In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ImagesLynn Hershman Leeson’s first feature film, Conceiving Ada, was shown at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, The Toronto International Film Festival, The Berlin International Film Festival and thirty-five other festivals worldwide. It also received the award of “Outstanding Achievement in Drama” from the Festival of Electronic Cinema. Conceiving Ada was released by Fox Lorber in February 1999 and on DVD in February 2000.She was awarded the 2003 (...) Alfred P. Sloan Award for writing and directing Teknolust, starring Tilda Swinton and Jeremy Davies, which premiered in the American Showcase of the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. In fall 2005 the University of California Press published the monograph Secret Agents Private I, The Art and Films of Lynn Hershman Leeson. Her touring retrospective is organized by the Henry Gallery in Seattle.Hershman Leeson is a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis, and an A.D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada, 1997, Film still, Photo courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson and bitforms gallery, New York (page 2) Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 2. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada, 1997, Film still, Photo courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson and bitforms gallery, New York (page 13) Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 3. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada, 1997, Film still, Photo courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson and bitforms gallery, New York (page 24) Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 4. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada, 1997, Film still, Photo courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson and bitforms gallery, New York (page 37) Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 5. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada, 1997, Film still, Photo courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson and bitforms gallery, New York (page 47) Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 6. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada, 1997, Film still, Photo courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson and bitforms gallery, New York (page 58) Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 7. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada, 1997, Film still, Photo courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson and bitforms gallery, New York (page 81) Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 8. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada, 1997, Film still, Photo courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson and bitforms gallery, New York (page 91) Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 9. Lynn Hershman Leeson, Conceiving Ada, 1997, Film still, Photo courtesy of Lynn Hershman Leeson and bitforms gallery, New York (page 103)Copyright © 2006 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In this article I bring together Jacques Derrida and Luce Irigaray's engagements with Sigmund Freud's vexed attempt to step beyond the pleasure principle. Derrida's speculations on the name, the house and the practice of Freud find him inadvertently rewriting the conditions of the autobiographical as that which erases as much as inscribes, while Irigaray requires a sexually different modelling of what we call language if the experience of the girl is to be addressed. Yet Irigaray uncannily repeats the teleological gesture (...) of laying claim to a legacy, diagnosed in Freud by Derrida, even as this legacy is newly imagined as that of the feminine to which Freud remained blind. I then interweave these revised stakes of the fort-da game as they are expressed in two experimental films; Lynn Hershman Leeson's feature Conceiving Ada (USA, 1997) and Hussein Chalayan's short Absent Presence (UK/Turkey, 2005). One self-consciously concerns the recovery of ‘lost’ women from history (da!), the other investigates the treatment of the foreigner staged with an all-female cast (in which the instability of foreign objects can secure no fortification for the scientific subject). The films differently engage fantasies concerning genetics, and differently engage the projection of a legacy as teleological ambition. Privileging Derrida's transformation of the pleasure into the postal principle as that which invokes ‘Tele–without telos’, I ask after the transmissibility of this ambition. (shrink)

While the initial reception of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo was unspectacular, it made its presence felt in a host of other films – from Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, to Brian De Palma's Obsession, and David Lynch's Mulholland Dr.. What seemed to have eluded the critics at the time is that Vertigo is a film about being haunted: by illusive images, turbulent emotions, motion and memory, the sound and feeling of falling into the past, into a nightmare. But it is also a (...) shrewdly reflexive film that haunts filmmakers, critics, and artists alike, raising fundamental questions about the ontology of moving images and the regime of fascination that churns them out. Douglas Gordon's Feature Film, D.N. Rodowick's The Wanderers, and Lynn Hershman's VertiGhost are contemporary examples of how the appropriation and contemplation of some the film's most iconic motifs, themes and strategies ask us to rethink the relation of fetishism to fabulation, and supplementarity to dissimulation and social engineering. Feature Film, The Wanderers, and VertiGhost are supplementary works, but like the original film they are about duplicity, doppelgänger, and dissimulation. What interests us is how they challenge the authority over, or even proximity to, that which returns in the form of the supplement. And ultimately, attaching themselves to the chain of forgers and forgeries, these supplementary works take their place in the vertiginous sequence of substitutions the film established: a neat allegory for a reign of the digital ghosting that Hitchcock could never have anticipated. (shrink)

