The past two decades of psychoanalytic discourse have witnessed a marked transformation in the way we think about women and gender. The assignment of gender carries with it a host of assumptions, yet without it we can feel lost in a void, unmoored from the world of rationality, stability and meaning. The feminist analytic thinkers whose work is collected here confront the meaning established by the assignment of gender and the uncertainty created by its absence. The contributions brought together in (...) _Psychoanalytic Reflections on a Gender-free Case_ address a cross-section of significant issues that have both chronicled and facilitated the changes in feminist psychoanalysis since the mid 1980s. Difficult issues which have previously been ignored are considered first. The book goes on to address family perspectives as they interact and shape the child’s experience of growing up male or female. Other topics covered are the authority of personal agency as influenced by the language and theory of patriarchy, male-centred concepts that consistently define women as inferior, and the concept of gender as being co-constructed within a relationship. The gender-free case presented here will fascinate all psychoanalysts interested in exploring ways of grappling with the elusive nature of gender, as well as those studying gender studies. (shrink)

It is often supposed that the spectacular successes of our modern mathematical sciences support a lofty vision of a world completely ordered by one single elegant theory. In this book Nancy Cartwright argues to the contrary. When we draw our image of the world from the way modern science works - as empiricism teaches us we should - we end up with a world where some features are precisely ordered, others are given to rough regularity and still others behave (...) in their own diverse ways. This patchwork makes sense when we realise that laws are very special productions of nature, requiring very special arrangements for their generation. Combining classic and newly written essays on physics and economics, The Dappled World carries important philosophical consequences and offers serious lessons for both the natural and the social sciences. (shrink)

Excitation at widely dispersed loci in the cerebral cortex may represent a neural correlate of consciousness. Accordingly, each unique combination of excited neurons would determine the content of a conscious moment. This conceptualization would be strengthened if we could identify what orchestrates the various combinations of excited neurons. In the present paper, cholinergic afferents to the cerebral cortex are hypothesized to enhance activity at specific cortical circuits and determine the content of a conscious moment by activating certain combinations of postsynaptic (...) sites in select cortical modules. It is proposed that these selections are enabled by learning-related restructuring that simultaneously adjusts the cytoskeletal matrix at specific constellations of postsynaptic sites giving all a similar geometry. The underlying mechanism of conscious awareness hypothetically involves cholinergic mediation of linkages between microtubules and microtubule-associated protein-2 . The first reason for proposing this mechanism is that previous studies indicate cognitive-related changes in MAP-2 occur in cholinoceptive cells within discrete cortical modules. These cortical modules are found throughout the cerebral cortex, measure 1–2 mm2, and contain approximately 103–104cholinoceptive cells that are enriched with MAP-2. The subsectors of the hippocampus may function similarly to cortical modules. The second reason for proposing the current mechanism is that the MAP-2 rich cells throughout the cerebral cortex correspond almost exactly with the cortical cells containing muscarinic receptors. Many of these cholinoceptive, MAP-2 rich cells are large pyramidal cell types, but some are also small pyramidal cells and nonpyramidal types. The third reason for proposing the current mechanism is that cholinergic afferents are module-specific; cholinergic axons terminate wholly within individual cortical modules. The cholinergic afferents may be unique in this regard. Finally, the tapering apical dendrites of pyramidal cells are proposed as primary sites for cholinergic mediation of linkages between MAP-2 and microtubules because especially high amounts of MAP-2 are found here. Also, the possibility is raised that muscarinic actions on MAP-2 could modulate microtubular coherence and self-collapse, phenomena that have been suggested to underlie consciousness. (shrink)

