As sexting has become more common, so has the sharing of nude and semi-nude images of others. While women and men may both engage in this practice, when they do so they often participate in distinct gendered rituals. Drawing on 55 in-depth interviews with college students, I examine how the symbolic meanings attached to men and women’s nude images in the context of intimate heterosexual interactions shape collective rituals of sexual pursuit and sexual rejection. I find that men share images (...) of women with their peers to demonstrate sexual prowess and receive praise, whereas women share images of men with their peers to cope with unwelcome sexual advances and receive support. These gendered rituals are linked to the perceived desirability of men’s and women’s nude images. While rituals of domination appear among men and reproduce unequal gender relations, rituals of commiseration appear among women to resist unequal gender relations. (shrink)

The human animal feels fear: the ancient tranquil hordes, inhabitants of infinite plains where time stood still, have dissolved into a swarming, formless mass rushing into the future as if into the void: without a plan, without a leader, without roots; perhaps the only thing that guides it is the vague feeling of being a body whose limbs can not survive if separated.

The recent conception of biodiversity proposed by James Maclaurin and Sterelny was developed mostly with macrobiological life in mind. They suggest that we measure biodiversity by dividing life into natural units (typically species) and quantifying the differences among units using phenetic rather than phylogenetic measures of distance. They identify problems in implementing quantitative phylogenetic notions of difference for non-prokaryotic species. I suggest that if we focus on microbiological life forms that engage in frequent, promiscuous lateral gene transfer (LGT), and their (...) associated reticulated phylogenies, we need to rethink the notion of species as the natural unit, and we discover additional problems with phylogenetic notions of distance. These problems suggest that a phenetic approach based on morphospaces has just as much appeal, if not more, for microbes as they do for multi-cellular life. Facts about LGT, however, offer no new insight into the additional challenge of reconciling units and differences into a single measure of biodiversity. (shrink)

