Bioethicists teaching and writing about the uses of prenatal genetic testing sometimes use “difficult cases” in which people with a disability want to test and select for the presence of their disability. Such cases challenge our stereotypes but also play into them.

: The accelerated discovery of gene mutations that lead to increased risk of disease has led to the rapid development of predictive genetic tests. These tests improve the accuracy of assigning risk, but at a time when intervention or prevention strategies are largely unproved. In coming years, however, data will become increasingly available to guide treatment of genetic diseases. Eventually genetic testing will be performed for common diseases as well as for rare genetic conditions. This will challenge genetic counseling practice. (...) The ethical principles that now guide this practice take into account the personal nature of test decision making, the need to respect individual self-determination, and the importance of client confidentiality. Certain of these principles may have to be modified as genetic testing becomes more widespread in order to meet the changing needs of clients and society. This paper offers recommendations to ensure that genetic counselors will take a leading role in the future delivery of ethical genetic services. (shrink)

The theme of this special issue is Post-truth. No doubt it was my exasperation with the terminological state of our collective situation that incited me in the spring of 2017 to settle upon it. What, exactly, does the hyphenated couplet mean or to what does it refer? What is its significance or sense? How is it being used, by whom, for what purpose, and with what consequences—for whom? And if, as was being asserted on nearly every side, we currently find (...) ourselves in post-truth, how might we ever get out, presuming we may one day want as much? The original contributions by Sarah Burgess, James Crosswhite, Jason David Myres, Bradford Vivian, and Eric King Watts published herein go a long way toward answering these... (shrink)

Prenatal screening and testing are preference‐based health care options. They are offered so that pregnant women and their partners can learn genetic information about the developing fetus. In this literature review, I summarize studies of women’s and their partners’ psychological responses to prenatal testing and screening. These studies investigate the experiences of pregnant women, largely in the United States, who have access to health care services. Although the results indicate that these women are receptive to prenatal testing and screening and (...) seem to have limited negative psychological consequences, pregnant women without access to these services are not represented and may have different experiences. With that caveat in mind, based on the evidence, women generally do well psychologically as they manage the options that arise for them in the prenatal context. (shrink)

On the fiftieth anniversary of Philosophy and Rhetoric I hope a future for the journal that not only continues to publish scholarship that reflects seriously on the productive possibilities of putting the unique understandings of the human condition delivered by philosophy into contact with the singular insights into the power and perils of speech, writing, and gesture offered up by rhetoric. I also wish for it printed pages on which scholars engage thoughtfully the challenges posed by worlds and loss of (...) worlds. Never before in my lifetime has this task seemed so urgent and so necessary. This article is delivered in that spirit.On 13 July 2013 a jury of six women in Sanford, Florida, returned a verdict of not... (shrink)

There is limited knowledge about cancer patients' experiences of uncertainty while waiting for genome sequencing results, and whether prolonged uncertainty contributes to psychological factors in this context. To investigate uncertainty in patients with a cancer of likely hereditary origin while waiting for genome sequencing results, we collected questionnaire and interview data at baseline, and at three and 12 months follow up. Participants had negative attitudes towards uncertainty at baseline, and low levels of uncertainty at three and 12 months. Uncertainty about (...) genome sequencing did not change significantly over time [t = 0.660, p = 0.510]. Greater perceived susceptibility for cancer [r = 0.14, p < 0.01], fear of cancer recurrence [r = 0.19, p < 0.01], perceived importance of genome sequencing [r = 0.24, p < 0.01], intention to change behavior if a gene variant indicating risk is found [r = 0.29, p < 0.01], perceived ability to cope with results [r = 0.36, p < 0.01], and satisfaction with decision to have genome sequencing [r = 0.52, p < 0.01] were significantly correlated with negative attitudes towards uncertainty at baseline. Multiple primary cancer diagnoses [B = −2.364 [−4.238, −0.491], p = 0.014], lower perceived ability to cope with results [B = −0.1.881 [−3.403, −0.359], p = 0.016] at baseline, greater anxiety about genome sequencing [B = 0.347 [0.148, 0.546], p = 0.0012] at 3 months, and greater perceived uncertainty about genome sequencing [B = 0.494 [0.267, 0.721] p = 0.000] at 3 months significantly predicted greater perceived uncertainty about genome sequencing at 12 months. Greater perceived uncertainty about genome sequencing at 3 months significantly predicted greater anxiety about genome sequencing at 12 months [B = 0.291 [0.072, 0.509], p = 0.009]. Semi-structured interviews revealed that while participants were motivated to pursue genome sequencing as a strategy to reduce their illness and risk uncertainty, genome sequencing generated additional practical, scientific and personal uncertainties. Some uncertainties were consistently discussed over the 12 months, while others emerged over time. Similarly, some uncertainty coping strategies were consistent over time, while others emerged while patients waited for their genome sequencing results. This study demonstrates the complexity of uncertainty generated by genome sequencing for cancer patients and provides further support for the inter-relationship between uncertainty and anxiety. Helping patients manage their uncertainty may ameliorate psychological morbidity. (shrink)