How do novel scientific concepts arise? In Creating Scientific Concepts, Nancy Nersessian seeks to answer this central but virtually unasked question in the problem of conceptual change. She argues that the popular image of novel concepts and profound insight bursting forth in a blinding flash of inspiration is mistaken. Instead, novel concepts are shown to arise out of the interplay of three factors: an attempt to solve specific problems; the use of conceptual, analytical, and material resources provided by the (...) cognitive-social-cultural context of the problem; and dynamic processes of reasoning that extend ordinary cognition. Focusing on the third factor, Nersessian draws on cognitive science research and historical accounts of scientific practices to show how scientific and ordinary cognition lie on a continuum, and how problem-solving practices in one illuminate practices in the other. (shrink)

Hunting Causes and Using Them argues that causation is not one thing, as commonly assumed, but many. There is a huge variety of causal relations, each with different characterizing features, different methods for discovery and different uses to which it can be put. In this collection of new and previously published essays, Nancy Cartwright provides a critical survey of philosophical and economic literature on causality, with a special focus on the currently fashionable Bayes-nets and invariance methods - and it (...) exposes a huge gap in that literature. Almost every account treats either exclusively how to hunt causes or how to use them. But where is the bridge between? It's no good knowing how to warrant a causal claim if we don't know what we can do with that claim once we have it. This book will interest philosophers, economists and social scientists. (shrink)

Until recently, struggles for justice proceeded against the background of a taken-for-granted frame: the bounded territorial state. With that "Westphalian" picture of political space assumed by default, the scope of justice was rarely subject to open dispute. Today, however, human-rights activists and international feminists join critics of structural adjustment and the World Trade Organization in challenging the view that justice can only be a domestic relation among fellow citizens. Targeting injustices that cut across borders, they are making the scale of (...) justice an object of explicit struggle. Inspired by these efforts, Nancy Fraser asks: What is the proper frame for theorizing justice? Faced with a plurality of competing scales, how do we know which one is truly just? In exploring these questions, Fraser revises her widely discussed theory of redistribution and recognition. She introduces a third, "political" dimension of justice—representation—and elaborates a new, reflexive type of critical theory that foregrounds injustices of "misframing." Engaging with thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas, John Rawls, Michel Foucault, and Hannah Arendt, she envisions a "postwestphalian" mapping of political space that accommodates transnational solidarity, transborder publicity, and democratic frame-setting, as well as emancipatory projects that cross borders. The result is a sustained reflection on who should count with respect to what in a globalizing world. (shrink)

Clinical gene transfer research has both a unique history and a complex and layered system of research oversight, featuring a unique review body, the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee. This paper briefly describes the process of decision-making about clinical GTR, considers whether the questions, problems, and issues raised in clinical GTR are unique, and concludes by examining whether the RAC's oversight is a useful model that should be reproduced for other similar areas of clinical research.Clinical GTR is governed by the same (...) oversight system as most clinical trials, with a significant addition: the RAC. Like other research with human subjects, GTR, if it is affiliated with a federally funded institution, must be approved by an institutional review board whose activities are governed by the common rule, that is, the federal regulations for protection of human subjects in research. Like other research intended to produce a drug, device, or biologic to be marketed in the United States, GTR is also overseen by the Food and Drug Administration. (shrink)

This essay explores the nexus between Buddhist discourse, moral reasoning, and aspects of indigenous ethnopsychology in a Shan community in northern Thailand. I suggest that these three strands of thought are routinely braided together in intricate ways and, furthermore, that some version of this conceptual arrangement is necessary in order for any moral thinking to take place. That is, all moral thought entails some conception of the way the world is structured (a conception that may or may not be based (...) on religion) and some ethnotheory of human nature, both of which are culturally mediated. Finally, I discuss the implications of this view for our understanding of human agency and autonomy. (shrink)

This paper describes a global pattern of declining academic freedom, often driven by powerful political interference with core functions of academic communities. It argues that countering threats to academic freedom requires doubling down on ethics, specifically standards of justice and fairness in pursuing knowledge and assigning warrant to beliefs. Using the example of the selection of a Qatari university to host the 2024 World Congress of Bioethics, the authors urge fairness towards diverse groups over time and efforts to counter injustices (...) that conferences generate. (shrink)

