Animal and plant species exhibit an astonishing diversity of sexual systems, including environmental and genetic determinants of sex, with the latter including genetic material in the mitochondrial genome. In several hermaphroditic plants for example, sex is determined by an interaction between mitochondrial cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS) genes and nuclear restorer genes. Specifically, CMS involves aberrant mitochondrial genes that prevent pollen development and specific nuclear genes that restore it, leading to a mixture of female (male‐sterile) and hermaphroditic individuals in the population (...) (gynodioecy). Such a mitochondrial‐nuclear sex determination system is thought to be rare outside plants. Here, we present one possible case of CMS in animals. We hypothesize that the only exception to the strict maternal mtDNA inheritance in animals, the doubly uniparental inheritance (DUI) system in bivalves, might have originated as a mitochondrial‐nuclear sex‐determination system. We document and explore similarities that exist between DUI and CMS, and we propose various ways to test our hypothesis. (shrink)

The work of women philosophers in the early modern period has traditionally been overlooked, yet their writing on topics such as reality, time, mind and matter holds valuable lessons for our understanding of metaphysics and its history. This volume of new essays explores the work of nine key female figures: Bathsua Makin, Anna Maria van Schurman, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Damaris Cudworth Masham, Mary Astell, Catharine Trotter Cockburn, and Émilie Du Châtelet. Investigating issues from eternity to free (...) will and from body to natural laws, the essays uncover long-neglected perspectives and demonstrate their importance for philosophical debates, both then and now. Combining careful philosophical analysis with discussion of the intellectual and historical context of each thinker, they will set the agenda for future enquiry and will appeal to scholars and students of the history of metaphysics, science, religion and feminism. (shrink)

With the normative demand to attend to social difference and an absence of universal evaluative terms with which to do so, recent theory has increasingly turned to the study of the affective rather than epistemological conditions of ethical encounter. This I call a “dispositional ethics” that construes responsibility as responsiveness. Recent articulations of such an ethics, notably in the most current work of Judith Butler, James Tully, Jade Larissa Schiff, and Ella Myers, highlight its connection to situated practices of concrete (...) bodies-in-relation, but often stop short of developing an account of what such embodied practices might be. Based on interviews with thirteen experts who take the body as their primary vocational and intellectual field and characterize their practice as an art of listening, I distinguish three dimensions of a dispositional ethics in practice and some of the specific strategies available to cultivate the conditions for responsiveness in political life. (shrink)

To ensure that the information resulting from research is relevant to patients, the Patient‐Centered Outcomes Research Institute eschews the “traditional health research” paradigm, in which investigators drive all aspects of research, in favor of one in which patients assume the role of research partner. If we accept the premise that patient engagement can offer fresh perspectives that shape research in valuable ways, then at least two important sets of questions present themselves. First, how are patients being engaged—and how should they (...) be engaged? Second, which patients are being engaged—and which patients should be? This set has received relatively less attention, and the neglect is surprising, given that the “who” question is conceptually prior to the question of “how.”This article focuses attention on the “who” of patient engagement in research. First, we provide background on the rationale for patient engagement, underscoring the importance of ensuring the representativeness of engaged patients. Second, we present what little is known about patients engaged in PCORI‐funded research. Third, we identify and discuss the ethical implications of ways in which current practices of patient identification and recruitment may lead to a lack of representativeness. These practices include reliance on the well‐connected and well‐informed, reliance on patients who are not well trained or well‐informed, and reliance on patient advocacy organizations. Finally, we consider several strategies for addressing these pitfalls in order to maximize the positive goals of patient engagement. Patient engagement is intended to address the inability of researchers, funders, and others to fully represent patient views and priorities, but without sufficient attention, the patients selected for this role may still leave important gaps. (shrink)

Simple idealized models seem to provide more understanding than opaque, complex, and hyper-realistic models. However, an increasing number of scientists are going in the opposite direction by utilizing opaque machine learning models to make predictions and draw inferences, suggesting that scientists are opting for models that have less potential for understanding. Are scientists trading understanding for some other epistemic or pragmatic good when they choose a machine learning model? Or are the assumptions behind why minimal models provide understanding misguided? In (...) this paper, using the case of deep neural networks, I argue that it is not the complexity or black box nature of a model that limits how much understanding the model provides. Instead, it is a lack of scientific and empirical evidence supporting the link that connects a model to the target phenomenon that primarily prohibits understanding. (shrink)

