The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 3, Page 46-48, March 2012.

It is a pleasure to comment on Giulia Cavaliere’s ‘ Gestation, Equality and Freedom: Ectogenesis as a Political Perspective’ in what one might say is ‘enthusiastic disagreement’. The enthusiastic part is because the article is deserving of much praise for adding an important feminist and political theoretical perspective on ectogenesis. The disagreement may come more from disciplinary differences or disposition. As I understand her argument, Cavaliere intends to attack two common arguments in favour of research into ectogenesis—that is, gestation of (...) a human fetus outside the womb—one that sounds in the potential of the technology to promote equality, the other that it has the potential to promote liberty. On the first her critique is that the risks and burdens of gestation for women are most pronounced for the worst off, but ectogenesis is unlikely to be used by them. On the second her critique is, i nter alia, that treating ‘ectogenesis as a means to address workplace inequalities calls for solutions that change the way society reproduces itself rather than a labour market …. (shrink)

With the breakdown of traditional racial boundaries in many areas of the world, the widespread and growing consumption of skin-lightening products testifies to the increasing significance of colorism—social hierarchy based on gradations of skin tone within and between racial/ethnic groups. Light skin operates as a form of symbolic capital, one that is especially critical for women because of the connection between skin tone and attractiveness and desirability. Far from being an outmoded practice or legacy of past colonialism, the use of (...) skin lighteners is growing fastest among young, urban, educated women in the global South. Although global in scope, the skin-lightening market is highly segmented by nation, culture, race, and class. This article examines the “yearning for lightness” and skin-lightening practices in various societies and communities and the role of transnational pharmaceutical and cosmetic corporations in fueling the desire for lighter skin through print, Internet, and television ads that link light skin with modernity, social mobility, and youth. (shrink)

Lying is one of the characteristic features of psychopathy, and has been recognized in clinical and diagnostic descriptions of the disorder, yet individuals with psychopathic traits have been found to have reduced neural activity in many of the brain regions that are important for lying. In this study, we examine brain activity in sixteen individuals with varying degrees of psychopathic traits during a task in which they are instructed to falsify information or tell the truth about autobiographical and non-autobiographical facts, (...) some of which was related to criminal behavior. We found that psychopathic traits were primarily associated with increased activity in the anterior cingulate, various regions of the prefrontal cortex, insula, angular gyrus, and the inferior parietal lobe when participants falsified information of any type. Associations tended to be stronger when participants falsified information about criminal behaviors. Although this study was conducted in a small sample of individuals and the task used has limited ecological validity, these findings support a growing body of literature suggesting that in some contexts, individuals with higher levels of psychopathic traits may demonstrate heightened levels of brain activity. (shrink)

In several places in Totality and Infinity, Levinas criticizes Socratic education for being emblematic of the totalizing tendency of Western thought. Levinas finds in Socratic maieutics another instance of the reduction of exteriority to interiority, heteronomy to autonomy, and the Other to the Same. Here, I explore Levinas’s critique and offer a possible response by arguing that maieutics does not deny the alterity of others but requires it. I find, therefore, that a Platonic conception of education as maieutics could be (...) a promising resource for rethinking how we engage students in the classroom in a way that is consonant with Levinas’s ethics. (shrink)

When one examines the emerging debate about genetic patenting, it becomes clear that those who oppose so-called misunderstand genetics or apply inappropriate moral and jurisprudential theory. In this brief essay I examine some arguments against gene patents of the variety, and conclude that patents on methods for detecting the presence of a genetic correlation with disease-related (and other) phenotypes can be appropriate, and that with several precautions the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office should continue granting patent protection to investigators who (...) generate genetic disease diagnostic innovations. (shrink)

This is the first book-length analysis of the techniques and procedures of ancient mathematical commentaries. It focuses on examples in Chinese, Sanskrit, Akkadian and Sumerian, and Ancient Greek, presenting the general issues by constant detailed reference to these commentaries, of which substantial extracts are included in the original languages and in translation, sometimes for the first time. This makes the issues accessible to readers without specialized training in mathematics or in the languages involved. The result is a much richer understanding (...) than was hitherto possible of the crucial role of commentaries in the history of mathematics in four different linguistic areas, of the nature of mathematical commentaries in general, of the contribution that the study of mathematical commentaries can make to the history of science and to the study of commentaries in general, and of the ways in which mathematical commentaries are like and unlike other kinds of commentaries. (shrink)

Should anonymous sperm “donation”—a misnomer, since sperm is usually purchased—be permitted? A number of countries, including Sweden, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, and several Australian states, have answered no.1 The United Kingdom recently joined this list, instituting a system whereby new sperm (and egg) donors must put information into a registry, and a donor-conceived child “is entitled to request and receive their donor’s name and last known address, once they reach the age of 18.”2 The arguments offered (...) by the legislators in these jurisdictions in favor of these measures, along with the arguments offered by scholarly proponents such as Naomi Cahn, focus on one major .. (shrink)

Professor Sparrow’s (2022) Target Article helpfully elucidates the question of when the ordinary person-affecting conception of harm and benefit should apply to discussions of germline genome editi...

