This article describes the relatively new technology of freezing human eggs and examines whether egg freezing, specifically when it is used by healthy women as 'insurance' against age-related infertility, is a legitimate exercise of reproductive autonomy. Although egg freezing has the potential to expand women's reproductive options and thus may represent a breakthrough for reproductive autonomy, I argue that without adequate information about likely outcomes and risks, women may be choosing to freeze their eggs in a commercially exploitative context, thus (...) undermining rather than expanding reproductive autonomy. (shrink)

HARWOOD L and CLARK AM. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 29–38 Understanding health decisions using critical realism: home‐dialysis decision‐making during chronic kidney diseaseThis paper examines home‐dialysis decision making in people with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) from the perspective of critical realism. CKD programmes focus on patient education for self‐management to delay the progression of kidney disease and the preparation and support for renal replacement therapy e.g.) dialysis and transplantation. Home‐dialysis has clear health, societal and economic benefits yet service usage is (...) low despite efforts to realign resources and educate individuals. Current research on the determinants of modality selection is superficial and insufficient to capture the complexities embedded in the process of dialysis modality selection. Predictors of home‐dialysis selection and the effect of chronic kidney disease educational programmes provide a limited explanation of this experience. A re‐conceptualization of the problem is required in order to fully understand this process. The epistemology and ontology of critical realism guides our knowledge and methodology particularly suited for examination of these complexities. This approach examines the deeper mechanisms and wider determinants associated with modality decision making, specifically who chooses home dialysis and under what circumstances. Until more is known regarding dialysis modality decision making service usage of home dialysis will remain low as interventions will be based on inadequate epistemology. (shrink)

Interrogating received knowledge is constitutive to any critical project, and recently there has been a wave of scholarship which argues for locating the origin of racist-thinking prior to modern Europe—even prior to the Common Era—without any real consideration of the potential dangers accompanying such a seismic redefinition. By expanding “racism” to include potentially any pre-modern xenophobic or ethnicist atrocity, even well-meaning scholarship dilutes the peculiar injustice of modern Europe’s most successful epistemological weapon. As a result, we lose any criteria to (...) distinguish ubiquitous oppressive projects from specifically racist-projects of hegemony and domination. However laudable its intent, such scholarship falls prey to methodological, epistemological, and practical errors that hamstring the ameliorative impact of contemporary anti-racist work while ironically diminishing racism’s impact. For if every conflict is racist, then contemporary colorblindness is correct: if white supremacy isn’t particularly white, then racism is a distinction without a difference. (shrink)

When faced with uncertainty, consequentialists often advocate choosing the option with the largest expected utility, as calculated using the arithmetic average. I provide some arguments to suggest that instead, one should consider choosing the option with the largest geometric average of utility. I explore the difference between these two approaches in a variety of ethical dilemmas and argue that geometric averaging has some appealing properties as a normative decision-making tool.

SummaryAccording to Ernst Mayr, most geneticists were not particularly interested in or well informed about macro-evolutionary processes and thus did not make major contributions to the evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s. Although this characterization applies to many American geneticists of the period, it does not fit their German counterparts. German geneticists' active interest in evolutionary mechanisms can be clearly seen in the German debates of the 1920s and 1930s over the significance of cytoplasmic inheritance. While morphologists celebrated the (...) evidence for cytoplasmic heredity as a basis for neo-Lamarckian mechanisms, those geneticists who actually studied cytoplasmic inheritance regarded it as a way of strengthening the case for natural selection. This German-American contrast suggests that our understanding of the evolutionary synthesis would benefit from an analysis of the institutional circumstances of the various contributing disciplines. (shrink)

Shane Harwood and Richard Scheines. Genetic Algorithm Search Over Causal Models.

Shane Harwood and Richard Scheines. Learning Linear Causal Structure Equation Models with Genetic Algorithms.

We examine stigma and how it operates, then develop a novel framework to classify the range of positions that are conceptually possible regarding how stigma ought to be handled from a public health perspective. In the case of weight stigma, the possible positions range from encouraging the intentional use of weight stigma as an obesity prevention and reduction strategy to arguing not only that this is harmful but that weight stigma, independent of obesity, needs to be actively challenged and reduced. (...) Using weight stigma as an illustrative example, we draw on prior theoretical work on stigma mechanisms and intervention strategies to develop a framework for improving the understanding, evaluation, and planning of anti-stigma interventions. This framework has the potential to help public health actors to map out how protest, contact, education, and regulation strategies can be used to reduce direct discrimination, structural discrimination, and internalized stigma. (shrink)

The first major collection of Boyle’s writings to be published since Thomas Birch’s eighteenth-century edition of his works presents material hitherto available only in the archives of the Royal Society. This edition of Boyle’s _Aretology _ and other moral essays from the late 1640s offers the intellectual and religious origins of Boyle’s most vital themes. John T. Harwood also includes two essays on moral topics, "Of Sin" and "Of Piety"; a sample of Boyle’s private meditations, "Joseph’s Mistress"; a short (...) essay, "Of Time and Idleness"; and two guides to private meditation, "The Dayly Reflection" and "Of Thoughts." Harwood concludes the volume with a previously unpublished account of about seven hundred books in Boyle’s library at the time of his death. (shrink)