The rule of rescue describes the moral impulse to save identifiable lives in immediate danger at any expense. Think of the extremes taken to rescue a small child who has fallen down a well, a woman pinned beneath the rubble of an earthquake, or a submarine crew trapped on the ocean floor. No effort is deemed too great. Yet should this same moral instinct to rescue, regardless of cost, be applied in the emergency room, the hospital, or the community clinic? (...) -/- In health care, the desire to save lives at any cost must be reconciled with the reality of resource scarcity. As one example, the estimated cost for prophylactic Factor VIII to treat one patient with hemophilia for one year is $300,000. Costs of this magnitude have been accepted by public and private insurers in the developed world, even though, in principle, these sums could provide greater overall health benefit if allocated to pay for the unmet health care needs of many other patients. Looking forward, however, broad application of the rule of rescue will be increasingly untenable. But the moral instinct will remain: the desire to help those weakest among us, especially when their small numbers allow us to see them as unique individuals. What, then, is the ethical framework that can guide coverage and reimbursement decisions for orphan drugs into the future? (shrink)

Uterus transplants provide another treatment for infertility. Some might think that we should embrace such transplants as one more way to assist people to have children. However, in this paper I argue that uterus transplants are not something that we ought to fund, nor something that we should make easy to access. First, I argue that any justification of providing uterus transplants must be based on the value of the experience of gestation, rather than on claims of meeting medical need (...) or promoting normal functioning. Second, I demonstrate that such a justification has limited prospects of success. The value of experiencing gestation is unlikely to be sufficient to justify state funding of uterus transplants and, further, we have reason to refrain from enabling such transplants. (shrink)

The continuum between nature and artefact is occupied by objects and environments that embody a relationship between natural processes and human activity. In this paper, I explore the relationship that emerges through human interaction with the land in the generation and aesthetic appreciation of industrial farming in contrast to more traditional agricultural practices. I consider the concept of a dialectical relationship and develop it in order to characterise the distinctive synthesising activity of humans and nature which underlies cultivated environments. I (...) argue that a more harmonious relationship, and greater aesthetic value, may be located within traditional farming landscapes. This position is supported and illustrated through a discussion of two agricultural practices in the UK, hedge-laying and stonewalling. (shrink)

Aesthetic value, often viewed as subjective and even trivial compared to other environmental values, is commonly given low priority in policy debates. In this paper I argue that the seriousness and importance of aesthetic value cannot be denied when we recognise the ways that aesthetic experience is already embedded in a range of human practices. The first area of human practice considered involves the complex relationship between aesthetic experience and the development of an ethical attitude towards the environment. I then (...) discuss how aesthetics has played a role in scientific study and the use of evaluative aesthetic concepts in science, such as variety and diversity. The final section shows the connection between the beneficial effects of aesthetic engagement with nature and the restorative value of nature for human well-being. (shrink)

Institutional Review Board decisions hinge on the availability and interpretation of information. This is demonstrated by the following well-known historical example. In 2001, 24-year-old Ellen Roche died from respiratory distress and organ failure as a result of her participation in a study at Johns Hopkins Asthma and Allergy Center. The non-therapeutic physiological study, “Mechanisms of Deep Inspiration-Induced Airway Relaxation,” was designed to examine airway hyperresponsiveness in healthy individuals in order to better understand the pathophysiology of asthma. Participants inhaled hexamethonium, a (...) chemical ganglionic blocker that was not FDA-approved for use as specified in the experimental protocol. Risks of inhaling hexamethonium, including lung damage, had been reported in the 1950s and ‘60s. An investigation conducted after Roche's death determined that the study's principal investigator had failed to adequately search the medical literature; the protocol submitted for IRB review cited articles indexed in online literature databases that went back only as far as the 1970s. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 98 Heft: 8 Seiten: 1-20.