The relationship between ethics and economics has never been easy. Opponents in a tug of war, friends in a warm embrace, ships passing in the night—the relationship has been highly variable. In recent years, the friendship model has been gaining credence, particularly among U.S. corporate executives. Increasingly, companies are launching ethics programs, values initiatives, and community involvement activities premised on management’s belief that “Ethics pays.”.

I outline a pragmatic account of evidence, arguing that it allows us to underwrite two implications of feminist scholarship: that knowledge is socially constructed and constrained by evidence, and that social relations, including gender, race, and class, are epistemologically significant. What makes the account promising is that it abandons any pretense of a view from nowhere, the view of evidence as something only individuals gather or have, and the view that individual theories face experience in isolation.

Transcending the various formal concepts of life, this captivating book offers a unique overview of life's history, essences, and future. "A masterpiece of scientific writing. You will cherish "What Is Life?" because it is so rich in poetry and science in the service of profound philosophical questions".--Mitchell Thomashow, "Orion". 9 photos. 11 line illustrations.

The persistence, and international expansion, of food banks as a non-governmental response to households experiencing food insecurity has been decried as an indicator of unacceptable levels of poverty in the countries in which they operate. In 1998, Poppendieck published a book, Sweet charity: emergency food and the end of entitlement, which has endured as an influential critique of food banks. Sweet charity‘s food bank critique is succinctly synthesized as encompassing seven deadly “ins” (1) inaccessibility, (2) inadequacy, (3) inappropriateness, (4) indignity, (...) (5) inefficiency, (6) insufficiency, and (7) instability. The purpose of this paper is to examine if and how the contemporary food bank critique differs from Sweet charity’s “ins” as a strategy for the formulation of synthesizing arguments for policy advocacy. We used critical interpretive synthesis methodology to identify relationships within and/or between existing critiques in the peer-reviewed literature as a means to create “‘synthetic constructs’ (new constructs generated through synthesis)” of circulating critiques. We analyzed 33 articles on food banks published since Sweet charity, with the “ins” as a starting point for coding. We found that the list of original “ins” related primarily to food bank operations has been consolidated over time. We found additional “ins” that extend the food bank critique beyond operations (ineffectiveness, inequality, institutionalization, invalidation of entitlements, invisibility). No synthetic construct emerged linking the critique of operational challenges facing food banks with one that suggests that food banks may be perpetuating inequity, posing a challenge for mutually supportive policy advocacy. (shrink)

Holobionts are multicellular eukaryotes with multiple species of persistent symbionts. They are not individuals in the genetic sense— composed of and regulated by the same genome—but they are anatomical, physiological, developmental, immunological, and evolutionary units, evolved from a shared relationship between different species. We argue that many of the interactions between human and microbiota symbionts and the reproductive process of a new holobiont are best understood as instances of reciprocal scaffolding of developmental processes and mutual construction of developmental, ecological, and (...) evolutionary niches. Our examples show that mother, fetus, and different symbiotic microbial communities induce or constitute conditions for the development and reproduction of one another. These include the direct induction of maternal or fetus physiological changes, the restructuring of ecological relations between communities, and evolutionary selection against undesirable competitors. The mutual scaffolding and niche constructing processes start early—prior to amniotic rupture. We are evolutionarily, physiologically, and developmentally integrated holobiont systems, strung together through mutual reliance and mutual construction. Bringing the processes of niche construction and developmental scaffolding together to interpret holobiont birth conceptually scaffolds two new directions for research: in niche construction, identifying the evolutionary implications of organisms actively constructing multiple overlapping niches and scaffolds, and in Evolutionary Developmental Biology, characterizing evolutionary and ecological processes as developmental causes. (shrink)