In his later work Judge for Yourself, Kierkegaard presents a view of the Christian life that appears to counter several recent interpretations which situate Kierkegaard within a classical Protestant account of justification and sanctification. I introduce briefly these interpretations and then turn to a reading of Judge for Yourself, showing that Kierkegaard offers an account of grace and moral striving which resists these interpretations. He resists them, yet he presents a Christianity that both rejects works-righteousness and graciously embraces those who (...) confess their failure to do what Christianity requires. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Human Genome Research in an Interdependent WorldAlexander Morgan Capron (bio)This has been the year of agenda-setting conferences for the ambitious ELSI (ethical, legal and social issues) program of the Human Genome Project (HGP). But of the dozen or more major meetings of this sort held across the country, the one held at the National Institutes of Heakh (NIH) in Bethesda, MD, June 2-4, 1991, was distinctive in several (...) respects.1As its name implies, "Human Genome Research in an Interdependent World" was a global look at the issues raised by gene mapping and sequencing. Unlike previous conferences, however, this meeting looked beyond a comparative analysis of clinical and domestic legal issues, and concentrated on topics that may require responses on a truly international level if they are to be successfully resolved.The meeting's organizers gathered an impressive group of more than seventy participants from fifteen countries, including the first significant contingent of Soviet and Japanese scientists, physicians, and philosophers at an ELSI meeting. In addition to talks by the heads of the genome projects in the Soviet Union, Japan, and the United States, the meeting was keynoted by Dr. James Wyngaarden, director general of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO), and I had the honor of serving as its general chairman.The goal of the meeting was to consider an array of issues that scientists, philosophers, and lawyers from around the world suggested might have international significance, with an eye to deciding three things: (1) Does the issue deserve further attention? (2) Is the issue best addressed in an international or domestic context? and (3) Do structures exist to which the issue can be referred for resolution? In the final sessions, the entire group debated proposed resolutions on the various topics and narrowed the list needing further, intensive exploration.To provide an international framework for this process, the conference [End Page 247] established a Global Steering Committee on Ethical and Social Issues in Genome Research, which will coordinate the efforts of several task forces charged with refining the tentative resolutions adopted by the conference participants on June 4. The task forces are expected to be able to complete work on some topics by the time of the steering committee's first meeting, which was described by one participant as a "check point," probably within the coming year; on other topics, the task forces will provide interim reports and arrange to continue their analysis. Several topics—less complex or more embryonic—were referred directly to the steering committee. On all issues, a major objective will be to ascertain what existing or newly created structure or structures are capable of implementing the group's recommendations and then to monitor the issue to ensure that appropriate implementation is occurring.Issues to be Explored by Task ForcesInsurance and EmploymentWhile individuals may derive medically useful information from the expanded range of genetic tests that will flow from the HGP, they could also be harmed if test results become a basis for discrimination. An area of particular concern at the conference in Bethesda was whether genetic information should be used to decide eligibility for employment or the scope and cost of health and life insurance. The complexity of this issue is increased as barriers to worker migration fall (especially in Europe) and as more firms carry on business internationally. Furthermore, questions arise about the limits of required testing and whether individuals may decline to be informed of the results of tests.The task force will not only gather information on practices and legal standards throughout the world—especially in light of the differences among nations with regard to the linkage of employment and various forms of insurance—but will also examine international anti-discrimination laws as a possible means of supplementing domestic statutes and regulations. As a starting point, the Bethesda meeting agreed on a set of principles for the task force to refine.2ForensicsAlthough their legal status is not fully resolved, DNA tests are being used increasingly in judicial proceedings and civil and criminal investigations as a highly probative means to identify people. Most forensic uses of "DNA fingerprints" are domestic, but international cooperation among investigative bodies... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Egg Takes Flight: The Once and Future Life of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission*Alexander Morgan Capron (bio)Attempting to describe the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) is comparable to the surreal feat performed by the artist in a famous painting by René Magritte. The artist (Magritte himself) sits with his back to the viewer, a palette in his left hand. The brush in his right hand is raised (...) to a canvas, blank except for a bird in flight that he is in the process of painting. The artist is looking to his left at a tabletop, bare except for a single, plain egg.Having held its second formal meeting in mid-January, NBAC is certainly still embryonic, its future mysterious within its shell. Yet answers to four major questions that will determine not just what kind of bird the Commission turns out to be but the heights to which it will fly should be evident by April or May 1997. First, will the White House take the sort of interest in NBAC that is needed if it is to succeed? Second, will the Commission’s term be extended beyond October 1997—and will the decision come early enough to allow it to start soon on projects that will take more than a single year to complete? Third, will the Commission take a broad view of the issues it addresses, reexamining widely accepted assumptions and going back to basic premises, or will it respond primarily in bureaucratic terms, guided by its charter’s focus on improving the policies and practices of federal departments and agencies? Fourth, will the Commission move beyond its initially mandated topics—the rights and welfare of human research subjects and the management and use of genetic information—and become what its name promises, the nation’s advisory body on the full range of bioethical issues that arise in the organization and management of health services and research?The Origins of the Egg: NBAC’s PredecessorsThe creation of a national bioethics commission has been demanded for years, at the least since its most recent predecessor, the Biomedical Ethics [End Page 63] Advisory Committee (BEAC) finally expired in 1990. BEAC’s statutory authority lapsed after the hapless committee had spent several years itself like an in vitro embryo in a vat of liquid nitrogen. BEAC’s opponents in Congress froze its appropriation and forbad it to meet until the Biomedical Ethics Board of six senators and six representatives to which it was supposed to report resolved the chaos resulting from the Board members’ ideological differences and personal distrust; this never occurred, and the Board proved unable even to choose its chairman. 1 BEAC, which met only twice, had laid preliminary plans to study the issues raised by the new genetics, but the politics of abortion—which had greatly complicated and slowed the Board’s naming of the BEAC members—was strong enough to interfere even with the topic of genetics, on which the difference among committee members actually gave no sign of dividing on pro-life/pro-choice grounds.The disappearance of BEAC left the nation without a mechanism for “public bioethics,” and several efforts were undertaken in the early 1990s to generate a new commission that could carry on in the tradition of the two previous, successful bioethics commissions. (The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research operated under a Congressional mandate in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare from 1974 to 1978, and the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which had been authorized by Congress in 1978, actually operated as an independent body with government-wide purview from January 1980 to March 1983.) The Institute of Medicine established a committee to assess the mechanisms available not only to the federal government but also to states, professional bodies, and the public for deliberating about and resolving ethical issues stemming from developments in biomedicine (Bulger, Bobby, and Fineberg 1995). In September 1992, Senators Mark O. Hatfield (R-OR), Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), and Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ) requested that the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) evaluate the... (shrink)

Graeme Earl's paper on computer graphic modeling in archaeology raises many themes of interest for the philosopher of science, although, as is to be expected of complex social and technical disciplinary practices, these philosophical issues are not to be easily separated or neatly labeled. On the one hand, the modeling practices and concerns of the archaeologists dispute (or even disrupt) the philosophers' traditional notions, while the formers' reective commentaries offer sophisticated analyses that go beyond the latters' traditional reflections on models. (...) On the other hand, the paper raises new questions about how human and social scientists—as humans with social lives—engage with models in their different .. (shrink)

