_Esotericism, Art, and Imagination_ is a uniquely wide- ranging collection of articles by scholars in the field of Western esotericism, focusing on themes of poetry, drama, film, literature, and art. Included here are articles illuminating such diverse topics as the Gnostic fiction of Philip Pullman, alchemical images, the Tarot, surrealism, esoteric films, and much more. This collection reveals the richness and complexity of the intersections between esotericism, artistic creators, and their works. Authors include Joscelyn Godwin, Cathy Gutierrez, M. E. Warlick, (...) Eric Wilson, and many others. (shrink)

Stem cell biology and systems biology are two prominent new approaches to studying cell development. In stem cell biology, the predominant method is experimental manipulation of concrete cells and tissues. Systems biology, in contrast, emphasizes mathematical modeling of cellular systems. For scientists and philosophers interested in development, an important question arises: how should the two approaches relate? This essay proposes an answer, using the model of Waddington’s landscape to triangulate between stem cell and systems approaches. This simple abstract model represents (...) development as an undulating surface of hills and valleys. Originally constructed by C. H. Waddington to visually explicate an integrated theory of genetics, development and evolution, the landscape model can play an updated unificatory role. I examine this model’s structure, representational assumptions, and uses in all three contexts, and argue that explanations of cell development require both mathematical models and concrete experiments. On this view, the two approaches are interdependent, with mathematical models playing a crucial but circumscribed role in explanations of cell development. (shrink)

This book aims to give an account, called Variabilism, of the moral significance of merely possible persons and to use Variabilism to illuminate abortion. In doing so it lays the groundwork for a more productive discussion on abortion.

The identification and valorization of unacknowledged, feminized forms of economic productivity has been an important task for feminist theory. In this article, we expand and rethink existing definitions of labour, in order to recognize the essential economic role women play in the stem cell and regenerative medicine industries, new fields of biomedical research that are rapidly expanding throughout the world. Women constitute the primary tissue donors in the new stem cell industries, which require high volumes of human embryos, oöcytes, foetal (...) tissue and umbilical cord blood. Such material is generally given for free in the advanced industrial democracies, constituted as a surplus (‘spare’ embryos) or waste (umbilical cord ‘afterbirth’, cadaveric foetuses, poor quality oöcytes) whose generative powers should not be withheld from others. At the same time, among impoverished female populations in developing nations, such biological material is now often procured through frankly transactional relations, where women undertake risky procedures for small fees. In each case, female bodily productivity is mobilized to support bioeconomic research, yet the economic value involved in these relations is largely unacknowledged. In this article, we consider both the gift economy and the transactional economy for reproductive tissues as a form of labour. In order to fully conceptualize the specificities of feminized productivity in the bioeconomy, we distinguish between earlier feminist theories of reproductive labour and the emerging practices generated by stem cell research, which we term regenerative labour. We consider how historical transformations in the regulation of feminized labour and the technical repertoires of stem cell research renegotiate the productivity limits of female reproductive biology, opening it out to novel and profitable forms of surplus value and enrolling women in complex negotiations over their role in bioeconomic activity. (shrink)

For both its enthusiastic adherents as well as its more generous opponents, liberalism commands considerable ethical appeal but at a price. And that price is its lack of systematic integrity or coherence. The charm of its ethical appeal stems from the great values which it celebrates. But for many these very values seem fatally incommensurable, seem to be forever colliding with and thwarting one another. As Isaiah Berlin has never tired of reminding us, liberty and equality continue to defy our (...) best efforts to reconcile them, to weave them together in some kind of orderly and compelling way. Liberalism, in other words, is flawed, if not tragically flawed. For those who nevertheless remain charmed by its ethical appeal, the tragedy of the incommensurability of its basic values is disappointing and disturbing. (shrink)

This paper examines a case of failed interdisciplinary collaboration, between experimental stem cell research and theoretical systems biology. Recently, two groups of theoretical biologists have proposed dynamical systems models as a basis for understanding stem cells and their distinctive capacities. Experimental stem cell biologists, whose work focuses on manipulation of concrete cells, tissues and organisms, have largely ignored these proposals. I argue that ‘failure to communicate’ in this case is rooted in divergent views of explanation: the theoretically-inclined modelers are committed (...) to a version of the covering-law view, while experimental stem cell biologists aim at mechanistic explanations. I propose a way to reconcile these two explanatory approaches to cell development, and discuss the significance of this result for interdisciplinary collaboration in systems biology and beyond. (shrink)

