A total of 378 mathematics undergraduates (selected for being strong at “systemizing”) and 414 students in other (control) disciplines at Cambridge University were surveyed with two questions: (1) Do you have a diagnosed autism spectrum condition? (2) How many relatives in your immediate family have a diagnosed autism spectrum condition? Results showed seven cases of autism in the math group (or 1.85%) vs one case of autism in the control group (or 0.24%), a ninefold difference that is significant. Controlling for (...) sex and general population sampling, this represents a three- to sevenfold increase for autism spectrum conditions among the mathematicians. There were 7 of 1,405 (or 0.5%) cases of autism in the immediate families of the math group vs 2 of 1,669 (or 0.1%) cases in the immediate families of the control group, which again is a significant difference. These results confirm a link between autism and systemizing, and they suggest this link is genetic given the association between autism and first-degree relatives of mathematicians. (shrink)

How are we to understand the phenomenology of imagining? Attempts to answer this question often invoke descriptors concerning the “vivacity” or “vividness” of our imaginative states. Not only are particular imaginings often phenomenologically compared and contrasted with other imaginings on grounds of how vivid they are, but such imaginings are also often compared and contrasted with perceptions and memories on similar grounds. Yet however natural it may be to use “vividness” and cognate terms in discussions of imagination, it does not (...) take much reflection to see that these terms are ill understood. In this paper, I review both some relevant empirical literature as well as the philosophical literature attempt to get a handle on what it could mean, in an imaginative context, to talk of vividness. As I suggest, this notion ultimately proves to be so problematic as to be philosophically untenable. (shrink)

Intuitions about the transparency of experience have recently begun to play a key role in the debate about qualia. Specifically, such intuitions have been used by representationalists to support their view that the phenomenal character of our experience can be wholly explained in terms of its intentional content.[i] But what exactly does it mean to say that experience is transparent? In my view, recent discussions of transparency leave matters considerably murkier than one would like. As I will suggest, there is (...) reason to believe that experience is not transparent in the way that representationalism requires. Although there is a sense in which experience can be said to be transparent, transparency in this sense does not give us any particular motivation for representationalism—or at least, not the pure or strong representationalism that it is usually invoked to support. (shrink)

A new edition of the highly acclaimed book Multiculturalism and "The Politics of Recognition," this paperback brings together an even wider range of leading philosophers and social scientists to probe the political controversy surrounding multiculturalism. Charles Taylor's initial inquiry, which considers whether the institutions of liberal democratic government make room--or should make room--for recognizing the worth of distinctive cultural traditions, remains the centerpiece of this discussion. It is now joined by Jürgen Habermas's extensive essay on the issues of recognition and (...) the democratic constitutional state and by K. Anthony Appiah's commentary on the tensions between personal and collective identities, such as those shaped by religion, gender, ethnicity, race, and sexuality, and on the dangerous tendency of multicultural politics to gloss over such tensions. These contributions are joined by those of other well-known thinkers, who further relate the demand for recognition to issues of multicultural education, feminism, and cultural separatism.Praise for the previous edition. (shrink)

This study investigated the business ethics experiences of Australian managers in China, using qualitative methodology to identify themes. Thirty-one Australian managers who had spent on average 8.7 years working in business connected to China participated in in-depth interviews regarding their business ethics experiences in China. Commonly, managers identified issues relating to a broad spectrum which could be labelled "bribery and facilitation". Other repeated themes included requests for visa assistance, employee theft, nepotism and non-adherence to contractual obligations. This study has important (...) implications for helping Australian managers improve the way they approach potential ethical situations in China. Four key coping strategies can be identified from the data: managers spoke of not compromising their own morals, of attempting to understand the motivation of Chinese colleagues, of talking to others and of adhering to company policy. These strategies suggest practical steps may be taken by organisations when training managers for business activities in China. In particular, structuring of mentoring relationships between experienced and less experienced practitioners may be of assistance. Cultural training for managers and clear company policy on contentious issues such as bribery may also be of benefit. The themes identified in the study also have implications for academics researching expatriate business peoples' experiences in China. (shrink)

