended by geology (and this is why there is/and will be/blood). This is a biopolitics that moves away from the governance of life and death into a consideration of how the geosocial formations of fossil fuels constitute the very possibilities for certain types of social, sexual, political, and labor arrangements. To study the geosocial matrix as it pertains to both power and possibility is not to add the geologic (or inhuman) as a supplement to an already existing biopolitical conceptualization. Rather, it is to register that the geologic is a mode of material expression that is already active within these formations, yet often bracketed out, and its political potential as a dynamic power within socialities, underplayed. Such an understanding of the permeable materiality of fossil fuels might just bear on the reconceptualization of the Anthropocene as an epoch characterized by a differentiated corporeal geology of/in the blood, rather than as a universal stratigraphic trace in some future geologic record.Against the Promethean trust of the Anthropocene, I follow Hélène Cixous’s dream in The Book of Promethea of “writing fire in the fire” (Cixous 1991, 134); an account made in proximity to the desirous intersection of experience. Such a mode of feminist geophilosophy seeks out the form of the underground—the underground as a way of being or a “thing state” (Lispector 2014, 109)—closing the gap between writing and being written. What follows is a fragmented genealogy that begins in the general conditions of inhuman matter and ends up in the specifics of the British coal mining strike in the 1980s. First, some mining methodology and Anthropocene drill sites.Some Drill Sites... (shrink)

Lodged in an impasse between questions of environmental justice and modes of capitalisation in the green economy, indeterminacy is a vulnerable and porous relation. Pollution activates a potentiality in the organism to be otherwise, to generate certain kinds of tumours, mini-deaths or mutations. Toxicity has an intermediary status that launches a mobility of effects that is often fragmented through sense organs, affirming forms of non-identity in biopolitical relations. Organisms are receptive to such bodily reconfigurations precisely because they are open to (...) the material communication of the world. In contrast to the “hidden labour” of indeterminacy in capitalist modes of capture, this article crafts an analytics of indeterminacy as an interjection in the politics of environments. Through dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico and military bees, two economies of indeterminacy are discussed. Drawing on Georges Bataille’s notion of political economy, I argue that what is required is an economy of radical inequivalence; an excessive engagement with the possibilities of indetermining forces to make fleeting marks. (shrink)

Pretty much everyone knows that our genes have at least something to do with how able or how high achieving we are. Some believe that we should not speak of this common knowledge, nor inquire into how genetic influence works or what it might mean. If we do not keep an open mind to the fact of genetic influence on academic achievement, however, then we cannot explore its possible implications. And if we do not consider the implications, then we cannot, (...) as a society, harness any potential benefits or avoid possible pitfalls. So that's what this essay is about—exploring what behavioral genetics research might be able to offer to educational theory, policy, and practice.We cannot yet use biological information to make accurate predictions for all children. We do know, however, that academic achievement is heritable, which is to say that differences between individuals are influenced by differences in their DNA. If genes are part of the problem for some pupils (to take the negative spin on this), then it seems likely that studying them could be part of a solution. And that's what behavioral geneticists are trying to do—to chart and understand pathways from DNA to behavior and to identify interventions that can maximize outcomes for all. The fact is, though, that we have an awfully long way to go. (shrink)

While acknowledging Hannah Arendt's keen philosophical and political insights, Kathryn T. Gines claims that there are some problematic assertions and oversights regarding Arendt’s treatment of the "Negro question." Gines focuses on Arendt's reaction to the desegregation of Little Rock schools, to laws making mixed marriages illegal, and to the growing civil rights movement in the south. Reading them alongside Arendt's writings on revolution, the human condition, violence, and responses to the Eichmann war crimes trial, Gines provides a systematic analysis (...) of anti-black racism in Arendt’s work. (shrink)

This paper provides an argument for a more socially relevant philosophy of science (SRPOS). Our aims in this paper are to characterize this body of work in philosophy of science, to argue for its importance, and to demonstrate that there are significant opportunities for philosophy of science to engage with and support this type of research. The impetus of this project was a keen sense of missed opportunities for philosophy of science to have a broader social impact. We illustrate various (...) ways in which SRPOS can provide social benefits, as well as benefits to scientific practice and philosophy itself. Also, SRPOS is consistent with some historical and contemporary goals of philosophy of science. We’re calling for an expansion of philosophy of science to include more of this type of work. In order to support this expansion, we characterize philosophy of science as an epistemic community and examine the culture and practices of philosophy of science that can help or hinder research in this area. (shrink)