This article looks at the increasing prominence of bioterrorist threat scenarios in recent US foreign policy. Germ warfare, it argues, is being depicted as the paradigmatic threat of the post-Cold War era, not only because of its affinity for cross-border movement but also because it blurs the lines between deliberate attack and spontaneous natural catastrophe. The article looks at the possible implications of this move for understandings of war, strategy and public health. It also seeks to contextualize the US’s growing (...) military interest in biodefence research within the commercial strategies of the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. In its methodology, the article weaves together elements from defence literature, scientific perspectives on infectious disease, catastrophe theory and political economy. The conceptual underpinnings of the strategy of pre-emptive warfare, it argues, lie as much in the theory of biological emergence as in official US defence strategy. (shrink)

There is by now broad consensus in the critical literature that neoliberalism and social conservatism have frequently coexisted in practice. Yet the alt-right fits none of the previously identified alliances: this is not the neoliberal neoconservatism of the Reagan and Bush years, nor the neoliberal communitarianism of the Third Way, nor even a form of neoliberal authoritarianism. Instead, the alt-right claims intellectual descent from economic libertarianism, on the one hand, and paleo- (as opposed to neo-) conservatism on the other. This (...) paper traces the contours of this ‘paleolibertarian’ alliance, first by following the volatile political trajectory of Murray Rothbard, the foremost philosopher of American libertarianism, and, second, by uncovering precedents in the longer history of the American far right. It will be argued that paleoconservatism makes for a uniquely powerful ally because it offers a workable response to libertarianism’s intrinsic contradictions. (shrink)

Understanding disability requires understanding its social construction, and social construction can be read in cultural products. In this essay, I look to one major locus for images of persons with disabilities—horror. Horror films and fiction use disability imagery to create and augment horror. I first situate my understanding of disability imagery in the horror genre using a case study read through the work of Julia Kristeva. But, I go on to argue that trademark moves in the horror genre, which typically (...) support ableist assumptions, can be used to subvert ableism and open space for alternative social and political thinking about disability. I point to the work of Tim Burton and Stephen King to demonstrate these possibilities in horror. (shrink)

We describe a first order axiom set which yields the classical first order Euclidean geometry of Tarski when used with classical logic, and yields an intuitionistic Euclidean geometry when used with intuitionistic logic. The first order language has a single six place atomic predicate and no function symbols. The intuitionistic system has a computational interpretation in recursive function theory, that is, a realizability interpretation analogous to those given by Kleene for intuitionistic arithmetic and analysis. This interpretation shows the unprovability in (...) the intuitionistic theory of certain “nonconstructive” theorems of the classical geometry. (shrink)

Anthropology of Consciousness, EarlyView.

This article critically examines some of the inconsistency objections that have been put forward by John Broome, Larry Temkin and others against the so-called "person-affecting," or "person-based," restriction in normative ethics, including "extra people" problems and a version of the nonidentity problem from Kavka and Parfit. Certain Pareto principles and a version of the "mere addition paradox" are discussed along the way. The inconsistencies at issue can be avoided, it is argued, by situating the person-affecting intuition within a non-additive form (...) of maximizing consequentialism – a theory which then competes with such additive, or aggregative, forms of maximizing consequentialism as "totalism" and "averagism.". (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 9, Page 26-28, September 2012.