Narrativists about well-being claim that our lives go better for us if they make good stories—if they exhibit cohesion, thematic consistency, and narrative arc. Yet narrativism leads to mistaken assessments of well-being: prioritizing narrative makes it harder to balance and change pursuits, pushes us toward one-dimensionality, and can’t make sense of the diversity of good lives. Some ways of softening key narrativist claims mean that the view can’t tell us very much about how to live a good life that we (...) can’t find in other theories of well-being; while there are smaller-scale ways we can incorporate narrativist insights into our views of well-being, narrativism should not be a universal organizing principle for our lives. (shrink)

The tension between reason and power has a long and illustrious history in political theory. In his magnum opus of legal and political theory, "Between Facts and Norms," Jürgen Habermas presents his most complex, sophisticated, and ambitious attempt to confront this tension. My thesis in this article is that though Habermas’s political theory thematizes the tension between reason and power in a way that is initially quite promising, he ultimately forecloses that tension in the direction of a rationality that has (...) been conceptually and methodologically purified of the strategic power relations that pervade social reality. His attempt to insulate his Arendtian notion of communicative power (which he conceptualizes in BFN as a force of legitimation) from strategic power is not only unattainable in practice, I argue, but conceptually incoherent. This should compel him not to abandon his normative theoretical and political agenda, I suggest, but to defend it in a more contextualist way than he has been willing to do up until now. (shrink)

According to representationalism, the qualitative character of our phenomenal mental states supervenes on the intentional content of such states. Strong representationalism makes a further claim: the qualitative character of our phenomenal mental states _consists in_ the intentional content of such states. Although strong representationalism has greatly increased in popularity over the last decade, I find the view deeply implausible. In what follows, I will attempt to argue against strong representationalism by a two-step argument. First, I suggest that strong representationalism must (...) be _unrestricted_ in order to serve as an adequate theory of qualia, i.e., it must apply to all qualitative mental states. Second, I present considerations to show that an unrestricted form of strong representationalism is problematic. (shrink)

I argue that Marx’s critique of political economy in volume 1 of Capital relies on a kind of genealogical argument that takes capitalism as its object. In the first section of the article, I sketch out an interpretation of the argumentative structure of Capital 1, highlighting what I take to be the two crucial turning points in Marx’s critique of political economy. Marx’s specifically genealogical argument comes to the foreground with the second of these turning points, which can be found (...) at the start of his account of primitive accumulation in Part 8 of Capital 1. The first part of the paper defends the thought that the genealogy of capitalism’s prehistory is no mere digression from or complement to the main theoretical argument, but rather the crucial completion of Marx’s critique of political economy in Capital 1. In the second part of the paper, I turn to the somewhat thornier question of what sort of genealogy Marx offers. Drawing on and extending Bernard Williams’s distinction between vindicatory and subversive genealogies, I contend that Marx’s genealogy of capitalism, despite containing both subversive and vindicatory strands, is embedded in a longer vindicatory historical arc that, while avoiding crude teleologies and strong claims to unilinearity, nonetheless maintains a kind of necessity claim for its genealogical object. (shrink)

This paper re-examines the relationship between power, reason and history in Horkheimer and Adorno’s "Dialectic of Enlightenment." Contesting Habermas’ highly influential reading of the text, I argue that "Dialectic of Enlightenment," far from being a dead-end for critical theory, opens up important lines of thought in the philosophy of history that contemporary critical theorists would do well to recover. My focus is on the relationship that Horkheimer and Adorno trace between enlightenment rationality and the domination of inner and outer nature.

A collection of essays on the work of Latin American philosopher Enrique Dussel, focusing on his ethics of liberation.