In this issue of the Hastings Center Report, James Sabin and his colleagues ask what responsibility investigators in a learning health organization have to patients when research—particularly research of which patients might be unaware—illuminates problematic aspects of the patients' care. Sabin and his colleagues were confronted by this question in the midst of designing a randomized controlled trial that sought to determine if an educational intervention targeted at patients with atrial fibrillation and their clinicians reduces underuse of oral anticoagulants. Worried (...) about harm that might befall patients in the control group and fearing that they would be negligent bystanders if they knew these patients were at risk and did nothing, the investigators adopted a “workaround.” But the “workaround,” I suggest, was not a solution to the negligent bystander problem. Nor was it a solution to the problem as I would alternatively frame it—how to address instances of suboptimal patient care identified through research within learning health organizations. (shrink)

This book explicates Leibnizian analysis as a search for conditions of intelligibility, and reconsiders his use of principles and methods as well as his account of truth in this way. Via careful reading of well-known, lesser known, and previously unedited texts, it gives a more accurate picture of his philosophical intentions, as well as the relevance of his project to contemporary debate. Two case studies are included, one concerning logic and the other arithmetic; they illustrate a theory of intelligibility that (...) takes as its central notion "possibility for thought", a notion which allows Leibniz to escape certain traps of psychologism, the pseudo-ontology of empiricism, and the empty forms of logicism, and suggests new approaches for contemporary philosophy. "In this remarkable study, Grosholz and Yakira offer a fresh interpretive and conceptual angle on Leibniz's metaphysics. [...] this study deserves high marks for its subtlety, novelty, and creative insight into Leibniz's modes of inquiry as well as for its philosophical acumen." Annals of Science. (shrink)

This paper presents an experimental approach for engaging undergraduate STEM students in anticipatory ethical reasoning, or ethical reasoning applied to the analysis of potential mid- to long-term implications and outcomes of technological innovation. The authors implemented two variations of an approach that integrates three key components—scenario analysis, design fiction, and ethical frameworks—into five sections of an introductory course on the social contexts of science and technology that is required of STEM majors. The authors dub this approach Creative Anticipatory Ethical Reasoning, (...) or CAER. Scenario analysis is a strategy emerging from business consulting for grounded analysis of plausible future trajectories to inform planning. Design fiction is a creative hands-on activity that blends science fiction and design prototyping to facilitate critical thinking with respect to the societal dimensions of a plausible future technology. The authors present the following findings: in each of the variations, students demonstrated significant engagement with CAER and a substantive shift in their conception of what constitutes responsible innovation and ethical conduct in science and technology. Specifically, their integration of ethical reasoning with stakeholder perspectives and scenario analysis reframed technologies, from unproblematic solutions for societal problems to socially-embedded forms of life that might diverge from designers’ intentions. This suggests that CAER could be a useful pedagogical intervention for expanding students’ ethical engagement to consider the potential unintended consequences of technological innovation. (shrink)

Relational quantum mechanics (RQM) is an interpretation of quantum mechanics based on the idea that quantum states do not describe an absolute property of a system but rather a relationship between systems. There have recently been some criticisms of RQM pertaining to issues around intersubjectivity. In this article, we show how RQM can address these criticisms by adding a new postulate which requires that all of the information possessed by a certain observer is stored in physical variables of that observer (...) and thus is accessible by measurement to other observers. This makes it possible for observers to reach intersubjective agreement about quantum events that have occurred in the past. We suggest a possible ontology for a version of RQM employing this postulate; this ontology upholds the principle that quantum states are always relational, but it also postulates a set of quantum events that are not strictly relational. We show that the new postulate helps address the preferred basis problem in RQM. (shrink)

Emily Brady provides a systematic account of aesthetics in relation to the natural environment, offering a critical understanding of what aesthetic appreciation ...

The authors argue that women's dependence on men plays a key role in muting challenges to gender inequality, and they explore that argument through an analysis of gender-related attitudes in five countries. Women's dependence at both the societal and the individual levels is associated with less egalitarian gender attitudes; such dependence especially affects women's attitudes, drawing them toward men's less egalitarian views. Societal-level dependence also strengthens the impact of individual-level dependence on egalitarianism. The authors conclude that women's dependence discourages egalitarian (...) gender attitudes, thus suppressing challenges to the gendered status quo and legitimating gender inequality. (shrink)

