Combining human embryonic stem cells with SCNT has been a gold standard of stem cell research. Adding a particular individual's genes to pluripotent stem cells might lead to the development of personalized tissue repair or replacement. Enthusiasm for human embryonic stem cell research had flagged in recent years due to controversy over the moral status of in vitro embryos, scientific misconduct by researcher Woo Suk Hwang, and the discovery that induced pluripotent stem cells could be produced from somatic cells. Energy (...) shifted to research on somatic cells, but three successes in the United States during 2013 and 2014 may reinvigorate embryonic stem cell research. (shrink)

Metaphors used to describe new technologies mediate public understanding of the innovations. Analyzing the linguistic, rhetorical, and affective aspects of these metaphors opens the range of issues available for bioethical scrutiny and increases public accountability. This article shows how such a multidisciplinary approach can be useful by looking at a set of texts about one issue, the use of a newly developed technique for genetic modification, CRISPRcas9.

When anthropologists and other social scientists study health services in medical institutions, tensions sometimes arise as a result of the social scientists and health care professionals having different ideas about the ethics of research. In order to resolve this type of conflict and to facilitate mutual learning, we describe two general categories of research ethics framing: those of anthropology and those of medicine. The latter focuses on protection of the individual through the preservation of autonomy expressed through the requirement of (...) informed consent whereas the former focuses on broader political implications. After providing an example of a conflict, we outline four issues that characterize the occasional clashes between social scientists and medical staff: (1) a discrepancy in the way anthropologists perceive patients and medical staff; (2) ambiguity concerning the role of medical staff in anthropological research; (3) impediments to informed consent in qualitative research projects; and (4) property rights in data. Enhanced dialogue could serve to invigorate the ethical debate in both traditions. (shrink)

While this paper does not explicitly define the concept of autonomy, the way Ubel et al describe clinicians’ failures to enhance their patients’ autonomy reflects a broader understanding of autonomy than the default account as free and informed choice. In this OPC I would demonstrate that the communication strategies the authors recommend reflects a more sophisticated conception of autonomy than the understanding that typically prevails in bioethics. I will also distinguish between weak and strong forms of paternalism, and argue that (...) a weak paternalistic approach is not only defensible but also aligns with the strategies the authors propose. Thus, by clarifying the concept of autonomy we can show how it can be enhanced in practice. (shrink)

This article contributes to carework scholarship by examining the nexus of gender, class, and race in long-term care facilities. We draw out a family ideology at work that promotes good care of residents and thus benefits nursing homes. We also found that careworkers value fictive kin relationships with residents, yet we uncover how the family model may be used to exploit these low-income careworkers. Reflecting a subordinate and racialized version of being “part of the family,” we call for an ethic (...) of reciprocity and for concrete change toward valuing equally the humanity of those who need and those who give care. (shrink)

The most important parent of the idea of property in the person (self-ownership) is undoubtedly John Locke. In this article, we argue that the origins of this idea can be traced back as far as the third century BCE, to classical Stoicism. Stoic cosmopolitanism, with its insistence on impartiality and the moral equality of all persons, lays the foundation for the idea of self-ownership, which is then given support in the doctrine of oikeiosis and the corresponding belief that nature had (...) made all human beings equal, self-preserving, and self-regarding. On the Stoic account, self-ownership (or our preferred term self-guardianship) is a natural correlate and consequence of oikeiosis, the natural urge to self-preservation, proprioception, and the individuation that came with it. In recognising that people are separate and individual, and entrusting each individual’s welfare to herself, Zeus appears to make everyone a ‘self-guardian’. We uniquely argue that Locke was directly inspired by these Stoic ideas, which he then develops and incorporates into his own theory. (shrink)

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a description of an innovative web-based ethics module that was designed to integrate ethics education across four accounting courses over two years (second and third year courses) in a large Australian tertiary institution. Approach: The approach taken in designing the ethics web-based module was to base the foundations of the module on Rest’s (1976) ethical behavior model with the adoption of a longitudinal approach to thecoverage of financial reporting ethical issues. Practical (...) Implications: The key objectives of the module are to improve students’ awareness and sensitivity to accounting ethics, and to foster student learning in an interesting and stimulating manner, leading to in-depth understanding of accounting ethics. Originality/value of paper: This paper provides a description of an original web-based approach to delivering ethics education to accounting students across four university courses. Its value lies in not only the innovative and interactive ethics education approach but also in providing feedback from students and the profession. (shrink)

