Conducting feminist research during the global COVID-19 pandemic has evoked a renewed interest in the concept of care within our research team. The purpose of this paper is to provide concrete examples of how feminist ethics of care changed the initial and ongoing design of a community-engaged research project in Ontario, Canada. Drawing from examples and lessons learned, we focus on various adjustments to our methodological decision-making that intentionally honoured and prioritized our responsibilities to community partners, research participants, broader communities (...) impacted by research, and the research team. By illustrating the methodological and ethical implications of these decisions, we argue that attending to these responsibilities prioritized both feminist research ethics and feminist ethics of care. As a result, we propose moving towards a conceptualization of a feminist research ethics of care, and discuss the value of this concept for researchers studying social justice. (shrink)

This paper examines the situation of rurally rooted cross-border migrant workers from Myanmar during the Covid-19 pandemic. It looks at the circumstances of the migrants prior to the global health emergency, before exploring possibilities for a post-pandemic future for this stratum of the working people by raising critical questions addressed to agrarian movements. It does this by focusing on the nature and dynamics of the nexus of land and labour in the context of production and social reproduction, a view that (...) in the context of rurally rooted cross-border migrant workers necessarily requires interrelated perspectives on labour, agrarian, and food justice struggles. This requires a rethinking of the role of land, not as a factor in either production or social reproduction, but as a central component in both spheres simultaneously. The question is not ‘whether’ it is necessary and desirable to forge multi-class coalitions and struggles against external capital, while not losing sight of the exploitative relations within rural communities and the household; rather, the question is ‘how’ to achieve this. It will require a messy recursive process, going back and forth between theoretical exploration and practical politics. (shrink)

In the first book on the development of John Dewey's ethical thought, Jennifer Welchman revises the prevalent interpretation of his ethics. Her clear and engaging account traces the history of Dewey's distinctive moral philosophy from its roots in idealism during the 1890s through the pragmatist approach of his 1922 work, Human Nature and Conduct. Central to the development of Dewey's ethics was his lifelong conviction that the realms of science and morals, facts and values were reconcilable. This conviction, Welchman (...) demonstrates, drove Dewey to reject the orthodox ethics of his day in favor of radical alternatives?first absolute idealism and later pragmatism. She reveals how Dewey came to adopt and subsequently to modify idealist ethics of self-realization. Welchman then explores the transformations in Dewey's conception of science that exploded the fragile truce between fact and value that he had negotiated as an idealist. Finally, she examines how Dewey developed his own instrumentalist accounts of moral value, conduct, and character that culminated in his best-known work of ethics, Human Nature and Conduct. (shrink)

Under normal circumstances the church would function as an agent of change and transformation, but this article focuses on the church herself that needs radical change if she is to remain relevant in mission and ministry in this current era. Clericalism and the centralisation of hierarchical control can be identified as the root causes of institutional pathology and weakening collegiality. To address clericalism may require the adjustment of seminary training, as in the current system seminarians are nurtured in a (...) sense of separateness, promoting male-ego and feed gender exclusivity and doctrinal self-righteousness. While the seminary was once an instrument of reform in the Catholic Church, established to counter problems such as clerical concubinage and illiteracy, but now it is no longer suitable as it has become the forum that breeds other problems. Priority attention should be paid to purge the church of rampant clericalism, discriminatory scapegoating of gay persons, marginalisation of free thinkers, exclusion of women priests, the perceived moral laxity of family life issues and reception of communion by divorced Catholics without the benefits of annulment. Discrediting the personal authority of the pope is hardly an enlightened option. What ought to be transformed is the centralisation of control and allowing increased localised dominion whereby crises such as sexual abuse scandals could be addressed and solved more speedily and liberally, and limit the need to go to the top for solutions. To wait for centralised, hierarchal structures to deal with urgent issues is not desirable, as speedy accountability is needed to address issues that hurt the church in its entirety. (shrink)

