Understanding and empathy on the part of those in privileged positions are often cited as powerful tools in the fight against oppression. Too often, however, those in positions of power assume they know what it is like to be less well off when, in actuality, they do not. This kind of assumption represents a thinking vice we dub synecdoche epistemic arrogance. In instances of synecdoche epistemic arrogance, a person who has privilege wrongly assumes, based on limited experiences, that she can (...) know what it is like to experience a particular form of oppression. We argue two main points. First, synecdoche epistemic arrogance can lead to a variety of moral harms. Second, synecdoche epistemic arrogance is often tied to other troubling epistemic patterns, which we discuss in the context of disability and race simulations. Overall, the essay helps demonstrate how synecdoche epistemic arrogance can contribute to injustice. (shrink)

We offer an interpretation of the mental files framework that eliminates the metaphor of files, information being contained in files, etc. The guiding question is whether, once we move beyond the metaphors, there is any theoretical role for files. We claim not. We replace the file-metaphor with two theses: the semantic thesis that there are irreducibly relational representational facts (viz. facts about the coordination of representations); and the metasemantic thesis that processes tied to information-relations ground those facts. In its canonical (...) statement, the ‘file’-theory makes reference to a certain kind of relational representational feature, and a certain kind of mental activity. Mental files need not come into it. In short, we posit mental filing without mental files. Our interpretation avoids awkward problems that arise on the standard interpretation and clarifies the explanatory commitments of the theory. (shrink)

Abstract The principal aim of this paper is to give a positive analysis of self-deception. I argue that self-deception is a species ?self-emplotment?. Through narrative self-emplotment one groups the events of one's life thematically in order to understand and monitor oneself. I argue that self-emplotment is an unextraordinary feature of mental life that is a precondition of agency. Self-emplotment, however, proceeds according to certain norms, some of which provide apparent justification for self-deceptive activity. A secondary aim of the paper is (...) to sketch the common characteristics between self-deception and self-knowledge. The framework of self-emplotment from which self-deception can emerge is also the framework that delivers self-knowledge; to the extent that the activity of self-emplotment is partially constitutive of what it means to possess self-knowledge, the self-deceiver may be closer to a state of self-knowledge than the person who fails to engage in significant introspective narrative. (shrink)

Increasingly, metaphors are the target of political critique: Jewish groups condemn Holocaust imagery; mental health organizations, the metaphorical exploitation of psychosis; and feminists, “rape metaphors.” I develop a novel model for making sense of such critiques of metaphor.

Traditional research into values has tended to dichotomise young people into categories of self and other orientations. In the present study values were explored within a contemporary context and analysed into more complex value sets. The sample comprised of 111 girls and 133 boys, aged 11-16 , who responded to four open-ended sentences designed to tap philosophies of life, fears and underlying values. The pleasures in life for girls tended to centre on relationships with family, friends and boys, whereas boys (...) enjoyed activities such as sport. Many desired to win the National Lottery, although they also concurrently held humanistic values. The potential impact of these value sets on development during adolescence is discussed. For these young people, the best things in life are free but, like many adults, they dream of fame and fortune. (shrink)

Epistemologists of testimony have focused almost exclusively on the epistemic dynamics of simple testimony. We do sometimes testify by ways of simple, single sentence assertions. But much of our testimony is narratively structured. I argue that narrative testimony gives rise to a form of epistemic dependence that is far richer and more far reaching than the epistemic dependence characteristic of simple testimony.