Impaired hand proprioception can lead to difficulties in performing fine motor tasks, thereby affecting activities of daily living. The majority of children with unilateral cerebral palsy experience proprioceptive deficits, but accurately quantifying these deficits is challenging due to the lack of sensitive measurement methods. Robot-assisted assessments provide a promising alternative, however, there is a need for solutions that specifically target children and their needs. We propose two novel robotics-based assessments to sensitively evaluate active and passive position sense of the index (...) finger metacarpophalangeal joint in children. We then investigate test-retest reliability and discriminant validity of these assessments in uCP and typically developing children, and further use the robotic platform to gain first insights into fundamentals of hand proprioception. Both robotic assessments were performed in two sessions with 1-h break in between. In the passive position sense assessment, participant's finger is passively moved by the robot to a randomly selected position, and she/he needs to indicate the perceived finger position on a tablet screen located directly above the hand, so that the vision of the hand is blocked. Active position sense is assessed by asking participants to accurately move their finger to a target position shown on the tablet screen, without visual feedback of the finger position. Ten children with uCP and 10 age-matched TDC were recruited in this study. Test-retest reliability in both populations was good >0.79). Proprioceptive error was larger for children with uCP than TDC, indicating discriminant validity. The active position sense was more accurate than passive, and the scores were not correlated, underlining the need for targeted assessments to comprehensively evaluate proprioception. There was a significant effect of age on passive position sense in TDC but not uCP, possibly linked to disturbed development of proprioceptive acuity in uCP. Overall, the proposed robot-assisted assessments are reliable, valid and a promising alternative to commonly used clinical methods, which could help gain a better understanding of proprioceptive impairments in uCP, facilitating the design of novel therapies. (shrink)

back in about 1984 or 1985, when I'd been in graduate school for a couple of years at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, I started hanging around with three chemists who shared a house. They were colleagues of my roommate, a chemistry grad student. One of them, no kidding, was named Lloyd A. Bumm, who would always introduce himself by saying, "My name is the best joke I know." Lloyd was a quirky, curious guy who often explored unusual places around (...) the City, unlike the typical chemistry grad student. For instance, he frequently would head into Chicago on Sunday mornings to go to this crazy street market he knew about. He invited me to go with him one weekend; he was looking for a power supply, whatever... (shrink)

As a modern academic Ulysses, the historical scientist is enticed by numerous plausible scientific theories that can explain the historical data in search of the truth. However, the predicament of her work is to inevitably crash onto the rocks and cliffs of uncertainty. The problem discussed in this paper is that several scientific models can be suitable to account for the same empirical observations. The risk of falling into speculation is looming, and exceedingly dangerous in science. This is also the (...) case in archaeological sciences, such as bioarchaeology. A bioarchaeologist frequently encounters traces of disease in ancient skeletons, and pertinent patterns may often result from equally probable different causes. This is a methodological issue commonly encountered in the interpretation of pathological patterns in human remains, and constitutes part of the problem known in bioarchaeology as the osteological paradox. During an informal trilogue, three characters discuss the osteological paradox, and attempt to define it in philosophical terms. The aim of this work is to present the problems of scientists with the philosophical approach to the debate between scientific realism and antirealism, focusing in particular on the so-called problem of underdetermination. Our original approach is to apply the distinction between ‘how-possibly’ models and ‘how-actually’ models by Alisa Bokulich to archaeological issues, integrating various fields of science with a multidisciplinary and omnivorous approach. The trilogue ends providing the historical scientist with reasons and means to believe in her ability to conceive of true and reliable scientific models to interpret the historical past. (shrink)

