Any complete account of morality should be able to account for its characteristic normativity; we show that enactivism is able to do so while doing justice to the situated and interactive nature of morality. Moral normativity primarily arises in interpersonal interaction and is characterized by agents’ possibility of irrevocably changing each other’s autonomies, that is, the possibility of harming or expanding each other’s autonomy. We defend that moral normativity, as opposed to social and other forms of normativity, regulates and, in (...) some cases, constitutes this very possibility. Agents are thus morally responsible for caring about their own and others’ autonomies in interaction. In our conception, moral normativity is embodied, situated, and deeply affective, and is constituted in social practices and maintained in interaction. We identify at least two necessary conditions for moral normativity to arise as a social practice. The first is our embodied constitution as living beings who are precarious and therefore vulnerable and in need of interaction with others and with the environment. The second is our sociolinguistic nature, which allows us to exponentially expand our possibilities for action and normatively distinguish among them. We finish by drawing a distinction between moral character and the moral content of interactions, which allows us to universally recognize the ethical dimensions of all human interaction while doing justice to the situated character of morals. (shrink)

The United States health care industry is the second largest in the world, expending an estimated 479 million metric tons (MMT) of carbon dioxide per year, nearly 8 percent of the country's total emissions. The importance of carbon reduction in health care is slowly being accepted. However, efforts to “green” health care are incomplete since they generally focus on buildings and structures. Yet hospital care and clinical service sectors contribute the most carbon dioxide within the U.S. health care industry, with (...) structures/equipment and pharmaceuticals ranking as the third and fourth highest emitters in the industry. Given the magnitude of health care carbon emissions—and the paucity of attention to the carbon of hospital care and clinical services—this essay identifies overuse of health care as a health threat with serious ethical implications, offers a data‐driven action plan for carbon reduction in health care, and provides practical suggestions for more sustainable health care delivery in the United States. (shrink)

Gilbert et al. argue that the neuroethics literature discussing the putative effects of Deep Brain Stimulation on personality largely ignores the scientific evidence and presents distorted claims that personality change is induced by the DBS stimulation. This study contributes to the first-hand primary research on the topic exploring DBS clinicians’ views on post-DBS personality change among their patients and its underlying cause. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with sixteen clinicians from various disciplines working in Australian DBS practice for movement disorders and/or (...) psychiatric conditions. Thematic analysis of the interviews revealed five primary themes: 1) types, frequency and duration of personality change, 2) causes of personality change, 3) impact on patient and family, 4) communication, comprehension and awareness, and 5) management. Clinicians described a variety of personality changes in Parkinson’s disease following DBS including irritability, impulsivity and impaired decision-making. The frequency of personality change seen in patients varied amongst clinicians, but changes were overwhelmingly transient. Clinicians considered both DBS stimulation and additional factors as inducing personality change. For DBS patients with major depressive disorder, a restoration of pre-morbid personality was associated with alleviation of illness. Considerations for future research of personality change following DBS include selecting suitable tools for quantitative examination and developing a common language between the scientific and ethics communities. Clinical implications including recommendations for the informed consent process for patients and families and clinicians’ management of personality change are discussed. (shrink)

This article examines the best contemporary arguments for a feminist epistemology of scientific knowledge as found in recent works by S. Harding. I argue that no feminist epistemology of science is worthy of the name, because such an epistemology fails to escape well-known vicissitudes of epistemic relativism. But feminist epistemology merits attention from philosophers of science because it is part of a larger relativist turn in the social sciences and humanities that now aims to extend its critique to science, and (...) Harding's "standpoint feminism" is the best-developed case. She attempts to make new use of discredited philosophical ideas concerning underdetermination, Planck's Hypothesis, and the role of counterfactuals in historical studies of science. (shrink)