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are widely taken as the gold standard for establishing causal conclusions. Ideally conducted they ensure that the treatment ‘causes’ the outcome—in the experiment. But where else? This is the venerable question of external validity. I point out that the question comes in two importantly different forms: Is the specific causal conclusion warranted by the experiment true in a target situation? What will be the result of implementing the treatment there? This paper explains how the probabilistic theory (...) of causality implies that RCTs can establish causal conclusions and thereby provides an account of what exactly that causal conclusion is. Clarifying the exact form of the conclusion shows just what is necessary for it to hold in a new setting and also how much more is needed to see what the actual outcome would be there were the treatment implemented. (shrink)

For evidence-based practice and policy, randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are the current gold standard. But exactly why? We know that RCTs do not, without a series of strong assumptions, warrant predictions about what happens in practice. But just what are these assumptions? I maintain that, from a philosophical stance, answers to both questions are obscured because we don't attend to what causal claims say. Causal claims entering evidence-based medicine at different points say different things and, I would suggest, failure to (...) attend to these differences makes much current guidance about evidence for medical and social policy misleading. (shrink)

The question of whether fluid intelligence can be differentiated from general intelligence in older adults is addressed. Data indicate that the developmental pattern of performance on fluid tasks differs from the pattern of general intelligence. These results suggest that it is important to identify changes in fluid cognitive functions associated with frontal lobe decline, as they may be early indicators of cognitive decline. (Published Online April 5 2006).

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 7, Page 802-808, September 2022.

The prospect of rescuing a person in immediate peril seems at first glance to be an unqualified good. Take, for example, the events of April 15, 2013, at the 117th Boston Marathon. Two consecutive...

Este ensayo provee una visión general de la obra de la pintora mexicana María Izquierdo y ubica sus imágenes e ideas dentro de los debates sobre el rol del arte en la sociedad mexicana entre 1930 y 1950. En la primera década de su carrera ella estaba tangencialmente afiliada al grupo vanguardista literario conocido como los Contemporáneos, que abogaba por el arte puro. Después de 1939, cambió los temas y el estilo de su obra y enfatizó la mexicanidad, acercándose a (...) algunas de las ideas -aunque no a todas- propugnadas por los muralistas y otros artistas que compartieron su agenda. A través de su carrera, Izquierdo creó obras que abordaron cuestiones de género y promovieron una presencia positiva de las mujeres. Las representaciones de las protagonistas femeninas de Izquierdo contrastan con las de los muralistas, quienes generalmente las presentaron en papeles secundarios. (shrink)

Developing World Bioethics, Volume 22, Issue 2, Page 112-122, June 2022.

First-in-human research has several characteristics that require special attention with respect to ethics and human subjects protections. At least some nanomedical technologies may also have characteristics that merit special attention in clinical research, as other papers in this symposium show. This paper considers how to address these characteristics in the consent form and process for FIH nanomedicine research, focusing principally on experimental nanotherapeutic interventions but also considering nanodiagnostic interventions.It is essential, as a starting point, to recognize that the consent form (...) and process are by no means the primary protectors of human subjects. Instead, consideration of the form and content of informed consent becomes relevant only after a clinical trial has been reviewed and deemed scientifically and ethically acceptable.Two convergent types of challenges to informed consent are posed by nanomedicine FIH research. First, some issues appear generally applicable to FIH research, but have specific nanomedicine implications. (shrink)