"Advocates of the evolutionary analogy claim that mechanisms governing scientific change are analogous to those at work in organic evolution - above all, natural selection. By referring to the works of the most influential proponents of evolutionary analogies (Toulmin, Campbell, Hull and, most notably, Kuhn) the authors discuss whether and to what extent their use of the analogy is appropriate. A careful and often illuminating perusal of the theoretical scope of the terms employed, as well as of the varying contexts (...) within which the analogy is appealed to in contemporary debates, leads to the conclusion that such general theories of selective processes are either too sketchy or eventually not persuasive, if not altogether based on flawed views of evolutionary biology. By clarifying what is at stake, the analysis carried out in the book sheds new light on one of the dominant theories of scientific progress. It also invites criticism, of course - but that is the very fuel of philosophical confrontation." - Stefano Gattei, IMT Institute for Advanced Studies, Lucca "This book presents a serious challenge to those, like David Hull, who seek to model scientific change as an evolutionary process. The authors point out that although there are similarities between the processes of scientific change and organic evolution, the dissimilarities present formidable difficulties to construing the relation as anything more than a weak analogy. Their argument employs what they call a 'type hierarchical' approach that promises to be a powerful tool for the classification of similarities between theories in all fields." - Michael Bradie, Department of Philosophy, Bowling Green State University "This is a most interesting discussion of the analogy between biological and scientific change. Particularly commendable is the close attention paid to the thinking of the late David Hull and his pathbreaking work on this issue." - Michael Ruse, History and Philosophy of Science, Florida State University. (shrink)

When a piece of fruit is in a bowl, and the bowl is on a table, we appreciate not only the individual objects and their features, but also the relations containment and support, which abstract away from the particular objects involved. Independent representation of roles (e.g., containers vs. supporters) and “fillers” of those roles (e.g., bowls vs. cups, tables vs. chairs) is a core principle of language and higherlevel reasoning. But does such role-filler independence also arise in automatic visual processing? (...) Here, we show that it does, by exploring a surprising error that such independence can produce. In four experiments, participants saw a stream of images containing different objects arranged in forcedynamic relations — e.g., a phone contained in a basket, a marker resting on a garbage can, or a knife sitting in a cup. Participants had to respond to a single target image (e.g., a phone in a basket) within a stream of distractors presented under time constraints. Surprisingly, even though participants completed this task quickly and accurately, they false-alarmed more often to images matching the target’s relational category than to those that did not — even when those images involved completely different objects. In other words, participants searching for a phone in a basket were more likely to mistakenly respond to a knife in a cup than to a marker on a garbage can. Follow-up experiments ruled out strategic responses and also controlled for various confounding image features. We suggest that visual processing represents relations abstractly, in ways that separate roles from fillers. (shrink)