Galit Wellner’s exploration of new kinds of digital technologies employing AI algorithms that simulate features and functions of the human imagination leads her to propose a conceptual analysis of the imagination as a composite of perception and memory. Wellner poses the question of whether the output of such technological applications might be regarded as not merely simulating creative activity but as truly imaginative in their own right. Wellner concludes with a qualified “no.” The use of AI algorithms in conjunction with (...) human cognitive activity, conceived in terms of a layered architecture of the faculties in question, can in fact be understood as an essential component of imaginative, and thus creative, production, but humans are still needed in the mix. To the extent that the AI-algorithm-enhanced human system is capable of imagining and creating works of art, imagination can be extended to AI algorithms. But, the algorithms sans humans are not themselves imaginers. For Wellner, AI algorithms can augment and enhance human imaginative efforts, equipping us with a richer and vastly wider array of possibilities and options for aesthetic consideration, but ultimately, the human is the essential element. However, once the door is opened to accepting algorithmically determined alternatives as capable of successfully achieving desired results within a field of possible outcomes, it seems possible that the activities of connecting, coordinating, or meaningfully linking, combining, and establishing new imaginative layers that Wellner reserves as requiring humans to enact might also be programmable, algorithmically achievable tasks that instantiate genuine aesthetic decision making. (shrink)

The Voice of Virtue illuminates the musical practices at the heart of the Neostoic movement that spread across French lands during the Wars of Religion in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Guided by twin reparative traditions granting music and philosophy therapeutic power, composers and performers across the embattled Catholic and Protestant confessions turned to moral song as a means of repairing personal and collective virtue damaged by the ongoing conflict. Moral song collections enlarged interest in Stoic philosophy by (...) circulating its ethical program to a broader audience through attractive paraphrases of Stoic maxims set to music. Even more importantly, this skillfully composed repertoire of polyphonic song offered a multi-sensory moral practice that would have resonated powerfully for those well-versed in the paradoxes of the Stoic tradition. Bringing together a repertoire of little-known music prints, a rich visual culture, and an impressive body of literary and philosophical sources, The Voice of Virtue not only illuminates the influence of Stoicism on music, but also reveals that we cannot fully understand Neostoicism as an intellectual or cultural movement without accounting for its vibrant musical sounds. Virtue, as voiced in these Stoic practices, proves to be both rational and fully invested in the sensory processes of the singing body. (shrink)

When her baby was born last June, Rossana Dalla Corte, age sixty-two, was thought to be the oldest woman ever to have given birth. Her pregnancy was achieved at a private fertility clinic in Italy, the same clinic that treated “Jennifer F.,” a London woman who, on Christmas day, 1993, at the age of fifty-nine, gave birth to twins. The reproductive procedure, likely to become more common during the next few years, has received intense scrutiny from health officials in Great (...) Britain, France, and Italy. Moral questions concerning that procedure already have been taken up by the popular press in the United States. Such questions can be expected to take on a new urgency as the United States considers reshaping its health care system and, specifically, the circumstances under which coverage for infertility treatment will be provided. (shrink)

From the beginning of the scientific revolution, scientists, philosophers, and laypersons have been concerned about the effects of knowledge on social relations. Although views differ about the details of this knowledge-society interface, most observers have understood that the kind of knowledge that emanates from establishedscience can indeed be quite powerful in practice. In exploring both the nature of race science discourse and selected features of the practical context within which it resonates effectively, the authors' investigationsof this field and its contribution (...) to the Holocaust represent an effort to specify some of the things that make knowledge powerful. (shrink)

In a critical intervention into the bioethics debate over human enhancement, philosopher Melinda Hall tackles the claim that the expansion and development of human capacities is a moral obligation. Hall draws on French philosopher Michel Foucault to reveal and challenge the ways disability is central to the conversation. The Bioethics of Enhancement includes a close reading and analysis of the last century of enhancement thinking and contemporary transhumanist thinkers, the strongest promoters of the obligation to pursue enhancement technology. With (...) specific attention to the work of bioethicists Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu, the book challenges the rhetoric and strategies of enhancement thinking. These include the desire to transcend the body and decide who should live in future generations through emerging technologies such as genetic selection. Hall provides new analyses rethinking both the philosophy of enhancement and disability, arguing that enhancement should be a matter of social and political interventions, not genetic and biological interventions. Hall concludes that human vulnerability and difference should be cherished rather than extinguished. -/- This book will be of interest to academics working in bioethics and disability studies, along with those working in Continental philosophy (especially on Foucault). (shrink)

Child Versus Childmaker investigates a "person-affecting" approach to ethical choice. A form of consequentialism, this approach is intended to capture the idea that agents ought both do the most good that they can and respect each person as distinct from each other. Focusing on cases in which a conflict of interest arises between "childmakers"—parents, infertility specialists, embryologists, and others engaged in the task of bringing new people into existence—and the children they aim to create, the author considers what we today (...) owe those who will come into existence tomorrow. (shrink)