Providing therapy to deaf clients raises important ethical considerations for psychologists related to competence; multiple relationships and boundary issues; confidentiality; assessment, diagnosis, and evaluation; and communication and using interpreters. In evaluating and addressing these, psychologists must consider the American Psychological Association’s Ethics Code and other relevant issues necessary to provide ethical treatment. The current article provides background, ethical considerations, principles and standards relevant to the treatment of deaf clients, and recommendations to support psychologists, training programs, and the field. Psychologists have (...) the responsibility to guarantee that the benefits of mental health treatment are fairly and justly provided to this traditionally underserved population. (shrink)

This volume presents the first systematic evaluation of a feminist epistemology of sciences' power to transform both the practice of science and our society. Unlike existing critiques, this book questions the fundamental feminist suggestion that purging science of alleged male biases will advance the cause of both science and by extension, social justice. The book is divided into four sections: the strange status of feminist epistemology, testing feminist claims about scientific practice, philosophical and political critiques of feminist epistemology, and future (...) prospects of feminist epistemology. Each of the essays3/4most of which are original to this text3/4 directly confronts the very idea that there could be a feminist epistemology or philosophy of science. Rather than attempting to deal in detail with all of the philosophical views that fall under the general rubric of feminist epistemology, the contributors focus on positions that provide the most influential perspectives on science. Not all of the authors agree amongst themselves, of course, but each submits feminist theories to careful scrutiny. Scrutinizing Feminist Epistemology provides a timely, well-rounded, and much needed examination of the role of gender in scientific research. (shrink)

History and philosophy complement and overlap each other in subject matter, but the two disciplines exhibit conflict over methodology. Since Hempel's challenge to historians that they should adopt the covering law model of explanation, the methodological conflict has revolved around the respective roles of the general and the particular in each discipline. In recent years, the revival of narrativism in history, coupled with the trend in philosophy of science to rely upon case studies, joins the methodological conflict anew. So long (...) as contemporary philosophy of science relies upon history's methodology to construct its case studies, it subjects itself to a paradoxical situation: the better the history, the worse the philosophy. An example of the methodological conflict is presented in the case of Antoine Lavoisier. This example also serves our ultimateconclusion, which is that distinctively philosophical methods of case-study design promise enhanced prescriptive powers for philosophy of science. (shrink)

Collective memory can be used conceptually to examine African-American perceptions of wildlands and black interaction with such places. The middle-American view of wildlands frames these terrains as refuges—pure and simple, sanctified places distinct from the profanity of human modification. However, wild, primitive areas do not exist in the minds of all Americans as uncomplicated or uncontaminated places. Three labor-related institutions—forest labor, plantation agriculture, and sharecropping—and terrorism and lynching have impacted negatively on black perceptions of wildlands, producing an ambivalence toward such (...) places among African Americans. (shrink)

Attempting to escape from the substantialist cartesian dualism, some take our conceptual schemes as dualist. Thus, Feigl makes the distinction between the mental and the physical from an epistemological viewpoint, accepting as distinctive of the mental a direct and immediate knowledge which has no place in the physical, but however he accepts the identity between mental states and neurological states. In a similar way, Davidson, stating that all events are physical, characterizes the mental as a specific manner of describing neurological (...) events, which is also accepted by Quine in his latest books. I take that theory as implying that there are mental properties, like those defined by Searle as macroproperties of the brain. But I see no reason to talk about the mind, unless with the purpose of abbreviating more complex expressions like ‘the set of mental properties’, or perhaps ‘the set of human psychological capacities’, as Kenny proposes. (shrink)

The object of the essay is to examine what is basically mental in humans as compared to animals. Differences in respect of the concept of will and in respect of the concept of intellect are examined following ideas expressed by Anthony Kenny in The Metaphysics of Mind, and some criticisms are suggested. Accepting the thesis put forward by Edelman as well as by Damasio that a neurological self is necessary for the development of consciousness, a scientific reading is given to (...) Kant�s idea of the self as well as to that of Wittgenstein in the Tractatus. For the same reasons, Wittgenstein�s later rejection of the concept of self is criticized. (shrink)

Este trabalho visa discutir as representações femininas e o trajeto histórico da mulher em busca de emancipação mediante a instrução e a escrita. Tal discussão se insere no processo de expansão das fontes e dos objetos históricos. Este trabalho foi fundamentado na abordagem da História Cultural, tendo como referencial teórico fundamental o historiador Roger Chartier. Aqui também se objetiva compreender como as representações contribuíram para a construção dos papeis sociais femininos, bem como entender sua influência na manutenção/ transgressão desses papeis.