This essay develops a concept of curiotization, through which people are reduced to a curio for the fascination of others. I argue that trans people as they have appeared in media, philosophy, and narratives of history are curiotized as forever fascinating, new, titillating, and controversial. In contrast to the narrative of momentous trans progress in the mid-2010s, I point out that frameworks such as the "Transgender Tipping Point" worked to position its "trans moment" as unprecedented and always on the threshold (...) of arrival. To work through a specific example, I point to decades of renewed fascination over trans women being capable of breastfeeding and the long history of trans fascination in popular music. I conclude by emphasizing the obscured world-historical presence of transsexuality as it coincides with the history of pharmaceuticals, hormone technologies, and birth control. In contrast to a "goldfish memory optics" through which trans people become eternally new, fascinating, and debatable, I stress the importance of restoring the complexity of "trans" and its histories back into an understanding of the present. (shrink)

A vision of a living code of ethics is proposed to counter the emphasis on negative phenomena in the study of organizational ethics. The living code results from the harmonious interaction of authentic leadership, five key organizational processes (attraction–selection–attrition, socialization, reward systems, decision-making and organizational learning), and an ethical organizational culture (characterized by heightened levels of ethical awareness and a positive climate regarding ethics). The living code is the cognitive, affective, and behavioral manifestation of an ethical organizational identity. We draw (...) on business ethics literature, positive organizational scholarship, and management literature to outline the elements of positive ethical organizations as those exemplary organizations consistently practicing the highest levels of organizational ethics. In a positive ethical organization, the right thing to do is the only thing to do. (shrink)

in The Case for Qualia,ed. by Edmond Wright , MIT Press (2008), pp. 285-298.

This essay provides a critical overview of the debate about corporate moral responsibility. Parties to the debate address whether corporations are the kinds of entities that can be blamed when they cause unjustified harm. Proponents of CMR argue that corporations satisfy the conditions for moral agency and so they are fit for blame. Their opponents respond that corporations lack one or more of the capacities necessary for moral agency. I review the arguments on both sides and conclude ultimately that what (...) divides the two is not so much competing conceptions of the corporation as it is disagreement about what moral agency requires. Homing in on the real site of contention will, it is hoped, allow future participants in the debate to focus their efforts more productively. (shrink)

In his account of critical theory as diagnosing social pathologies of reason, Axel Honneth has rehabilitated the analogy between critical theory and psychoanalysis – according to which the critical theorist stands in relation to the pathological social order as the analyst stands in relation to the analysand, and the aim of critical theory is to effect the diagnosis and, ultimately, the cure of social disorders or pathologies. In this article, I show that Honneth, like Habermas before him, has an overly (...) rationalistic understanding of how psychoanalysis works and crucially downplays the role of affect in the therapeutic process of working through. Looking to Freud’s papers on analytic technique, I show that psychoanalysis works first and foremost not through rational insight, but rather through the dynamic reworking of affect. I then discuss some of the implications of this for Habermas and Honneth’s conceptualization of critical theory. (shrink)

In this article, I take up one strand – arguably the central one – of the Foucault/Habermas debate: their respective accounts of subjectivation. Against those who hold that Foucault and Habermas occupy such drastically different theoretical perspectives as to preclude the integration of their views into a common framework, I begin to lay the groundwork for an account of subjectivation that draws on the conceptual insights to be found on each side of the debate. While both Foucault and Habermas offer (...) a one-sided analysis of subjectivation – Foucault emphasizes its power-ladenness, and Habermas its communicative, rational, intersubjective aspects – I argue that subjectivation necessarily entails both communicative rationality and power relationships. I then consider the implications of my comparative argument for both Foucault and Habermas’s broader philosophical projects. (shrink)

This article re-examines the closing sections of Michel Foucault's The Order of Things in order to address the longstanding question of whether he is best understood as a philosopher or a historian. My central argument is that this question misses the crucial point of Foucault's work, which is to historicize the notion of history, which Foucault takes to be central to the historical a priori of modernity. An examination of his historicization of History thus reveals that Foucault is neither simply (...) a philosopher—because he conceives of philosophy in modernity as a historical enterprise—nor a historian—because his own historical approach is designed to transform the modern historical a priori from within. This analysis also sheds new light of Foucault's relationship to psychoanalysis and his conception of critique. (shrink)