The Asymmetry consists of two claims. (A) That a possible person's life would be abjectly miserable –less than worth living – counts against bringing that person into existence. But (B) that a distinct possible person's life would be worth living or even well worth living does not count in favour of bringing that person into existence. In recent years, the view that the two halves of the Asymmetry are jointly untenable has become increasingly entrenched. If we say all persons matter (...) morally whether they exist or not and on that basis try to explain the first half of the Asymmetry, we lose the second half of the Asymmetry. If we say that some persons do not matter morally and some do and on that basis try to explain the second half of the Asymmetry, we lose the first half of the Asymmetry – or else find ourselves with a principle that is either inconsistent or otherwise deeply troubled in some way that has nothing to do with the content of the Asymmetry itself. In this article, I propose an alternative approach to the Asymmetry which I will call Variabilism. By understanding each and every person, whether existing or not, to matter morally but variably– such that the moral significance of any loss incurred by any person is considered to depend, not on who incurs that loss and whether that person matters morally, but rather on where that loss is incurred in relation to the person who incurs it – we can both nicely ground the two halves of the Asymmetry and avoid the conceptual difficulties that have plagued competing approaches. (shrink)

This essay examines the role of social interactions in the search for blood stem cells, in a recent episode of biomedical research. Linked to mid-20th century cell biology, genetics and radiation research, the search for blood stem cells coalesced in the 1960s and took a developmental turn in the late 1980s, with significant ramifications for immunology, stem cell and cancer biology. Like much contemporary biomedical research, this line of inquiry exhibits a complex social structure and includes several prominent scientific successes, (...) recognized as such by participating researchers. I use personal interviews and the published record to trace the social interactions crucial for scientific success in this episode. All recognized successes in this episode have two aspects: improved models of blood cell development, and new interfaces with other lines of research. The narrative of the search for blood stem cells thus yields a robust account of scientific success in practice, which generalizes to other scientific episodes and lends itself to expansion to include wider social contexts. (shrink)

Focusing on the speculative methodologies used to generate models of the financial and meteorological future, this article develops a series of theses on the ‘evental’ and ‘atmospheric’ quality of contemporary power. What is at stake in the circulation of capital today, I argue, is not so much the exchange of equivalents as the universal transmutability of fluctutation. Whether we are dealing with the turbulence of world financial markets or that of complex earth systems, the non-dialectical relation can itself be extracted, (...) recombined and liquefied, as it were, in a dimension of its own. In the same way that financial derivatives price the variable relation between and across national currencies, weather derivatives now make it possible to issue contracts on the unknowable contingencies embedded in complex atmospheric relations. This reconfiguration of value requires a thorough rethinking of classical sociological conceptions of debt, promise and political violence. (shrink)

Ontologies of living things are increasingly grounded on the concepts and practices of current life science. Biological development is a process, undergone by living things, which begins with a single cell and (in an important class of cases) ends with formation of a multicellular organism. The process of development is thus prima facie central for ideas about biological individuality and organismality. However, recent accounts of these concepts do not engage developmental biology. This paper aims to fill the gap, proposing the (...) lineage view of stem cells as an ontological framework for conceptualizing organismal development. This account is grounded on experimental practices of stem cell research, with emphasis on new techniques for generating biological organization in vitro. On the lineage view, a stem cell is the starting point of a cell lineage with a specific organismal source, time-interval of existence, and ‘tree topology’ of branch-points linking the stem to developmental termini. The concept of ‘enkapsis’ accommodates the cell-organism relation within the lineage view; this hierarchical notion is further explicated by considering the methods and results of stem cell experiments. Results of this examination include a (partial) characterization of stem cells’ developmental versatility, and the context-dependence of developmental processes involving stem cells. (shrink)