“Home office” has become a reality for many employees. What is normatively at stake in this shift in the geography of work, given the various forms of structural injustice in our societies? Drawing on the normative criteria of employee well-being and protection from harm, autonomy, non-discrimination, environmental impact, and the role of workplaces as spaces of social encounters, I defend two claims: First, decisions about where individuals work need to be proceduralized on a fair basis, giving employees a voice. Second, (...) giving up the workplace requires a broader discussion about alternatives spaces for social integration. (shrink)

Unlike his contemporaries Virginia Woolf and Henry James, Kipling always denied he was a critic. But his letters, speeches, and stories are full of comments on writing and writers. This collection, including many formerly unpublished private letters and papers, details Kipling's response to the commercialisation of literature and the emerging role of the writer as celebrity in the turbulent literary world of the 1890s and beyond. They reveal a mind intensely concerned with questions of literary value, with language and imagination, (...) with truth, realism, and romanticism. Kipling's fame made him a significant spokesperson for important segments of the reading public - the soldiers, engineers, and functionaries central to Britain's imperial expansion. He profoundly influenced English literary language and our perception of English national character. This book offers access to the private and public history of a writer whose continuing influence is still a matter of fierce controversy. (shrink)

_Abstract_: In this paper, we argue that the recent debates and proclaimed crises in psychology are partly due to a reflection deficit and the reductionist understanding of psychology as exclusively a science. For this reason, we introduce Psychological Humanities as a novel interdisciplinary approach that defines psychology as its object of investigation and opens a field of reflection. Although the study of psychological topics with an orientation toward the humanities is not new, either within or outside of psychology, we argue (...) for the introduction of the collective term Psychological Humanities for four reasons: (1) the definition of Psychological Humanities does more justice to central psychological subject areas such as subjectivity, (2) it serves as a common term of interconnectedness and visibility, (3) it resonates with new reflective fields in related disciplines, such as the medical humanities, and (4) it is more consistent with intersubjective practice in applied psychology. In what follows, we present our approach to Psychological Humanities, developed at the University of Lübeck. Our model differentiates between two fundamental views: a view from the outside on the discipline of psychology and its contexts (e.g., through history, cultural studies, and ethics) and a view from the inside on psychology (e.g., through theoretical psychology, critical psychologies, or epistemology of psychology). _Keywords_: Interdisciplinary Research; Subjectivity; Epistemology of Psychology; Applied Psychology; Psychological Humanities _Guardare la psicologia attraverso una doppia lente: le Psychological Humanities come approccio integrato_ _Riassunto_: In questo articolo sosterremo che le discussioni recenti e le crisi proclamate in psicologia sono dovuti in parte a un deficit di riflessione e a una comprensione riduttiva della psicologia come disciplina esclusivamente scientifica. Per questo motivo presentiamo le _Psychological Humanities_ come nuovo approccio interdisciplinare che ha la psicologia come proprio oggetto di indagine e apre un campo d’indagine. Sebbene lo studio di argomenti psicologici con un orientamento verso le discipline umanistiche non sia nuovo, né all’interno né all’esterno della psicologia, sosterremo l’introduzione del termine collettivo _Psychological Humanities_ per quattro motivi: (1) la definizione di _Psychological Humanities_ rende maggiormente giustizia ad aree tematiche psicologiche centrali come la soggettività, (2) funge da termine comune di interconnessione e visibilità, (3) richiama altri ambiti di riflessione in discipline affini quali le _medical humanities_ ed (4) è più coerente con la pratica intersoggettiva in psicologia applicata. Nel lavoro che segue presenteremo l'approccio alle _Psychological Humanieties_ che abbiamo sviluppato presso l’Università di Lubecca. Il nostro modello differenzia tra due prospettive fondamentali: uno sguardo esterno alla psicologia come disciplina e ai suoi contesti (per esempio attraverso la storia, gli studi culturali e l’etica) e uno sguardo interno alla psicologia (per esempio attraverso la psicologia teoretica, le psicologie critiche o l’epistemologia della psicologia). _Parole chiave_: Ricerca interdisciplinare; Soggettività; Epistemologia della psicologia; Psicologia applicata; Psychological Humanities. (shrink)

This article analyses the two main rhetorical techniques of “argumentation” and “persuasion” employed in politico-philosophical debates recorded in early Chinese argumentative texts of the Warring States period. Through the analysis of pertinent case studies drawn from the received literature, the contribution explores the formal, structural, and grammatical features of these techniques, with attention paid to the wide selection of rhetorical and literary devices they make use of. It also further provides an overview of the historical and socio-cultural background against which (...) such techniques developed among so called “wandering persuaders”, who were travelling from court to court to offer their services as political advisors and diplomats to the local rulers of the time. (shrink)

Lisa Bortolotti introduces the arguments about whether dogs can have beliefs.