What motives underlie the ways humans interact socially? Are these the same for all societies? Are these part of our nature, or influenced by our environments?Over the last decade, research in experimental economics has emphatically falsified the textbook representation of Homo economicus. Literally hundreds of experiments suggest that people care not only about their own material payoffs, but also about such things as fairness, equity and reciprocity. However, this research left fundamental questions unanswered: Are such social preferences stable components of (...) human nature; or, are they modulated by economic, social and cultural environments? Until now, experimental research could not address this question because virtually all subjects had been university students, and while there are cultural differences among student populations throughout the world, these differences are small compared to the full range of human social and cultural environments. A vast amount of ethnographic and historical research suggests that people's motives are influenced by economic, social, and cultural environments, yet such methods can only yield circumstantial evidence about human motives. Combining ethnographic and experimental approaches to fill this gap, this book breaks new ground in reporting the results of a large cross-cultural study aimed at determining the sources of social preferences that underlie the diversity of human sociality. The same experiments which provided evidence for social preferences among university students were performed in fifteen small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of social, economic and cultural conditions by experienced field researchers who had also done long-term ethnographic field work in these societies. The findings of these experiments demonstrated that no society in which experimental behaviour is consistent with the canonical model of self-interest. Indeed, results showed that the variation in behaviour is far greater than previously thought, and that the differences between societies in market integration and the importance of cooperation explain a substantial portion of this variation, which individual-level economic and demographic variables could not. Finally, the extent to which experimental play mirrors patterns of interaction found in everyday life is traced.The book starts with a succinct but substantive introduction to the use of game theory as an analytical tool and its use in the social sciences for the rigorous testing of hypotheses about fundamental aspects of social behaviour outside artificially constructed laboratories. The results of the fifteen case studies are summarized in a suggestive chapter about the scope of the project. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetorical Maneuvers:Subjectivity, Power, and ResistanceKendall R. Phillips and James P. ZappenA sense of subjectivity as fluid, dynamic, and multiple has become almost orthodox throughout the humanities. The widespread influence of poststructural thought has seemingly routed earlier Enlightenment notions of a unified, transcendent subject and opened the door for critical approaches to the numerous and changing manifestations of human subjectivity. The fluidity of the human subject, however, is not without (...) its bounds or constraints. Indeed, the same line of poststructural thinking that served to de-center the Enlightenment subject, especially the work of Michel Foucault, also stipulated that the subject was positioned by larger formations of discourse over which they had limited if any control. These two sides of poststructural subjectivity—its fluidity and its positioning—establish not so much two divergent approaches, but the two poles between which the human subject can be thought to operate. In turn the two poles of the apparent fixity of the subject position and the seeming fluidity of the subjectivity manifested within that position suggest the kind of productive tension through which we are simultaneously limited and enabled by the discourse formations within which we operate and against which we, at times, resist.This productive tension between the multiplicity of the subject and the singularity of the subject position has, of course, been the focus of numerous inquiries. In his later work, Foucault attended to the processes by which the subject makes itself an object upon which work might be done and urged a more aesthetic approach to the continuous crafting of the self.1 Along similar lines, Judith Butler has conceived of the subject in terms of its performativity and the ways that the "I" is crafted through numerous and fluid citations of existing power relations. Conceived in this way, the notion of the "self" is a constantly changing object crafted and re-crafted out of the points of identification provided in the exterior fields of power and knowledge. These points of identification, in turn, provide symbolic anchors by which a subject is moored, at least temporarily, into a particular subject position within which they become identifiable and intelligible in terms of the broader formation of discourse. [End Page 310]In addition to posing a serious challenge to Enlightenment philosophy, this conception of the self as fluid and dynamic presents some vexing questions concerning the practices of self and the capacity of a subject to offer any meaningful challenge to the formations of discourse that constitute its existence. As Butler puts the problem, "The paradox of subjectivation (assujetissement) is precisely that the subject who would resist such norms is itself enabled, if not produced, by such norms" (1993, 15). The theoretical concerns over the relationship between agency and subjectivity also impact upon a series of political questions surrounding the nature and possibility of identity politics and recent debates concerning