There is currently a great debate about whether the holobiont, i.e. a multicellular host and its residential microorganisms, constitutes a biological individual. We propose that resident microorganisms have a general and important role in the individuality of the host organism, not the holobiont. Drawing upon the Equilibrium Model of Immunity, we argue that microorganisms are scaffolds of immune capacities and processes that determine the constituency and persistence of the host organism. A scaffolding perspective accommodates the contingency and heterogeneity of resident (...) microorganisms while accounting for their necessity and unifying contributions to host individuality. In our symbiotic view of life, holobionts may not be organisms or units of selection, but macroorganisms cannot persist nor function as individuals without their scaffolding microorganisms. (shrink)

The Daily Spiritual Experience Scale is an instrument designed to provide researchers with a self-report measure of spiritual experiences as an important aspect of how religiousness/spirituality is expressed in daily life for many people. The sixteen-item scale includes constructs such as awe, gratitude, mercy, sense of connection with the transcendent, compassionate love, and desire for closeness to God. It also includes measures of awareness of discernment/inspiration and transcendent sense of self. This measure was originally developed for use in health studies, (...) but has been increasingly used more widely in the social sciences, for program evaluation, and for examining changes in religious/spiritual experiences over time. It has been included on the U. S. General Social Survey , and the items have shown high prevalence in that population. The challenge of identifying items that tap the underlying constructs was addressed through qualitative methods, both in the development and testing of the instrument. Translations have been made into Spanish, Korean, Hebrew, Vietnamese, and French, and the scale has been effectively used outside the United States. Detailed discussion of item construction based on qualitative work is given to assist in use, interpretation and translation development. Options for scoring and suggestions for exploring correlations with other variables using individual items and subgroups are also presented. (shrink)

Feminism, Science, and the Philosophy of Science brings together original essays by both feminist and mainstream philosophers of science that examine issues at the intersections of feminism, science, and the philosophy of science. Contributors explore parallels and tensions between feminist approaches to science and other approaches in the philosophy of science and more general science studies. In so doing, they explore notions at the heart of the philosophy of science, including the nature of objectivity, truth, evidence, cognitive agency, scientific method, (...) and the relationship between science and values. (shrink)

One of the lessons we ought to have learned from the history of philosophy and science is that it is rarely, if ever, useful in dealing with challenges from a new movement or in distinguishing one’s position from a different school of thought, to “draw a line in the sand” and claim that everything on this side is legitimate and that everything on that side is not, and can therefore be dismissed without serious consideration or discussion. On some analyses, Plato (...) sought to dismiss all of natural science in this way, by claiming that since it dealt with change it can yield at best belief, not knowledge. The logical positivists, building on the work of Hume, tried to use the analytic/synthetic distinction and various forms of verificationism to dismiss as nonsense everything but science, logic, mathematics, and the philosophy of science. Neither of these moves succeeded in banishing what was placed on that side of the line to intellectual never-never land. More recently, critics of creationism have dismissed the views they are attacking as “not science at all” and therefore of neither concern nor interest to the scientific communities. These maneuvers tend to be unsuccessful not just because they rely on distinctions which cannot, in the end, be sustained—or can be drawn and maintained only after all the hard work which they are frequently claimed to make unnecessary has been done—but because they refuse to deal with the specific evidence and arguments advanced by the challengers, bad as those might be. (shrink)

This essay critiques feminist treatments of maternal-fetal "relationality" that unwittingly replicate features of Western individualism (for example, the Cartesian division between the asocial body and the social-cognitive person, or the conflation of social and biological birth). I argue for a more reflexive perspective on relationality that would acknowledge how we produce persons through our actions and rhetoric. Personhood and relationality can be better analyzed as dynamic, negotiated qualities realized through social practice.