Free and informed choice is an oft-acknowledged ethical basis for living kidney donation, including parental living kidney donation. The extent to which choice is present in parental living kidney donation has, however, been questioned. Since parents can be expected to have strong emotional bonds to their children, it has been asked whether these bonds make parents unable to say no to this donation. This article combines a narrative analysis of parents’ stories of living kidney donation with a philosophical discussion of (...) conditions for parental decision-making. Previous research has shown that parents often conclude that it is “natural” to donate. Our study shows that this naturalness needs to be understood as part of a story where parental living kidney donation is regarded as natural and as a matter of non-choice. Our study also highlights the presence of a parenthood moral imperative of always putting one’s child’s needs before one’s own. On the basis of these results, we discuss conditions for decision-making in the context of parental LKD. We argue that the presence of a parenthood moral imperative can matter with regard to the decision-making process when parents consider whether to volunteer as living kidney donors, but that it need not hamper choice. We emphasise the need for exploring relational and situational factors in order to understand parental decision-making in the context of parental LKD. (shrink)

About one-third of Australians use the services of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM); but debate about the role of CAM in public healthcare is vociferous. Despite this, the mechanisms driving CAM healthcare choices are not well understood, especially in rural Australia. From 2016 to 2018, 2,679 persons from the Goulburn Valley, northern Victoria, were surveyed, 28% (755) of whom reporting visiting CAM practitioners. A Generalized Linear Mixed Model was used to assess associations between various socio-demographic variables and the use of (...) CAM services. The strongest significant inverse (p < 0.05) association with CAM use overall was being unemployed, with markedly lower odds of using CAM than those employed full-time (OR 0.22 [0.12, 0.41]). The next strongest inverse relationship was being retired (OR 0.44 [0.30, 0.65]). The strongest positive associations were with English spoken at home (OR 2.38 [1.34, 4.24]), private health insurance (hospital cover) (1.57 [1.28, 1.91]), being Australian born (OR 1.61 [1.14, 2.28]), and female sex (1.25 [1.02, 1.52])). Females had significantly higher odds of using osteopathy than males (OR 1.98 [1.33, 2.96]) but there were no significant sex differences for chiropractic or massage. This is the first such study conducted solely for a rural Australian population. The drivers of CAM use differed from previous nation-wide studies and they varied across modalities. The factors identified here as being associated with CAM use could be used by CAM practitioners in developing person-centred services. Similarly, the findings are relevant to primary-care services in understanding what sectors of society might eschew conventional health care for CAM in rural regions, where health services are often limited. (shrink)

Motivated by a conviction that mass incarceration and state execution are among the most important ethical and political problems of our time, the contributors to this volume come together from a diverse range of backgrounds to analyze, critique, and envision alternatives to the injustices of the U.S. prison system, with recourse to deconstruction, phenomenology, critical race theory, feminism, queer theory, and disability studies. They engage with the hyper-incarceration of people of color, the incomplete abolition of slavery, the exploitation of prisoners (...) as workers and as “raw material” for the prison industrial complex, the intensive confinement of prisoners in supermax units, and the complexities of capital punishment in an age of abolition. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A recent issue of the journal Design and Culture included Lucy Kimbell's interview of object-oriented ontology philosopher Graham Harman. The invitation was premised on Harman's ability to counter the contemporary focus on user-centered design with an object orientation. Harman's appearance in the world of design discourse presents a paradox. To ask what object-oriented ontology that explicitly rejects anthropocentrism can offer user-centered and decidedly anthropocentric design practice seems to miss the point of an object orientation. An answer to the paradox (...) may reside in Ian Bogost's account of the metaphorism of object-oriented ontology. This essay explores Bogost's Alien Phenomenology, or What It's like to Be a Thing, which uses Harman's metaphor of black noise as “the background noise of peripheral objects,” and considers the design implications of Bogost's call to amplify black noise and linger in the speculative fiction of things, such as roasted green chile peppers, udon noodles, and pound cake. (shrink)

Who wants to be a hero? -- Everyone can help -- A best friend to all -- Locked up! -- Keeping a promise -- Dream big -- Say cheese! -- In the wild -- How you can help.

