The genome sequencing revolution has revealed that all species possess a large number of unique genes critical for trait variation, adaptation, and evolutionary innovation. One widely used approach to identify such genes consists of detecting protein‐coding sequences with no homology in other genomes, termed orphan genes. These genes have been extensively studied, under the assumption that they represent valid proxies for species‐specific genes. Here, we critically evaluate taxonomic, phylogenetic, and sequence evolution evidence showing that orphan genes belong to a range (...) of evolutionary ages and thus cannot be assigned to a single lineage. Furthermore, we show that the processes generating orphan genes are substantially more diverse than generally thought and include horizontal gene transfer, transposable element domestication, and overprinting. Thus, orphan genes represent a heterogeneous collection of genes rather than a single biological entity, making them unsuitable as a subject for meaningful investigation of gene evolution and phenotypic innovation. (shrink)

Research suggests that interventions involving extensive training or counterconditioning can reduce implicit prejudice and stereotyping, and even susceptibility to stereotype threat. This research is widely cited as providing an “existence proof” that certain entrenched social attitudes are capable of change, but is summarily dismissed—by philosophers, psychologists, and activists alike—as lacking direct, practical import for the broader struggle against prejudice, discrimination, and inequality. Criticisms of these “debiasing” procedures fall into three categories: concerns about empirical efficacy, about practical feasibility, and about the (...) failure to appreciate the underlying structural-institutional nature of discrimination. I reply to these criticisms of debiasing, and argue that a comprehensive strategy for combating prejudice and discrimination should include a central role for training our biases away. (shrink)

Comment on Brogaard's Seeing and Saying (OUP 2018).

Targeted modifications of the human epigenome, epigenome editing (EE), are around the corner. For EE, techniques similar to genome editing (GE) techniques are used. While in GE the genetic information is changed by directly modifying DNA, intervening in the epigenome requires modifying the configuration of DNA, for example, how it is folded. This does not come with alterations in the base sequence (‘genetic code’). To date, there is almost no ethical debate about EE, whereas the discussions about GE are voluminous. (...) Our article introduces EE into bioethics by translating knowledge from science to ethics and by comparing the risks of EE with those of GE. We, first (I), make the case that a broader ethical debate on EE is due, provide scientific background on EE, compile potential use-cases and recap previous debates. We then (II) compare EE and GE and suggest that the severity of risks of novel gene technologies depends on three factors: (i) the choice of an ex vivo versus an in vivo editing approach, (ii) the time of intervention and intervention windows and (iii) the targeted diseases. Moreover, we show why germline EE is not effective and reject the position of strong epigenetic determinism. We conclude that EE is not always ethically preferable to GE in terms of risks, and end with suggestions for next steps in the current ethical debate on EE by briefly introducing ethical challenges of new areas of preventive applications of EE (III). (shrink)

Those who want to deny the ‘ought implies can’ principle often turn to weakened views to explain ‘ought implies can’ phenomena. The two most common versions of such views are that ‘ought’ presupposes ‘can’, and that ‘ought’ conversationally implicates ‘can’. This paper will reject both views, and in doing so, present a case against any pragmatic view of ‘ought implies can’. Unlike much of the literature, I won't rely on counterexamples, but instead will argue that each of these views fails (...) on its own terms. ‘Ought’ and ‘can’ do not obey the negation test for presupposition, and they do not obey the calculability or the cancelability tests for conversational implicature. I diagnose these failures as partly a result of the importance of the contrapositive of ‘ought implies can’. I end with a final argument emphasizing the role the principle plays in moral thinking, and the fact that no pragmatic account can do it justice. (shrink)