Moral distress is a phenomenon that has been receiving increasing attention in nursing and other health care disciplines. Moral distress is a concept that entered the nursing literature – and subsequently the health care ethics lexicon – in 1984 as a result of the work done by American philosopher and bioethicist Andrew Jameton. Over the past decade, research into moral distress has extended beyond the profession of nursing as other health care disciplines have come to question the impact of moral (...) constraint on individual practitioners, professional practice, and patient outcomes. Along with increased interest in the phenomenon of moral distress have come increasing critiques – critiques that in their essence point to a serious lack of conceptual clarity in the definition, study, and application of the concept. Foundational to gaining conceptual clarity in moral distress in order to develop strategies to prevent and ameliorate the experience is a careful revisiting of the epistemological assumptions underpinning our knowledge and use of the concept of moral distress. It is our contention that the conceptual challenges reveal flaws in the original understanding of moral distress that are based on an epistemological stance that holds a linear conception of cause and effect coupled with a simplistic perspective of ‘constraint’ and ‘agency’. We need a more nuanced approach to our study of moral distress such that our ontological and epistemological stances help us to better appreciate the complexity of moral agents acting in organizational contexts. We believe that critical realism offers such a nuanced approach. (shrink)

Can one be fooled into believing that one intended an action that one in fact did not intend? Past experimental paradigms have demonstrated that participants, when provided with false perceptual feedback about their actions, can be fooled into misperceiving the nature of their intended motor act. However, because veridical proprioceptive/perceptual feedback limits the extent to which participants can be fooled, few studies have been able to answer our question and induce the illusion to intend. In a novel paradigm addressing this (...) question, participants were instructed to move a line on the computer screen by use of a phony brain–computer interface. Line movements were actually controlled by computer program. Demonstrating the illusion to intend, participants reported more intentions to move the line when it moved frequently than when it moved infrequently. Consistent with ideomotor theory, the finding illuminates the intimate liaisons among ideomotor processing, the sense of agency, and action production. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Highlights of Past Literature Current Work Future Work.

This paper presents new data on the representation of women who publish in 25 top philosophy journals as ranked by the Philosophical Gourmet Report for the years 2004, 2014, and 2015. It also provides a new analysis of Schwitzgebel’s 1955–2015 journal data. The paper makes four points while providing an overview of the current state of women authors in philosophy. In all years and for all journals, the percentage of female authors was extremely low, in the range of 14–16%. The (...) percentage of women authors is less than the percentage of women faculty in different ranks and at different kinds of institutions. In addition, there is great variation across individual journals, and the discrepancy between women authors and women faculty appears to be different in different subfields. Interestingly, journals which do not practice anonymous review seem to have a higher percentage of women authors than journals which practice double anonymous or triple anonymous review. This paper also argues that we need more data on academic publishing to better understand whether this can explain why there are so few full-time female faculty in philosophy, since full-time hiring and tenuring practices presumably depend on a candidate’s academic publishing. (shrink)

Feminist analyses of science have grown dramatically in scope, diversity, and impact in the years since Nancy Tuana edited the two-volume issue of Hypatia on “Feminism and Science” (Fall 1987, Spring 1988). What had begun in the 1960s and 1970s as a “trickle of scholarship on feminism and science” had widened by the mid-1980s “into a continuous stream” (Rosser 1987, 5). Fifteen years later, the stream has become something of a torrent. The essays assembled for this special issue of Hypatia (...) represent a vibrant fi eld of scholarship that has matured and diversifi ed in many respects, and that presupposes a number of hard-won insights that were just beginning to emerge in the mid-1980s. To take the measure of these developments, consider briefl y where we have come from. (shrink)

Across mammals, when fathers matter, as they did for hunter-gatherers, sex-similar pair-bonding mechanisms evolve. Attachment fertility theory can explain Schmitt's and other findings as resulting from a system of mechanisms affording pair-bonding in which promiscuous seeking is part. Departures from hunter-gatherer environments (e.g., early menarche, delayed marriage) can alter dating trajectories, thereby impacting mating outside of pair-bonds.