This dissertation argues that a sufficiently worked out concept of habit is crucial for understanding race, and specifically whiteness. It has become common for race theorists to think about white privilege as a matter of habit, but they have yet to realize the potential of this approach. This is in part because the existing accounts of white habit either omit or outright reject an explicitly phenomenological framework. This leads them to think only in terms of discrete habits of racism and (...) white privilege. I agree that racism and white privilege operate through specific habits of perception, cognition, and bodily response. But racism and racial privilege amount to more than individual problematic habits. To fully appreciate the extent to which habit structures racial categories, we need to historicize habit at a more fundamental level. That is to say, we need to understand the ways in which habituation itself––the ability to be oriented in and enabled by certain spaces, and to feel at home in them––tracks race. -/- I do this work through an account of racial habit that combines Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of habit as orientation, a Deweyan-pragmatist ontology of transaction, and a generally Du Boisian approach to race theory. It is not just the kinds of habits that differently racialized subjects acquire that determine their position within a socially and politically hierarchized landscape; it is the very ability to be oriented by and within certain spaces that constitutes one’s racial position. The differential ability to cultivate habits and to accrue the psychological, physiological, and affective benefits of habituation is a phenomenological asymmetry in our lived experience of race that constitutes a harm over and above the harms of individual racist habits. I give the name “anti-social habit” to those individual and collective habits that eventuate in this phenomenological asymmetry. I then draw on the framework of democratic egalitarianism to argue that this constitutes a distinct site of unjust social inequality. Finally, I argue for phenomenological disruption as a necessary form of social praxis and consider what this might look like in terms of political action. (shrink)

The use of Genetic Modification in food is the subject of deep political disagreement. Much of the disagreement involves different perceptions of the kinds of risks posed by pursuing GM food, and how these are to be tolerated and regulated. As a result, a primary institutional site of GM food politics is regulatory agencies tasked with risk assessment and regulation. Locating GM food politics in administrative areas of governance regimes produces unique challenges of democratic legitimacy, conventionally secured through legislative channels. (...) In particular, debate over the ends of a society’s policy on GM food inevitably continues in these institutional locations, despite conventional instrumental understandings of administrative legitimacy resting on effective application of ‘ends-means’ norms. This paper assesses the two major regulatory frameworks currently applied to GM food—the ‘precautious’ and ‘proof of harm’ approaches—and presents their respective limits in securing the procedural and substantive dimensions of the legitimacy of administrative deference in democratic societies. On the basis of these criticisms, a synthesized and emergent approach—‘experiential precaution’—is presented as having the resources to deepen the legitimacy of risk governance institutions in the case of GM food. It is characterized by deepened participatory practices of negotiated rulemaking and inclusion of further substantive requirements in approval criteria. (shrink)

The ability to recognize failures presupposes the ability to recognize achievements. By the same logic, ethical failures are identifiable only to the extent to which ethical achievements are identifiable. This article examines the possibility of cultural criticism in Whitehead’s metaphysics. The first part of this article challenges Isabelle Stenger’s nonnormative reading of Whitehead, while the second part employs my alternative reading in order to critique two different accounts of the nature of ideals. The main focus of this critique is Derrida’s (...) account of the autoimmunity of democracy and the aporetic structure of justice. (shrink)