As environments and their inhabitants undergo a multitude of abrupt changes due to climate, in the aesthetic field there has been a hardening of a few representational figures that stand in for those contested political ecologies. Biodiversity loss and habitat change can be seen to be forcing an acceleration of archival practices that mobilize various images of the ‘play of the world’, including the making of star species to represent planetary loss, and the consolidation of other species into archives implicitly (...) organized around the category of their destruction. The first section of this article looks at Jacques Rancière’s concept of political aesthetics in order to extend an argument about the importance of aesthetics in multispecies living beyond a concentration on practices per se and into a more excessive engagement articulated by Georges Bataille. I argue that aesthetics must be considered as part of the practice of politics and a space that configures the realm of what is possible in that politics. This is to suggest aesthetics as a form of ethics or an ‘aesthetics of existence’, as Foucault put it. The conclusion considers how a biopolitical aesthetic comes into being through such archival practices, and asks what aesthetic shifts would make the ‘play of the world’ more present in its absences. (shrink)

Sometimes form-meaning mappings in language are not arbitrary, but iconic: they depict what they represent. Incorporating iconic elements of language into a compositional semantics faces a number of challenges in formal frameworks as evidenced by the lengthy literature in linguistics and philosophy on quotation/direct speech, which iconically portrays the words of another in the form that they were used. This paper compares the well-studied type of iconicity found with verbs of quotation with another form of iconicity common in sign languages: (...) classifier predicates. I argue that these two types of verbal iconicity can, and should, incorporate their iconic elements in the same way using event modification via the notion of a context dependent demonstration. This unified formal account of quotation and classifier predicates predicts that a language might use the same strategy for conveying both, and I argue that this is the case with role shift in American Sign Language. Role shift is used to report others’ language and thoughts as well as their actions, and recently has been argued to provide evidence in favor of Kaplanian “monstrous” indexical expressions. By reimagining role shift as involving either quotation for language demonstrations or “body classifier” predicates for action demonstrations, the proposed account eliminates one major argument for these monsters coming from sign languages. Throughout this paper, sign languages provide a fruitful perspective for studying quotation and other forms of iconicity in natural language due to their lack of a commonly used writing system which is otherwise often mistaken as primary data instead of speech, the rich existing literature on iconicity within sign language linguistics, and the ability of role shift to overtly mark the scope of a language report. In this view, written language is merely a special case of a more general phenomenon of sign and speech demonstration, which accounts more accurately for natural language data by permitting more strict or loose verbatim interpretations of demonstrations through the context dependent pragmatics. (shrink)

Inspired by Mariana Ortega's invitation to reflect on diverse iterations of intersectionality, this article focuses on María Lugones's engagements with two Black feminist concepts, namely, interlocking oppressions and intersectionality. It explores these concepts alongside Lugones's use of her own terms such as intermeshed, curdling, multiplicity, and fusion, in several paradigm shifting essays, specifically, “Purity, Impurity, and Separation”, “Tactical Strategies of the Street Walker”, “On Complex Communication”, “Heterosexism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System”, “Toward a Decolonial Feminism”, “Methodological Notes Toward a Decolonial (...) Feminism”, and “Radical Multiculturalism and Women of Color Feminisms”. It also underscores Ortega's important contributions bringing these Black and Latina feminist concepts together in philosophically productive ways—in a spirit of collaboration and coalition rather than zero-sum competition. (shrink)