In Gender, Class, and Freedom in Modern Political Theory, Nancy Hirschmann demonstrates not merely that modern theories of freedom are susceptible to gender and class analysis but that they must be analyzed in terms of gender and class in order to be understood at all. Through rigorous close readings of major and minor works of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Mill, Hirschmann establishes and examines the gender and class foundations of the modern understanding of freedom. Building on a social (...) constructivist model of freedom that she developed in her award-winning book The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom, she makes in her new book another original and important contribution to political and feminist theory. Despite the prominence of "state of nature" ideas in modern political theory, Hirschmann argues, theories of freedom actually advance a social constructivist understanding of humanity. By rereading "human nature" in light of this insight, Hirschmann uncovers theories of freedom that are both more historically accurate and more relevant to contemporary politics. Pigeonholing canonical theorists as proponents of either "positive" or "negative" liberty is historically inaccurate, she demonstrates, because theorists deploy both conceptions of freedom simultaneously throughout their work. (shrink)

Despite recognition of the gender dimensions of climate change, there is little attention to racism in climate justice perspectives. In response, this article advocates developing an ecologically informed intersectional approach designed to disclose the ways racism contributes to the construction of illegible lives in the domain of climate policies and practices. Differential impacts of climate change, while an important dimension, is ultimately inadequate to understanding and responding to both climate justice and environmental racism. What is required is a rich understanding (...) of the histories and lineages of the deep incorporation of racism and environmental exploitation. To catalyze such an approach to climate justice, this article develops an analysis of three instances of the intermingling of racism and environmental exploitation: climate adaptation practices in Lagos, Nigeria; the enmeshment of race and coal mining in the post–Civil War United States; and the infusing of precarity and rainforest destruction in Brazil. (shrink)

In his article, "Is Essentialism Unscientific?" (1988), Jarrett Leplin claims that I do not have sufficient grounds for rejecting the customary "philosophical method of discovery" that allows for the direct transfer of theories developed in the philosophy of language to science. While admitting that all attempts at transfer thus far have failed, he still maintains that method is sound. I argue that the wholesale failure of these attempts is reason enough to suspect the method and to try to devise one (...) more suitable to fathoming how "meaning", "reference", and "meaning change" are to be understood for scientific theories. The method I have proposed in Nersessian (1984b), and subsequent work, demands that we learn how to incorporate the actual practices of meaning construction in science into our analyses. Leplin distorts my analysis and, thus, fails to understand the insights that study provides. (shrink)

This chapter gives a concrete example of a question of current scientific interest where capacities matter: ‘Do the Bell inequalities describing Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen experiments show that causality is incompatible with quantum mechanics?’ The question cannot be answered if we rely on probabilistic theories of causality and laws of associations alone. It takes the concept of capacity and related notions of how capacities operate even to formulate the problem correctly. Econometrics models with correlated errors, it is shown, can explain the EPR results (...) when the correlations are given a capacity interpretation. (shrink)

The Human Genome Project has allowed researchers to gain new insights into the genetic causes of health and disease. With this knowledge comes the potential to develop new genetic tests that are capable of predicting the risk of disease or disability among presently healthy individuals. This information is potentially beneficial in that it may allow individuals to develop strategies to reduce their risk of illness and may allow health providers to recognize and treat the early stages of disease more effectively. (...) As knowledge about genetic contributions to disease continues to grow and genetic testing technology becomes more widespread, there is a risk that personal genetic information could be used in ways potentially concerning to consumers. Genetic testing technology could potentially be used to discriminate against individuals in terms of their ability to obtain health, life, and disability insurance. Decreased access to insurance, in turn, significantly hinders access to health care and income for oneself and/or for one's dependent. (shrink)

Four distinguished authors have been brought together to produce this elegant study of a much-neglected figure. The book is divided into three sections: Neurath's biographical background and the economic and social context of his ideas; his theory of science; and the development of his role in debates on Marxist concepts of history and his own conception of science. Coinciding with the emerging serious interest in logical positivism, this timely publication will redress a current imbalance in the history and philosophy of (...) science. (shrink)

Carpendale & Lewis (C&L) emphasize the importance of viewing language as activity. In this commentary I push further their claim by highlighting how constructions, rather than words, are the appropriate unit of analysis. In addition, I suggest how a discussion of indexicality paves the way for a better understanding of how language provides a powerful tool for children's construction of mind.