The Zhuangzi offers two apparently incompatible models of bereavement. Zhuangzi sometimes suggests that the sage will greet loss with unfractured equanimity and even aplomb. However, upon the death of his own wife, Zhuangzi evinces a sorrow that, albeit brief, fits ill with this suggestion. In this essay, I contend that the grief that Zhuangzi displays at his wife’s death better honors wider values averred elsewhere in the text and, more generally, that a sage who retains a capacity for sorrow will (...) be better positioned for the robust joy so often identified as central to the Zhuangzi’s vision of flourishing. The sagely figures who entirely forego sorrow, I argue, achieve equanimity only through a sacrifice of the emotional range and responsiveness necessary not only for grief but also for the delight Zhuangzi recommends. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article engages with a key interpretive puzzle in Hobbes’s political thought – his seemingly contradictory view of liberty of conscience – and argues that Hobbes theorizes civic education as a powerful tool to confront and refashion prevailing views of conscience in early modernity. While influential accounts have recovered more ‘tolerant’ arguments in Hobbes’s political thought, recent revisionist accounts have argued that Hobbes does not merely advocate for the compulsion of outward conformity but also subjects’ inward persuasion. Yet this (...) nuanced attention to the sovereign’s role in cultivating obedient, peaceful subjects does not attend fully to his shaping of the consciences of his subjects. Situating Hobbes in the early modern discourse on casuistry, as well as political debates on educational reform, reveals that the sovereign can and should try to shape the consciences of subjects, specifically returning to a view of conscience as a kind of ‘knowing with’ others. Reframing Hobbes’s project of civic education as a strategy to ‘gently instill’ the consciences of subjects does not merely shed light on the interpretive puzzle of Hobbes’s ambivalence towards toleration but also draws attention to one of the most powerful and arguably underappreciated ways to overcome the threat of conscience to sovereignty. (shrink)

In this book, Richlin argues that the attitude of sexual aggressiveness exhibited by the garden statues of the god Priapus served as a model for Roman satire from Lucilius to Juvenal.

In this article, I argue for bringing the work of Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt into dialogue with respect to the links between power, subjectivity, and agency. Although one might assume that Foucault and Arendt come from such radically different philosophical starting points that such a dialogue would be impossible, I argue that there is actually a good deal of common ground to be found between these two thinkers. Moreover, I suggest that Foucault's and Arendt's divergent views about the role (...) that power plays in the constitution of subjectivity and agency should be seen as complementary rather than opposed. (shrink)

Philosophical Studies 104: 143-162 (2001).

In this article, I argue that persons suffering from Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) can give informed consent to surgical measures designed to treat this disorder. This is true even if the surgery seems radical or irrational to most people. The decision to have surgery made by a BIID patient is not necessarily coerced, incompetent or uninformed. If surgery for BIID is offered, there should certainly be a screening process in place to insure informed consent. It is beyond the scope (...) of this work, however, to define all the conditions that should be placed on the availability of surgery. However, I argue, given the similarities between BIID and gender dysphoria and the success of such gatekeeping measures for the surgical treatment of gender dysphoria, it is reasonable that similar conditions be in place for BIID. Once other treatment options are tried and gatekeeping measures satisfied, A BIID patient can give informed consent to radical surgery. (shrink)

The authors discuss findings from a qualitative research project concerning applied ethics that was undertaken at a general family counseling agency in southern Ontario. Interview data suggested that workers need to dialogue about ethical dilemmas, but that such dialogue demands a high level of risk taking that feels unsafe in the organization. This finding led the researchers to examine their own sense of "breaking rules" by suggesting an intersubjective view of ethics that requires a "safe space" for ethical dialogue. The (...) authors critique the individualistic tendency of professional ethics as an effect of power that is tied to the history of professionalism, and discuss the role of bureaucracies in diminishing a central role for ethics in helping services. The authors call for elaboration of critical perspectives on ethics in order to promote the centrality of ethics in the helping professions. (shrink)

Although much work has been done on Kant’s theory of moral agency, little explored is the possibility of a Kantian account of the moral agency of groups or collectives that comprise individual human beings. The aim of this paper is to offer a Kantian account of collective moral agency that can explain how organized collectives can perform moral actions and be held morally responsible for their actions. Drawing on Kant’s view that agents act by incorporating an incentive into their maxims, (...) it is argued that groups of agents can engage in practical deliberation in much the same way individual agents can, resulting in the formulation of a distinctive “group maxim” for which the group, as such, can be morally responsible. (shrink)