Rights have been criticized as incorporating features that are antithetical to ecofeminism: rights are allegedly inherently adversarial; they are based on a conception of the person that fails to reflect women’s experience, biased in an illegitimate way toward humans rather than nonhumans, overly formal, and incapable of admitting the importance of emotion in ethics. Such criticisms are founded in misunderstandings of the ways in which rights operate and may be met by an adequate theory of rights. The notions of entitlement (...) and immunity that flow from a conception of rights have great use and potential in environmental ethics. Nonetheless, our understanding of moral rights must be revised in order to realize this potential. The usual attribution of moral rights is structurally arbitrary because obligations arising from others’ rights are unjustifiably distinguished from other sorts of obligations for which the same sorts of justificatory bases obtain. Once this arbitrariness is recognized, there remains little reason not to extend a continuous framework of entitlement toward nonhuman animals and nature more generally. Reassessing moral rights according to a basic principle of respect delivers an integrated account of our moral obligations toward one another, and a satisfactory basis from which to account for our diverse obligations toward nonhuman animals and the environment. (shrink)

Rights have been criticized as incorporating features that are antithetical to ecofeminism: rights are allegedly inherently adversarial; they are based on a conception of the person that fails to reflect women’s experience, biased in an illegitimate way toward humans rather than nonhumans, overly formal, and incapable of admitting the importance of emotion in ethics. Such criticisms are founded in misunderstandings of the ways in which rights operate and may be met by an adequate theory of rights. The notions of entitlement (...) and immunity that flow from a conception of rights have great use and potential in environmental ethics. Nonetheless, our understanding of moral rights must be revised in order to realize this potential. The usual attribution of moral rights is structurally arbitrary because obligations arising from others’ rights are unjustifiably distinguished from other sorts of obligations for which the same sorts of justificatory bases obtain. Once this arbitrariness is recognized, there remains little reason not to extend a continuous framework of entitlement toward nonhuman animals and nature more generally. Reassessing moral rights according to a basic principle of respect delivers an integrated account of our moral obligations toward one another, and a satisfactory basis from which to account for our diverse obligations toward nonhuman animals and the environment. (shrink)

This article probes the politics of the migrant caregiver/citizen-employer relationship in Palestine/israel as it unfolds within the Jewish-Israeli home. Based on interviews with migrants from the Philippines, Nepal, India and Sri Lanka and their Jewish-Israeli employers, I examine how Israel’s ethno-racially hierarchical citizenship regime and the transnational gendering and racialisation of carework manifest in this relationship. I begin by situating migrant women working as caregivers within the legal and political context of Palestine/israel, delineating how gendered constructions of the Jewish-Israeli woman (...) uphold the borders of the nation and paint non-Jewish migrant women as reproductively threatening. I then analyse two common tropes among citizen-employers in describing migrant caregivers. The first, what I term the ‘kinship trope’, characterizes them as ‘one of the family’, obscuring the ethno-racial basis of the state. I show how this trope contrasts sharply with Zionist settler colonial rhetoric portraying Jewish-Israelis as ‘one big family’. The second trope represents migrant women as individual agents of economic development and Israel as a market-driven, neoliberal society that is equally a state for all its citizens. By depicting Israel as a ‘modern’, ‘progressive’ state that is an exemplar of gender equality, this trope again masks the ethno-racial basis of citizenship, as well as gender disparities. Finally, I argue for a feminist approach to migrant carework that accounts for the ways neoliberal labour formations are mediated by gendered racisms specific to a particular state’s racial nation-building project. (shrink)

This essay considers how an “intimacy contract,” as a conceptual tool and a political reality, extends existing critiques of the social contract tradition by accounting for the privatized nature of the post-9/11 US empire. Examining critiques by Carole Pateman and Charles Mills, I argue that an intimacy contract uncovers the coercive power relations underlying neoliberal discourses of entrepreneurial freedom. Focusing on migrant labor on US military bases, I provide an overview of the racial, sexual, and settler contracts and the need (...) to extend Mills’s and Pateman’s critiques of embodiment and spatiality. Next, I suggest how the intimacy contract generates a transnational, embodied account of the labors upholding US empire; a lens into the shifting significance of these labors under neoliberal imperialism; and a chronicling of desire and workers’ interests. In conclusion, I suggest how the intimacy contract exposes multiple resistances to US empire and neoliberal capitalism. (shrink)

This paper offers three objections to Leslie’s recent and already influential theory of generics :375–403, 2007a, Philos Rev 117:1–47, 2008): her proposed metaphysical truth-conditions are subject to systematic counter-examples, the proposed disquotational semantics fails, and there is evidence that generics do not express cognitively primitive generalisations.