Practical political relations according to Luce Irigaray ground the possibilities for emerging to a new political epoch. She articulates that in order to move toward a more peaceful and emancipated politics, philosophers must focus more on subject-subject relations as opposed to subject-object relations. This in turn promotes the possibility of relating to a naturally and culturally different other. She also elaborates how an emancipated politics demands initially and primarily grounding subjectivity in the two, rather than in individuality or collectivity. This (...) is in contrast to classical liberalism which conceives of a social contract between individual agents who relate through mediations of property. Her philosophy conceives of refounding politics not only in the sphere of public government, but also in the traditionally private domestic sphere, which must become politically awakened. She articulates ways of refounding the family and the couple mediated first by relations between two, and liberating the family from its primary role as the material ground of society. Irigaray suggests that political relations at all levels must be rooted in difference rather than sameness, starting with recognizing sexual difference. Establishing such conditions involves creating civil protections and rights, especially for women, and establishing contexts nurturing to desire, including cultivating sensitivity and attending to sensible differences. Liberating contemporary politics from competitiveness and violence, and providing favorable conditions for peace, demands first attending to cultivating difference and fostering relations between two. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Cycle of Violence and Feminist Constructions of Selfhood Jennifer L. Rike University ofDetroit Mercy Violence is the heart and secret soul ofthe sacred" (Girard 1977, 31). René Girard reaches this shocking conclusion by tracing the dynamics ofthe generation ofviolence in history, and the ingenious ways in which humanity has learned to funnel violence into ritual sacrifice to avoid apocalypse. His argument pivots upon his understanding ofhumanity as (...) inherently flawed, as fated to conflict in the struggle to survive. Ifthe sacred mechanism of ritual sacrifice is not deployed, violence takes on a power and personality all its own: "If left unappeased, violence will accumulate until it overflows its confines and floods the surrounding area. The role ofsacrifice is to stem this rising tide... and redirect violence into 'proper' channels" (10). Girard's theory about the violent origins ofthe sacred institutions of ritual sacrifice, law, and myth highlights perhaps the chief paradox of religion: it has been used to promote as much as to oppose violence. Today, as feminists explore how women in particular have been the objects ofsuch violence, they too have turned to Girard to understand this paradox, and yet most have ended up criticizing Girard for falsely universalizing typically Eurocentric and androcentric conceptions of humanity, violence, and religion (Shea, Kirk-Duggan, Nowak 24-6).' While they may be right on certain points, it is also possible that the rush offeminist scholars to charge 1 Nancy Jay has also criticized Girard for androcentrism, in particular because "he still grounds all community and culture on male control of male violence" (130). 22Jennifer L. Rike Girard with androcentrism reflects their own refusals to confront how the dark face of violence appears in women as well as in men. Rather than evaluating specific feminist criticisms ofGirard in this regard, I propose a more global approach—to delineate in greater detail how feminist constructions of selfhood need to be informed by Girard's theory of the violent origins ofthe sacred in order for feminism to achieve its own goals. In Girard's view, the ritual ofsacrifice and the law are generated out ofthe socio-psychological mechanisms ofacquisitive mimesis and scapegoating as the sacred's way of controlling violence. In ways he leaves largely implicit, these mechanisms reflect the devastating cyclical effects of violence upon its victims. Girard stops short of reflecting on the roles gender plays in the cyclical processes of violence, and yet, as my subsequent analyses shall demonstrate, there can be little doubt that women participate in these processes in ways both like and unlike men. Women have been scapegoated throughout history, but not all women end up as victims ofviolence and the rituals constructed to appease it. Nor do many women remain simply victims of the tides of violence: many repeat the cycle of victimization and themselves become perpetrators. Moreover, some escape the cycle ofviolence by a variety ofmeans whose patterns are well worth scrutinizing. My point is that women's modes of participation in the processes through which violence makes and remakes itself are far more complex than has been recognized, and merit our full attention. From the perspective of feminist constructions of selfhood, the question then becomes, how does gender affect one's experience of acquisitive mimesis and scapegoating, victimage and perpetration? To claim that only women are victims and only men—and the women they have co-opted—are perpetrators may be politically correct, but that claim ignores some hard but ultimately helpful truths about what women must do to bring about the changes necessary for revolutionizing our society by transforming its violent ways into peaceful ones. My plan, then, is to suggest how Girard might be used to advance the theory and praxis of feminism further by delving into the psychological mechanisms underlying acquisitive mimesis and scapegoating. I shall argue that using object relations theory to understand the ways in which violence splits the human psyche complements Girard's conception of acquisitive mimesis and scapegoating to disclose the complete dynamics ofthe cycle ofviolence. Such understanding is essential to feminist reconstructions of selfhood, because it makes the defeat of sexism and violence possible by exposing them at their roots. Feminist Constructions ofSelfhood23 My project has four steps... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Canada and Pure Land, a New Field and Buddha-Land:Womanists and Buddhists Reading TogetherJennifer LeathReligion, in theory and in praxis, is often a journey through and to territories known and unknown. Sometimes the paths of particular traditions seem to avoid intersection at all costs. Thus, it is no small accomplishment that Womanists and scholars and practitioners of Buddhism, who typically reflect very different demographic groups, have been in dialogue about (...) Buddhist texts. I participated in two dialogues, in 2009 and 2011, which brought together scholars and practitioners of Buddhism and of Womanism, as well as scholars of Black religion more broadly, to read Buddhist texts from our individual and collective scholarly and faith perspectives. These dialogues addressed several challenges facing Womanist scholarship and praxis. The three discussed in this essay are (1) the Christian parameters that continue to constrain much contemporary Womanist discourse, (2) the ways that Womanism negotiates orthopraxy, and (3) the unique ways that Womanist scholarship and practice pursue liberation amid various postmodern conditions. Ultimately, the content and methodology of the Womanist-Buddhist dialogues inspire new ways to approach and mediate among these challenges. Throughout the dialogues, it became increasingly clear that the traditions of Womanism and Buddhism are similar insofar as they trouble the category of religion, while they contribute to the study of religion.I will begin with a brief exegesis that exemplifies one way of reading and weaving Womanism and Buddhism. Next, I will expound upon the three challenges mentioned above. Finally, I will raise some questions and concerns that must inform the ongoing development of Womanist-Buddhist dialogue. In the process, I will invite Womanist and Buddhist scholars to refashion our concepts of journey and destination.Canada and Pure Land: Journeys Toward FreedomAccording to Alice Walker's definition, among other things, a Womanist is: "Traditionally capable, as in: 'Mama, I'm walking to Canada and I'm taking you and a bunch of other slaves with me.' Reply: 'It wouldn't be the first time.'"1 This is important [End Page 57] because it underscores the three-dimensional nature of Womanism: (1) it is rooted in convictions (i.e., faith), not least of which is a commitment to liberation; (2) it is confirmed through praxis (i.e., walking to Canada—and taking others); and (3) it is something about which one may write (i.e., scholarship). It is also important because it establishes the significance of distinct and intersecting "movements": through space, place, time, and social position. Walking to Canada refers to movement from the Southern slave territories of the United States to the Northern free territories of Canada (i.e., movement through space, from one place to another). "Walking to Canada" is both ideological and pragmatic; it reinterprets the antebellum objective of migrating toward freedom for various postbellum times and conditions (i.e., movement through time). It is an ongoing journey from slavery to freedom (i.e., movement from one social position to another). Walker asserts that although our "Canada" may change, the quest for freedom, for oneself and one's community, remains the objective for Womanists and Womanism.In order to draw the reader's attention to Canada and to journeys toward freedom, Walker presents a dialogue between a child and mother. This exchange clearly establishes the identity of the first speaker, who indicates her plan to head to Canada, and to bring her "Mama" and other slaves with her, as a Womanist—a mother's child with womanish behaviors. However, her womanish/Womanist identity depends upon "Mama's" reply: "It wouldn't be the first time." In other words, the child's identity as a Womanist is fully realized in the process of dialogue.Although certain expressions of the relationship between land and freedom are unique to Womanism, the relationship between land and individual and collective freedom is not, of course, a Womanist invention. During one of the Womanist-Buddhist dialogues in which I participated, we discussed this relationship as we read The Sūtra of Contemplation on the Buddha of Immeasurable Life, from the Pure Land tradition of Mahāyāna Buddhism. In this sutra, Ajātasatru imprisons his father, King Bimbisāra, whose power and... (shrink)