The increasing complexity of human subjects research and its oversight has prompted researchers, as well as institutional review boards, to have a forum in which to discuss challenging or novel ethical issues not fully addressed by regulations. Research ethics consultation services provide such a forum. In this article, we rely on the experiences of a national Research Ethics Consultation Collaborative that collected more than 350 research ethics consultations in a repository and published 18 challenging cases with accompanying ethical commentaries to (...) highlight four contexts in which REC can be a valuable resource. REC assists: 1) investigators before and after the regulatory review; 2) investigators, IRBs, and other research administrators facing challenging and novel ethical issues; 3) IRBs and investigators with the increasing challenges of informed consent and risk/benefit analysis; and 4) in providing flexible and collaborative assistance to overcome study hurdles, mediate conflicts within a team, or directly engage with research participants. Institutions that have established, or plan to establish, REC services should work to raise the visibility of their service and engage in open communication with existing clinical ethics consult services as well as the IRB. While the IRB system remains the foundation for the ethical review of research, REC can be a valuable service for investigators, regulators, and research participants aligned with the goal of supporting ethical research. (shrink)

We set out by noting the preference for circular flows in ecological thought, and the related abhorrence of inefficiency and waste that Western ecology shares with mainstream economic thinking. This has often been manifest in a shared disdain both for uncontained, free-burning fire and for ‘unmanaged’ sexual desire. The paper constructs a ‘pyrosexual’ counter-narrative that explores the mutually constitutive and generative implication of sex and fire. Bringing together the solar ecology of Georges Bataille, feminist and queer thinking about sexuality and (...) reproduction, and a range of ways of theorising biological life and fire, we explore how fire mediates between organismic desire and the energetic dynamics of the earth and solar system. The first section takes a genealogical approach to fire and sex that traces their entanglement from the initial ‘assembling’ of fire through to the emergence of a fire-handling creature. The second section looks at how fire has been contained and intensified by human actors, and the role that heat-driven transformations of inorganic matter have played in the incitement and channeling of desire in urban spaces. The third section addresses the development of industrial ‘heat engines’ and the implications for desire and reproduction of tapping vast reservoirs of subterranean solar energy. We round off by beginning to consider what alternative possibilities might lie in the renegotiation of sex and fire on a planet undergoing rapid change. (shrink)

How Doctors Think defines the nature and importance of clinical judgment. Although physicians make use of science, this book argues that medicine is not itself a science but rather an interpretive practice that relies on clinical reasoning. A physician looks at the patient's history along with the presenting physical signs and symptoms and juxtaposes these with clinical experience and empirical studies to construct a tentative account of the illness. How Doctors Think is divided into four parts. Part one introduces the (...) concept of medicine as a practice rather than a science; part two discusses the idea of causation; part three delves into the process of forming clinical judgment; and part four considers clinical judgment within the uncertain nature of medicine itself. In How Doctors Think, Montgomery contends that assuming medicine is strictly a science can have adverse side effects, and suggests reducing these by recognizing the vital role of clinical judgment. (shrink)

Philosophers of science are increasingly arguing for the importance of doing scientifically- and socially-engaged work, suggesting that we need to reduce barriers to extra-disciplinary engagement and broaden our impact. Yet, we currently lack empirical data to inform these discussions, leaving a number of important questions unanswered. How common is it for philosophers of science to engage other communities, and in what ways are they engaging? What barriers are most prevalent when it comes to broadly disseminating one’s work or collaborating with (...) others? To what extent do philosophers of science actually value an engaged approach? Our project addresses this gap in our collective knowledge by providing empirical data regarding the state of philosophy of science today. We report the results of a survey of 299 philosophers of science about their attitudes towards and experiences with engaging those outside the discipline. Our data suggest that a significant majority of philosophers of science think it is important for non-philosophers to read and make use of their work; most are engaging with communities outside the discipline; and many think philosophy of science, as a discipline, has an obligation to ensure it has a broader impact. Interestingly, however, many of these same philosophers believe engaged work is generally undervalued in the discipline. We think these findings call for cautious optimism on the part of those who value engaged work—while there seems to be more interest in engaging other communities than many assume, significant barriers still remain. (shrink)

