Significant developments in medical research and technology have meant that the process of reproduction is increasingly affected by the consumption of a variety of services and goods. Individuals intervene in their own reproductive processes as they eat particular foods, take particular drugs and avail themselves of diagnostic and reproductive services. Although such developments have been analysed by feminists in terms of their ethical consequences or their contribution to the commodification of reproduction, they have not been evaluated in terms of their (...) contribution to reproductive consumption. This article argues that we can avoid the reductiveness of critiques of commodified reproduction by developing a conceptual framework of reproductive consumption. Thinking through reproductive consumption also enables feminist analysis to expand our understanding of the gendered aspects of consumption. Most feminist work on consumption practices has focused on the domestic sphere as a site of consumption or on the role of sex and sexuality in promoting consumption. This article's analysis of reproductive consumption adds to this work by revealing ways in which biological reproduction itself is a site of consuming desires and needs, and is permeated by socio-economic forces. In developing a theoretical framework for analysing reproductive consumption, this article argues that consumption produces adaptive value as an object of exchange is acquired and adapted in order to satisfy some need or desire. In making this argument I draw on O'Brien, who argued that reproduction produces syntheticvalue by synthesizing reason and nature in bringing another human being into the world. In doing so she used Marx's method of extracting the concept of commodity value from capitalist exchange relations. Similarly, I analyse the relations of consumption in order to distil a value that is specific to consumption. Reproductive consumption identifies the reproductive consumer as someone who adapts objects of consumption to her own reproductive needs and desires as she negotiates her reproductive nature. Thinking about reproduction and consumption in terms of each other helps us to identify how reproduction is brought about through a taste for particular goods and services, and how consumption works through the reproductive, as well as the sexual, body. (shrink)

The present offers a pragmatic solution of the Heap Paradox, based on the idea that vague predicates are “indexical” in the sense that their denotation does not only depend on the context of their use, but it is a function of the context. The analysis is based on the following three claims. The borderlines of vague terms are undetermined in the sense that though they may be determined in some contexts, they may differ from one context to the next. Vagueness (...) serves the important communicative function, enabling speakers to identify entities as objects (as things we can talk about) in terms of some quantitative differences between the “object” and its background in the context. Thus, in some contexts we can naturally partition the group of men uniquely so as to distinguish the bald from the not-bald. Whether a man with a given hair number is among the bald in a given context depends not only on his own hair number but also on the hair number of others in that context. This provides the background for the claim that when we assert that John is bald, we presuppose that there is a unique demarcation to the bald in that context. I consider the truth of the Paradox’s statements in contexts where the presupposition is true and in contexts where it is false. The analysis yields that the contradiction is avoided because though each of the statements is often true, never are all the sentences in the Paradox true together. (shrink)

In the current research landscape, there are increasing demands for research to be innovative and cutting-edge. At the same time, concerns are voiced that as a consequence of neoliberal regimes of research governance, innovative research becomes impeded. In this paper, I suggest that to gain a better understanding of these dynamics, it is indispensable to scrutinise current demands for innovativeness as a distinct way of ascribing worth to research. Drawing on interviews and focus groups produced in a close collaboration with (...) three research groups from the crop and soil sciences, I develop the notion of a project-innovation regime of valuation that can be traced in the sphere of research. In this evaluative framework, it is considered valuable to constantly re-invent oneself and take ‘first steps’ instead of ‘just’ following up on previous findings. Subsequently, I describe how these demands for innovativeness relate to and often clash with other regimes of valuation that matter for researchers’ practices. I show that valuations of innovativeness are in many ways bound to those of productivity and competitiveness, but that these two regimes are nevertheless sometimes in tension with each other, creating a complicated double bind for researchers. Moreover, I highlight that also the project-innovation regime as such is not always in line with what researchers considered as a valuable progress of knowledge, especially because it entails a de-valuation of certain kinds of long-term epistemic agendas. I show that prevailing pushes for innovativeness seem to be based on a rather short-sighted temporal imaginary of scientific progress that is hardly grounded in the complex realities of research practices, and that they can reshape epistemic practices in potentially problematic ways. (shrink)