According to telling based views of testimony (TBVs), B has reason to believe that p when A tells B that p because A thereby takes public responsibility for B's subsequent belief that p. Andrew Peet presents a new argument against TBVs. He argues that insofar as A uses context-sensitive expressions to express p, A doesn't take public responsibility for B's belief that p. Since context-sensitivity is widespread, the kind of reason TBVs say we have to believe what we're told, is (...) not widespread. Peet doesn't identify any problem with his own argument though he does attempt to limit its sceptical potential by identifying special contexts in which TBVs stand a chance of success. A more general defence of TBVs can be provided by showing Peet's argument to be unsound. I argue that Peet's argument is unsound because it requires us to wrongly suppose that speakers do far less labour than their audiences in context-sensitive linguistic communication. I aim to show why—in the context of the epistemology of testimony and the philosophy of language—it's important to recognize the labour that speakers can do, and so can can be held responsible for not doing, in episodes of context-sensitive linguistic communication. (shrink)

Three arguments for the thesis that sex is socially constructed are examined and rejected. No such argument could succeed, because sex is not socially constructed.

This article explores Sylvia Wynter’s analysis of gender as a category differentially applied across the global color line and María Lugones’ account of the coloniality of gender. While Wynter’s and Lugones’s work offer consequential insights for queer, trans, and intersex studies and activism, they have deliberately engaged these particular discourses and histories of struggle in limited ways. Wynter analyzes the contradictions of Western feminists’ organizing against female genital cutting in Africa, but she does not link her conclusions to their ramifications (...) for activism against genital cutting on children deemed intersex. Lugones uses the existence of intersex people as a turning point in her critique of Aníbal Quijano when developing her concept of the coloniality of gender, but she does not go further to connect global intersex activism and decolonial feminist struggles. This article explores the work of Wynter and Lugones for their compatibility with trans and intersex studies and activism, and the places where their work can be furthered through insights from trans and intersex studies. It concludes that to move beyond the coloniality of gender requires trans and intersex liberation and that trans and intersex liberation must be understood in a broader decolonial feminist framework. (shrink)

Slightly modified excerpt from the section 13.4 Zusammenfassung und Ausblick (translated into englisch): This chapter is based on an analysis of ethical debates on epigenetics and genome editing, debates, in which ethical arguments relating to future generations and justice play a central role. The analysis aims to contextualize new developments in genetic engineering, such as genome and epigenome editing, ethically. At the beginning, the assumptions of "genetic determinism," on which "genetic essentialism" is based, of "epigenetic determinism" as well as "genetic" (...) and "epigenetic exceptionalism" are analyzed and critically discussed. The remarks on the ethical discourse on epigenetics show that the notion of "epigenetic determinism" can sometimes be discerned not only in popular scientific discourse but also in ethical discourse. Ethical debates on epigenetics, however, have distanced themselves from this deterministic understanding. As a result, the focus in the ethical discourse on epigenetics shifts from responsibility for one's own health and that of subsequent generations to justice. What is meant here is justice, for example, in terms of access to healthy environmental conditions, regardless of whether these contribute to health with or without epigenetic agency. An analysis of the discourse on genome editing reveals that it is primarily germline interventions that are being ethically examined, with a concentration on the aspect of inheritance. The question is whether this is accompanied by an implicit "genetic determinism" or even a "genetic essentialism": the determinism could lie in the centrality of the aspect of heritability, since only genetic information is inherited. Does the aspect of heritability and genome modification play a more decisive role in debates on genome editing than the safety issue? Is the problem of embryos and their potential offspring not being able to consent to germline intervention given such a high priority because it is a genetic intervention? Under such a premise of "strong genetic determinism" supplemented by "epigenetic determinism," not only genome editing but also epigenome editing would be ethically relevant precisely because it too would have an influence on the genome. How this influence of genome editing and epigenome editing is ethically evaluated in each case therefore depends initially on whether the assumptions of "genetic" and "epigenetic determinism" are advocated. These assumptions are increasingly viewed critically in ethical discourse because they cannot be confirmed from a scientific perspective. In popular scientific debates in particular, however, they seem to persist, which ultimately also influences the public discussion. Since a broad public discussion is required especially on genome editing, a reflective approach to the various "-isms" analyzed in this chapter is central. DOI: 10.5771/9783748927242. (shrink)

Dupras and Bunnik’s strong statement against the normative approach of genetic exceptionalism, which can no longer be justified in the midst of multi-omic research, is of great importance fo...