This paper argues that Hannah Arendt's political theory offers key insights into the power that binds together the feminist movement - the power of solidarity. Second-wave feminist notions of solidarity were grounded in notions of shared identity; in recent years, as such conceptions of shared identity have come under attack for being exclusionary and repressive, feminists have been urged to give up the idea of solidarity altogether. However, the choice between (repressive) identity and (fragmented) non-identity is a false opposition, and (...) the Arendtian account of solidarity developed here allows us to move beyond this opposition. Thus, Arendt provides us with a model of solidarity that can stand a post-identity politics feminist theory in good stead. (shrink)

This grounded study investigated the negotiation of authorship by faculty members, graduate student mentors, and their undergraduate protégés in undergraduate research experiences at a private research university in the northeastern United States. Semi-structured interviews using complementary scripts were conducted separately with 42 participants over a 3 year period to probe their knowledge and understanding of responsible authorship and publication practices and learn how faculty and students entered into authorship decision-making intended to lead to the publication of peer-reviewed technical papers. Herein (...) the theoretical model for the negotiation of authorship developed through the analysis of these interviews is reported. The model identifies critical causal and intervening conditions responsible for the coping strategies faculty and students employ, which, in our study, appear to often produce unfortunate consequences for all involved. The undergraduate student researchers and their graduate student mentors interviewed in this study exhibited a limited understanding of authorship and the requirements for authorship in their research groups. The power differential between faculty and students, the students’ limited epistemic development, the busy-ness of the faculty, and the faculty’s failure to prioritize authorship have been identified as key factors inhibiting both undergraduate and graduate students from developing a deeper understanding of responsible authorship and publication practices. Implications for graduate education and undergraduate research are discussed, and strategies for helping all students to develop a deeper understanding of authorship are identified. (shrink)

Exploring the apparent tension between Foucault’s analyses of technologies of domination – the ways in which the subject is constituted by power–knowledge relations – and of technologies of the self – the ways in which individuals constitute themselves through practices of freedom – this article endeavors to makes two points: first, the interpretive claim that Foucault’s own attempts to analyse both aspects of the politics of our selves are neither contradictory nor incoherent; and, second, the constructive claim that Foucault’s analysis (...) of the politics of our selves, though not entirely satisfactory as it stands, provides important resources for the project of critical social theory. (shrink)

Contemporary political theory has increasingly attended to the inevitability, and even advantage, of hypocrisy in liberal democratic politics, but less consideration has been given to the social and psychological repercussions of this ubiquitous phenomenon. This article recovers Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle’s critiques of hypocritical conformity to demonstrate that their influential theories of toleration and freedom were shaped considerably by concerns with enforced conformity. Reframing Spinoza and Bayle as theorists of hypocrisy, moreover, suggests that recent redemptive accounts of hypocrisy in (...) political theory overlook deeper and arguably more discerning anxieties about a politics characterized by hypocrisy, specifically the deleterious effects of social mistrust and psychological distress. (shrink)

Exemplars clearly play a significant role in the ethical vision of the Analects. However, while they are often treated as illustrations of the text’s more abstract ethical commitments, I argue that they are better understood to source those commitments. Such is to say that the conceptual schemata of the Analects – its account of human flourishing, the specific virtues it recommends, and its suggested path for self cultivation – originate in the people the text so vividly describes, in the unmediated (...) experiences of admiration and appreciation that these figures inspire. Theory is here an attempt to take our responses to exemplars and query just why we admire them, lifting from the examples they provide more general observations about virtue. Drawing on Linda Zagzebski’s’s recent work, I argue that there are both sound textual reasons and important prudential reasons to treat the Analects as exemplarist virtue ethic. (shrink)