The Hobbesian problem of order has been central to international relations (IR) pedagogy. What are the political implications of this pedagogy? Giving students conceptual tools to understand world politics feels vital in this moment of anxiety about the erosion of the current international order. But some of the deepest threats to international order are rooted in a multiplicity of justice claims. IR's explanatory orientation, and the many biases underlying its anchoring concepts, limit our ability as educators to make sense of (...) those threats in the language of the discipline. How do we teach IR, then, without socializing students into a problematic discipline that only reproduces the existing order? I propose that rather than jettison our disciplinary concepts and frames with their baked-in injustices, we can reorient our teaching about them. Drawing on history and mythology, I focus on the Westphalian myth that anchors IR's central question: Given states, how can international order be produced? I suggest another version of the myth that foregrounds how order and justice, the explanatory and the normative, are entangled all the way down. This revised Westphalian myth urges us to think of recognition of political units—a justice claim—as intrinsic to ordering decisions. (shrink)

Following Namita Goswami’s call for a “non-antagonistic understanding of difference” in Subjects That Matter: Philosophy, Feminism, and Postcolonial Theory (2019), I want to challenge the canon of white feminism that still lingers in the emerging discourses on trauma care and trauma recovery, specifically utilizing concepts from Critical Disability Theory and, to some degree, Critical Trauma Studies. As Joy DeGruy asks in Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome [PTSS]: “debilitating beliefs and assumptions are... part of the legacy of trauma.... How are such effects (...) of trauma transmitted through generations?” and in the spirit of Spivak’s aesthetic education as Goswami cites her, I make an effort here to “bring to crisis” the meaning of trauma, beyond its psychotherapeutic connotations, especially as it may be rooted in the collective, as well as to demonstrate the connections between the inherited trauma of anti-black oppression to the legacy of slavery. This challenge begs the following questions: whose trauma matters? And to what end? (shrink)

Poverty has traditionally been conceived of as a state of deprivation. To be poor is to lack something essential to human flourishing. How that something is understood—in terms of welfare, resources, or capabilities—and how it is measured—in absolute terms or relative to a social standard—has been the subject of much debate within the development literature. In this paper, I put forward an account of poverty rooted in the philosophy of action. I argue that poverty essentially involves being in a context (...) in which a reasonable agent’s future-directed agency is systemically undermined. Centering this dimension of poverty allows us to attend to aspects of poverty that are easily overlooked on existing accounts. (shrink)