Aggleton & Brown rightly point out the shortcomings of the medial temporal lobe hypothesis as an approach to anterograde amnesia. Their broader perspective is a necessary corrective, and one hopes it will be taken very seriously. Although they correctly note the dangers of conflating recognition and recall, they themselves make a similar mistake in discussing familiarity; we suggest an alternative approach. We also discuss implications of their view for an analysis of retrograde amnesia. The notion that there are two routes (...) by which the hippocampus can reactivate neuronal ensembles in the neocortex could help us understand some currently puzzling facts about the dynamics of memory consolidation. (shrink)

I consider the issues that recent feminist critiques of science raise for contemporary empiricist philosophy of science. Three particular focuses of feminist criticism are addressed: the social arrangements within and outside science communities that divide cognitive labor and authority, the apparent androcentrism in several of the social and biological sciences, and the use of models that reflect Western political experience in the biological sciences. ;I urge that a consideration of these issues indicate that science communities interact with our larger society (...) with consequences for the directions of scientific research, and with consequences for our common sense understandings of human and nonhuman nature. In the light of feminist criticisms, I re-examine the philosophy of science of a major American philosopher, W. V. O. Quine. The interplay between Quine's work and feminist scholarship provides support for two thesis. ;First, I urge that contemporary philosophy of science has too narrowly construed the factors relevant to the epistemology of science. Among the factors that feminists have shown to have an impact on research programs and theoretical frameworks are Western gender arrangements and Western political experience generally. Much contemporary philosophy of science lacks the categories that would enable these factors to be incorporated in the epistemology of science. I argue that frameworks need to be developed that can both accommodate these factors and account for the success of our theorizing. ;Secondly, I urge that the thesis of "epistemological individualism" be abandoned by empiricists. I argue that the feminist criticisms considered and aspects of Quine's philosophy of science indicate that the thesis is empirically unsound. I argue that the acquirers of knowledge are communities, and not individuals, and I use aspects of Quine's philosophy of science and the current presence of androcentric and feminist perspectives in the sciences to support this view. (shrink)

This introductory article provides a contextual and theoretical overview to this special issue of Body & Society. The special issue presents five selected case studies – focusing on the contexts of transplantation, psychiatry, amputation and war, and a transvalued media ecology of cancer – to offer meditations on a number of interlinked questions. The first of these is the entanglement of biomedical governance – political/economic as well as self-disciplinary – with the nexus of estrangement, which can denote both the distancing (...) of otherness and self-division. Second is the realm of feeling, of phantasmatic projection and of the ways in which the biopolitical becomes reciprocally, discursively, enmeshed in a wider cultural imaginary. Third is the shifting terrain of gender and feminist politics, a key dimension of which is the necessary reworking of feminist thought in the wake of a radically altered biomedical and biotechnological landscape. Under the rubric of Estranged Bodies, the collection considers themes of dissolution and the fragility of the body/subject read through bodily catastrophe, radical body modification and extreme medical intervention. Also considered is the notion of assemblage – the provisional coming together of disparate parts – which encourages a rethinking of questions of reconstituted, displaced and re-placed bodies. (shrink)

Environmental pragmatism is rightly described as “cynical” if good reasons exist to worry its advocates would endorse oppressive measures to achieve its goals. Given the history of human chauvinism, moreover, this worry is not far-fetched. It is, however, misguided: conflation not-withstanding, human chauvinism and human-centeredness (anthropocentrism) are not the same thing. “Chauvinism” describes an objectionable but alterable course of human history; anthropocentrism is an indigenous feature of the experiential conditions of Homo sapiens from which no particular course of human history (...) necessarily follows. Properly understood, I argue, human-centeredness is an ally in the quest for environmental responsibility—not its foe. (shrink)