This essay considers the dependency of trans youth by bridging transgender studies with feminist care ethics to emphasize a trans wisdom about solidarity through dependency. The first major section of the essay argues for reworking Sara Ruddick's philosophy of mothering in the context of trans and gender‐creative youth. This requires, first, stressing a more robust interaction among her divisions of preservative love, nurturance for growth, and training for acceptability, and second, creating a more nuanced account of “nature” in relation to (...) nurturance for growth to avoid casting transition as contrary to a trans youth's healthy development. In the second major section of the essay, I depart from Ruddick's framework to emphasize the difference of care for trans youth by trans and/or queer communities and through mutual caregiving, stressing a trans wisdom about dependency and solidarity found in the work of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. Turning to Eva Feder Kittay's links between dependency work and equality, I argue that Rivera and Johnson's work contains a distinct knowledge derived from practice necessitating the connection between solidarity and dependency in particular communities. I then call for more work on trans care ethics, trans ethics, and trans wisdom more broadly. (shrink)

A profound problem posed by education for any pluralistic society with democratic aspirations is how to reconcile individual freedom and civic virtue. Children cannot be educated to maximize both individual freedom and civic virtue. Yet reasonable people value and intermittently demand both. We value freedom of speech and press, for example, but want people to refrain from false and socially harmful expression. The various tensions between individual freedom and civic virtue pose a challenge that is simultaneously philosophical and political. How (...) can we resolve the tensions philosophically in light of reasonable political disagreements over the relative value of individual freedom and civic virtue? Instead of giving priority to one value or the other, this essay defends a democratic ideal ofconscious social reproduction, which consists of three principles:nonrepression, nondiscrimination, and democratic deliberation. (shrink)

Alice considered [the idea of un-birthday presents] a little. “I llke birthday presents best,” she said at last.“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” cried Humpty Dumpty. … “[There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents… And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s a ‘glory’ for you!”“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’” Alice said.Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for (...) you!’”“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”. (shrink)

The centerpiece of the first volume of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality is the analysis of what Foucault terms the “repressive hypothesis,” the nearly universal assumption on the part of twentieth-century Westerners that we are the heirs to a Victorian legacy of sexual repression. The supreme irony of this belief, according to Foucault, is that the whole time that we have been announcing and denouncing our repressed, Victorian sexuality, discourses about sexuality have actually proliferated. Paradoxically, as Victorian as we allegedly (...) are, we cannot stop talking about sex. Much of the analysis of the first volume of the History of Sexuality consists in an unmasking and debunking of the repressive hypothesis. This unmasking does not take the simple form of a counter-claim that we are not, in fact, repressed; rather, Foucault contends that understanding sexuality solely or even primarily in terms of repression is inaccurate and misleading. As he said in an interview published in 1983, “it is not a question of denying the existence of repression. It’s one of showing that repression is always a part of a much more complex political strategy regarding sexuality. Things are not merely repressed.”1 Foucault makes this extremely clear in the introduction to the History of Sexuality, Volume 1, when he writes. (shrink)

Philosophers have long suggested that our attitude of special concern for the future is problematic for a reductionist view of personal identity, such as the one developed by Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons. Specifically, it is often claimed that reductionism cannot provide justification for this attitude. In this paper, I argue that much of the debate in this arena involves a misconception of the connection between metaphysical theories of personal identity and our special concern. A proper understanding of this (...) connection reveals that the above-mentioned objection to reductionism cannot get off the ground. Though the connection I propose is weaker than the connection typically presupposed, I nonetheless run up against a conclusion reached by Susan Wolf in “Self-Interest and Interest in Selves.” According to Wolf, metaphysical theses about the nature of personal identity have no significance for our attitude of special concern. By arguing against Wolf’s treatment of self-interest, I suggest that her arguments for this conclusion are misguided. This discussion leads to further clarification of the nature of the link between theories of personal identity and our special concern and, ultimately, to a better understanding of the rationality of this attitude. (shrink)