Hegel’s “Absolute Knowing” and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida are tragi-comic consternations. They are theatres of ethical panentheism: they present dramatic “absolute” ethical interpretations and actions, each of which is at once ungrounded and completely seeded. I start with the etymology of “consternation.” Then I discuss the comic vs. tragic interpretations of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, arguing it is a consternating tragi-comedy. I analyze the predicate “absolute” in terms of consternations, in a few passages of the book. I elaborate especially upon (...) phenomenological reasoning’s Sache selbst. In the Phenomenology, reason develops by thinking the absolute thing through culture, politics, morality, and religion, reaching completion in “Absolute Knowing.” That absolute is reason’s comprehensive insight into its phenomenological absolutes, and its own absolute sublating. Northrop Frye’s cited claim about myth can be understood in this phenomenological way. With all this in hand, Hegel’s science of experience is formally complete. But the experience of Absolute Knowing is still consternation. To capture the consternating essence of sublation – a consternation by which experience becomes something it was not before – I season this formal science with Shakespeare’s “comedy” Troilus and Cressida, revealing its structural roots to be consternations. (shrink)

This paper analyses the forgotten concept of “sperm-force” proposed by George Newport (1803–1854). Newport is known for his comprehensive microscopic examinations of sperm and egg interaction in amphibian fertilization between 1850 and 1854. My work with archival sources reveals that Newport believed fertilization was caused by sperm-force, which the Royal Society refused to publish. My reconstruction chronologically traces the philosophical and experimental origins of sperm-force to Newport’s 1830s entomological work. Sperm-force is a remnant of Newport’s speculations on the creation of (...) the active individual. I argue that sperm-force was rooted in British interpretations of German _Naturphilosophie_, which demonstrates Continental influences on mid-Victorian embryology, particularly the role of male generative power. This context provides further evidence that British versions of Romantic science fostered sophisticated experimental work. The refusal by Paleyite stalwarts of natural theology to publish Newport’s ideas illustrates the institutional resistance to German pantheistic and vitalistic influences. This reconstruction of sperm-force’s philosophical foundation and its reception offers new understandings of mid-Victorian attitudes toward the inheritance of mind and body. It situates Newport’s work within the nineteenth century’s scientific project to assign stereotypical genders to the gametes. (shrink)

Because other cultures classify mental disorders very differently from ours, it behooves us to inquire into the philosophical and cultural sources of our own guiding nosological categories. This paper is a philosophical exploration into the historical and theoretical bases of the late nineteenth-century, Kraepelinian division between disorders of mood or affect, and schizophrenia, in which our present day nosological categories are rooted. By tracing the early nosologists’ divisions into eighteenth-century and Kantian faculty psychology, and following the fate of faculty psychology (...) through the nineteenth century, we discover genealogical elements of our taxonomy likely to affect clinical diagnosis and understanding. (shrink)

I speak to some of Frederick Stoutland’s thinking over the years. In his last published paper, Stoutland brought together Davidson’s accounts of action and of perception, taking both to belong in a picture “of how we are related to the world” which “has its roots in the Cartesian revolution.” I suggest that Stoutland’s early criticisms of Davidson’s account of action expose the faults in such a picture. And I try to point up the attractions of a different picture in which (...) Davidson’s account of perception fits no better than his account of action. (shrink)

Problematic perceptions about race damage our society. These attitudes can seem impossible to overcome, but philosophers Dr Jennifer Mensch, at Western Sydney University in Australia, and Dr Michael Olson, at Marquette University in the US, beg to differ. They are compiling a collection of 18th-century philosophical and scientific texts that helped shape the way people saw race across the Western world, and were used to justify colonisation. They believe that by exposing these historical roots of racism, opportunities to improve (...) societal attitudes to race will become easier to identify. -/- This article was produced by Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEM), and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE). (shrink)

Desire satisfaction theorists and attitudinal-happiness theorists of well-being are committed to correcting the psychological attitudes upon which their theories are built. However, it is not often recognized that some of the attitudes in need of correction are evaluative attitudes. Moreover, it is hard to know how to correct for poor evaluative attitudes in ways that respect the traditional commitment to the authority of the individual subject's evaluative perspective. L. W. Sumner has proposed an autonomy-as-authenticity requirement to perform this task, but (...) this article argues that it cannot do the job. Sumner's proposal focuses on the social origins of our values and overlooks the deep psychological roots of other evaluative attitudes that are just as problematic for welfare. If subjective theories of welfare are to be at all plausible they may need to abandon or modify their traditional commitment to the authority of the individual subject. (shrink)