Recent advances in virtual technologies have allowed the investigation of simulated moral actions in aversive moral dilemmas. Previous studies have employed diverse populations in order to explore these actions, with little research considering the significance of occupation on moral decision-making. For the first time, in this study we have investigated simulated moral actions in Virtual Reality made by professionally trained paramedics and fire service incident commanders who are frequently faced with and must respond to moral dilemmas. We found that specially (...) trained individuals showed distinct empathic and related personality trait scores and that these declined with years of experience working in the profession. Supporting the theory that these professionals develop resilience in moral conflict, reduced emotional arousal was observed during virtual simulations of a distressing dilemma. Furthermore, trained professionals demonstrated less regret following the execution of a moral action in virtual reality when compared to untrained control populations. We showed that, contrary to previous research, trained individuals made the same moral judgments and moral actions as untrained individuals, though showing less arousal and regret. In the face of increasing concerns regarding empathy decline in healthcare professionals, we suggest that the nature of this decline is complex and likely reflects the development of a necessary emotional resilience to distressing events. (shrink)

The authors examine the nature of the relationship between social science and philosophy and address the sort of work social science should do, and the role and sorts of claims that an accompanying philosophy should engage in. In particular, the authors reintroduce the question of ontology, an area long overlooked by philosophers of social science, and present a cricital engagement with the work of Roy Bhaskar. The book argues against the excesses of philosophising and commits itself to a philosophical approach (...) more deeply grounded in the social sciences. (shrink)

The Benefits and Potential Harms of Genetic Testing for Huntington's Disease: A Case Study Content Type Journal Article Pages 14-19 Authors Kathryn Edge, BSC, Rheumatic Diseases Centre, CSB, Hope Hospital, The University of Manchester, Stott Lane, Salford M6 8HD, England Journal Human Reproduction & Genetic Ethics Online ISSN 2043-0469 Print ISSN 1028-7825 Journal Volume Volume 14 Journal Issue Volume 14, Number 2 / 2008.

Philosophers of science are increasingly interested in engaging with scientific communities, policy makers, and members of the public; however, the nature of this engagement has not been systematically examined. Instead of delineating a specific kind of engaged philosophy of science, as previous accounts have done, this article draws on literature from outside the discipline to develop a framework for analyzing different forms of broadly engaged philosophy of science according to two key dimensions: social interaction and epistemic integration. Clarifying the many (...) forms of engagement available to philosophers of science can advance future scholarship on engagement and promote more strategic engagement efforts. (shrink)

A significant portion of the scholarship in analytic philosophy of psychiatry has been devoted to the problem of what kind of kind psychiatric disorders are. Efforts have included descriptive projects, which aim to identify what psychiatrists in fact refer to when they diagnose, and prescriptive ones, which argue over that to which diagnostic categories should refer. In other words, philosophers have occupied themselves with what I call “diagnostic kinds”. However, the pride of place traditionally given to diagnostic kinds in psychiatric (...) research has recently come under attack, most notably by a recent initiative of the National Institute of Mental Health, the Research Domain Criteria Project, that seeks to exclude diagnostic categories from experimental designs and focus on other sorts of psychiatric kinds. I argue that philosophical accounts privileging diagnostic kinds must respond to this new line of criticism, and conclude that philosophers need to either counter psychiatrists’ growing suspicion about the hegemony of diagnostic categories in the clinic and the laboratory, or join in redirecting their efforts toward the development of robust accounts of other sorts of psychiatric objects and processes. (shrink)

The paper identifies the phenomenal rise of increasingly invasive forms of elective cosmetic surgery targeted primarily at women and explores its significance in the context of contemporary biotechnology. A Foucauldian analysis of the significance of the normalization of technologized women's bodies is argued for. Three "Paradoxes of Choice" affecting women who "elect" cosmetic surgery are examined. Finally, two utopian feminist political responses are discussed: a Response of Refusal and a Response of Appropriation.

This paper imagines what the liberatory possibilities of (full) ectogenesis are, insofar as it separates woman from female reproductive function. Even before use with human infants, ectogenesis productively disrupts the biological paradigm underlying current gender categories and divisions of labour. I begin by presenting a theory of women’s oppression drawn from the radical feminisms of the 1960s, which sees oppression as deeply rooted in biology. On this view, oppressive social meanings are overlaid upon biology and body, as artefacts of culture (...) and history. I then argue that ectogenesis should be pursued to replace two modes of assisted gestation that can be seen as outgrowths of oppressive assumptions about women's function, ectogenesis should be pursued to replace two modes of assisted gestation. These are gestational surrogacy and uterine transplant, which arise partly from gendered, pronatalist, and geneticist norms. These practices are supported by assumptions about women’s identity and value. Pursuing technologies such as ectogenesis, which weaken the presumed link between biology and gender, is beneficial to (trans-inclusionary radical) feminist aims, as part of a broad project of challenging dominant power relations resting on and maintaining gender categories. By allowing the conceptual separation of female reproductive function from ‘woman’, ectogenesis raises questions about how we determine who counts in this gender identity, and also how we value those who claim the identity ‘woman’. I conclude that ectogenesis has the potential to challenge traditional patriarchal family structures, and thence all other male-dominated structures (of work, education, cultural production), allowing a reimagining of the family and society in more radical ways than we have yet achieved. (shrink)