Our exemplar of a Native American relational ethic is depicted through the Seven Grandfather Teachings, an ancient sacred story of Potawatomi and Ojibwe peoples. These teachings state that human beings are responsible to act with wisdom, respect, love, honesty, humility, bravery, and truth toward each other and all creation. We illustrate the possible uses of this ethic through exercises wherein students reflect on the values and learn lessons related to ethics, leadership, teamwork, and relationships, or create stories using Native American (...) story form. (shrink)

Genome-wide association studies raise important ethical and regulatory issues. This is particularly true of the current move toward broad sharing of genomic and phenotypic data. Our survey study examined the opinions of professionals involved in human subjects protection regarding genetic research review. The majority indicated that it is important for their institutional review board to offer guidance about developing and using a data repository or biobank that includes genetic data, and also about sharing this data with other investigators. Only one-third (...) of respondents reported that the National Institutes of Health policy regarding data sharing among researchers in genome-wide association studies is clear. Another third answered that they did not know whether this policy is clear. Findings from this study suggest a need for increased education for IRB professionals regarding the existing data sharing policy, collaboration among IRB professionals and researchers to define best practices, and further empirical research into prospective research participants’ information needs and preferences in the context of wide data sharing. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer some critical comments on Fabian Freyenhagen's book, Adorno's Practical Philosophy. Although I am largely in agreement with many of his arguments about the value of Adorno's negativism for contemporary critical theory, I raise a few critical questions that are grouped around the following three headings: immanent critique, objectivism, and skepticism. My primary aim in pursuing these questions is not to haggle over fine points of Adorno interpretation but rather to consider how these three issues bear (...) systematically on the vision for critical theory that Freyenhagen has put forward. (shrink)

This article is a co-written reflection on the process of curating and programming Printing Solidarity: Tricontinental Graphics from Cuba (2021–2022). Held at Stony Brook University's Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery, the exhibition featured over sixty posters and printed matter produced mostly in the 1960s–1970s by the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (OSPAAAL) in Havana. As an experiment in pedagogical curating, the yearlong project spanned the isolation from, return to, and re-envisioning of inperson learning during (...) the COVID-19 pandemic. Reflecting on our inspirations, intentions, and challenges, we argue for the role of art objects in activating material-based, in-person learning on campus and consider the value of academic collaboration, cross-regional research, and experimental pedagogies. The project offered an opportunity to revisit the Cold War-period politics of global solidarity in today's pandemic era while exploring what it would mean to study art today from the question of solidarity rather than division. (shrink)

To reflect on coloniality is not to study the history of colonialism from the safety of a “postcolonial” present. Rather, it requires one to interrogate ongoing legacies of colonialism, not only in...

This essay examines narratives of fundamental change, which portray a break in the continuity between a pre-transition and post-transition transgender subject, in accounts of transgender transitions. Narratives of fundamental change highlight the various changes that occur during transition and its disruptive effects upon a trans subject’s continuous identity. First, this essay considers the historical appearance of fundamental change narratives in the social sciences, the media, and their use by families of trans people, partners of trans people, and trans people themselves. (...) After this is a consideration of Mark Johnson’s account of narrative as a meaning-making activity that occurs in the context of social norms. Johnson’s account is then applied to narratives of fundamental change to explain why these narratives occur, especially in relation to social norms and lived experience. The essay concludes by considering the trajectory of fundamental change narratives, looking at emerging transgender narratives, which stress a more integrated, complex account of transgender lives. (shrink)

Research on language processing has shown that the disruption of conceptual integration gives rise to specific patterns of event-related brain potentials —N400 and P600 effects. Here, we report similar ERP effects when adults performed cross-domain conceptual integration of analogous semantic and mathematical relations. In a problem-solving task, when participants generated labeled answers to semantically aligned and misaligned arithmetic problems, the second object label in misaligned problems yielded an N400 effect for addition problems. In a verification task, when participants judged arithmetically (...) correct but semantically misaligned problem sentences to be “unacceptable,” the second object label in misaligned sentences elicited a P600 effect. Thus, depending on task constraints, misaligned problems can show either of two ERP signatures of conceptual disruption. These results show that well-educated adults can integrate mathematical and semantic relations on the rapid timescale of within-domain ERP effects by a process akin to analogical mapping. (shrink)