In 1997, the United States incarcerated over 1.7 million persons in local jails and in state and federal prisons. These inmates are disproportionately poor and persons of color. Many lack adequate access to health care before incarceration and present to correctional services with major unaddressed medical problems.Convictions for drug possession and use have increased the number of injection drug users with HIV and AIDS in prisons. Determinate sentencing and “three strikes and you’re out” laws have increased the number of inmates (...) who are aging and dying during their sentences. Their feelings reflect those of Larry Rideau, sentenced to life without parole and founder of The Angolite—an award-winning prison newspaper at Louisiana's Angola Prison—“The dream of getting out, you equate with heaven. Dying in prison you equate with hell.”. (shrink)

In Total Truth, Nancy Pearcey offers a razor-sharp analysis of the split between public and private, fact and feelings.

While people are still alive, we owe them respect. Yet what, if anything, do we owe the newly dead? This question is an urgent practical concern for aged societies, because older people die at higher rates than any other age group. One novel way in which Japan, the frontrunner of aged societies, meets its need to accommodate high numbers of newly dead is itai hoteru or corpse hotels. Itai hoteru offer families a way to wait for space in over‐crowded crematoriums (...) while affording an environment conducive to grieving. Drawing on conversations with itai hoteru employees, we delineate the values this contemporary death practice expresses and show how these values comprise part of the broader idea of a good death. A good death implies duties on both sides of death's divide: to both the dying and the newly dead. (shrink)

This article presents a close reading of Ibn ʿAsākir’s biography of ʿUmar II in the Tārīkh madīnat Dimashq. Although there was an earlier and substantial historiographical tradition, Ibn ʿAsākir’s biography is distinct from those of his predecessors in two major ways. First, he strategically arranged his biography to emphasize or de-emphasize certain aspects of ʿUmar II’s life, including his youth, rise to the caliphate, and reputation as a redeemer. Second, Ibn ʿAsākir’s legitimizing historiography appears to be bi-directional. Namely, where earlier (...) biographers depicted ʿUmar II as the “fifth of the Rāshidūn,” bolstering the later Umayyad’s reputation through an association with earlier authorities, in Ibn ʿAsākir’s account problematic aspects of the early civil wars and fitna-ridden Rāshidūn period are also elided through the Rāshidūn’s association with the famously pious ʿUmar II. The context for this bi-directionality is to be found in the political and social environment in which Ibn ʿAsākir compiled his Tārīkh, where dual pressure from Crusader and Shiʿite opponents contributed to his articulation of a particular Sunni vision of political and religious continuity that relied heavily on ‘Umar II’s unique persona. (shrink)

A good many models used in physics and economics offer descriptions of imaginary situations, using a combination of mathematics and natural language. The descriptions are both thin - not much about the situation is filled in - and unrealistic - what is filled in is not true of many real situations. Yet we want to use the results of these models to inform our conclusions about a range of actually occurring situations. I propose we interpret many of these models as (...) fables. The actual happenings in the model are only one concrete instantiation of a lesson that is more widely applicable ‘when expressed in more abstract language.' A fable generally comes with the abstract lesson attached; parables, by contrast, usually require an interpretation from outside. Models, then, tend to be more like parables than fables. The right abstract interpretation is not supplied by the model itself. The central problem, then, is where shall it come from? (shrink)

The argument of this article is that, philosophically, there are but three broad conceptual models that Western thought employs in thinking about the meaning of God. At the level of greatest generality, these are the models known as classical theism, pantheism, and panentheism. The essay surveys and updates these three conceptual models in light of recent writings, finds more flaws in classical theism and panentheism than in pantheism, and suggests a feminist response to each.

I argue that Nelson's feminist transformation of empiricism provides the basis of a dialogue across three currently competing feminist epistemologies: feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint theories, and postmodern feminism, a dialogue that will result in a dissolution of the apparent tensions between these epistemologies and provide an epistemology with the openness and fluidity needed to embrace the concerns of feminists.