This article provides a review and critique of Animal Liberation and Atheism: Dismantling the Procrustean Bed by English professor, activist, and avowed political atheist Kim Socha. Socha engages in a twofold argument as she makes the case for animal liberation as a natural imperative of atheism. On the one hand, she denounces religious arguments for animal liberation as dead ends that rely on intellectual gymnastics and present what is actually secular thinking in religious guise. On the other hand, she identifies (...) contamination of atheist’s thinking by religious perspectives, primarily hierarchy, as the root of the failure of atheists to embrace animal liberation. Methodological difficulties are identified and critical questions raised in response to both the premises and conclusions of the work. (shrink)

The body image with respect to physical disability has long been a woefully under-theorized area of scholarship. The literature that does attend to the body image in cases of physical abnormality or functional impairment regularly offer poorly articulated or problematic definitions of the concept, effectively undermining its historic analytic scope and depth. Here, I revisit the epistemic roots of the body image while also engaging the rich contemporary literature from a body studies perspective in order to situate the narratives of (...) amputees about the relationship between dismemberment, prosthetization, phantom limb syndrome, and body image. Stories about living with artificial, fleshy, phantomed, and residual limbs unquestionably reveal a number of peculiarities unique to amputees. However, they also offer a distinctively productive ingress into the analytic utility of a ‘re-visioned’ conceptualization of the body image more broadly speaking. Indeed, the body image can function as a robust investigative tool for exploring the intersubjective, processual, and relational features of embodiment and corporeality. (shrink)

Efforts to understand gender segregation within and among science disciplines have focused on both supply- and demand-side explanations. Yet we know little about how academic scientists themselves view the sources of such segregation. Utilizing data from a survey of scientists at thirty top U.S. graduate programs in physics and biology and semistructured interviews with 150 of them, this article examines the reasons academic scientists provide for differences in the distribution of women in biology and physics. In quantitative analyses, gender is (...) more salient than discipline in determining the reasons scientists provide for gender disparities between disciplines, suggesting that gender may act as a “master status,” shaping the experiences of scientists regardless of the gender composition of the discipline. Qualitative interviews confirm this interpretation and reveal that scientists also perceive mentoring, natural differences, discrimination, and the history of the disciplines to be important factors. Results contribute to research on the relationship between emotional labor and occupational gender segregation conducted in professions such as law and nursing. (shrink)

Plasticity is a central concept in the philosophy of Catherine Malabou and the theory of animation. And yet, the temporal dimension of transformation and mutability that Malabou foregrounds in her philosophy is missing from recent theoretical accounts of plasticity in animation studies​. ​In these accounts, plasticity appears as a mode of spatial extension, conveying the elasticity of form across a Cartesian timeline, whereas Malabou aims to understand time’s own metamorphosis and self-differentiation. This article invokes Malabou’s theorization of plasticity as the (...) becoming of time itself rather than the becoming of things in time to rethink the perception of life-like movement in animation. Reviewing the techniques of animation that Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston describes in The Illusion of Life as “drawing in the fourth dimension”, I argue that Malabou’s characterization of plasticity as the capacity “to see (what is) coming” (voir venir) gets to the heart of animation as an art of subjective anticipation. Utilizing the human perceptual system’s tendency to invent new structures and relationships in response to changing inputs from the environment, animation prepares us to anticipate the unforeseeable and to perceive an order of movement typically concealed by the movement of objects in space. (shrink)

In their target article, Galasso (2024) highlights the limitations of upstream inclusion in precision medicine research to produce downstream benefits to participants and proposes precision public...