Recently, we reported that melanoma risk in redheads is linked not only to pale skin, but also to the synthesis of the pigment – called pheomelanin – that gives red hair its color. We demonstrated that pheomelanin synthesis is associated with increased oxidative stress in the skin, yet we have not uncovered the chemical pathway between the molecule pheomelanin and the DNA damage that drives melanoma formation. Here, we hypothesize two possible pathways. On one hand, pheomelanin might generate reactive oxygen (...) species (ROS) that directly or indirectly cause oxidative DNA damage. On the other hand, pheomelanin synthesis might consume cellular antioxidant stores and make the cell nucleus more vulnerable to other endogenous ROS. Uncovering the mechanistic pathway between pheomelanin and oxidative DNA damage will be an important step in developing strategies to lower melanoma risk in redheads. (shrink)

Les courtiers du savoir sont présentés comme des acteurs se déplaçant entre deux mondes, les producteurs de savoir et les utilisateurs de savoir. Leur travail ne consiste pourtant pas seulement à servir de véhicule entre les deux mondes ; ils opèrent d’une triple manière : ils mettent les savoirs en circulation, les traduisent et les solidifient. Ils établissent en fait des connexions très particulières transitoires, temporaires et flexibles. L’article s’attache à décrire ces opérations pour montrer que le courtage conduit vers (...) un nouveau monde aux contours incertains et surtout imprévisibles.Knowledge brokers may be described as people moving between the two different worlds of knowledge producers and knowledge users. However, they do more than merely shuttle knowledge between the two worlds. Their task is threefold: they bring knowledge into circulation, translate it and give it solid substance. To do so, they establish very specific, transitory, temporary and flexible connections. This article describes their operations to show that knowledge brokering is ushering in a new world whose boundaries are not only uncertain but also unpredictable. (shrink)

κ-M-proper forcing, introduced in [K00] when κ = ω1, is a very powerful new technique for generic stepping up, subsuming all previous generic steppings up using auxiliary functions. A general framework for using κ-M-proper forcing is set out, and a couple of examples of such forcings, adding κ−-thin-very tall scattered spaces and long chains in P(κ) modulo <κ−, are given. These objects are not currently obtainable by the previously known techniques.

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} One of the most celebrated biologists of the past century, Edward O. Wilson has received virtually every scientific award and recognition for his provocative and innovative enquiry into the nature of the relationship between moral behavior and biology which the scientific community can offer. For over twenty-five years, (...) his development of a field of study at Harvard University called sociobiology and the analytical concept he created called conscilience have revolutionized our thinking about ethics and human behavior. Exploring the interrelatedness of the chemistry of the mind and the genetic bases of culture, he has challenged the philosophical, theological, and sociological world to embrace a creatively converging view of science and ethics, of biology and human behavior. This essay is a critical review of Wilson’s major works written during the past three decades which have caused both international exuberance among scientists and an exclamation of outrage among many in the philosophical and theological world. This is the first comprehensive review and critical assessment of his major works. (shrink)

Once upon a time, an ugly duckling became famous in the history of European fairy tales. It was said of him that "… the poor duckling, who had come last out of his eggshell, and was so ugly, was bitten, pecked, and teased by both ducks and hens.… The poor thing scarcely knew what to do; he was quite distressed because he was so ugly."Today, in America—the mecca of MakeOver culture—that ugly duckling would know exactly what to do: tell his (...) pitiful tale and be accepted for an "Extreme Makeover" that would be televised around the world. This paper uses Foucault's rich and complex notion of an Apparatus to examine how weight-loss surgery is migrating into the repertoire of "normalized procedures" listed under .. (shrink)