Suffering is a ubiquitous yet elusive concept in health care. In a field devoted to the pursuit of objective data, suffering is a phenomenon with deep ties to subjective experience, moral values, and cultural norms. Suffering’s tie to subjective experience makes it challenging to discern and respond to the suffering of others. In particular, the question of whether a child with profound neurocognitive disabilities can suffer has generated a robust discourse, rooted in philosophical conceptualizations of personhood as well as the (...) academic and experiential expertise of practiced health-care professionals. The issue remains unresolved because it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to ever truly know an infant’s lived experience. But what if this is not the best question? What if instead of asking “can this infant suffer?” the discourse is broadened to ask “is there suffering here?” This latter question demands attention to patients’ subjective experiences of suffering, but also to the web of relationships that envelop them. Without losing sight of the importance of patients’ experiences, consideration of their relationships may elucidate the presence of suffering when the patients themselves are unable to provide the same clarity. In this essay, care ethics frames an examination of how suffering manifests in the loving and caring relationships that surround an infant with profound neurocognitive disabilities, changing those relationships and affecting the individuals within them. Exploring suffering through these relationships may offer clarity on the presence and content of suffering for infants with profound cognitive disabilities, in turn offering moral guidance for responding to suffering and supporting flourishing in this context. (shrink)

Imagination allows us to step out of the ordinary but also to transform it through our sense of wonder and play, artistic inspiration and innovation, or the eureka moment of a scientific breakthrough. In this book, Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei offers a groundbreaking new understanding of its place in everyday experience as well as the heights of creative achievement. -/- The Life of Imagination delivers a new conception of imagination that places it at the heart of our engagement with the (...) world—thinking, acting, feeling, making, and being. Gosetti-Ferencei reveals imagination’s roots in embodied human cognition and its role in shaping our cognitive ecology. She demonstrates how imagination arises from our material engagements with the world and at the same time endows us with the sense of an inner life, how it both allows us to escape from reality and aids us in better understanding it. Drawing from philosophy, cognitive science, evolutionary anthropology, developmental psychology, literary theory, and aesthetics, Gosetti-Ferencei engages a spectacular range of examples from ordinary thought processes and actions to artistic, scientific, and literary feats to argue that, like consciousness itself, imagination resists reductive explanation. The Life of Imagination offers a vital account of transformative thinking that shows how imagination will be essential in cultivating a future conducive to human flourishing and to that of the life around us. (shrink)

In "Theology and Social Theory", John Milbank critiques Scottish Enlightenment political economy and its attendant descriptive moral philosophy for "de-ethicizing" human action. A closer look at the development of theoretical understandings of sympathy, however, shows that instinct did not ultimately displace virtue. Moreover, a survey of practical responses to poverty calls into question the claim that political economy obliterated the Christian sphere of public charity. Many of the innovations Milbank criticizes as de-ethicizing in fact reflect serious efforts to absorb into (...) ethical reflection and practice deep social and economic changes, which Christian theology could ignore only at its own peril. Moreover, it was sometimes non- or even anti-religious thinkers like David Hume and William Hazlitt who were soonest to see the dangers involved in appealing to instinctual behavior and providential coordination of social action. Returning to the roots of social theory allows theologians to recover lost possibilities for productive collaboration with "the secular.". (shrink)

The first in-depth analysis of the radical feminist theory and coalitional praxis of scholar-activist María Lugones. Speaking Face to Face provides an unprecedented, in-depth look at the feminist philosophy and practice of the renowned Argentinian-born scholar-activist María Lugones. Informed by her identification as “nondiasporic Latina” and US Woman of Color, as well as her long-term commitment to grassroots organizing in Chicana/o communities, Lugones’s work dovetails with, while remaining distinct from, that of other prominent transnational, decolonial, and women of color feminists. (...) Her visionary philosophy motivates transformative modes of engaging cultural others, inviting us to create political intimacies rooted in a shared yearning for interdependence. Bringing together scholars and activists across fields, this volume charts her profound impact in and beyond the academy for the past thirty years. In so doing, it exemplifies a new method of coalitional theorizing—traversing racial, ethnic, sexual, national, gendered, political, and disciplinary borders in order to cultivate learning, embrace heterogeneity, and provide a unique framework for engaging contemporary debates about identity, oppression, and activism. Across thirteen original contributions, authors address issues of intersectionality, colonial and decolonial subjectivities, the multiplicity and the coloniality of gender, indigenous spiritualities and cosmologies, pluralist and women of color feminisms, radical multiculturalism, popular education, and resistance to multiple oppressions. The book also includes a rare interview with Lugones and an afterword by Paula Moya, ultimately offering both new critical resources for longstanding admirers of Lugones and a welcome introduction for newcomers to her groundbreaking work. “This is an important contribution to Latinx studies, Latina feminist philosophy, queer studies, and the burgeoning field of decolonial feminism, a field that Lugones almost single-handedly launched. It is interdisciplinary, but also a wonderful pedagogical resource. It provides readers who are both familiar and unfamiliar with her work a thorough and judicious point of entry.” — Eduardo Mendieta, author of Global Fragments: Globalizations, Latinamericanisms, and Critical Theory. (shrink)

Recent calls to address racism in bioethics reflect a sense of urgency to mitigate the lethal effects of a lack of action. While the field was catalyzed largely in response to pivotal events deeply rooted in racism and other structures of oppression embedded in research and health care, it has failed to center racial justice in its scholarship, pedagogy, advocacy, and practice, and neglected to integrate anti-racism as a central consideration. Academic bioethics programs play a key role in determining the (...) field’s norms and practices, including methodologies, funding priorities, and professional networks that bear on equity, inclusion, and epistemic justice. This article describes recommendations from the Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (REDI) Task Force commissioned by the Association of Bioethics Program Directors to prioritize and strengthen anti-racist practices in bioethics programmatic endeavors and to evaluate and develop specific goals to advance REDI. (shrink)