When people must either save a greater number of people from a smaller harm or a smaller number from a greater harm, do their choices reflect a reasonable moral outlook? We pursue this question with the help of an experiment. In our experiment, two-fifths of subjects employ a similarity heuristic. When alternatives appear dissimilar in terms of the number saved but similar in terms of the magnitude of harm prevented, this heuristic mandates saving the greater number. In our experiment, this (...) leads to choices that are inconsistent with all standard theories of justice. We argue that this demonstrates the untrustworthiness of distributive judgments in cases that elicit similarity-based choice. (shrink)

I argue that we should rethink the nature and scope of Spinoza’s “one and the same” relation. Contrary to the standard reading, the nature of this relation is not identity but a union, and its scope includes all idea-object pairs, even God and the idea of God. A crucial reason we should adopt this dual picture is that the idea of God must be one and the same as something found when Nature is conceived under each of the other attributes. (...) If “one and the same” is interpreted as a relation of identity, this requirement cannot be met. However, maintaining that God and the idea of God are one and the same not only fulfills this requirement, but also is independently motivated. I also briefly consider how the thesis that God and the idea of God are one and the same affords us with positive insights concerning the nature of this relation. (shrink)

Excerpt: 1. Introduction This chapter provides insight into the diverse ethical debates on genetics and epigenetics. Much controversy surrounds debates about intervening into the germline genome of human embryos, with catchwords such as genome editing, designer baby, and CRISPR/Cas. The idea that it is possible to design a child according to one’s personal preferences is, however, a quite distorted view of what is actually possible with new gene technologies and gene therapies. These are much more limited than the editing and (...) design metaphors suggest. Such metaphors are therefore highly problematic phrases in the context of new gene technologies, for two reasons. On one hand, to design a child of choice by modifying the genome would require modifying any gene of choice, which is more than can be done with current gene technologies, such as CRISPR/Cas. On the other hand, a modification of genes would need to be enough to create any characteristic of choice in the future child. The latter presupposes the assumption of genetic determinism. Moreover, the CRISPR/Cas technology can not only be used in a potentially therapeutic manner at the germline level. In addition, there is the (more likely) scenario of a future clinical therapeutic use of these new gene technologies for modifying the DNA sequence of other cells of the body (somatic genome editing). There is also the option of modifying the epigenome, that is, the spatial configuration of DNA (epigenome editing) (see table 1). Like genetics and genome editing, epigenetics has been at the center of recent popular scientific and ethical discourse as well as scientific debates. The concept of epigenetics has given rise to very different notions of inheritability and responsibility for health, which, however, are oftentimes based on scientifically controversial basic assumptions. That there continues to be covert genetic determinism in the form of epigenetic determinism (see table 2) in debates about epigenetics has been pointed out in ethical analyses of epigenetics. Neither genetic determinism nor epigenetic determinism has been confirmed scientifically. It is therefore important to recognize the concepts that are discussed (and sometimes harshly criticized) in debates about genome editing and epigenetics—for example, concepts about the causal role of DNA for our own life course. This importance is based on the fact that if we understand such controversial concepts, we will be able to remain critical when evaluating scientific knowledge and ethical arguments about genome editing and epigenetics. This chapter, therefore, explains some of these concepts. For an ethical analysis of epigenetics as well as of genome editing, it is necessary to understand and critically reflect upon the underlying concepts of genetic determinism and other, related -isms. The following section offers a detailed introduction to these -isms (section 2; see also table 2). Section 3 provides an ethical analysis of genome editing and epigenetics based on the explanations in section 2. Section 3 focuses on inheritability and responsibility, justice, safety, the problem of consent, and the effects of genome editing and epigenetics on embryos and future generations. This section does not discuss in detail further points that can be found in ethical debates about epigenetics as well as in ethical debates about genome editing. These points include (among others): • fear that the findings of epigenetics and that the methods of genome editing are misused—this also with respect to eugenics and enhancement; • naturalness—an issue we mention in passing a few times in the following analysis; • a possible connection between the genome/epigenome and the concept of human dignity, and the derived danger of instrumentalization and infringement of autonomy when intervening in the genome or epigenome. Since current discourse about ethical issues associated with genome editing focuses mainly on germline interventions, which are, for instance, interventions into a human embryo’s genome, we mainly focus on germline interventions when comparing the debates on genome editing and on epigenetics in section 3. (shrink)