Introducing non-Darwinian mind as a nonaptation I argue that Darwinian mind evolved from non-Darwinian mind through the evolution of desire and aversion. The subject position within Darwinian mind is Darwinian self and is inherently selfish. However the cathexis whereby the subject prioritises motivations of desire and aversion is not an inherent property of mind. Instead it is proposed to be an adaptation, a predisposition to respond to pleasant/unpleasant sensations with desire/aversion. This explains why self-sacrifice and disengagement from desire/aversion are the (...) sine qua non of serious commitment to the spiritual path, i.e. Darwinian self and desire/aversion are two sides of the same coin and erosion of one is erosion of the other. Thus, through self- renunciation and suspension of desire/aversion the seeker passes from adaptive selfish Darwinian mind towards nonaptive selfless non-Darwinian mind. But Darwinian mind automatically resists this transcendence by intensifying motivations of desire/aversion thereby explaining the extreme difficulties of the spiritual path. A theoretical distinction is made between evolved Darwinian 'morality' , 'Darwinian' morality and amoral non-Darwinian kenosis . These distinctions make it easy to disentangle scientific and religious jurisdictions on morality with important implications for both religious ethics and science's view of spirituality. All in all, the nonaptive theory of spiritual mind offers a unified solution to age-old problems which have been uncomfortably shifting this way and that in the interstices between biology, psychology, theology and philosophy. (shrink)

caue, caue; namque in malos asperrimus parata tollo cornua, qualis Lycambae spretus infido gener aut acer hostis Bupalo. an, si quis atra dente me petiuerit, inultus ut flebo puer? Harrison observes that commentators translate ‘“inultus” not “unavenged” but “without taking revenge”, construing it with Horace as the subject of “flebo” and not with “puer”’, and he then asserts ‘This use of “inultus” is wholly unparalleled; the adjective is elsewhere always used passively of persons or objects unavenged and never in the (...) active sense of “unavenging”’. (shrink)

Recent conflicts both within Europe and between Europe and the United States suggest that Europe's current political arrangements need to be adjusted. F.A. Hayek and Jürgen Habermas argued, albeit on very different grounds, for European political integration. Their arguments ultimately are not persuasive, but a “United States of Europe” can be justified—on the basis of its contribution to European security.

Social Responsibility (SA) 8000 registration/certification is a response by the business community to address consumer and investor perceptions of the importance of emerging global social issues such as child labor, worker rights, discrimination, compensation, etc. As more U.S. and European firms outsource production to less developed nations, social, environmental, and reputational issues have become more important. SA8000 is a series of behavioral standards that represents a comprehensive, and potentially global, corporate social responsibility registration system that provides a standard of socially (...) responsible treatment of workers. This paper explores how SA8000 adoption may impact a firm's marketing activities. (shrink)

In this installment of the Faculty Authors Series, Vance Morgan (Philosophy, Providence College) discusses his newest book, "Freelance Christianity: Philosophy, Faith, and the Real World.".

Today, texts are the centerpiece of intellectual life, and it is no different in philosophy. Thirty years ago, the subjects of the history of philosophy were the arguments of dead philosophers about perennial problems. Today, greater attention is paid to the texts that such figures wrote—why they wrote them, their genre, form, style, and how we now might read them. In analytic philosophy, this attention to form and its relation to meaning is revolutionary.

This brief volume, one of the Past Masters series, is a fascinating introduction to the full range of Thomas Hobbes's philosophy. The book has three parts. In the first Tuck describes Hobbes's life and gives a "brief, synoptic view of Hobbes's philosophy" as it develops in the context of sixteenth-century history and thought. The second part discusses Hobbes's arguments on science, ethics, politics, and religion. Finally, Tuck surveys a variety of styles of Hobbes interpretation, from Hobbes's contemporaries to our own (...) today. (shrink)

This picture of philosophy and politics harbors as much caricature as accuracy. Even in Plato, who is often cited as its earliest author, the contrast occurs less sharply. Arguably Plato never saw philosophy as wholly transcendent, nor politics as wholly empirical, even in the Republic. But the Western tradition has rarely appreciated the nuance in Plato. The radical contrast has a long and influential history with at least one useful result, that the question of the relationship between philosophy and politics (...) is frequently brought vividly to our attention. (shrink)

The philosophy of mind is an especially flourishing plot of philosophical terrain these days. In part this activity derives from the quality of the work and in part from the topic's location, at the intersection of science--computer science, mathematics, biology, and cognitive psychology--and metaphysics and epistemology, even ethics. If recent developments date from Ryle and his iconoclasm, the modern study of mind has an older provenance in the writings of Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, and other figures whose work coincided (...) with the rise of the new science, the fragmentation of religious hegemony, and the recovery of ancient traditions. In this period, of special importance to the treatment of human experience and mental phenomena was the retrieval of Epicurean and Stoic texts and ideas. It is, therefore, an opportune moment to have a sophisticated and comprehensive introduction to the philosophy of mind of the ancient Stoics and Epicureans. In this book, Julia Annas has provided just that. (shrink)