Assertions about appearances license inferences about the speaker's perceptual experience. For instance, if I assert, 'Tom looks like he's cooking', you will infer both that I am visually acquainted with Tom (what I call the "individual acquaintance inference"), and that I am visually acquainted with evidence that Tom is cooking (what I call the "evidential acquaintance inference"). By contrast, if I assert, 'It looks like Tom is cooking', only the latter inference is licensed. I develop an account of the acquaintance (...) inferences of appearance assertions building on two main previous lines of research: first, the copy raising literature, which has aimed to account for individual acquaintance inferences through the "perceptual source" semantic role; second, the subjectivity literature, which has focused on the status of acquaintance inferences with predicates of personal taste, but hasn't given much attention to the added complexities introduced by appearance language. I begin by developing what I take to be the most empirically-sound version of a perceptual source analysis. I then show how its insights can be maintained, while however taking anything about perception out of the truth conditions of appearance sentences. This, together with the assumption that appearance assertions express experiential attitudes, allows us to capture the acquaintance inferences of bare appearance assertions without making incorrect predictions about the behavior of appearance verbs in embedded environments. (shrink)

On the traditional relationalist conception of singular thought, a thought has singular content when it is based on an ‘information relation’ to its object. Recent work rejects relationalism and suggests singular thoughts are distinguished from descriptive thoughts by their inferential role: only thoughts with singular content can be employed in ‘direct’ inferences, or inferences that ‘trade on identity’. Firstly this view is insufficiently clear, because it conflates two distinct ideas—one about a kind of inference, the other a kind of process (...) that grounds inferences—under the title, ‘trading on identity’. Secondly, this leaves us without a notion that can be used as an alternative to relationalism about singular thought. The first notion is no more applicable to singular than to descriptive thought. The second may help us better understand singular thought, but does so, not by replacing the view that singular thoughts are information-based, but by helping us understand the nature of information-based thought. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering involves revising our concepts. It can be pursued as a specific philosophical methodology, but is also common in ordinary, non-philosophical, contexts. How does our capacity for conceptual engineering fit into human cognitive life more broadly? I hold that conceptual engineering is best understood alongside practices of conceptual exploration, examples of which include conceptual supposition (i.e., suppositional reasoning about alternative concepts), and conceptual comparison (i.e., comparisons between possible concept choices). Whereas in conceptual engineering we aim to change the concepts (...) we use, in conceptual exploration, we reason about conceptual possibilities. I approach conceptual exploration via the linguistic tools we use to communicate about concepts, using metalinguistic negotiation, convention-shifting conditionals, and metalinguistic comparatives as my key examples. I present a linguistic framework incorporating conventions that can account for this communication in a unified way. Furthermore, I argue that conceptual exploration helps undermine skepticism about conceptual engineering itself. (shrink)

After briefly reviewing some of the empirical and philosophical literature suggesting that there may be an adaptive role for delusion formation, we discuss the results of a recent study consisting of in-depth interviews with people experiencing delusions. We analyse three such cases in terms of the circumstances preceding the development of the delusion; the effects of the development of the delusion on the person’s situation; and the potential protective nature of the delusional belief as seen from the first-person perspective. We (...) argue that the development of the delusional belief can play a short-term protective function and we reflect on the implications that this might have for our understanding of psychotic symptoms, for the stigma associated with mental health issues, and for treatment options. (shrink)

