All large-scale telescope facilities are constructed within a geographical, social, historical, and political context that includes nested layers at the global, national, and local levels. However, discussions about the geographic siting of astronomy facilities, for example, the communities in which they are embedded or the interactions between the facility and its locale, are uncommon in social science studies of astronomy, and no extant review focused on this gap in the literature. In this literature review and discourse analysis, we explore the (...) ways in which research about astronomy facilities and their local communities has emerged, and the extent to which it focuses on the Global South. We find that literature addressing the social and policy aspects of astronomy facilities has an emphasis on the Global North. However, literature addressing host communities has an emphasis on the Global South. Broadly, the discourses related to host communities in the Global South have emerged from reflections on the controversies related to large-scale telescopes in Hawai’i, Chile, and South Africa. One common theme linking these discourses is that a focus on benefits at the national and international levels obscures a range of problematic power dynamics and outcomes at the local level. The notion of the Global South as an ‘empty space’ in which astronomical observation does not constitute impactful action amongst local communities, is challenged by discourses that centre local contexts, and challenged by discourses that employ conceptual frameworks with a focus on revealing power dynamics. (shrink)

Mounting ambitions and capabilities for public and private, non-government sector crewed space exploration bring with them an increasingly diverse set of space travelers, raising new and nontrivial ethical, legal, and medical policy and practice concerns which are still relatively underexplored. In this piece, we lay out several pressing issues related to ethical considerations for selecting space travelers and conducting human subject research on them, especially in the context of non-governmental and commercial/private space operations.

The true story of Dr. Caroline Crocker's experience as an adjunct science professor at George Mason University. Addresses her teaching techniques, methodology, and perceived discrimination. Also provides a semi-biographical account of her experience with students.

Pesquisas com vitimizadores sexuais infantis são escassas, especialmente em contexto nacional. Objetivou-se descrever o perfil sociodemográfico, judicial e as experiências na família de origem de homens condenados pelo crime de estupro de vulnerável. Trata-se de um estudo transversal descritivo, realizado com 49 homens em cumprimento de pena. Foi realizado levantamento documental dos processos judiciais e aplicação de questionário de dados sociodemográficos e judiciais, além do Family Background Questionnaire. Análises estatísticas descritivas e inferenciais revelaram predomínio de vitimizadores solteiros (53,1%), mas com (...) filhos (82,2%). Somente 6,1% tinham diagnóstico de transtorno pedofílico. Os crimes ocorreram preponderantemente em contexto intrafamiliar (54,5%) e com vítimas do sexo feminino (74,3%). Mais de 30% revelaram contato sexual indesejado ao longo da vida. Os vitimizadores de contextos extrafamiliares vivenciaram significativamente mais negligência na família de origem (M=22,71) do que os intrafamiliares (M=14,66). Ressalta-se a necessidade de novos estudos para compreender com mais abrangência o perfil desta população. (shrink)

When people lose capacity to make a medical decision, the standard is to assess what their preferences would have been and try to honor their wishes. Dementia raises a special case in such situations, given its long, progressive trajectory during which others must make substituted judgments. The question of how to help surrogates make better‐informed decisions has led to the development of dementia‐specific advance directives, in which people are given tools to help them communicate what their preferences are while they (...) are still able. Such directives allow the perspective of the person to play a clearer role in guiding decisions about their care. Dementia directives can never serve as rigid algorithms. Rather, they can be used to help inform conversations, to help surrogates make decisions that are better aligned with the preferences the person would have had. This essay lays out the proposed utility of dementia‐specific directives and addresses some of the criticisms raised about them. (shrink)