Contingencies of the early nuclear arms race Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-23 DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9495-z Authors S. S. Schweber, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, Science Center 371, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Alex Wellerstein, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, Science Center 371, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Ethan Pollock, Department of History, Box N, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA Barton J. Bernstein, History Department, Building 200, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-2024, USA Michael D. Gordin, (...) History Department, 305 Dickinson Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796. (shrink)

This article explores three distinct approaches to politics identified by Deleuze and Guattari. I argue that they consistently privilege a 'problematic' approach entailing individuals and associations establishing norms on the basis of the potential they possess within a concrete situation, and that this implies resistance to both the 'theorematic' politics they associate with statist philosophy and struggles aiming to alter the 'axiomatic' determination induced by global forces of capital. While this resistance necessarily proceeds in relation to established notions of identity (...) and value, it must also do more than aim for the establishment of particular institutional 'constants,' including particular democratic procedures and human rights. (shrink)

Pelluchon, Corine Manifest animalista: La causa animal com a camí per a un nou humanismeBarcelona: Rosa dels Vents, 141 p.ISBN 978-84-16930-41-8.

Race in the United States is most often talked about in terms of black and white, sometimes as a spectrum running from whiteness to blackness. Such a conception does not map onto actual racial structures in the United States and excludes Native Americans. This article will criticize this binary, detailing a theory of race in which colonialism and racism are prior to racial formation, following Patrick Wolfe and Michael Omi and Howard Winant. In assembling this theory, this article attempts to (...) bridge philosophical critical race studies and Native American and Indigenous Peoples studies. It argues that to be a member of a race is to be in a relationship of dominance and resistance with settler colonialism. It discusses the implications of a political mode of Native race in greater detail, including how it can be differentiated from ethnicity and tribal identity, and how it might be politically useful in anti-domination solidarity. Finally, the article examines the similarities and differences between Native race as construed here and concepts of being Indigenous, suggesting that what Indigenous is at the global level, Native race may be at the local. (shrink)

The most famous Socratic question—ti esti touto?—is often pre- ceded by a far less famous, but more fundamental question—esti touto ti? Though this question is posed in many dialogues with re- spect to myriad topics, in every instance it receives but one answer: it is something, namely something that is. The dialogue devoted to why this question always meets with an affirmative answer would appear to be the Parmenides, for there Parmenides throws into question whether the eidē are, only to (...) establish that, if we have opinions that there is some unity in being, such unity must be. Nevertheless, the dramatic setting of the Parmenides is the quarreling of the Pre-Socratic schools, and the popular dismissal of philosophy that their quarreling engendered. For a dialogue that establishes that the object of inquiry is simply because we have opinions about it, we must, as I hope to show, turn to the Euthyphro. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Reading the work of Sylvia Wynter and María Lugones together, particularly as it pertains to sex, gender, and sexuality, reveals the limits of popular discourses and frameworks of queer and feminist philosophy that may unwittingly obscure its constructions of sex and gender along the global color line. This article looks at Wynter’s analysis of gender as a category differentially applied across the global color line and Lugones’s analysis of the coloniality of gender. The author concludes to move beyond the (...) coloniality of gender requires intersex liberation, but also that intersex liberation must be understood within a decolonial framework. (shrink)