This volume expands the concept and role of the schema, with three goals in mind: 1) to outline the continuing issues in the schema concept as the legacy of Kant's concept and analysis, 2) to show that Kant's challenges resulted in successful but truncated views of the schema and its functions, 3) to reconstruct Otto Selz's schema concept by proposing an alternative. The basis and scope of Selz's schema were intended to yield a more complete follow-up to Kant's challenges. These (...) had emerged out of his unresolved view of the schema as knowledge, on one hand, and thought, on the other. Sel'z concepts-'anticipatory schema,' 'coordinate relations,' and 'knowledge complex'-are more inclusive and psychologically dynamic than those of the influential but reductionist theorists: Piaget, Bartlett, and Craik. Harwood Fisher explores Sel'z ideas in past, present, and future temporal contexts. His predecessors' and his contemporaries' ideas influenced him. Present-day needs and future prospects round out a Selzian conception of the schema that would enrich a psychology of thought and knowledge. Harwood Fisher is Professor Emeritus, City College, City University of New York, USA. (shrink)

This book is one of the definitive accounts of Steiner-Waldorf education by the founder of the first Waldorf School in the UK. In clear and insightful terms, Cecil Harwood presents the heart of this unique approach to children's development, learning and wellbeing as a much-needed antidote to modern educational methods. Harwood's book is full of still-fresh ideas for both parents and teachers, and is a must-read for anyone interested in Steiner-Waldorf education. The classic work has been edited for (...) the modern age, with a contextualising introduction by Professor Douglas Sloan. (shrink)

Although the commentary on Aristotle’s problematic discussion of slavery is vast, his discussion of nobility receives little attention. The fragments of his dialogue On Noble Birth constitute his most extensive examination of nobility, and while their similarity to the παμβασιλεύς of the Politics has recently been recognized, their relevance to natural slavery has hitherto gone unnoticed. Yet by declaring that true nobles – particularly the god-like ἀρχηγός – preternaturally possess superhuman characteristics, Aristotle precludes their easy inclusion in the kind “human” (...) in a manner inversely mirroring the preternatural subhumanity of natural slaves. Building on recent scholarship which argues that Aristotle’s “defense” of natural slaves is better understood as an indictment, On Noble Birth becomes most coherent if read as a hypothetical investigation into what would be required for “nobility” to name something true rather than equivocal, with the conclusion that “true nobility” is an empty set. (shrink)

In The New Eugenics: Selective Breeding in an Era of Reproductive Technologies, Judith Daar advocates for increased access to assisted reproductive technologies and minimizes concerns about the potential “eugenic logic” of some procreative choices. Although Daar’s goal of expanded access is laudable, her argument suggests an unresolved tension between the moral equality of persons and individual reproductive freedom. Exploring that tension, this paper argues that efforts to expand access to ART must still grapple with the “eugenic mentality” of quality control (...) that some forms of reproductive and genetic technologies enable. (shrink)

This paper offers a sketch of the complicated conflicts which arise—and metastasize seemingly daily—in the era of Big Data. Given the public’s ubiquitous-yet-ostensibly-voluntary data surrender, and industry’s ubiquitous-yet-ostensibly-anodyne collection of the same, inaction is not an option for any near-just society. By revisiting the philosophical basis for Panoptic apparatus, sketching the tumultuous history of US contract law trying to protect the public from itself, and comparing existing industry codes for similarly-situated—read: terrifyingly invasive—fields, the paper will provide a preliminary framework for (...) identifying and confronting the galaxy of problems associated with data analytics. (shrink)

Although there is much discussion in scientific and law journals regarding direct-to-consumer genetic testing (DTCGT), there is a paucity of philosophical-ethical examination of how such services threaten to repeat the essentialist, racial-projects of the past. On the one hand, testing for ancestry can be cathartic: for those lacking familial history as to when and how they came to be where they are, DTCGT can offer powerful access to their lineage and identity-formation. On the other hand, DTCGT inevitably reinscribes problematic epistemologies (...) of race—even when the companies claim that their tests can be tools to combat white supremacy. Tracing the roots of biological essentialism back to Aristotle, through the invention of raza as cocreator of modernity, and up to critical race theories today, provides a strong foundation to examine the nascent race-thinking underlying DTCGT. Borrowing heavily from Paul Taylor and Charles Mills, but also enlisting scholars from other disciplines, such as Ifeoma Ajunwa (law), Alondra Nelson (sociology), and Troy Duster (genetics), provides the broad scope necessary for thoughtful, agile engagement of that which is ameliorative, unethical, and even dangerous—for all of us—in the age of 23andMe. (shrink)