James Lenman argues that consequentialism fails as a moral theory because it is impossible to predict the long-term consequences of our actions. I agree that it is impossible to predict the long-term consequences of actions, but argue that this does not count as a strike against consequentialism. I focus on the principle of indifference, which tells us to treat unforeseeable consequences as cancelling each other out, and hence value-neutral. I argue that though we cannot defend this principle independently, we cannot (...) do without it in practical rationality. Thus abandoning the principle of indifference would involve abandoning all of rationality, not just consequentialist reasoning. I suggest that we should understand the principle as P. F. Strawson understands inductive reasoning – as being part of rationality. Correspondence:c1 Elinor.Mason@colorado.edu. (shrink)

The ability to explain the occurrence of errors in children's speech is an essential component of successful theories of language acquisition. The present study tested some generativist and constructivist predictions about error on the questions produced by ten English-learning children between 2 and 5 years of age. The analyses demonstrated that, as predicted by some generativist theories [e.g. Santelmann, L., Berk, S., Austin, J., Somashekar, S. & Lust. B. (2002). Continuity and development in the acquisition of inversion in yes/no questions: (...) dissociating movement and inflection, Journal of Child Language, 29, 813-842], questions with auxiliary DO attracted higher error rates than those with modal auxiliaries. However, in wh-questions, questions with modals and DO attracted equally high error rates, and these findings could not be explained in terms of problems forming questions with why or negated auxiliaries. It was concluded that the data might be better explained in terms of a constructivist account that suggests that entrenched item-based constructions may be protected from error in children's speech, and that errors occur when children resort to other operations to produce questions [e.g. Dabrowska, E. (2000). From formula to schema: the acquisition of English questions. Cognitive Liguistics, 11, 83-102; Rowland, C. F. & Pine, J. M. (2000). Subject-auxiliary inversion errors and wh-question acquisition: What children do know? Journal of Child Language, 27, 157-181; Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press]. However, further work on constructivist theory development is required to allow researchers to make predictions about the nature of these operations. (shrink)

Comparison between different animal species is omnipresent in the history of science and medicine but rarely subject to focussed historical analysis. The articles in the “Working Across Species” topical collection address this deficit by looking directly at the practical and epistemic work of cross-species comparison. Drawn from papers presented at a Wellcome-Trust-funded workshop in 2016, these papers investigate various ways that comparison has been made persuasive and successful, in multiple locations, by diverse disciplines, over the course of two centuries. They (...) explore the many different animal features that have been considered to be comparable, and the ways that animals have shaped science and medicine through the use of comparison. Authors demonstrate that comparison between species often transcended the range of practices typically employed with experimental animal models, where standardised practises and apparatus were applied to standardised bodies to produce generalizable, objective data; instead, comparison across species has often engaged diverse groups of non-standard species, made use of subjective inferences about phenomena that cannot be directly observed, and inspired analogies that linked physiological and behavioural characteristics with the apparent affective state of non-human animals. Moreover, such comparative practices have also provided unusually fruitful opportunities for collaborative connections between different research traditions and disciplines. (shrink)

This paper explores the history of ELIZA, a computer programme approximating a Rogerian therapist, developed by Jospeh Weizenbaum at MIT in the 1970s, as an early AI experiment. ELIZA’s reception provoked Weizenbaum to re-appraise the relationship between ‘computer power and human reason’ and to attack the ‘powerful delusional thinking’ about computers and their intelligence that he understood to be widespread in the general public and also amongst experts. The root issue for Weizenbaum was whether human thought could be ‘entirely computable’. (...) This also provoked him to re-consider the nature of machine intelligence and to question the instantiation of its logics in the social world, which would come to operate, he said, as a ‘slow acting poison’. Exploring Weizenbaum’s 20th Century apostasy, in the light of ELIZA, illustrates ways in which contemporary anxieties and debates over machine smartness connect to earlier formations. In particular, this article argues that it is in its designation as a computational therapist that ELIZA is most significant today. ELIZA points towards a form of human–machine relationship now pervasive, a precursor of the ‘machinic therapeutic’ condition we find ourselves in, and thus speaks very directly to questions concerning modulation, autonomy, and the new behaviorism that are currently arising. (shrink)