This article explores the different moral and legal arguments used by protagonists in the debate about whether or not to conduct a humanitarian intervention in Darfur. The first section briefly outlines four moral and legal positions on whether there is (and should be) a right and/or duty of humanitarian intervention: communitarianism, restrictionist and counter-restrictionist legal positivism and liberal cosmopolitanism. The second section then provides an overview of the Security Council's debate about responding to Darfur's crisis, showing how its policy was (...) influenced by both normative concerns and hard-nosed political calculations. The article concludes by asking what Darfur's case reveals about the legitimacy and likelihood of humanitarian intervention in such catastrophes and the role of the UN Security Council as the primary authorising body for the use of international force. The authors argue that this case demonstrates that for the cosmopolitan/counter-restrictionist case to prevail pivotal states need to put humanitarian emergencies on the global agenda and express a willingness to act without Council authorisation, though the question of how to proceed in cases where the Council is deadlocked remains vexed. (shrink)

Followership and leadership provide two distinct but complementary sets of behaviors that jointly contribute to positive team dynamics. Yet, followership is rarely measured in shared leadership research. Using a prospective design with a sample of leaderless project teams, we examined the interdependence of leadership and followership and how these leader-follower dynamics relate to relationship conflict at the dyadic and team level. Supporting the reciprocity of leader-follower dynamics, social relations analyses revealed that uniquely rating a teammate higher on effective leadership was (...) associated with being rated higher by that same person on effective followership. Additionally, team members with a reputation as an effective leader also tended to be viewed as an effective follower. As expected, team levels of leadership were tightly linked to team levels of followership. Connecting these results to relationship conflict at the dyadic level, we found that uniquely rating someone as an effective follower or an effective leader would decrease the likelihood of experiencing interpersonal conflict with that person and that having a reputation for effective followership or effective leadership relates negatively to being viewed as a conflict hub within the team. Finally, effective followership was significantly negatively related to team levels of conflict, but we did not find a significant relation between effective leadership and relationship conflict at the team level. Our results highlight that followership is not only a necessary ingredient for high levels of shared leadership to exist within a team, but it underpins more functional team interactions. (shrink)

Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko, a tragic and schizophrenic science fiction coming-of-age tale is a perplexing and paradoxical film with multiple interpretations and many aporias of meaning. In this examination, I first compare the two standard phenomenological ways to regard the film: either Donnie exists in a science fiction world or he is schizophrenic. Second, I pose a new and divergent reading of the filmic world: Donnie is a character in a story of artistic mourning. Third, I compare the feature film (...) and the director's cut in terms of world and world view and conclude that the latter reduces the tragic existential hero to a scifi messiah. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza una recreación quijotesca en la novela de Graham Greene Monseñor Quijote. Para ello se utilizan dos términos procedentes del Derecho romano: los conceptos de autoridad y poder. En esta obra de Greene, la autoridad surge de los libros o de autores de libros, cuya lectura permite que la vida siga teniendo sentido. En Greene encontramos la estrategia de lectura conocida como las sortes virgilianae que permite a los personajes orientarse en las dificultades diarias. Sin embargo, (...) el poder está caracterizado por su condición iletrada, la ausencia de libros y su ignorancia. In this article a novel by Graham Greene entitled Monsignor Quixote is analysed, a book that involves a recreation of the novel by Cervantes. The author of this article employs two concepts from Roman law: authority and power in his analysis. In this work by Greene, authority arises from the books or the book writers, whose reading allows life to keep making sense. In Greene, a strategy of reading known as the sortes virgilianae is found and this allows the characters to get their bearings in the daily difficulties. However, power is described as illiterate, the absence of books and ignorance. (shrink)