In this article, we illuminate the affective phenomenon of loneliness by exploring the question of how it relates to love and other forms of friendship. We reflect in particular on the question of how different forms of loneliness are relevant to human existence. Distinguishing three forms of loneliness, we first introduce two border cases of loneliness: unfelt loneliness in which one’s individuality is denied and one therefore cannot feel lonely; and existential loneliness in which the possibility of intimacy and existential (...) communication are denied and one therefore cannot but feel lonely. We then turn to loneliness that occurs within intimate friendships—even the most intimate ones. In our analysis, we pay attention especially to the role of communication. In order to do so, we repeatedly turn to poetic expressions of loneliness. We argue that loneliness cannot reflect only the absence or partial failure of communication but also the inherent limits of communication. These limits in turn point back to the nature of human existence and love itself. (shrink)

Since the last issue of Feminist Legal Studies, we editorial board members have had lots of conversations about comfort, displacement and alienation. As we developed the programme for #FLaK2016 we thought about it as a kind of pulling ourselves out of our comfort zone, if academic events and journals ever have a comfort zone. Drawing on a mix of feminist live performance methods and a science and technology studies-type curiosity for objects of experimentation, we tried out a kitchen table method (...) of hosting a live research conversation with activists, artists and academics over two days. But we had not fully anticipated the way that the Brexit result would contribute to and complicate discomfort. A fuller analysis of FLaK awaits a later moment, but here we pick out this one aspect of our gathering—feelings of discomfort – as they animate the contributions to this issue in interesting ways. (shrink)

In the opening sections of this paper, we defined ambiguity in terms of distinct sentences (for a single sentence-string) with, in particular, distinct sets of truth conditions for the corresponding negative sentence-string. Lexical vagueness was defined as equivalent to disjunction, for under conditions of the negation of a sentence-string containing such an expression, all the relevant more specific interpretations of the string had also to be negated. Yet in the case of mixed quantification sentences, the strengthened, more specific, interpretations of (...) some such positive string are not all of them necessarily implied to be false if the corresponding negative sentence-string is asserted. On the contrary, as we saw in section 6, a negative sentence-string can be used to deny one of the more specific interpretations of the corresponding positive string without also denying other weaker interpretations of that same string. One might therefore argue that the only empirical evidence availble for assessing quantified sentences suggests clearly that these sentence-strings are ambiguous. Indeed logicians, many of whom restrict their attention to propositions, MUST recognise logical ambiguity at this point. For the contextualisation of the negative sentences in section 6 showed that it was possible to assert the falsity of some proposition P expressed by the sentence S while asserting a further proposition which was compatible with the truth of S. However the corresponding conclusion that such sentence-strings are sententially ambiguous is not a necessary conclusion for the linguist: for the alternative account of postulating a single semantic representation plus a set of semantic procedures is also compatible with the negation evidence. Moreover we have seen independent reasons for thinking that if sentential ambiguity is assumed to be in one-to-one correspondence with what we should now call logical ambiguity, a considerable body of generalisations is lost. For the maximal ambiguity account, it should be recalled, is committed to assigning at least thirteen distinct propositions and hence thirteen distinct sentence outputs for every sentence-string containing no more than two quantifiers, for three out of the four interpretations originally outlined in this paper can be understood with each numeral taken either in an ’exactly’ sense or in an ’at least’ sense. Moreover there is no explanation of why just these interpretations are available-they are merely an arbitrary list, no more connected than are the two interpretations of John saw her duck, with no reason to predict that the ambiguity would carry over from language to language. If then it is granted that an ambiguity account fails to capture appropriate generalisations, only two alternative accounts of mixed quantification sentence-strings remain viable-an analysis proposing an initial co-ordinate logical form like the logical form III, which is the strongest form compatible with each of the propositional interpretations of sentence-string Two examiners marked six scripts, and the radically weak form in which only existential quantification (both over sets and over members of those sets) is invoked. Since there are strong arguments to suggest that the procedures which both analyses require are semantic, there seems no reason not to adopt the radical vagueness account, with its considerably greater simplicity. (shrink)