The human right to health, insofar as it is widely recognized, is typically thought to include the right to fair access to adequate healthcare, but the operating conception of healthcare in this context has been under-defined. This lack of conceptual clarity has often led in practice to largely Western cultural assumptions about what validly constitutes “healthcare” and “medicine.” Ethnocentric and parochial assumptions ought to be avoided, lest they give justification to the accusation that universal human rights are mere tools for (...) Western imperial agendas. At the same time, a right to healthcare that is not also explicitly the right to effective healthcare rapidly loses meaning. This paper strives to provide an account of medicine with the flexibility to accommodate cultural difference in forms of practice, while also aiding in the articulation of a minimum for medical systems to meet the standards set out in a human right. (shrink)

Contemporary educational goals place increasing emphasis on conferring recognition and building self-esteem for people deemed to be marginalised and vulnerable. Such goals coalesce with the language, symbols and practices of therapy inscribed within a broader 'therapeutic ethos'. The paper relates these trends to broader cultural demoralisation about people's potential for human agency and evaluates their effects on educational debates. A therapeutic ethos in education appears benign and empowering. Yet, the paper argues that it produces a diminished view of people and (...) low expectations about people's capacity for resilience and autonomy. One effect is to encourage an alignment between the values and activities of education and welfare. This both legitimises and extends institutional and government influence over people's psychological and emotional states. The paper explores these trends and evaluates their implications for educational ideas about human agency. (shrink)

This essay provides a short introduction to the ideas and potential implications of quantum physics for scholars in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Quantum-inspired ideas pepper current discourse in all of these fields, in ways that range from playful metaphors to sweeping ontological claims. We explain several of the most important concepts at the core of quantum theory, carefully delineating the scope and bounds of currently established science, in order to aid the evaluation of such claims. In particular, we (...) emphasize that the smallest units of matter and light, as described in quantum physics, are not things, meaning that they do not obey the logic we take for granted when discussing the behavior of macroscopic objects. We also highlight the substantial debate that exists within physics about the interpretation of the equations and empirical results at the core of quantum physics, noting that implicit philosophical commitments necessarily accompany any discussion of quantum ideas that takes place in non-technical language. (shrink)

Building upon Thornton's (1991) work on teachers as “curricular-instructional gatekeepers,” the author explores what guided the curricular decision-making for one novice teacher concerning controversial issues that center on race, social class, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues. Qualitative case study revealed context, student demographics, and teacher positionality as influencing this teacher's choices regarding these themes in her curriculum. Findings indicated that this teacher was willing and able to challenge racist views in her classroom when she was a student (...) teacher and her students more closely mirrored her own race and social class. When she was a full-time teacher of students who were of a different racial and class background, she was unable to similarly challenge their homophobic beliefs. Implications for teacher education are discussed. (shrink)

The failure of psychiatry to validate its diagnostic constructs is often attributed to the prioritizing of reliability over validity in the structure and content of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Here I argue that in fact what has retarded biomedical approaches to psychopathology is unwarranted optimism about diagnostic discrimination: the assumption that our diagnostic tests group patients together in ways that allow for relevant facts about mental disorder to be discovered. I consider the Research Domain Criteria framework (...) as a new paradigm for classifying objects of psychiatric research that solves some of the challenges brought on by this assumption. (shrink)