The 30th anniversary of the first DBS surgery of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) for Parkinson’s disease was celebrated in Grenoble this June. Since this initial surgery, the application of DBS has e...

Disability imagery, whether photographs, posters, or verbal or written discourse, comprises multiple viewpoints or gazes, ranging from the impaired physical body to the disabling social environment. In some instances, photographic image and accompanying text combine to reinforce the notion of persons with disabilities as helpless and needy people. These conceptualizations not only emphasize obvious prejudices and limited thinking about persons with disabilities, but also illustrate the consequences: persons with disabilities tend to assimilate the oppressive images constructed by society. In order (...) to create positive images of, for example, persons with brain injury, epilepsy or hemiplegia, we need to develop a disability consciousness that allows us to re-imagine (dis)ability in ways that value individual identity. In so doing, we raise critical questions about self and other. (shrink)

El intento de librarnos del dualismo sustancialista cartesiano conduce a algunos a traspasar el dualismo a nuestros esquemas de conceptualización. Así, Feigl coloca la distinción entre lo físico y lo mental en un nivel epistemológico, aceptando como distintivo de lo mental un conocimiento directo e inmediato que no tiene lugar con respecto a lo físico, aun cuando acepte la identidad entre los estados mentales y los estados cerebrales. De modo parecido, Davidson, manteniendo que todo suceso es físico, caracteriza lo mental (...) como una manera peculiar de describir los estados del cerebro, y es una idea... (Leer más) aceptada también por Quine en sus últimos libros. Me parece que esta explicación obliga a aceptar que haya propiedades mentales, como las que Searle, por ejemplo, define como macropropiedades del cerebro. Pero nada de ello justifica que sigamos hablando de la mente, a menos que sea para abreviar una expresión más compleja como �conjunto de las propiedades mentales�, o tal vez �conjunto de las capacidades psicológicas humanas�, como hace Kenny. (shrink)

This paper criticizes Coliingridge’s arguments against an epistemology of technological control. Collingridge claims that because prediction mechanisms are inadequate, his “dilemma of control” demonstrates that the sociopolitical impact of new technologies cannot be forecasted, and that, consequently, policy makers must concentrate their control measures on minimizing the costs required to alter entrenched technologies. I argue that Collingridge does not show on either horn that forecasting is impossible, and that his criticisms of forecasting methods are self-defeating for they undercut his positive (...) case for the control of entrenched technologies. Finally, I indicate an empirical base for forecasting risk that may define epistemic principles of technology assessment. (shrink)

Embracing the discipline of kindness -- Purifying the body -- Breath control -- Meditation on inner calm -- Divine consciousness.

This paper focuses on the metaphysical and conceptual structures of reality organization that exist currently in western culture. Taking a feminist perspective, this paper analyzes how some disfavored social groups actively have their identities manipulated and sometimes conceptually erased from the dominant conceptual scheme. Utilizing this analysis, it is concluded that this conceptual scheme perpetuates oppression; therefore, maintained loyalty to it is incompatible with the belief that all people should be treated as full persons.

(2002). Scarlet Letter or Chastity Belt? What Legal Dramas of the Twenty-first Century are “Telling” Law Students about a Career in Law. Legal Ethics: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 90-102.

Interpretation without Truth is the result of thirty years of research that Pierluigi Chiassoni has devoted to legal interpretation and legal reasoning. More generally, the book represents one of t...