In this paper, we identify and discuss some of the ethical problems associated with digital sensors used to detect water contamination and air pollution in the United States. Such safety devices are often deployed unsystematically and with questionable efficacy, thereby structuring the life chances of people in unequal ways. Whereas most technological infrastructures are hidden from view . or at least from active awareness . until they cease to function, those infrastructures meant to monitor and/or regulate largely "invisible" public health (...) dangers resist public awareness even when they fail. Because such detection systems tend to indivi-dualize responsibility for reducing risk, the systems may normalize and perhaps exacerbate root problems of contamination and unequal exposure. One ethical challenge is to render such systems and their failures legible. (shrink)

The first in-depth analysis of the radical feminist theory and coalitional praxis of scholar-activist María Lugones. Speaking Face to Face provides an unprecedented, in-depth look at the feminist philosophy and practice of the renowned Argentinian-born scholar-activist María Lugones. Informed by her identification as “nondiasporic Latina” and US Woman of Color, as well as her long-term commitment to grassroots organizing in Chicana/o communities, Lugones’s work dovetails with, while remaining distinct from, that of other prominent transnational, decolonial, and women of color feminists. (...) Her visionary philosophy motivates transformative modes of engaging cultural others, inviting us to create political intimacies rooted in a shared yearning for interdependence. Bringing together scholars and activists across fields, this volume charts her profound impact in and beyond the academy for the past thirty years. In so doing, it exemplifies a new method of coalitional theorizing—traversing racial, ethnic, sexual, national, gendered, political, and disciplinary borders in order to cultivate learning, embrace heterogeneity, and provide a unique framework for engaging contemporary debates about identity, oppression, and activism. Across thirteen original contributions, authors address issues of intersectionality, colonial and decolonial subjectivities, the multiplicity and the coloniality of gender, indigenous spiritualities and cosmologies, pluralist and women of color feminisms, radical multiculturalism, popular education, and resistance to multiple oppressions. The book also includes a rare interview with Lugones and an afterword by Paula Moya, ultimately offering both new critical resources for longstanding admirers of Lugones and a welcome introduction for newcomers to her groundbreaking work. “This is an important contribution to Latinx studies, Latina feminist philosophy, queer studies, and the burgeoning field of decolonial feminism, a field that Lugones almost single-handedly launched. It is interdisciplinary, but also a wonderful pedagogical resource. It provides readers who are both familiar and unfamiliar with her work a thorough and judicious point of entry.” — Eduardo Mendieta, author of Global Fragments: Globalizations, Latinamericanisms, and Critical Theory. (shrink)

Kant and the Concept of Community, edited by Charlton Payne and Lucas Thorpe, gathers together some of the best known figures in contemporary Kant scholarship. This fine collection traces Kant’s concept of community from its Precritical roots to its role in The Critique of Pure Reason, before going on to investigate the subsequent transformations it would undergo in Kant’s later works on ethics, religion, history, politics, and aesthetics. With very few exceptions, all of the essays in this collection are interesting (...) and informative, with signature pieces by Béatrice Longuenesse, Paul Guyer, Allen Wood, Onora O’Neill, and Susan Shell. This is a highly recommended collection suitable for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals. (shrink)

Intrinsic gait variability, i.e., fluctuations in the regularity of gait patterns between repetitive cycles, is inherent to the sensorimotor system and influenced by factors such as age and pathology. Increased GV is associated with gait impairments in individuals with cerebral palsy and has been mainly studied based on spatiotemporal parameters. The present study aimed to describe kinematic GV in young people with CP and its associations with clinical impairments [i.e., passive range of motion, muscle weakness, reduced selective motor control, and (...) spasticity]. This retrospective study included 177 participants with CP representing 289 clinical gait analyses [n = 172 for unilateral CP vs. 117 for bilateral CP ]. As variability metrics, Root Mean Square Deviation for nine lower-limb kinematic parameters and Gait Standard Deviation – as composite score of the kinematic parameters – were computed for the affected and most affected side, respectively, as defined by clinical scores. GaitSD was then computed for the non/less-affected side for between leg comparisons. Uni- and multivariate linear regressions were subsequently performed on GaitSD of the affected/most affected side with all clinical impairments as independent variables. Highest RMSD were found in the transverse plane, for distal joints in the sagittal plane and for foot progression. GaitSD was not different between uCP and bCP but higher in the non-affected vs. affected side in uCP. GaitSD was associated with age, gait deviation index, muscle weakness, selectivity, and pROM. After adjustment for age and GDI, GaitSD remained associated with muscle weakness and selectivity. Kinematic GV can be expressed as global indicator of variability in young people with CP given the strong correlation of RMSD for lower-limb kinematic parameters. In terms of asymmetry, increased variability of the non-affected vs. affected side may indicate contralateral compensation mechanisms in uCP. Notably muscle weakness and selectivity – but not spasticity – were associated with GaitSD. Further studies need to explore the clinical relevance of kinematic GV in CP to support the interpretation of clinical gait analyses and therapeutic decision-making. (shrink)