The Bermuda Principles for DNA sequence data sharing are an enduring legacy of the Human Genome Project. They were adopted by the HGP at a strategy meeting in Bermuda in February of 1996 and implemented in formal policies by early 1998, mandating daily release of HGP-funded DNA sequences into the public domain. The idea of daily sharing, we argue, emanated directly from strategies for large, goal-directed molecular biology projects first tested within the “community” of C. elegans researchers, and were introduced (...) and defended for the HGP by the nematode biologists John Sulston and Robert Waterston. In the C. elegans community, and subsequently in the HGP, daily sharing served the pragmatic goals of quality control and project coordination. Yet in the HGP human genome, we also argue, the Bermuda Principles addressed concerns about gene patents impeding scientific advancement, and were aspirational and flexible in implementation and justification. They endured as an archetype for how rapid data sharing could be realized and rationalized, and permitted adaptation to the needs of various scientific communities. Yet in addition to the support of Sulston and Waterston, their adoption also depended on the clout of administrators at the US National Institutes of Health and the UK nonprofit charity the Wellcome Trust, which together funded 90% of the HGP human sequencing effort. The other nations wishing to remain in the HGP consortium had to accommodate to the Bermuda Principles, requiring exceptions from incompatible existing or pending data access policies for publicly funded research in Germany, Japan, and France. We begin this story in 1963, with the biologist Sydney Brenner’s proposal for a nematode research program at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the University of Cambridge. We continue through 2003, with the completion of the HGP human reference genome, and conclude with observations about policy and the historiography of molecular biology. (shrink)

This manuscript reviews recent evidence supporting the utility of telomeres and mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNAcn) in detecting the biological impacts of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and outlines mechanisms that may mediate the connection between early stress and poor physical and mental health. Critical to interrupting the health sequelae of ACEs such as abuse, neglect, and neighborhood disorder, is the discovery of biomarkers of risk and resilience. The molecular markers of chronic stress exposure, telomere length and mtDNAcn, represent critical biological (...) links between ACEs and poor health outcomes. We examine how telomeres and mtDNAcn may exacerbate health disparities and contribute to the intergenerational transmission of trauma. Finally, we explore how these molecular markers of early stress exposure may help define the role of resilience and develop effective interventions to moderate ACE health risk impact. (shrink)

The sixteenth-century reckoning with extra-European peoples and cultures occurred at precisely the same moment that humanists were increasingly preoccupied with the daily life, material culture, and lived religion of classical antiquity. Leading figures in sixteenth-century antiquarianism took an abiding interest in ethnographic accounts of contemporary peoples and even produced such accounts. This article examines how sixteenth-century readers and scholars placed bodies of literature on ancient and modern customs in dialogue with one another. While scholars have long appreciated that ethnographic and (...) travel writing were deeply mediated by the study of antiquity, that mediation cut both ways. This article addresses the question of how ethnographic descriptions of modern peoples shaped sixteenth-century understandings of the customs and lived religion of antiquity. The writings of merchants and humanists testify to the ways in which the practices of ethnographic writing helped to shape travellers’ and readers’ appreciation of the cultural alterity of classical antiquity. (shrink)

Open Access: What if it doesn’t get better? Against more hopeful and optimistic views that it is not just ideal but possible to put an end to what John Rawls calls “the great evils of human history,” I aver that when it comes to evils caused by human beings, the situation is hopeless. We are better off with the heavy knowledge that evils recur than we are with idealizations of progress, perfection, and completeness; an appropriate ethic for living with such (...) heavy knowledge, which I call an ‘Imperfectionist Ethic,’ could include resisting evils, improving the lives of victims, and even enjoying ourselves. Better conceptions of the objects of hope, and the good life, inform a praxis-centered, nonideal ethic, supportive of sustained moral motivation, resilience, and even cheer. I connect elements of stoic and pessimistic philosophy in order to outline some normative recommendations for living with evils. A praxis-centered ethic would helpfully adjust our expectations from changing an uncontrollable future, to developing better skills for living in a world that exceeds our control. (shrink)