Feminist Philosophy: An Introduction provides a comprehensive coverage of the core elements of feminist philosophy in the analytical tradition. Part 1 examines the feminist issues and practical problems that confront us as ordinary people. Part 2 examines the recent and historical arguments surrounding the subject area, looking into the theoretical frameworks we use to discuss these issues and applying them to everyday life. -/- With contemporary and lively debates throughout, Elinor Mason provides a rigorous and yet accessible overview of (...) a rich array of topics including: -/- feminism in a global context work and care reproductive rights sex work sexual violence and harassment sexism, oppression, and misogyny intersectionality objectification consent ideology, false consciousness, and adaptive preferences. -/- An outstanding introduction which will equip the reader with a thorough knowledge of the fundamentals of feminism, Feminist Philosophy is essential reading for those approaching the subject for the first time. (shrink)

ArgumentThis article offers a social history of the “Galois Affair,” which arose in 1831 when the French Academy of Sciences decided to reject a paper presented by an aspiring mathematician, Évariste Galois. In order to historicize the meaning of Galois's work at the time he tried to earn recognition for his research on the algebraic solution of equations, this paper explores two interrelated questions. First, it analyzes scholarly algebraic practices and the way mathematicians were trained in the nineteenth century to (...) reconstruct the scientific meaning of Galois's research. By emphasizing the historically contingent nature of scientific debates, the paper argues that to historicize the work of a mathematician, we must historicize the scientific world as well. The second part of this article goes further to seek a fresh perspective on Galois's short career by analyzing the cultural, social, and institutional dynamics that governed how the mathematical community came to recognize an aspiring mathematician as one of its own. (shrink)

The development of a human right to water and sanitation under international law has created an imperative to implement human rights in water and sanitation policy. Through forty-three interviews with informants in international institutions, national governments, and non-governmental organizations, this research examines interpretations of this new human right in global governance, national policy, and local practice. Exploring obstacles to the implementation of rights-based water and sanitation policy, the authors analyze the limitations of translating international human rights into local water and (...) sanitation practice, concluding that system operators, utilities, and management boards remain largely unaffected by the changing public policy landscape for human rights realization. To understand the relevance of human rights standards to water and sanitation practitioners, this article frames a research agenda to ensure that human rights aspirations lead to public policy reforms and public health outcomes. (shrink)

Cet article analyse les débuts de la Revue du Mois, revue de culture générale à caractère scientifique créée en 1905 par le mathématicien Émile Borel. À une période où des périodiques de format similaire se multiplient, l’originalité de l’entreprise réside dans l’association d’articles présentant à un large public les enjeux des recherches récentes (en sciences exactes, expérimentales, mais aussi humaines), et de thèmes plus légers, comme des chroniques théâtrales et littéraires. En examinant la préparation des premiers numéros, l’article dévoile les (...) intentions et la mise en acte de ce projet. Il étudie notamment comment a été définie la ligne éditoriale, comment ambition scientifique et vocation généraliste ont pu coïncider, et comment la revue est parvenue à conquérir son public. (shrink)

Writing and that which it entails are the subject of countless texts by Maurice Blanchot. In particular, Blanchot has focused on the notion of the work, or more precisely on a groundlessness or an absence of the work, which he has designated from different perspectives over the course of more than half a century. In various ways, Blanchot has conceived of the work as an affirmation of its undoing. The question of narration, often about a confrontation with death, is fundamentally (...) important, as is evident for example in Blanchot’s Death Sentence, The Madness of the Day or The Instant of My Death. In a sense, it is bound up with the possibility of the work. Writing about Henry James in “The Turn of the Screw” 2 in The Book to Come, Blanchot discusses narration. What is described is indeed a certain absence of the work relating to the writer’s difficult struggle to narrate everything. I will examine Blanchot’s reading of James to expose this conception of narration centred on seizing the truth. It is apparent that Blanchot approaches the question very differently in “Narrative Voice ,” in The Infinite Conversation in which there is a decentring of the work. 3 I will show that this text as well as certain writings by Derrida make it possible to arrive at a conception of narration in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw which strongly contrasts with the one put forward by Blanchot in The Book to Come. Thus, alongside Blanchot’s reading of The Turn of the Screw which relates to the project of realising the work as a totality, Blanchot makes possible a more radical approach to the text, illustrating the non-totalization of the work whose borders are uncertain. In this way, Blanchot can be shown to step beyond an impossible conception of the absence of the work. (shrink)