Este artículo busca establecer en primer lugar una doble distinción: de un lado, entre fantasía y conciencia de imagen; y, por el otro, entre fantasía y conciencia estética, ambas a partir de los trabajos de Edmund Husserl. Las dos series de distinciones se encuentran ligadas una con otra por el especial estatuto fenomenológico que Husserl concede a la imagen, el cual debe ser también sometido a aclaración. El artículo propone tres conclusiones: que la así llamada “conciencia estética” no es resultado (...) de ninguna “epojé”; que la experiencia de la imagen entremezcla percepción y fantasía; y que esta conciencia estética exige como contrapolo a un sujeto que habita en la irrealidad del “como si”. (shrink)

Al aplicar la ética en la política se desvela un problema fundamental consistente entre su supuesta relación, llegando a entenderse como saberes opuestos, es preciso, pues, reflexionar en torno a su posible aplicación, o si, por el contrario, normatizar éticamente la política es imposible, utilizando la ayuda de métodos analíticos, deductivos e histórico-comparativos que sirvan de marco teórico. A causa de la negación ética en los procederes políticos surge una práctica política amoral, que mediante el sometimiento y la costumbre se (...) termina aceptando como algo políticamente normal, degenerando en una serie de problemas y creencias que imposibilitan cada vez más la aplicación de juicios morales a actuares políticos, es por ello que en la actualidad es normal pensar que lo único importante en la política es únicamente el fin, ignorando el daño que se pueda generar en el proceso. Sin embargo, la ética y política son acciones humanas, por lo tanto, se debe reflexionar sobre ellas con las herramientas brindadas por la ética política, aplicando juicios éticos y morales a los actuares inmediatos y prácticos encontrados en la política. (shrink)

During the late nineteenth century, scientists around the world disagreed as to the types of instruments and methods that should be used for determining the most important constant of celestial mechanics: the solar parallax. Venus’s 1874 transit across the sun was seen as the best opportunity for ending decades of debate. However, a mysterious “black drop” that appeared between Venus and the sun and individual differences in observations of the phenomenon brought traditional methods into disrepute. To combat these difficulties, the (...) astronomer Jules Janssen devised a controversial new instrument, the “photographic revolver,” that photographed Venus at regular intervals. Another solution came from physicists, who rivaled the astronomers’ dominance in precision measurements by deducing the solar parallax from physical measurements of the speed of light. Yet other astronomers relied on drawings and well‐trained observers. The new space emerging from this debate was characterized by a decline in faith in photography and in geometry and by the growing realization of the importance of alternative elements needed for establishing scientific truths: power and authority, skill and discipline, standardization, mechanical reproducibility, and theatricality. By examining the “cinematographic turn” in science and its alternatives, this essay brings to light unexplored multidisciplinary connections that contribute to the histories of psychology, philosophy, physics, and film studies. (shrink)

Observational learning can enhance the acquisition and performance quality of complex motor skills. While an extensive body of research has focused on the benefits of synchronous (i.e., concurrent physical practice) and non-synchronous (i.e., delayed physical practice) observational learning strategies, the question remains as to whether these approaches differentially influence performance outcomes. Accordingly, we investigate the differential outcomes of synchronous and non-synchronous observational training contexts using a novel dance sequence. Using multidimensional cross-recurrence quantification analysis, movement time-series were recorded for novice dancers (...) who either synchronised with (n = 22) or observed and then imitated (n = 20) an expert dancer. Participants performed a 16-count choreographed dance sequence for 20 trials assisted by the expert, followed by one final, unassisted performance trial. Although end-state performance did not significantly differ between synchronous and non-synchronous learners, a significant decline in performance quality from imitation to independent replication was shown for synchronous learners. A non-significant positive trend in performance accuracy was shown for non-synchronous learners. For all participants, better imitative performance across training trials led to better end-state performance, but only for the accuracy (and not timing) of movement reproduction. Collectively, the results suggest that synchronous learners came to rely on a realtime mapping process between visual input from the expert and their own visual and proprioceptive intrinsic feedback, to the detriment of learning. Thus, the act of synchronising alone does not ensure an appropriate training context for advanced sequence learning. (shrink)