The ability to judge accurately whether or not an action can be accomplished successfully is critical for selecting appropriate response options that enable adaptive behaviors. Such affordance judgments are thought to rely on the perceived fit between environmental properties and knowledge of one's current physical capabilities. Little, however, is currently known about the ability of individuals to judge their own affordances following a stroke, or about the underlying neural mechanisms involved. To address these issues, we employed a signal detection approach (...) to investigate the impact of left or right hemisphere injuries on judgments of whether a visual object was located within reach while remaining still. Regarding perceptual sensitivity and accuracy in judging reachability, there were no significant group differences between healthy controls, right brain damaged and left brain damaged stroke patients. However, while healthy controls and RBD patients demonstrated a negative response criterion and thus overestimated their reach capability, LBD patients' average response criterion converged to zero, indicating no judgment tendency. Critically, the LBD group's judgment tendency pattern is consistent with previous findings in this same sample on an affordance judgment task that required estimating whether the hand can fit through apertures. Lesion analysis suggests that this loss of judgment tendency may be associated with damage to the left insula, the left parietal and middle temporal lobe. Based on these results, we propose that damage to the left ventro-dorsal stream disrupts the retrieval and processing of a stable criterion, leading to stronger reliance on intact on-line body-perceptive processes computed within the preserved bilateral dorsal network. (shrink)

Lisa Bortolotti argues that there is more to judging delusions than whether they accurately reflect the world.

This article explores how theoretical arguments in relation to the concepts of embodiment and identity can allow one to analyse and explore the cultural and psychological significance of a contemporary set of practices of the `hallucinatory self', exemplified by members of the Hearing Voices Network. The article considers work in `critical psychology', which has largely been ignored by media and cultural theory. Through specific analysis of the ways in which a group of voice-hearers are enacting their identities outside of the (...) frameworks of the `psy' disciplines, the limits of current theories of identity will be exemplified. The article suggests that cultural and social theory must move beyond `consumption' as one of the key sites of subjectification, and begin to explore the significance of sites organized through divisions made between the normal and the abnormal. This will involve developing theories of subject formation which can adequately theorize the relations between truth, power and desire, and can pay attention to those situated practices which produce the various possibilities of experience in relation to contemporary forms of selfhood. (shrink)

A dominant cultural narrative within Costa Rica describes Costa Ricans not only as different from their Central American neighbours, but it also exalts them as better: specifically, as more white, peaceful, egalitarian and democratic. This notion of Costa Rican exceptionalism played a key role in the creation of their health care system, which is based on the four core principles of equity, universality, solidarity and obligation. While the political justification and design of the current health care system does, in part, (...) realize this ideal, we argue that the narrative of Costa Rican exceptionalism prevents the full actualization of these principles by marginalizing and excluding disadvantaged groups, especially indigenous and black citizens and the substantial Nicaraguan minority. We offer three suggestions to mitigate the self-undermining effects of the dominant national narrative: 1) encouragement and development of counternarratives; 2) support of an emerging field of Costa Rican bioethics; and 3) decoupling health and national successes. (shrink)

One winter morning, the two of us—both postdoctoral fellows in medical humanities and bioethics—gathered with a handful of reproductive science graduate students in the lab to watch a demonstration on making alginate beads. Due to their three-dimensional nature, the beads are capable of holding ovarian follicles—the beads act as though they were a small ovary. The scientists in the lab have managed to mature the follicles maintained in the beads into eggs, fertilize these eggs, and produce the birth of live (...) mice. This research was begun in an effort to develop a means of gathering ovarian follicles from young human cancer patients before they commence cancer treatment that may result in their infertility, thus .. (shrink)

This review article explores the politics of hope and optimism made possible by a re-thinking of touch as a movement towards the not-yet-known, embodied through an engagement with the improvisational character of Argentine tango. Tango discloses the relational and enactive qualities of corporeality, moving us to ask not what bodies are, but rather what can bodies do; what can bodies become? The article engages with the moves to a Spinozist conception of affect developed by Massumi and Deleuze and Guattari, to (...) consider the extent to which touch as affective symbiosis can form the basis of a democracy-yet-to-come. The article asks whether such concepts could and indeed should form the basis of a politics of re-invention, and what might be some of the problems and limitations with aligning affect principally with movement and change. The article situates the discussion within arguments that currently traverse the psychological and biological sciences, and concludes that more cautious reflection on the kinds of ontological turn that are forming the foundation of such processual models is needed. (shrink)