This book contains essays presented at a symposium on evidence and data presented by the America Philosophical Society. The essays discuss the role of evidence in interpreting anthropological fieldwork; human psychology; the mechanisms of artificial intelligence; and claims about the past. The natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities are all represented.

Nietzsche's remarks about women and femininity have generated a great deal of debate among philosophers, some seeing them as ineradicably misogynist, others interpreting them more favorably as ironic and potentially useful for modern feminism. In this study, Kay Picart uses a genealogical approach to track the way Nietzsche's initial use of "feminine" mythological figures as symbols for modernity's regenerative powers gradually gives way to an increasingly misogynistic politics, resulting in the silencing and emasculation of his earlier configurations of the "feminine." (...) While other scholars have focused on classifying the degree of offensiveness of Nietzsche's ambivalent and developing misogyny, Picart examines what this misogyny means for his political philosophy as a whole. Picart successfully shows how Nietzsche's increasingly derogatory treatment of the "feminine" in his post-Zarathustran works is closely tied to his growing resentment over his inability to revive a decadent modernity. (shrink)

Jeff Mason looks at what Plato had to say about love and desire.

Marilyn Mason, education officer of the British Humanist Association, asks whether an adequate moral education must involve religion, and reflects on the way that attitudes to moral education have changed over the last fifty years.

Mason on the question: "What are the most important unsolved questions in political philosophy and/or related disciplines and what are the prospects for progress?" Political philosophy rarely, if ever, solves problems once and for all. Old problems usually persist despite attempts to resolve them, and even when they are successfully resolved, new ones arise from the ashes of the old. In my view, however, it would be a mistake to conclude from this that political philosophy makes no progress. We (...) should not measure progress in terms of problems solved or questions answered, but rather in terms of improved understanding. Progress occurs though clarifying the question that is being asked and by coming to a better understanding of which answers to that question are coherent. I think considerable progress has been made in the study of justice, in the sense that we understand the issues much better, though there are still many that we do not understand very well, for example, issues to do with the moral significance of national or state boundaries, and the issue of when justice requires people to bear the costs of their behaviour. I do not doubt that progress, in the sense of improved understanding, will be made on these issues as they come to the forefront of political philosophy. (shrink)

This thesis is guided by the following question: what, if anything, makes a life meaningful? My answer to this question is asymmetric welfarism about meaning in life. According to asymmetric welfarism, the meaning of a life depends upon two factors. First, a life is conferred meaning insofar as it promotes or protects the well-being of other welfare subjects. Second, a life is made meaningless insofar as it decreases or minimises the well-being of other welfare subjects. The meaning of a life (...) is determined by the net balance between these two factors; the more the good outweighs the bad, the more meaningful a life that is. I argue that asymmetric welfarism is the most plausible theory about meaning in life. To do this, I show how such a view captures a variety of intuitions about meaning in life while defending it from objections. This is the business of chapters 1, 2, and 3. Specifically, chapter 1 lays the groundwork, chapter 2 advances the case in favour of asymmetric welfarism, while chapter 3 defends asymmetric welfarism from objections. But some objections cannot be so easily overturned by a mere argument. Such objections do not just count against asymmetric welfarism, but also support competing theories. In order to overcome both, I show how such objections, and the theories they motivate, are best understood as tracking a different, but related, evaluative dimension a life can have. This is the business of chapters 4, 5, and 6. Specifically, chapter 4 argues that subjective theories are best understood as being about fulfilment, chapter 5 argues that purpose theories are best understood as being about purpose, and chapter 6 argues that differing views about the role of morality confuse morality and significance with meaning. These other evaluative dimensions which stand alongside meaning in life are fulfilment, purpose, significance, morality, and prudential value. (shrink)