In theoretical work about the language of personal taste, the canonical example is the simple predicate of personal taste, 'tasty'. We can also express the same positive gustatory evaluation with the complex expression, 'taste good'. But there is a challenge for an analysis of 'taste good': While it can be used equivalently with 'tasty', it need not be (for instance, imagine it used by someone who can identify good wines by taste but doesn't enjoy them). This kind of two-faced behavior (...) systematically arises with complex sensory-evaluative predicates, including those with other appearance verbs, such as 'look splendid' and 'sound nice'. I examine two strategies for capturing these different uses: one that posits an ambiguity in appearance verbs, and one that does not. The former is in line with an approach to 'look'-statements prominent in work in philosophy of perception, and I consider how the motivation given in that tradition carries over to the present context. I then show how the data used to support the verbal ambiguity approach can equally be captured on the second strategy, which appeals only to independently-motivated flexibility in adjective meaning. I close by discussing some considerations that are relevant for choosing between the two options. (shrink)

The standard view amongst philosophers of language and linguists is that the logical form of generics is quantificational and contains a covert, unpronounced quantifier expression Gen. Recently, some theorists have begun to question the standard view and rekindle the competing proposal, that generics are a species of kind-predication. These theorists offer some forceful objections to the standard view, and new strategies for dealing with the abundance of linguistic evidence in favour of the standard view. I respond to these objections and (...) show that their strategies fail. I offer a novel argument in favour of the standard view that I call the binder argument. The upshot of this argument is that if one rejects the existence of Gen, then one is committed to rejecting the existence of covert structure in general. (shrink)

How should knowledge be analyzed? Compositionally, as having constituents like belief and justification, or as an atomic concept? In making arguments for or against these perspectives, epistemologists have begun to use experimental evidence from developmental psychology and developmental linguistics. If we were to conclude that knowledge were developmentally prior to belief, then we might have a good basis to claim that belief is not a constituent of knowledge. In this review, I present a broad range of developmental evidence from the (...) past decade and discuss some of the implications it has for the proper analysis of knowledge. The orthodox perspective from the developmental literature was one where children fail to understand belief and knowledge concepts until later in childhood, with typical asymmetries in belief attribution and knowledge attribution. But what emerges from both a discussion of newer findings and a contextualization of older findings is a picture of development whereby core competence with belief and knowledge concepts emerges much earlier than previously thought that apparent failures in later childhood may be explained by other aspects of development than conceptual development and that there is no clear evidence that knowledge attributions emerge earlier than belief attributions. (shrink)

: This article seeks to explain how thought experiments work, and also the reasons why they can fail. It is divided into four sections. The first argues that thought experiments in philosophy and science should be treated together. The second examines existing accounts of thought experiments and shows why they are inadequate. The third proposes a better account of thought experiments. According to this account, a thought experimenter manipulates her worldview in accord with the “what if” questions posed by a (...) thought experiment. When all necessary manipulations are carried through, the result is either a consistent model or a contradiction. If a consistent model is achieved, the thought experimenter can conclude that the scenario is possible; if a consistent model cannot be constructed, then the scenario is not possible. The fourth section of the article uses this account to shed light on the circumstances in which thought experiments fail. (shrink)

We discuss a case where medically optimal investigations of health problems in a donor-conceived child would require their egg donor to participate in genetic testing. We argue that it would be justified to contact the egg donor to ask whether she would consider this, despite her indicating on a historical consent form that she did not wish to take part in future research and that she did not wish to be informed if she was found to be a carrier of (...) a ‘harmful inherited condition’. We suggest that we cannot conjecture what her current answer might be if, by participating in clinical genetic testing, she might help reach a diagnosis for the donor-conceived child. At the point that she made choices regarding future contact, it was not yet evident that the interests of the donor-conceived child might be compromised by her answers, as it was not foreseen that the egg donor’s genome might one day have the potential to enable diagnosis for this child. Fertility consent forms tend to be conceptualised as representing incontrovertible historical boundaries, but we argue that rapid evolution in genomic practice means that consent in such cases is better seen as an ongoing and dynamic process. It cannot be possible to compel the donor to aid in the diagnosis of the donor-conceived child, but she should be given the opportunity to do so. (shrink)