Arguments for a just transition are integral to debates about climate change and the drive to create a carbon-neutral economy. There are currently two broad approaches rooted in ethics and justice for framing just energy transitions. The first can be described as internal to the transition and emphasizes the anticipation, assessment, and redressing of harms created by the transition itself and the inclusion in transition governance of groups or communities potentially harmed by its disruptions. In this article, we propose a (...) second approach to ethics and justice in an energy transition, which we describe as systemic or societal in scope. This approach complements attention to the proximate dynamics and impacts of the transition process with a focus on the distant societal and economic outcomes the transition brings into being and how they compare to conditions prior to the transition. It poses the question: do the transformative social, economic, and technological changes wrought by energy systems create more just societies and economies, or do they instead reinforce or recreate long-standing injustices and inequalities? We illustrate this approach with an assessment of one of the most significant existing forms of energy injustice: the energy-poverty nexus. We argue that the energy-poverty nexus reflects configurations of socio-energy systems that create complex, extractive feedbacks between energy insecurity and economic insecurity and, over time, reinforce or exacerbate poverty. We further argue that just energy transitions should work to disentangle these configurations and re-design them so as to create generative rather than extractive feedbacks, thus ending the energy-poverty nexus and creating long-term outcomes that are more just, equitable, and fair. (shrink)

Skin pigment pattern formation is a paradigmatic example of pattern formation. In zebrafish, the adult body stripes are generated by coordinated rearrangement of three distinct pigment cell‐types, black melanocytes, shiny iridophores and yellow xanthophores. A stem cell origin of melanocytes and iridophores has been proposed although the potency of those stem cells has remained unclear. Xanthophores, however, seemed to originate predominantly from proliferation of embryonic xanthophores. Now, data from Singh et al. shows that all three cell‐types derive from shared stem (...) cells, and that these cells generate peripheral neural cell‐types too. Furthermore, clonal compositions are best explained by a progressive fate restriction model generating the individual cell‐types. The numbers of adult pigment stem cells associated with the dorsal root ganglia remain low, but progenitor numbers increase significantly during larval development up to metamorphosis, likely via production of partially restricted progenitors on the spinal nerves. (shrink)

With roots in Greek drama, mimesis has recently undergone expansion into an unexpected domain: microbial resistance to viruses. Research revealed that bacteria copy portions of the DNA of attacking viruses and incorporate them into their own DNA. When a virus attacks again, the bacteria generate matching RNA sequences that, together with the Cas9 protein, enable them to recognize the virus and cut its DNA. This process satisfies the requisites for mimesis, thus justifying the name microbiomimesis. It exemplifies nonconscious cognition, a (...) capacity that all lifeforms possess to process and interpret information in contexts that connect it with meaning. In 2012 Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Carpentier coauthored a paper showing that the bacterial defense of RNA/cas9 can be programmed to work as a gene editing tool. So was born CRISPR-Cas9, a technology now routinely used to edit genes by detecting their precise location and modifying them. Never has mimesis been so controversial and laden with implications for the futures of human and nonhuman lifeforms on the planet; what lessons can its traditions offer? (shrink)

We used a retrospective survey to model the patterns of appraisal, motivation, and coping that uniquely correspond with 12 positive emotions (affection/love, amusement, awe, challenge/det...

Against recent work by Haslanger and Leslie, I argue that we do not yet have good reason to think that we should single out generics about social groups out as peculiarly destructive, or that we should strive to eradicate them from our usage. Indeed, I suggest they continue to serve a very valuable purpose and we should not rush to condemn them.

This book is a critical introduction to the philosophy of social science. While most social scientists maintain that the social sciences should stand free of politics, this book argues that they should be politically partisan. Root offers a clear description and provocative criticism of many of the methods and ideals that guide research and teaching in the social sciences.

Philosophers of language have tended to focus on examples that are not politically significant in any way. We spend a lot of time analyzing natural kind terms: We think hard about “water” and “pain” and “arthritis.” But we don’t think much about the far more politically significant kind terms (natural or social—it's a matter for dispute) like “race,” “sex,” “gender,” “woman,” “man,” “gay,” and “straight.” In this essay, I will try to show, using the example of “woman,” that it's worth (...) thinking about terms like these, for at least three reasons: (1) There are some interesting puzzles. (2) Politically significant terms matter to people's lives— and it's worth spending at least some of our energy thinking about things that matter in this way. (3) Most importantly, interesting methodological issues emerge at the intersection of philosophy of language and politics. (shrink)

To determine whether dispositions are causally relevant, we have to get clear about what causal relevance is. Several characteristics of causal relevance have been suggested, including Explanatory Power, Counterfactual Dependence, Lawfullness, Exclusion, Independence, and Minimal Sufficiency. Different accounts will yield different answers about the causal relevance of dispositions. However, accounts of causal relevance that are the most plausible, for independent reasons, render the verdict that dispositions are causally relevant.