It is a commonplace of long standing that one should be “authentic” or—in expressions which may have an approximately similar meaning—that one should be “true to oneself” or that one should “lead a life of one’s own”. Duty and morality aside, this command to be “authentic” leads the prudentially-minded reader to ask, “Why? Why should I be authentic, or true to myself, or lead a life of my own? Will I, of necessity, be horribly unhappy if I am not authentic? (...) Is not an inauthentic, but happy life, at least a conceptual possibility? And, if I can be happy though inauthentic, then why should I strive toward authenticity, especially since the psychological literature on this subject makes much of the considerable pain involved in this process?” It is not self-evidently clear, from the prudential point of view, why authenticity is desirable. (shrink)

This article addresses the rise of faith-based emergency relief by examining the US President’s Emergency Plan for HIV/AIDS (PEPFAR), a public health intervention focused on the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that the theological turn in humanitarian aid serves to amplify ongoing dynamics in the domestic politics of sub-Saharan African states, where social services have assumed the form of chronic emergency relief and religious organizations have come to play an increasingly prominent role in the provision of such services. (...) In the context of an ongoing public health crisis, PEPFAR has institutionalized the social authority of the Pentecostal and charismatic churches, leading to a semantic confluence between the postcolonial politics of emergency and the Pentecostal/Pauline theology of kairos or event. Far from being confined to the space of foreign aid, however, the faith-based turn in humanitarianism is in keeping with ongoing reforms in domestic social policy in the United States. While on the one hand the sustained welfare programmes of the New Deal and Great Society have been dismantled in favour of a system of emergency relief, on the other hand the federal government has intensified its moral, pedagogical and punitive interventions into the lives of the poor. The wilful transfer of welfare services to overtly religious service providers has played a decisive role in this process. The article concludes with a critical appraisal of the links between African and North American Pentecostal-evangelical churches and questions the revolutionary mission ascribed to Pauline political theology in recent political theory. (shrink)

In 2007, Song-Ming Ang initiated Guilty Pleasures, a series of listening parties dedicated to sharing beloved “bad songs” and facilitating critical discussions about complex desires and hierarchies of taste. In this article, I extend on these discussions and offer a theory of guilty pleasures. Informed by queer and critical approaches to affect and minor aesthetic categories, I argue that guilty pleasures are characterized not by a specific medium or style, but rather by their ability to evoke pleasure interrupted by a (...) meta-response of guilt. This experience is activated by the outmoded, saccharine, or naff qualities of an object. I contrast guilty pleasures with good-bad art, painful art, and objects that foster akrasia, and provide an extended examination of naff, another minor aesthetic category with roots in Polari that intersects aspects of camp, heteronormativity, and Lauren Berlant’s notion of “cruel optimism.” I ultimately argue that guilty pleasures are far from a simplistic category of low art enjoyed with indifference. Instead, I perceive guilty pleasures as always enjoyed with a degree of criticality or skepticism that is tethered to the beholder’s taste, life experiences, and values. (shrink)

Fitouchi et al.'s moral disciplining approach highlights the significant role social evaluations of self-control appear to play in human moral judgment. At the same time, attributing the wide range of puritanical concerns to a singular focus on self-control seems unwarranted. A more pluralistic approach would enrich understanding of moral judgment in all its cultural and historical diversity.

According to the Asymmetry, it is wrong to bring a miserable child into existence but permissible not to bring a happy child into existence. When it comes to procreation, we don’t have complete procreative liberty. But we do have some discretion. The Asymmetry seems highly intuitive. But a plausible account of the Asymmetry has been surprisingly difficult to provide, and it may well be that most moral philosophers – or at least most consequentialists – think that all reasonable efforts to (...) provide such an account have by now been exhausted. In this paper, I argue that, despite the difficulties, the Asymmetry is too important to be set aside. I also note a handful of accounts of the Asymmetry that have been proposed and why they fail. It seems, for example, that it will not do to say that some people matter morally and others don’t, or that a person matters morally in some worlds but not others. My own conclusion is that, while we are bound to say all people matter morally – you, me and the merely possible – we are not bound to say that all their losses– or all ours– matter morally. We can instead distinguish between morally significant and insignificant losses, with the distinction between the two being a matter of where the loss is incurred in relation to the person who incurs it. This way of looking at things – which I call Variabilism– provides the basis for a plausible account of the Asymmetry. The availability of such an account suggests, I think, that our prospects for rescuing the Asymmetry are bright. (shrink)