The laws of nature have come a long way since the time of Newton: quantum mechanics and relativity have given us good reasons to take seriously the possibility of laws which may be non-local, atemporal, ‘all-at-once,’ retrocausal, or in some other way not well-suited to the standard dynamical time evolution paradigm. Laws of this kind can be accommodated within a Humean approach to lawhood, but many extant non-Humean approaches face significant challenges when we try to apply them to laws outside (...) the time evolution picture. Thus for proponents of non-Humean approaches to lawhood there is a clear need for a novel non-Humean account which is capable of accommodating these sorts of laws. In this paper we propose such an account, characterizing lawhood in terms of constraints, which are understood as a form of modal structure. We demonstrate that our proposed realist account can indeed accommodate a large variety of laws outside the time evolution paradigm, and describe some possible applications to important philosophical problems. (shrink)

With so much attention on the issue of voice in democratic theory, the inverse question of how people come to listen remains a marginal one. Recent scholarship in affect and neuroscience reveals that cognitive and verbal strategies, while privileged in democratic politics, are often insufficient to cultivate the receptivity that constitutes the most basic premise of democratic encounters. This article draws on this scholarship and a recent case of forum theatre to examine the conditions of receptivity and responsiveness, and identify (...) specific strategies that foster such conditions. It argues that the forms of encounter most effective in cultivating receptivity are those that move us via affective intensity within pointedly mediated contexts. It is this constellation of strategies—this strange marriage of immersion and mediation—that enabled this performance to surface latent memory, affect and bias, unsettle entrenched patterns of thought and behaviour, and provide the conditions for revisability. This case makes clear that to lie beyond the domain of cognitive and verbal processes is not to lie beyond potential intervention, and offers insight to how such receptivity might be achieved in political processes more broadly. (shrink)

Dementia patients in the moderate-late stage of the disease can, and often do, express different preferences than they did at the onset of their condition. The received view in the philosophical literature argues that advance directives which prioritize the patient’s preferences at onset ought to be given decisive moral weight in medical decision-making. Clinical practice, on the other hand, favors giving moral weight to the preferences expressed by dementia patients after onset. The purpose of this article is to show that (...) the received view in the philosophical literature is inadequate and is out of touch with real clinical practice. I argue that having dementia is a cognitive transformative experience and that preference changes which result from this are legitimate and ought to be given moral weight in medical decision-making. This argument ought to encourage us to reduce our confidence in the moral weight of advance directives for dementia patients. (shrink)

A vibrant history of acoustical technology and aural culture in early-twentieth-century America.

In this paper I defend a Quinean view on ontological commitment against some recent challenges. I outline the virtues and limitations of the Quinean approach before considering two different theories. Thomas Hofweber argues that commitment in natural language is ambiguous and that Quine’s canonical notation is incapable of representing the two functions of natural language quantifiers. Truthmaker theorists argue that Quine’s approach is based on a fallacious view of the relation between true sentences and the truthmaking domain (the world). In (...) response I argue that both objections are aimed at a particularly strong version of the Quinean approach, and that rather than abandon it we can use these challenges to understand its true value. (shrink)

Cette note de recherche prend pour point de départ un certain nombre d’observations empiriques sur les pratiques d’écritures relatives à la « rédaction web ». Son ancrage est celui de l’analyse du discours, envisagée comme discipline interprétative et lecture critique des énoncés mais aussi comme démarche susceptible d’apporter sa contribution à une didactique de l’écrit. Nous y livrons quelques premiers éléments de réflexion pour la caractérisation discursive des textes issus de la rédaction web, prenant en compte pour cela à la (...) fois la composante discursive de ces productions et les discours construisant la rédaction web comme pratique d’écriture. A partir de deux exemples, nous montrons que les normes dominantes de la rédaction web, liées notamment aux contraintes du support et à des enjeux économiques, sont diversement prises en compte suivant la sphère d'activité où sont produits les textes. (shrink)

To develop effective public health management strategies, it is necessary to account for the viewpoints of all stakeholders. Thus, anthropological approaches can potentially inform strategies for preventing and managing zoonotic diseases. Here, we use Q fever as a starting point for exploring how small ruminant farmers perceive the reality of microbes by disentangling the farmers’ often subtle relationships with their livestock, disease, and the world in general. We found that livestock farmers feel like they exist in the borderlands between two (...) worlds: the non-naturalistic World A, characterised by long timespans and complex relationships with non-humans, and the naturalistic World B, characterised by short timespans and the control of non-humans. The occurrence of diseases leads to tension and shifts between the worlds, depending on how much farmers entrust World B with health risk management and relations with non-humans. Significant or complete delegation of these responsibilities may result in a sense of unease and dispossession, particularly when World B fails to provide productive solutions. Whether farmers view Q fever as mysterious and threatening is also highly dependent on the degree of health risk delegation. Overall, the agent that causes Q fever is perceived in one of two ways: as a fearsome pathogen or a normal denizen in the farm’s ecosystem. These results have implications beyond Q fever and clearly illustrate the concept of the “microbial turn”, which emphasizes the plurality and ambivalence of the relationships between humans and microbes. (shrink)