Epistemologists, like other philosophers, sometimes try to convince us of the truth of their claims about the nature of knowledge by appeals to our epistemic intuitions. Sometimes intuitions are gathered and deployed against an epistemological theory: as, for example, when our intuitive judgement that the subject in a Gettier case fails to know what he justifiably and truly believes is used to undermine the view that knowledge is justified true belief. Othertimes intuitions are gathered and deployed in support of an (...) epistemological theory: as, for example, when the same intuition about the Gettier case is used to support the view that knowledge is true belief that could not easily have been wrong. In a more sophisticated way (which I shall describe in more detail), contextualists about knowledge have made appeal to epistemic intuitions a central part of the arguments they offer in support of their view. Appeals to intuition, then, are central to the current methodology of epistemology. (shrink)

While many Catholic hospitals permit the prescription of the emergency contraception drug levonorgestrel for rape victims, some continue to prohibit this practice as a matter of institutional conscience. While the standard approach to this issue has been to offer an argument that levonorgestrel either is or is not morally permissible, we have taken a different tack. We begin by briefly describing and acknowledging that reasonable disagreement exists on this question (part one), and then arguing that the reasonable disagreement itself can (...) serve as a compelling basis for Catholic leadership at hospitals that prohibit emergency contraception for rape victims to accommodate physicians who wish to provide levonorgestrel as a matter of conscience (part two). We end by anticipating and responding to some objections. (shrink)

It is widely presumed, at least among typical Western physicians and medical lay persons, that the Hippocratic and the Judeo- Christian traditions in medical ethics are closely connected or at least compatible. We examine the historical, metaethical, and normative relationships between them, and we find virtually no evidence of any historical links prior to the ninth century. In fact, important differences between them are found. The Hippocratic Oath appears to reflect the environment of a Greek mystery cult. It includes a (...) commitment to secrecy and a sense of community alien to Judeo- Christian tradition. Differences between the two traditions on the issues of killing and life prolongation, abortion, surgery, and normative ethical principles including truth-telling, autonomy, and justice are also explored. We conclude that important differences not only exist but also raise serious problems for persons identifying with both traditions. (shrink)

Jeffrey A. Mason has written an informative, accessible guide to today's most popular form of philosophical writing, the journal-length essay. The Philosopher's Address does what no other book on the market has attempted: it takes the reader behind the scenes of the writing process to expose the rhetorical underpinnings of philosophical texts. Mason argues that readers need to understand why philosophical writing is constructed as it is, and to be aware of the rhetorical devices by which authors seek (...) to persuade them if they are to engage fully with these texts. This book is intended for a broad audience of specialists and students alike. Professional scholars will appreciate Mason's astute discussion of current trends within analytic philosophy, while students will benefit greatly from his comprehensive understanding of the social context in which philosophical discourse is produced, its various and competing schools of thought, and the theoretical concepts that inform them. (shrink)

Since we have learned that human organs can be used to treat severe health problems, only donation has been considered for organ procurement. Among the other possibilities that can be used after a person’s death, purchase or systematic removal have been a priori rejected. However, we will show that the appeal to individual altruism have resulted in some of the aporias of the present situation. Subsequently, we will consider how systematic organ removal from deceased persons can be made acceptable in (...) liberal and democratic societies. Finally, we will suggest that individual choices with regard to systematic organ removal could well be registered in a way that allows proper implementation of present French legislation. (shrink)

Probing semantic relations Exploration and identification in specialized texts Alain Auger and Caroline Barrière In recent years, several scientific ...