the importance and efficacy of gaining "recognition" as a political move.2 Whatever one's position within such debates, it is clear that the question of subjectivity and its concomitant questions of subjectivation and agency must be addressed in order to conceive of any kinds of democratic politics.The question of the subject, then, clearly entails broad philosophical and political implications. Rhetorical scholars have entered this conversation with a particular concern for the practices that both constitute and challenge the constitution of the self and many of these scholars have attended specifically to the points of friction between prescribed positions in which a subject is constituted and the dynamic nature of subjectivity as performed. Following from the works of Foucault, Barbara Biesecker (1992), for instance, urges attention to the canon of style as a crucially rhetorical element in the processes by which the individual negotiates relations of power, knowledge, and subjectivity. In a similar vein, Bradford Vivian draws from the works of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to suggest that rhetoricians recognize "that the self may be conceived as a form—a rhetorical form—that exists only in its continual and aesthetic creation, in its indefinite becoming" (2000, 304). The indefinite nature of this becoming is, for both Vivian and Deleuze and Guattari, a politically crucial insight into the ways that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.4 (2002) 328-344 [Access article in PDF] Spaces of Invention:Dissension, Freedom, and Thought in Foucault Kendall R. Phillips Over the past two decades, invention has become an increasingly difficult concept to discuss. In an age when the free, rational actor has become not only de-centered but viewed as both impossible and undesirable by some social theorists, the traditional conception of invention, especially rhetorical invention, becomes more (...) tenuous. While some continue to promote a rational deliberative model of the human subject—Habermas is a prime example of this school of thought—the harsh and unrelenting critiques of poststructural and postmodern thinkers have cast these recovery efforts in a nostalgic and often negative light. Chief among these critics of the modern, humanist conception of human action is Michel Foucault. Within Foucault's perspective our utterances are governed by underlying rules of discourse formations, our actions are proscribed and authorized by relations of power, and our very conception of our self is circumscribed by technologies of subjectivity. Contained within these intertwined relations of knowledge, power, and subjectivity, the human subject takes on a very different meaning and even the concept of "human subject" is itself a product of these intertwined relations; a product that may, in time, disappear under new relations of discourse and governance.Despite the apparent centrality of a creative human subject to the study of rhetoric, Foucault has taken his place within the study of rhetoric. Of course, neither this incorporation of Foucault nor the observation of its peculiarity is particularly new. The incorporation of Foucault into rhetoric took its most dramatic turn in 1989 with Raymie McKerrow's "Critical Rhetoric" essay and the implications of this union of Foucault and rhetoric were forcefully raised by Barbara Biesecker in "Michel Foucault and the Question of Rhetoric" (1992). These two important essays made the relationship between Foucault and rhetoric most pressing: McKerrow by offering [End Page 328] a practical agenda for a Foucaultian rhetorical perspective and Biesecker by opening a space for reflection on this type of agenda. In the intervening decade, however, the incorporation of Foucault into rhetoric has outstripped the reflection on this incorporation and Foucault now sits as comfortably in the bibliographies of rhetorical scholars as Burke or McKeon or Perelman.The purpose of the present essay is to revisit this relationship between Foucault and rhetoric. I pursue this end not in order to critique McKerrow's project or to outstrip Biesecker's reflections, but in order to press the importance of their earlier arguments. The project of a Foucaultian rhetoric should be taken seriously, seriously enough to keep the peculiarity of this union in the forefront of our minds as we pursue it. My present effort furthers this end by seeking within Foucault a space for invention and, in so doing, asks the question: how might invention be rendered within a Foucaultian framework?My contention is that a space for invention exists within Foucault's studies of knowledge, power, and subjectivity and that this space can be demonstrated by considering the counterpoints to his tripartite understanding of the human condition. The limiting/enabling relations of knowledge/power/subjectivity are counterpointed by three terms that describe the conditions for invention: dissension, freedom, and thought. Before turning to the conditions for these spaces of invention and the unique shape of invention that emerges from them, I will briefly consider previous discussions of Foucault. Power, resistance, and invention Rhetoricians, to be clear, are not the first to be concerned with the apparent foreclosing of the possibility of invention within Foucault. Focusing mainly on dominating relations of power/knowledge/subjectivity, Foucault seems to leave little ground for the creation of new ways of acting, speaking, or being. However, what I call a concern for invention has generally not been expressed as such; rather, in rhetoric and in other fields, criticism of Foucault has been largely couched in terms of resistance. Edward Said (1986), for instance, contends that Foucault's work is "not finally as contestatory, or as oppositional as on the surface it seems to be" (152... (shrink)