Much of the attention of philosophy of science, history of science, and psychology in the twentieth century has focused on the nature of conceptual change. Conceptual change in science has occupied pride of place in these disciplines, as either the subject of inquiry or the source of ideas about the nature of conceptual change in other domains. There have been numerous conceptual changes in the history of science, some more radical than others. One of the most radical was the chemical (...) revolution. In the seventeenth century, chemists believed that the processes of combustion and calcination involved the absorption or release of a substance called phlogiston. On this theory, when an ore is heated with charcoal, it absorbs phlogiston to produce a metal; when a metal is burned, it releases phlogiston and leaves behind a residue, or calx. The concept of phlogiston derived from a quite complex Aristotelian/medieval structure that included three concepts central to chemical theory: sulphur, the principle of inflammability; mercury, the principle of fluidity; and salt, the principle of inertness. All material substances were believed to contain these three principles in the form of earths. The phlogiston theory held that in combustion, the sulphurous earth (phlogiston) returns to the substance from which it escaped during some earlier burning process in its history, and that in calcination the process is reversed. However, chemists also knew that a calx is heavier than the metal from which it was derived. So, the theory implies that phlogiston has a negative weight, or a positive lightness. This did not present a problem, though, because it was compatible with the Aristotelian elements of fire and air (the others being earth and water), which were not attracted towards the center of the earth. The development of the oxygen theory of combustion and calcination by Lavoisier in the late eighteenth century has been called the chemical revolution because it required replacing the whole conceptual structure with, for example, different concepts of substance and element and new concepts of oxygen and caloric. In the new system, it was no longer possible to believe in the existence of substances with negative weight. According to the oxygen theory, oxygen gas is released in combustion and absorbed in calcination. Thus calx is metal (substance) plus oxygen, rather than metal minus phlogiston. The concept of phlogiston was eliminated from the chemical lexicon. The reconceptualization of chemical phenomena that took place in the chemical revolution made possible the atomic theory of matter, which, as we know, posits quite different constituents of material substances from the principles central to the earlier conceptual structure. Just what constitutes conceptual change, how it relates to theory change, and how it relates to changes in belief continues to be a subject of much debate. Clearly, though, as the preceding example demonstrates, the three are significantly interrelated. (shrink)

This paper addresses bioethics in the context of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic. The Introduction (Section 1) highlights that at the field's inception, infectiousness was not front and center. Instead, infectious disease was widely perceived as having been conquered. This made it possible for bioethicists to center values such as individual autonomy, informed consent, and a statist conception of justice. Section 2 urges shifting to values more fitting for the moment the world is in. To find these, it directs (...) attention to the Global South, and in particular, Africa, and to the values of ubuntu, solidarity, dignity, kinship, and humility. The paper concludes (in Section 3) that 21st‐century challenges facing bioethics are increasingly global, and calls on bioethicists themselves to be more globally inclusive in their approaches. (shrink)

This paper argues that bioethics as a field should broaden its scope to include the ethics of war, focusing on war’s public health effects. The “Introduction” section describes the bioethics literature on war, which emphasizes clinical and research topics while omitting public health. The section, “War as a public health crisis” demonstrates the need for a public health ethics approach by framing war as a public health crisis. The section, “Bioethics principles for war and public health” proposes six bioethics principles (...) for war that address its public health dimensions: health justice, accountability, dignified lives, public health sustainability, nonmaleficence, and public health maximization. The section, “Justifying and applying bioethical principles” shows how these principles inform ethical analysis, including just war theory and military ethics. The section, “From principles to practice” envisions ways in which bioethicists can promote these principles in practice through research, teaching, and service. The “Conclusion” section urges bioethicists to engage with war as a public health crisis, including calling attention to war’s impact on civilians, especially women, children, and other vulnerable groups. (shrink)