Geography is experiencing a ‘moral turn’ in its research interests and practices. There is also a flourishing interest in animal geographies that intersects this turn, and is concurrent with wider scholarly efforts to reincorporate animals and nature into our ethical and social theories. This article intervenes in a dispute between Michael Dear and Richard Symanski. The dispute is over the culling of wild horses in Australia, and I intervene to explore how geography deepens our moral understanding of the animal/human dialectic. (...) I begin by situating the inquiry into ethics and animals in geography. Next, I provide a synopsis of Dear and Symanski's comments on ‘animal rights’, followed in turn by discussions of moral value and value paradigms. I then introduce a value paradigm termed geocentrism as a geographical account of our moral relations to animals. Finally, I discuss the wider significance of this debate for geographical ethics, moral philosophy and social theory. (shrink)

Rudolf Leuckart’s 1851 pamphlet Ueber den Polymorphismus der Individuen stood at the heart of naturalists’ discussions on biological individuals, parts and wholes in mid-nineteenth-century Britain and Europe. Our analysis, which accompanies the first translation of this pamphlet into English, situates Leuckart’s contribution to these discussions in two ways. First, we present it as part of a complex conceptual knot involving not only individuality and the understanding of compound organisms, but also the alternation of generations, the division of labor in nature, (...) and the possibility of finding general laws of the organic world. Leuckart’s pamphlet is important as a novel attempt to give order to the strands of this knot. It also solved a set of key biological problems in a way that avoided some of the drawbacks of an earlier teleological tradition. Second, we situate the pamphlet within a longer trajectory of inquiry into part-whole relations in biology from the mid-eighteenth century to the present. We argue that biological individuality, along with the problem-complexes with which it engaged, was as central a problem to naturalists before 1859 as evolution, and that Leuckart’s contributions to it left a long legacy that persisted well into the twentieth century. As biologists’ interests in part-whole relations are once again on the upswing, the longue durée of this problem merits renewed consideration. (shrink)

The reism adopted by Brentano in the later stages of his philosophy led him to advocate a non-propositional theory of judgment. George Bealer, in his book Quality and Concept, charges that Brentano's theory, and indeed all non-propositional theories of judgment are not adequate to certain "intuitively valid" arguments in the realm of intensional logic. I show that Bealer is mistaken when he claims that Brentano's theory cannot offer an adequate rendering of the first two arguments, and I challenge the intuitive (...) validity of the third. I conclude, therefore, that Bealer's arguments against Brentano do not succeed. (shrink)

The reism adopted by Brentano in the later stages of his philosophy led him to advocate a non-propositional theory of judgment. George Bealer, in his book Quality and Concept, charges that Brentano's theory, and indeed all non-propositional theories of judgment are not adequate to certain "intuitively valid" arguments in the realm of intensional logic. I show that Bealer is mistaken when he claims that Brentano's theory cannot offer an adequate rendering of the first two arguments, and I challenge the intuitive (...) validity of the third. I conclude, therefore, that Bealer's arguments against Brentano do not succeed. (shrink)

In his paper "Intentionality of Phenomenology in Brentano," Matjaz Potrc endeavors to provide a Brentanian analysis of how it is possible for phenomenal objects to become the contents of intentional acts of sensing. Potrc contends that while Brentano stands as an "origins philosopher" at the crossroads of analytic and continental philosophy, subsequent philosophers from both traditions have failed to adequately address the nature of phenomenological experiences. Potrc seeks to redress the explanatory insufficiency. This commentary outlines Brentano's theory of sensation as (...) background to Potrc's important project and evaluates and develops his thesis of Brentano as an "origins philosopher.". (shrink)

Clahsen's compelling evidence for the dual-mechanism model of the lexicon derives in part from the use of cross-linguistic data in psycholinguistic research. This approach reflects a growing (and positive) trend toward incorporating data from several languages when analyzing and modeling human language behavior. This perspective should be expanded to include data from typologically distinct languages to develop more explanatory models of language.