This special issue is the result of concerns about the marginalized status of gender within the sociology of religion. The collection of exciting new research in this special issue advocates for the importance of a gender lens on questions of religion in order to highlight issues, practices, peoples, and theories that would otherwise not be central to the discipline. We encourage sociologists who study religion to engage more in interdisciplinary and intersectional scholarship, acknowledge developments in the global South, and develop (...) more compelling theoretical frameworks that analyze religion from a gendered perspective. Our aim is to bring religion to the attention of gender and feminist scholars and to encourage religion scholars to consider gender not just as a variable but as a social structure. We hope that both groups of scholars will consider gender and religion as mutually constitutive social categories. (shrink)

Given the potential dangers of unethical decisions in the workplace, it has become increasingly important for managers to hire, and promote into leadership positions, those who are morally inclined. Behavioral ethics research has contributed to this effort by examining an array of individual difference variables that play a role in morality. However, past research has focused mostly on direct causal effects and not so much on the processes through which different factors, especially those that are morality based, decrease unethical choices. (...) The purpose of the current research is to examine the process, which includes both subconscious and conscious decision pathways, through which moral attentiveness curbs unethical decision making at the individual level. The findings of a study employing about 200 participants and a cheating task reveal that both accurate ethical prototypes and moral awareness of the situation decreased unethical decisions, and moral attentiveness was found to be positively related to both of these constructs. In addition, having accurate ethical prototypes was found to be a partial mediator between perceptual moral attentiveness and less cheating, while moral awareness was found to be a partial mediator between reflective moral attentiveness and less cheating. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Kevin Dorst has recently provided a novel argument for the KK principle. In this paper I sketch a rejoinder.

Food - what we eat, how much we eat, how it is produced and prepared, and its cultural and ecological significance- is an increasingly significant topic not only for scholars but for all of us. Theology on the Menu is the first systematic and historical assessment of Christian attitudes to food and its role in shaping Christian identity. David Grumett and Rachel Muers unfold a fascinating history of feasting and fasting, food regulations and resistance to regulation, the symbolism attached (...) to particular foods, the relationship between diet and doctrine, and how food has shaped inter-religious encounters. Everyone interested in Christian approaches to food and diet or seeking to understand how theology can engage fruitfully with everyday life will find this book a stimulus and an inspiration. (shrink)

We offer a novel account of metalinguistic comparatives, such as 'Al is more wise than clever'. On our view, metalinguistic comparatives express comparative commitments to conventions. Thus, 'Al is more wise than clever' expresses that the speaker has a stronger commitment to a convention on which Al is wise than to a convention on which she is clever. This view avoids problems facing previous approaches to metalinguistic comparatives. It also fits within a broader framework—independently motivated by metalinguistic negotiations and convention-shiftingexpressions— (...) that gives linguistic conventions a role in the semantics. (shrink)

Gyngell and colleagues consider that the recent Nuffield Council report does not go far enough: heritable genome editing is not just justifiable in a few rare cases; instead, there is a moral imperative to undertake it. We agree that there is a moral argument for this, but in the real world it is mitigated by the fact that it is not usually possible to ensure a better life. We suggest that a moral imperative for HGE can currently only be concluded (...) if one first buys into an overly deterministic view of a genome sequence, and the role of variation within in it, in the aetiology of the disease: most diseases cannot simply be attributed to specific genetic variants that we could edit away. Multiple, poorly understood genetic and environmental factors interact to influence the expression of diseases with a genetic component, even well understood ‘monogenic’ disorders. Population-level genome analyses are now demonstrating that many genetic ’mutations' are much less predictive than previously thought 1. Furthermore, HGE might introduce new risks just as it reduces old ones; or remove protections not yet clearly delineated. (shrink)