Online shaming is a subject of import for social philosophy in the Internet age, and not simply because shaming seems generally bad. I argue that social philosophers are well-placed to address the imaginal relationships we entertain when we engage in social media; activity in cyberspace results in more relationships than one previously had, entailing new and more responsibilities, and our relational behaviors admit of ethical assessment. I consider the stresses of social media, including the indefinite expansion of our relationships and (...) responsibilities, and the gap between the experiences of those shamed and the shamers’ appreciation of the magnitude of what they do when they shame; I connect these to the literature suggesting that some intuitions fail to guide our ethics. I conclude that we each have more power than we believe we do or than we think carefully about exerting in our online imaginal relations. Whether we are the shamers or the shamed, we are unable to control the extent to which intangible words in cyberspace take the form of imaginal relationships that burden or brighten our self-perceptions. (shrink)

This paper proposes that public health is the sort of institution that has a role in producing structures of virtue in society. This proposal builds upon work that describes how virtues are structured by the practices of institutions, at the collective or whole-of-society level. This work seeks to fill a gap in public health ethics when it comes to virtues. Mainstay moral theories tend to incorporate some role for virtues, but within public health ethics this role has not been fully (...) articulated. Two recent papers have proposed ways in which the virtues might be incorporated: working from a structural account, Rozier suggests that public health could work to instil virtues, like temperance, in the public in order to achieve its health-related goals; Nihlén Fahlquist suggests that compassion is among three virtues that practitioners of public health should cultivate in order to do their work well. In the end, both accounts recommend incorporating virtues at the level of individuals, among the public and among practitioners. I propose a third kind of role for virtue in public health that focuses on structures. Public health activities take place at the population level, and a public health virtue ethics must also be suitably population-focussed. (shrink)

Philosophy of science has the potential to enhance scientific practice, science policy, and science education; moreover, recent research indicates that many philosophers of science think we ought to increase the broader impacts of our work. Yet, there is little to no empirical data on how we are supposed to have an impact. To address this problem, our research team interviewed 35 philosophers of science regarding the impact of their work in science-related domains. We found that face-to-face engagement with scientists and (...) other stakeholders was one of the most—if not the most—effective pathways to impact. Yet, working with non-philosophers and disseminating research outside philosophical venues is not what philosophers are typically trained or incentivized to do. Thus, there is a troublesome tension between the activities that are likely to lead to broader uptake of one’s work and those that are traditionally encouraged and rewarded in philosophy. We suggest several ways that philosophers of science, either as individuals or as a community, can navigate these tensions. (shrink)

Philosophers of science are increasingly arguing for and addressing the need to do work that is socially and scientifically engaged. However, we currently lack well-developed frameworks for thinking about how we should engage other expert communities and what the epistemic benefits are of doing so. In this paper, I draw on Collins and Evans' concept of ‘interactional expertise’ – the ability to speak the language of a discipline in the absence of an ability to practice – to consider the epistemic (...) benefits that can arise when philosophers engage scientific communities. As Collins and Evans argue, becoming an interactional expert requires that one ‘hang out’ with members of the relevant expert community in order to learn crucial tacit knowledge needed to speak the language. Building on this work, I argue that acquiring interactional expertise not only leads to linguistic fluency, but it also confers several ‘socio-epistemic’ benefits such as the opportunity to cultivate trust with scientific communities. These benefits can improve philosophical work and facilitate the broader uptake of philosophers' ideas, enabling philosophers to meet a variety of epistemic goals. As a result, having at least some philosophers of science acquire interactional expertise via engagement will likely enhance the diversity of epistemic capacities for philosophy of science as a whole. For some philosophers of science, moreover, the socio-epistemic benefits identified here may be more important than the ability to speak the language of a discipline, suggesting the need for a broader analysis of interactional expertise, which this paper also advances. (shrink)

Ethical sensitivity was introduced to caring science to describe the first component of decision making in professional practice; that is, recognizing and interpreting the ethical dimension of a care situation. It has since been conceptualized in various ways by scholars of professional disciplines. While all have agreed that ethical sensitivity is vital to practice, there has been no consensus regarding its definition, its characteristics, the conditions needed for it to occur, or the outcomes to professionals and society. The purpose of (...) this article is to explore the meaning of the concept of ethical sensitivity based on a review of the professional literature of selected disciplines. Qualitative content analysis of the many descriptors found within the literature was conducted to enhance understanding of the concept and identify its essential characteristics. Ethical sensitivity is considered to be an emerging concept with potential utility in research and practice. (shrink)