In this article, we examine an important but relatively under-researched form of corporate social responsibility, namely, employer support for employee voluntary activity. Using Canadian data, we examine two questions. First, we analyze the impacts of employer support on the total number of hours volunteered and on the voluntary activities which are undertaken. Second, we examine how employer support is distributed between male and female employees. Our results indicate that employer support is associated with a greater amount of volunteer activity by (...) both men and women employees and in a wide range of voluntary activities. However, we also find that women are less likely to receive employer support than men and are less likely to receive support in the form of flexible work hours and time-off. These results are puzzling given that women typically face more binding time constraints than men. We conclude the paper by discussing how employer policies might be changed to address this finding. (shrink)

_Philosophy and Rhetoric, _one of Penn State Press’s longest-running journals, was conceived at a time of immense philosophical upheaval: rhetoric as a field of study—first dismissed by Descartes—was being reexamined after decades of neglect. Now, nearly forty years later, _Philosophy and Rhetoric _continues to hold pride of place in this reinvigorated discipline. The brainchild of Penn State professors Carroll Arnold and Henry Johnstone, _Philosophy and Rhetoric_ boasts work from dozens of international luminaries from a broad spectrum of specializations. To commemorate (...) the fortieth year of publication, current series editor Gerard Hauser assembled a volume of the journal’s most noteworthy articles, beginning with Henry Johnstone’s gem of an essay underscoring the essential relationship between the art of rhetoric and philosophy. Donald Verene elaborates that initial thesis and suggests that rhetoric and philosophy are not distinct entities in conversation, but instead that rhetoric provides a forum in which philosophy can exist. Jean Goodwin looks at the theory in terms of a teacher/student relationship, and Barbara Biesecker looks at how governments in the war on terror employ rhetoric to manipulate the social consciousness. A concluding article by Carroll Arnold casts rhetoric as a dramatic device essential to establishing personal sovereignty. During its forty years, Hauser writes, the journal “radically altered the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric from irreconcilable antagonists to interlocutors in a shared inquiry into the constitutive powers of discourse.” This series of essays brilliantly traces the arc of that accomplishment. (shrink)

We would like to thank the commentators for their generous comments, valuable insights and helpful suggestions. We begin this response by discussing the selfishness axiom and the importance of the preferences, beliefs, and constraints framework as a way of modeling some of the proximate influences on human behavior. Next, we broaden the discussion to ultimate-level (that is evolutionary) explanations, where we review and clarify gene-culture coevolutionary theory, and then tackle the possibility that evolutionary approaches that exclude culture might be sufficient (...) to explain the data. Finally, we consider various methodological and epistemological concerns expressed by our commentators. (shrink)

The natural rights with which we have been dealing are, however, inseparably connected, in the very person who is their subject, with just as many respectiveduties; and rights as well as duties find their source, their sustenance and their inviolability in the natural law which grants or enjoins them.Since men are social by nature they are meant to live with others and to work for one another’s welfare. A well-ordered human society requires that men recognize and observe their mutual rights (...) and duties. It also demands that each contribute generously to the establishment of a civic order in which rights and duties are more sincerely and effectively acknowledged and fulfilled. (shrink)

This paper is about the difficulties involved in establishing criteria for definiteness. A number of possibilities are considered – traditional ones such as strength, uniqueness, and familiarity, as well as several which have been suggested in the wake of Montague’s analysis of NPs as generalized quantifiers. My tentative conclusion is that Russell’s uniqueness characteristic (suitably modified) holds up well against the others.