The following key ideas of the Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977) can already be found in the nineteenth century German philosopher, Franz von Baader (1765–1841): religious antithesis, the law idea (Wetsidee) contrasted with autonomy of thought, Ground Motives in history, the method of antinomy, the use of Kant’s ideas to criticize Kant’s own Critique, cosmic time, the supratemporal heart, the prism analogy, modalities, sphere sovereignty, sphere universality, analogies of time, anticipation and retrocipation, Christ as the Second Root, pre-theoretical experience, the (...) Subject-Object relation, the Gegenstand relation, theoretical synthesis, and cultural unfolding. A comparison with Baader helps to interpret Dooyeweerd. (shrink)

The role of the healer is expanding. Attempts by physicians to enhance human capacity are but one among many new medical projects. The twentieth century ushered in significant changes in therapeutic modalities, and the past two decades have seen the role of the physician reshaped by economic, political, and dramatic new social mores. People ask new and different things of their clinicians. Under managed care, the primary care clinician is expected to have much more skill than was traditionally expected of (...) a general internist, and new incentives force physicians to much more explicitly ration the care they provide to patients and to patient populations. But perhaps no change in the contemporary world of health portends more long-term effects than the introduction of enhancement technologies. (shrink)

Parts and wholes come in an infinite variety, but in each instance something, namely relations, joins the parts together to make them into a whole rather than an Aristotelian "heap." The ontological status of relations is the subject of this dissertation. ;The question of whether relations are real presupposes some method of determining what is real. A modified version of Whitehead's ontological principle, or the idea that only real things can have effects on other things, serves as the test of (...) the reality. If any effects result from a whole but not from a collection of parts, then a whole differs from its parts and relations are real. Such effects can manifest themselves in two ways: parts themselves may somehow be affected by being joined into a whole or some new property may emerge with a whole that cannot be attributed to the parts taken separately. If one discovers either type of effect, then relations are real. ;The first section of the dissertation is an historical examination on the question of the reality of the relations. In the first chapter, the positions of Hume, Parmenides and Whitehead are considered but ultimately rejected. The second chapter examines the positions of Aristotle and Wittgenstein, thinkers for whom relations are in some cases real, while the third examines Plato's idea on relations. ;In the fourth chapter, a distinction between two types of relations is drawn. The difference between these relations is found in whether or not the parts joined are affected by being in a whole. Static relations are those which join parts into a whole without affecting those parts, while parts joined by dynamic relations are affected by being in a whole. Both static and dynamic wholes possess emergent properties which come into being only when parts are joined into wholes. ;The second section focuses on the consequences of the reality of relations in philosophy, specifically in ethics, logic and the philosophy of space and time. (shrink)

This article is an imaginary Socratic dialogue between J. S. Mill and Michel Foucault, principally concerning educational assessment.

This book contains over 150 role plays for elementary aged students that will help them to develop social skills and self-understanding.

Locke & Bogin (L&B) propose that humans are unique in possessing stages of childhood and adolescence. Arguments to the contrary include evidence for a similar and adaptive juvenile period in simians of slow growth, intense play and learning, and provisioning with solid food by adults. Likewise, simians as well as humans undergo a compensatory growth spurt during puberty.

Book reviewed in this article: The Making of Rehabilitation. By Glenn Gritzer and Arnold Arluke.

Degrees of belief; Dempster's rule of combination; Simple and separable support functions; The weights of evidence; Compatible frames of discernment; Support functions; The discernment of evidence; Quasi support functions; Consonance; Statistical evidence; The dual nature of probable reasoning.

Glenn Alexander Magee's controversial book argues that Hegel was decisively influenced by the Hermetic tradition, a body of thought with roots in Greco-Roman ...

An account of the conflict between our positive and negative emotional relationships to the Earth and how they will be resolved for the Symbiocene, the next period in the history of the Earth.

How do modern Muslims adapt their traditions to engage with today's world? Charles Tripp's erudite and incisive book considers one of the most significant challenges faced by Muslims over the last sixty years: the challenge of capitalism. By reference to the works of noted Muslim scholars, the author shows how, faced by this challenge, these intellectuals devised a range of strategies which have enabled Muslims to remain true to their faith, whilst engaging effectively with a world not of their (...) own making. The work is framed around the development of their ideas on Islamic socialism, economics and the rationale for Islamic banking. While some Muslims have resorted to confrontation or insularity to cope with the challenges of modernity, most have aspired to innovation and ingenuity in the search for compromise and interaction with global capitalism in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Anyone who is serious about sustainable development must also be serious about addressing the issues of women. Most of the activities involved in promoting and implementing sound development work are, in fact, the responsibility of the women. They are the ones who carry the water, grow and prepare the food and care for the children. They remain in the community, even when the men go to the city or abandon the family altogether. Women carry an enormous burden, and suffer as (...) a result. Those committed to working with the poor in communities must be willing to bring women into the process of dialogue and planning from the start. Culture and traditions that perpetrate a cycle of exploitation and injustice against women must be challenged and changed. This is possible only through the participation and transformation of the people themselves. (shrink)

Glenn Langford; Teaching as a Social Practice: a reply to S. B. Brooke-Norris, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 20, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 235–24.

Glenn Langford; XI—Rules, Moral Rules and the Subjects of Moral Predicates, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 69, Issue 1, 1 June 1969, Pages 187–.

Rancière’s reception among political theorists connects to what some have called an “aesthetic turn” in the study of politics. One feature of this turn is a critique of the emphasis on reason found in Rawls- and Habermas-inspired political thought. At least on the standard readings of them, Rawls and Habermas conceive of politics as a process of adjudicating competing interests and validity claims. Political theory then becomes an effort to determine the principles that should guide this adjudication and how they (...) might be institutionalized. For theorists of the aesthetic turn, however, such an approach to politics overlooks fundamental issues, specifically about what is sensed and how... (shrink)