Upward mobility through the path of higher education has been an article of faith for generations of working-class, low-income, and immigrant college students. While we know this path usually entails financial sacrifices and hard work, very little attention has been paid to the deep personal compromises such students have to make as they enter worlds vastly different from their own. Measuring the true cost of higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, Moving Up without Losing Your Way looks at the (...) ethical dilemmas of upward mobility—the broken ties with family and friends, the severed connections with former communities, and the loss of identity—faced by students as they strive to earn a successful place in society. -/- Drawing upon philosophy, social science, personal stories, and interviews, Jennifer Morton reframes the college experience, factoring in not just educational and career opportunities but also essential relationships with family, friends, and community. Finding that student strivers tend to give up the latter for the former, negating their sense of self, Morton seeks to reverse this course. She urges educators to empower students with a new narrative of upward mobility—one that honestly situates ethical costs in historical, social, and economic contexts and that allows students to make informed decisions for themselves. -/- A powerful work with practical implications, Moving Up without Losing Your Way paves a hopeful road so that students might achieve social mobility while retaining their best selves. (shrink)

Studies in the social and biomedical sciences of racial differences in socioeconomic status or health within a population view the race of members as fixed and look for a difference in the frequency of a trait like average income or disease risk between racial subgroups. But, as I explain in this paper, there are good reasons to allow the race of members to vary with the trait whose variation within the population is to be described or explained. According to such (...) a view of race, racial categories are more scientifically significant if membership in the categories is allowed to vary with differences in scientific interest rather than held constant across a variety of interests. (shrink)

In this paper, I write about nurses of colour who have made significant contributions to nursing, yet are actively ignored in traditional nursing textbooks related to colonized thinking. One consequence of this is that when we think about comparing the disparities of the past to the present day, we see that we have not made much of a difference. The disparity is still huge. I call on all of us as nurses to challenge ourselves to think beyond the box of (...) colonized thought to what we know is true. (shrink)

Epistemology should take seriously the possibility of rationally evaluable changes in conceptual resources. Epistemic decision theory compares belief states in terms of epistemic value. But it's standardly restricted to belief states that don't differ in their conceptual resources. I argue that epistemic decision theory should be generalized to make belief states with differing concepts comparable. I characterize some possible constraints on epistemic utility functions. Traditionally, the epistemic utility of a total belief state has been understood as a function of the (...) epistemic utility of individual (partial) beliefs. The most natural ways of generalizing this account generate a kind of repugnant conclusion. I characterize some possible alternatives, reflecting different epistemic norms. (shrink)

One of the most important aspects of Grice’s theory of conversation is the drawing of a borderline between what is said and what is implic- ated. Grice’s views concerning this borderline have been strongly and influentially criticised by relevance theorists. In particular, it has become increasingly widely accepted that Grice’s notion of what is said is too lim- ited, and that pragmatics has a far larger role to play in determining what is said than Grice would have allowed. (See for (...) example Bezuidenhuit 1996; Blakemore 1987; Carston 1991; Recanati 1991, 1993, 2001; Sperber and Wilson 1986; Wilson and Sperber 1981.) In this paper, I argue that the rejection of Grice has moved too swiftly, as a key line of objection which has led to this rejection is flawed. The flaw, we will see, is that relevance theorists rely on a misunderstanding of Grice’s project in his theory of conversation. I am not arguing that Grice’s versions of saying and implicating are right in all details, but simply that certain widespread reasons for rejecting his theory are based on misconceptions. (shrink)

Accuracy-first epistemology aims to show that the norms of epistemic rationality can be derived from the effective pursuit of accuracy. This paper explores the prospects within accuracy-first epistemology for vindicating “modesty”: the thesis that ideal rationality permits uncertainty about one’s own rationality. I argue that accuracy-first epistemology faces serious challenges in accommodating three forms of modesty: uncertainty about what priors are rational, uncertainty about whether one’s update policy is rational, and uncertainty about what one’s evidence is. I argue that the (...) problem stems from the representation of epistemic decision problems. The appropriate representation of decision problems, and corresponding decision rules, for (diachronic) update policies should be a generalization of decision problems and decision rules for (synchronic) coherence. I argue that extant accounts build in conflicting assumptions about which kinds of information about the believer should be used to structure epistemic decision problems. In particular, extant accounts of update build in a form of epistemic consequentialism. Related forms of epistemic consequentialism have been shown to generate problems for accuracy-first epistemology’s purported justifications of probabilism, conditionalization, and the principal principle. These results are vindicated only with nonconsequentialist epistemic decision theories. I close with suggestive examples of how, with a fully nonconsequentialist representation of epistemic decision problems, accuracy-first epistemology can allow for rational modesty. (shrink)