: Following a long process of revision, a new version of the Declaration of Helsinki was approved by the World Medical Association in 2000. Two provisions of the Declaration address ongoing international controversies regarding research sponsored by industrialized countries and conducted in developing countries. Despite the issuance of the final version of the Declaration, opponents remain locked in debate. Moreover, the Declaration remained silent on other prominent controversies concerning international research. An analysis of these current controversies reveals reasons why they (...) are not likely to be readily resolved, despite apparent agreement by opponents on overarching ethical principles. (shrink)

Feminist philosophers of science have produced an exciting array of works in the last several years, from critiques of androcentrism in traditional science to theories about what might constitute feminist science. I suggest here another possibility: that gynocentric science has existed all along, then the task of identifying a feminist alternative to androcentric science should be a suitable candidate for empirical investigation. Such empirical investigation could provide a solid ground for further theorizing about feminist science at a time when that (...) solid ground is looking rather necessary. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the surprise examination paradox from a practical perspective, paying special attention to the communicative role of the teacher’s promise to the students. This perspective, which places the promise within a practice, rather than viewing it in the abstract, imposes constraints on adequate solutions to the paradox. In the light of these constraints, I examine various solutions which have been offered, and suggest two of my own.

A new political movement has arisen in bioethics, self‐consciously distingushed from the rest of the ield and characterized by a new way of writing and arguing. Unfortunately, that new method is mean‐spirited, mystical, and emotional. It claims insight into ultimate truth yet disavows reason.

Steven Pinker (1995) chides the educated layman for imagining Darwin's theory to go this way (the vertical lines are "begats"): [Figure #1] Pinker says, "evolution did not make a ladder; it made a bush" (p. 343), and he gives us the following diagrams instead, showing how it went, in increasing detail, down to us.

The positions of Brandom and Millikan are compared with respect to their common origins in the works of Wilfrid Sellars and Wittgenstein. Millikan takes more seriously the “picturing” themes from Sellars and Wittgenstein. Brandom follows Sellars more closely in deriving the normativity of language from social practice, although there are also hints of a possible derivation from evolutionary theory in Sellars. An important claim common to Brandom and Millikan is that there are no representations without function or “attitude”.

I sketch in miniature the whole of my work on the relation between language and thought. Previously I have offered closeups of this terrain in various papers and books, and I reference them freely. But my main purpose here is to explain the relations among the parts, hoping this can serve as a short introduction to my work on language and thought for some, and for others as a clarification of the larger plan.

I argue that critical realists think pretty much what Tukka Kaidesoja says that he himself thinks, but also that Kaidesoja’s objections to the views that he attributes to critical realists are not persuasive.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

We consider question-answer dialogues between participants who may disagree with each other. The main problems are: (a) How different speech-acts affect the information in the dialogue; and (b) How to represent what was said in a dialogue, so that we can summarize it even when it involves disagreements (i.e., inconsistencies).We use a fully-typed many-sorted language L with a possible-worlds semantics. L contains nominals representing short answers. The speech-acts are uniformly represented in a dialogue language DL by focus structures, consisting of (...) a mood operator, a topic component and a focus component. Each stage of the dialogue is associated with a set of information functions (g-functions), which are partial functions taking a topic component (representing a question raised) to a set of propositions determined by the corresponding focus component (to the set of answers given to it). (shrink)