La familia desde una relectura de la política de Aristóteles, elaborado por Pablo Andrés Heredia y Catya Ximena Torres Cordero, en el que se presenta un análisis de la obra de Aristóteles con la finalidad de establecer las diferencias existentes entre las percepciones clásica y moderna sobre la familia; a su vez, los autores se proponen reconocer la relevancia de la familia en la construcción de la sociedad y del Estado a partir del análisis dedos obras de la filosofía política (...) contemporánea: La condición humana de Hannah Arendt (1993) y Homo Saccer de Giorgio Agamben (1998); obras que a decir de los autores retoman, extienden el pensamiento aristotélico y establecen una serie de directrices para comprender el lugar de la familia en el ámbito público. (shrink)

We advocate and share the same theoretical framework for empirical research in ethics as exemplified in Christina Bicchieri’s The Grammar of Society. Our research differs from Bicchieri’s in our approach to experimentation: where she relies on lab experiments, we have constructed an experimental platform based on an internet survey instrument; where she relies on rational reconstructions, we do not. In this paper we focus on four contrasts in our methods: (1) we provide a space to explore ethical influence and norm (...) transmission between participants, belief and choice revision, and reputation over time; (2) we provide ways for participants to expand the context of their and others’ decisions; (3) we focus on more realistic ethical decisions than is allowed by games; and (4) we explain why Bicchieri’s method of rational reconstructions presents challenges to her theory of social norms. Our methods are complementary to Bicchieri’s, and together we can work toward developing more comprehensive empirically informed ethics. †To contact the authors, please write to Peter Danielson, W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics, University of British Columbia, 227‐6356 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, V6T 1Z2, Canada; e‐mail: pad@ethics.ubc.ca. (shrink)

This paper presents a proof of concept for a graphical models approach to assessing the moral coherence and moral robustness of systems of social interactions. “Moral coherence” refers to the degree to which the rights and duties of agents within a system are effectively respected when agents in the system comply with the rights and duties that are recognized as in force for the relevant context of interaction. “Moral robustness” refers to the degree to which a system of social interaction (...) is configured to ensure that the interests of agents are effectively respected even in the face of noncompliance. Using the case of conscientious objection of pharmacists to filling prescriptions for emergency contraception as an example, we illustrate how a graphical models approach can help stakeholders identify structural weaknesses in systems of social interaction and evaluate the relative merits of alternate organizational structures. By illustrating the merits of a graphical models approach we hope to spur further developments in this area. (shrink)

We propose a new hybrid data mining method for predicting protein-protein interactions combining Likelihood-Ratio with rule induction algorithms. In essence, the new method consists of using a rule induction algorithm to discover rules representing partitions of the data, and then the discovered rules are interpreted as “bins” which are used to compute likelihood ratios. This new method is applied to the prediction of protein-protein interactions in the Saccharomyces Cerevisiae genome, using predictive genomic features in an integrated scheme. The results show (...) that the new hybrid method outperforms a pure likelihood ratio based approach. (shrink)

Rønnow-Rasmussen’s book explores the distinction between two kinds of value: good, and good-for. Rønnow-Rasmussen provides a reductive theory of both kinds of goodness: a fitting attitude account of goodness, on which facts about value reduce to facts about the norms governing agents’ attitudes. But Rønnow-Rasmussen argues that they conflict in an especially sharp way, so that we have a kind of choice about which to prioritise, and no obvious grounds on which to choose one over the other. I articulate some (...) virtues of the book but also doubts about the central thesis. (shrink)

I review Shlomi Segall's book 'Why Inequality Matters'. I argue that it conclusively establishes that alongside egalitarians, prioritarians and sufficientarians must sometimes regard a prospect as better (in at least one respect) when it is not better (in terms of well-being) for anyone. Sufficientarians and prioritarians must therefore relinquish a treasured anti-egalitarian argument. It also makes a powerful case that among these three views, egalitarians are in the best position to explain such departures from what is in each person’s prudential (...) interest. For egalitarians can point to the natural idea that it is unfair when, due to pure chance, some fare much better than others. By contrast, it remains unclear what value, if any, sufficientarians or prioritarians can appeal to in order to justify their departures from what best promotes people’s well-being. (shrink)

This is a review of Context and Communication.