Social epistemologists should be well-equipped to explain and evaluate the growing vulnerabilities associated with filter bubbles, echo chambers, and group polarization in social media. However, almost all social epistemology has been built for social contexts that involve merely a speaker-hearer dyad. Filter bubbles, echo chambers, and group polarization all presuppose much larger and more complex network structures. In this paper, we lay the groundwork for a properly social epistemology that gives the role and structure of networks their due. In particular, (...) we formally define epistemic constructs that quantify the structural epistemic position of each node within an interconnected network. We argue for the epistemic value of a structure that we call the (m,k)-observer. We then present empirical evidence that (m,k)-observers are rare in social media discussions of controversial topics, which suggests that people suffer from serious problems of epistemic vulnerability. We conclude by arguing that social epistemologists and computer scientists should work together to develop minimal interventions that improve the structure of epistemic networks. (shrink)

Viewed this way, the texts yield striking examples of language and notation that are irreducibly ambiguous and productive because they are ambiguous.

In The Sublime in Modern Philosophy: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Nature, Emily Brady takes a fresh look at the sublime and shows why it endures as a meaningful concept in contemporary philosophy. In a reassessment of historical approaches, the first part of the book identifies the scope and value of the sublime in eighteenth-century philosophy, nineteenth-century philosophy and Romanticism, and early wilderness aesthetics. The second part examines the sublime's contemporary significance through its relationship to the arts; its position with respect (...) to other aesthetic categories involving mixed or negative emotions, such as tragedy; and its place in environmental aesthetics and ethics. Far from being an outmoded concept, Brady argues that the sublime is a distinctive aesthetic category which reveals an important, if sometimes challenging, aesthetic-moral relationship with the natural world. (shrink)

Mainstream forms of psychiatric talk therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) do not reliably generate lasting recovery for eating disorders. We discuss widespread assumptions regarding the nature of eating disorders as fundamentally psychological disorders and highlight the problems that underlie these notions, as well as related practical problems in the implementation of mainstream treatments. We then offer a theoretical and practical alternative: a dynamical systems model of eating disorders in which behavioral interventions are foregrounded as powerful mediators between psychological and (...) physical states. We go on to present empirical evidence for behavioral modification specifically of eating speed in the treatment of eating disorders, and a hypothesis accounting for the etiology and progression, as well as the effective treatment, of the full spectrum of eating problems. A dynamical systems approach mandates that in any dietary and lifestyle change as profound as recovery from an eating disorder, acknowledgment must be made of the full range of pragmatic (psychological, cultural, social, etc.) factors involved. However, normalizing eating speed may be necessary if not sufficient for the development of a reliable treatment for the full spectrum of eating disorders, in its role as a mediator in the complex feedback loops that connect the biology and the psychology with the behaviors of eating. (shrink)

What kinds of issues does the global crisis of climate change present to aesthetics, and how will they challenge the field to respond? This paper argues that a new research agenda is needed for aesthetics with respect to global climate change (GCC) and outlines a set of foundational issues which are especially pressing: (1) attention to environments that have been neglected by philosophers, for example, the cryosphere and aerosphere; (2) negative aesthetics of environment, in order to grasp aesthetic experiences, meanings, (...) and dis/values in light of the catastrophic effects of GCC; (3) bringing intergenerational thinking into aesthetics through concepts of temporality and ‘future aesthetics’ (4) understanding the relationship between aesthetic and ethical values as they arise in regard to GCC. (shrink)

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

Discerning Deacons is using community organizing strategies to listen to and empower the People of God, shift power, and work toward structural change within the Church. Its goal is encouraging the discernment of opening the permanent diaconate to women, with fidelity to the synodal process. Reflecting on the vision and strategies of Discerning Deacons offers unique insights into organizing within an ecclesial structure. Its work highlights convergences of synodality, Catholic social teaching, and community organizing, and is a model of what (...) it means to be protagonists of transformation. (shrink)