Commercial video games are popular entertainment media and part of students’ media reality. While commercial video games’ main purpose is not learning, they nonetheless could and should serve as objects of reflection in formal educational settings. Teachers could guide student learning and reflection as well as motivate students with commercial video games, but more evidence from formal educational settings is required. We conducted two mixed methods case studies to investigate students’ reflection processes using commercial video games in regular formal high (...) school teaching. In a double lesson, 29 students of a 10th-grade biology course and 17 students of a 12th-grade advanced course on history played and discussed a commercial video game related to the current curricular topic. We examined the reflection processes of students in terms of their reactions to the teachers’ game-related statements and questions. Regarding teachers’ statements, students discussed several topics related to game enjoyment and the games’ representation of topic-related content. Regarding teachers’ questions, students discussed multiple goals in each game, how the games represented topic-related content, and how the games could be appropriate for learning. In Study 2, students additionally discussed emotions, stereotypes, violence, and the narrative related to the digital history game. We found that the discussions provided students opportunities to reflect on their game experiences and the current curricular topic as well as to practice media criticism. We further provide quantitative results on students’ perceived topic knowledge, on several facets of their learning motivation, and on their acceptance of video games. Overall, our findings illustrate the educational value of using commercial video games as objects of reflection. (shrink)

ArgumentIn 1980, when the diagnosis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder was introduced into the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, survivor guilt – a symptom long associated with trauma of the Holocaust and other extreme experiences – was included in the list of symptom criteria. But in the revised edition of the manual of 1987, survivor guilt was demoted to the status of merely an “associated feature” of the condition. Now that survivor guilt has disappeared from the (...) official lexicon of trauma, shame has come to take its place as the emotion that most defines the traumatic state. This paper examines the rationale for the shift from survivor guilt to shame in the context of the American Psychiatric Association's revisions. It argues that the shift can be understood as yet another manifestation of the oscillation between mimetic and antimimetic theories of trauma that, I have argued in my book Trauma: A Genealogy, has structured the understanding of trauma from the start. (shrink)

Increasingly in the modern world, incentives are becoming the tool we reach for when we wish to bring about change. In government, in education, in health care, between and within institutions of all sorts, incentives are offered to steer people's choices in certain directions. But despite the increasing interest in ethics and economics, the ethics of the use of incentives has raised very little concern. From a certain point of view, this is not surprising. When incentives are viewed from the (...) perspective of market economics, they appear to be entirely unproblematic. An incentive is an offer of something of value, sometimes with a cash equivalent and sometimes not, meant to influence the payoff structure of a utility calculation so as to alter a person's course of action. In other words, the person offering the incentive means to make one choice more attractive to the person responding to the incentive than any other alternative. Both parties stand to gain from the resulting choice. In effect, it is a form of trade, and as such, it meets certain ethical requirements by definition. A trade involves voluntary action by all parties concerned to bring about a result that is beneficial to all parties concerned. If these conditions were not met, the trade would simply not occur. And as inducements in a voluntary transaction, incentives certainly have the moral high ground over coercion as an alternative. (shrink)

The central purpose of this work is to compare the analytic possibilities that offer the quantitative and qualitative methodological strategies for the study of the corruption, just as this it is perceived and interpreted by the middle class of Buenos Aires. The data come from the pre-tests of a su..

La concepción agustiniana del tiempo como distentio animi de Confessiones XI posee un complejo sustrato teórico, tanto en lo que respecta al horizonte problemático previo, como a las doctrinas que se hacen presentes en la resolución dada, sin que ello niegue o disminuya su originalidad. Por el contrario, es este mismo horizonte problemático el que permite resaltar el aporte del Santo de Hipona. De la complejidad de ese horizonte, nos interesa destacar dos elementos. El primero de ellos es la concepción (...) estoica sobre las tres instancias temporales y la determinación del tiempo como incorpóreo. El segundo es la crítica del escepticismo académico sobre el ser del tiempo como totalidad, dada la inexistencia de cada una de las partes de ese todo; en el caso del tiempo, las aporías se plantean como aporías sobre el ser del pasado, el presente y el futuro. En ambos casos, el problema se presenta como un dilema sobre la relación entre temporalidad y ser. Consideramos que los argumentos agustinianos pueden ratificar su consistencia argumentativa al mostrarse como correlatos resolutivos de los problemas de este horizonte teórico. Además, la presencia de ejemplos y comparaciones que forman parte de este horizonte y de sus textos, permiten acentuar dicha consistencia. (shrink)