The coronavirus pandemic has necessitated extraordinary human resilience in order to preserve and prolong life and social order. Risks to health and even life are being confronted by workers in health and social care, as well as those in roles previously never defined as “frontline,” such as individuals working in community supply chain sectors. The strategy adopted by the United Kingdom government in facing the challenges of the pandemic was markedly different from other countries. The present study set out to (...) examine what variables were associated with resilience, burnout, and wellbeing in all sectors of frontline workers, and whether or not these differed between the UK and Republic of Ireland. Individuals were eligible if they were a frontline worker in the UK or RoI during the pandemic. Part of a larger, longitudinal study, the participants completed an online survey to assess various aspects of their daily and working lives, along with their attitudes toward their government’s handling of the crisis, and measurement of psychological variables associated with heroism. A total of 1,305 participants provided sufficient data for analysis. UK-based workers reported lower wellbeing than the RoI-based participants. In multivariate models, both psychological and pandemic-related variables were associated with levels of resilience, burnout, and wellbeing in these workers, but which pandemic-related variables were associated with outcomes differed depending on the country. The judgment of lower timeliness in their government’s response to the pandemic appeared to be a key driver of each outcome for the UK-based frontline workers. These findings provide initial evidence that the different strategies adopted by each country may be associated with the overall wellbeing of frontline workers, with higher detriment observed in the UK. The judgment of the relatively slow response of the UK government to instigate their pandemic measures appears to be associated with lower resilience, higher burnout, and lower wellbeing in frontline workers in the UK. (shrink)

Background International collaborators face challenges in the design and implementation of ethical biomedical research. Evaluating community understanding of research and processes like informed consent may enable researchers to better protect research participants in a particular setting; however, there exist few studies examining community perspectives in health research, particularly in resource-limited settings, or strategies for engaging the community in research processes. Our goal was to inform ethical research practice in a biomedical research setting in western Kenya and similar resource-limited settings. Methods (...) We sought to use mabaraza , traditional East African community assemblies, in a qualitative study to understand community perspectives on biomedical research and informed consent within a collaborative, multinational research network in western Kenya. Analyses included manual, progressive coding of transcripts from mabaraza to identify emerging central concepts. Results Our findings from two mabaraza with 108 community members revealed that, while participants understood some principles of biomedical research, they emphasized perceived benefits from participation in research over potential risks. Many community members equated health research with HIV testing or care, which may be explained in part by the setting of this particular study. In addition to valuing informed consent as understanding and accepting a role in research activities, participants endorsed an increased role for the community in making decisions about research participation, especially in the case of children, through a process of community consent. Conclusions Our study suggests that international biomedical research must account for community understanding of research and informed consent, particularly when involving children. Moreover, traditional community forums, such as mabaraza in East Africa, can be used effectively to gather these data and may serve as a forum to further engage communities in community consent and other aspects of research. (shrink)

A major goal of this work is to specify some steps of the process by which participants maintain coherency in their conversations.The underlying element of the analysis is a construct called a “context space.” Roughly, a group of utterances that refers to a single issue or episode forms the basis for a context space. Superficially, a conversation is a sequence of utterances; at a deeper level it is a structured entity whose utterances can be parsed into hierarchically related context spaces.As (...) a conversation proceeds, each conversant builds a discourse model that includes the conversation's context space structure, a notion of the present discourse topic, and a list of items being focused upon. Conversational coherency depends upon a lack of conflict between the respective models of the participants. Conflicts are prevented by speakers following high level syntactic and semantic relational rules that enable listeners to identify their discourse models. These rules, given in the study, are highly integrated with the view of conversation presented here—a hierarchy of related context spaces. (shrink)