The study investigates how the territorial community can influence the individual and social well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual youth and especially the recognition of their feelings and the construction of their own identity as well as their needs to be socially recognized. This research focuses on the experiences of 30 LGB individuals, with a mean age of 25.07 years, living in urban and rural areas of Southern Italy. Focalized open interviews were conducted, and the Grounded Theory Methodology, supported by the (...) Atlas.ti 8.0 software, was used for data analysis. The textual material was first coded, and then codes were grouped into five macro-categories: Freedom of identity expression in the urban and rural context, identity construction and acceptance process, need of aggregation and identification with the LGB community, role of the interpersonal relationship in the process of identity acceptance, socio-cultural context, and LGB psychological well-being. The results showed a condition common to the two contexts that we can define as “ghettoization.” The young LGB is alone in the rural area due to a lack of places and people to identify with and greater social isolation. On the contrary, although there are more opportunities in the urban area, young people feel stigmatized and ghettoized because “their places” are frequented exclusively by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual, queer community. The work will extensively discuss the limitations of the research, future proposals, and the practical implications of the results. (shrink)

The use of facial recognition systems in concerts provides a perfect pretext to semiotically discuss the role of the face in contemporary culture, identifying different strategies and axiologies (systems of values). In his visionary essay Bruits (“noises”) from 1977, the French thinker Jacques Attali establishes a close connection between music and power and locates it in the site of the collective unfolding of music: the concert hall. Following this hint, the article reconstructs the current debate on facial recognition systems in (...) the music business, with a particular focus on concerts and festivals. The different positions (of musicians, authorities, and professionals) are outlined (some are openly in favor, others openly against), key moments are identified (Beyoncé’s concert in Cardiff, 2017; Jacky Cheung’s in Nanchang, 2018; Taylor Swift’s at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, 2018; the “banfacialrecognition.com” campaign launched in 2019; the case of Barbara Hart at Brandi Carlile’s show at the Madison Square Garden, 2022) and, finally, the issue is framed within the broader debate about the face as an indexical marker of presence, identity, and humanity (the contrast between Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben and American sociologist and design theorist Benjamin Bratton is addressed). (shrink)

Culturally different connotations of basic concepts challenge the comparative study of religion. Do persons in Germany or in the United States refer to the same concepts when talking about ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’? Does it make a difference how they identify themselves? The Bielefeld-Chattanooga Cross-Cultural Study on ‘Spirituality’ includes a semantic differential approach for the comparison of self-identified “neither religious nor spiritual”, “religious”, and “spiritual” persons regarding semantic attributes attached to the concepts ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ in each research context. Results show (...) that ‘spirituality’ is used as a broader concept than ‘religion’. Regarding religion, semantics attributed by self-identified religious persons differ significantly from those of the spiritual persons. The ‘spiritual’ and the ‘religious’ groups agree on semantics attributed to spirituality but differ from the ‘neither spiritual nor religious’ group. Qualifications of differences and agreements become visible from the comparison between the United States and Germany. It is argued for the semantically sensitive study of culturally situated ‘spiritualities’. (shrink)

Em junho de 2019, Habermas completou 90 anos de idade. Para minha surpresa, o aniversariante, Jürgen Habermas enviou-me uma carta pessoal, que traduzimos – Sergio Paulo Rouanet e eu. Pensamos primeiro que houve um acidente na família. Contudo, a carta parecia ser um suspiro desanimado de alguém que pensou durante toda vida salvar o mundo pela razão comunicativa. E, no entanto, a realidade (digamos, a guinada para a direita na Europa e em outras partes do mundo) dava a entender, que (...) começava a duvidar do esforço empregado em toda a sua vida, sem ver o êxito desse esforço. Para podermos discutir essa questão, é indispensável ler quatro blocos temáticos de sua obra: A teoria do agir comunicativo (1981); O discurso filosófico da modernidade (1990); A Teoria Democrática/Tanner Lectures (1992); O Diálogo entre Saber e Religião (2007). Dicas para uma leitura prévia (Freitag-Rouanet, 2005, 2017, 2018). (shrink)