Despite their substantial appeal, closure principles have fallen on hard times. Both anti-luck conditions on knowledge and the defeasibility of knowledge look to be in tension with natural ways of articulating single-premise closure principles. The project of this paper is to show that plausible theses in the epistemology of testimony face problems structurally identical to those faced by closure principles. First I show how Lasonen-Aarnio’s claim that there is a tension between single premise closure and anti-luck constraints on knowledge can (...) be extended to make trouble for transmission theses. Second, I show how Schechter’s claim that there is a tension between single premise closure and the thought that knowledge is defeasible can be extended to make trouble for transmission theses. I end the paper by sketching the consequences of this trouble for the dialectic in the epistemology of testimony. (shrink)

Determinations of ability/disability are rooted in coloniality, specifically in categorizations of race, gender, and animality as they bear on social formations. I elucidate this rootedness by weaving the “coloniality of ability” into María Lugones’ accounts of the coloniality of gender and the colonial-modern system as founded on the “human-nonhuman” difference. This enables me to reveal an “ability system” based on the “ability-bestiality” difference and delineate with more specificity liminal sites of oppression and resistance across the heterogeneous socialities of coloniality-modernity. From (...) the perspective of the coloniality of ability that I develop, I focus on the liminality of the white woman Victorian invalid and that of the colonized “bestial” body in order to distinguish between two forms of colonial-modern liminality—“light” and “dark.” I also draw from this discussion two forms of colonial-modern oppression—“dehumanizing” and “bestializing”—and two related modalities of anticolonial resistance—“humanizing” and “decolonial.”. (shrink)

The question of “Are faces special?” has essentially referred to whether there are unique visual mechanisms for processing identity-related information in faces as compared to other objects. Faces provide unique information about expression, gaze direction, identity, and visual cues to speech. In the literature, however, the debate about whether “faces are special” has referred to the specific question of whether there are special visual processing mechanisms unique to faces, presumably deriving from the social importance of faces and developed either across (...) the course of evolution or the course of childhood. This article provides historical background to the question and presents key theoretical findings and key methodological findings. It reviews literature on an evolved face representation, including studies of newborns, face-deprived monkeys and twins; on configural behavioral processing in object experts; and on neural processing in object novices and object experts including single-unit recording, fMRI, ERPs, TMS, and neuropsychological studies. (shrink)

"A rich historical pastiche of 17th- and 18th-century philosophy, science, and religion."—G. Y. Craig, New Scientist "This book, by a distinguished Italian historian of philosophy, is a worthy successor to the author's important works on Francis Bacon and on technology and the arts. First published in Italian (in 1979), it now makes available to English readers some subtly wrought arguments about the ways in which geology and anthropology challenged biblical chronology and forced changes in the philosophy of history in the (...) early modern era.... [Rossi] shows that the search for new answers about human origins spanned many disciplines and involved many fascinating intellects—Bacon, Bayle, Buffon, Burnet, Descartes, Hobbes, Holbach, Hooke, Hume, Hutton, Leibniz, de Maillet, Newton, Pufendorf, Spinoza, Toland, and, most especially, Vico, whose works are impressively and freshly reevaluated here."—Nina Gelbart, American Scientist. (shrink)

The authors suggest creating a scheme that offers new incentives for research on diseases disproportionately affecting the poor, with the goal of making development of neglected disease vaccines a lucrative endeavor for pharmaceutical companies.

Surgical training has traditionally involved a lengthy apprenticeship to a series of master surgeons, who teach medical students and residents the techniques of surgery while allowing them to work on patients in the operating room. This article examines surgical training as a structured environment that prepares students for the embodied lessons taught by a surgeon. It argues that even the most seemingly mechanical of surgical techniques contains social lessons when taught by a surgeon within the rich environment of the operating (...) room. (shrink)

Many are calling for concrete mechanisms of oversight for health research involving artificial intelligence (AI). In response, institutional review boards (IRBs) are being turned to as a familiar model of governance. Here, we examine the IRB model as a form of ethics oversight for health research that uses AI. We consider the model's origins, analyze the challenges IRBs are facing in the contexts of both industry and academia, and offer concrete recommendations for how these committees might be adapted in order (...) to provide an effective mechanism of oversight for health‐related AI research. (shrink)