_Psychopathology at School_ provides a timely response to concerns about the rising numbers of children whose behaviour is recognised and understood as a medicalised condition, rather than simply as poor behaviour caused by other factors. It is the first scholarly analysis of psychopathology which draws on the philosophers Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari and Arendt to examine the processes whereby children’s behaviour is pathologised. The heightened attention to mental disorders is contrasted with education practices in the early and mid-to-late twentieth century, and (...) the emergence of a new conceptualization of childhood is explored. Taking education as a central component to the contemporary experience of growing up, the book charts the ways in which mental disorders have become commonplace in childhood and youth, from birth through to college and university, but also offers examples of where professionals have refused to pathologise children’s behaviour. The book examines the extent of the influence of psychopathology on the lives of children and young people, as well as the practices that infiltrate education and the possibilities for alternative educational responses that negate the diagnosis of mental disorder. Psychopathology at School is a must read for anyone concerned about the growing influence of psychopathology in education and will be of particular interest to educated readers and to scholars, students and professionals in education, psychiatry, psychology, child studies, youth studies, nursing, social work and sociology. (shrink)

This paper examines Aristotle’s discussion of slavery, showing his description of actual slavery to be an indictment and those regarding natural slavery to be a hypothetical investigation of a separate kind. Aristotle not only precludes the inclusion of natural slaves and freepersons in a single natural kind, but also articulates such bizarre requirements for natural slaves that they ultimately cannot exist. While this reading avoids notorious difficulties associated with Aristotle’s discussion of slaves, it replaces them with impossible preconditions for just (...) slavery—so much that one must consider the possibility that Aristotle did not believe there was such a thing as “just” slavery. Was Aristotle’s otherwise acute mind blinded by the prejudices of his time? Or is this the inevitable result of “defending” the indefensible: an ad absurdum that has been ironically misunderstood and anachronistically misapplied to modern race and racism? (shrink)

In the first part of the 21st century, the complicated relationship between transparency and security reached a boiling point with revelations of extra-judicial CIA activities, near universal NSA monitoring and unprecedented whistleblowing – and prosecution of whistleblowers under the Espionage Act. This article examines the dual necessities of security and transparency for any democracy, and the manner in which whistleblowers radically saddle this Janus-faced relationship. Then I will move to contemporary examples of whistleblowing, showing how and why some prove more (...) damaging or beneficial than others. I will conclude with some suggestions as to practical reforms which might mitigate the seemingly inevitable pendulum-swinging between Snowden-style vigilantism and a panoptic security state. (shrink)

Teaching in university education programmes, can, at times, involve the uncomfortable situation of discriminatory speech.A situation that has often occurred in our own teaching, and in those of our colleagues, is the citation of homophobic and heterosexist comments.These are comments that are more likely to occur in foundation subjects such as philosophy and sociology of education.The occurrence of such situations has prompted debate regarding ‘silencing words that wound’. This has prompted the question, ‘should we keep students from stating such discriminatory (...) speech?’ Our article takes up this issue, and considers it from the perspective of the importance of critique.Working with Foucault’s What is Critique? together with his discussion of subjectivation in the 1981–82 lectures at the Collège de France, we set out to make the case for the significance of the relationship between truth and critique.This leads us to a position where we ask the question, if we silence, what do we risk doing to critique? (shrink)

I show that if the ontological argument is sound, it proves that a number of maximally great beings must exist. I show that maximal greatness does not imply uniqueness, that such beings can be omnipotent and yet not restrict each other's power, and that each must have its own separate stream of consciousness. I also show that attempts to unify the beings by unifying the streams of consciousness leads to a form of pantheism.

Indicates that post-modernist and mainstream psychologists who accept social constructionist arguments that posit a social context within which to describe human thought, emotion, and language as discourse conventions, in fact, support context as a class of events that can neither be opposed nor superseded. When scientific power-positioning is attributed to psychologists, while social contextualism is walled off from the same accusation, power over categories results. The elimination of dualities of mind and body and of thought and language, and a resulting (...) inability of the individual to assign meanings or think about emotions, isolates emotion and thought from logic and meaning. It is argued that the assumption that political context surrounds all psychological thinking suspends a host of contraries; and that the egalitarian counterclaim of post-modernists is contradicted by the very political power matrix within which it is stated. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Introduction: Major terms, their classification, and their relation to the book's objective -- The problem of analogous forms -- Natural logic, categories, and the individual -- Shift to individual categories, dynamics, and a psychological look at identity form versus function -- What is the difference between the logic governing a figure of speech and the logic that is immature or unconscious? -- What are the role and function of the self vis-à-vis consciousness? -- Development in the logic from immature to (...) mature modes -- Pathological and defensive logical forms -- The "I," identity, and the part-whole resolutions -- The "I," entropy, and the trope. (shrink)

What I most appreciate about H. Theixos and S. B. Jamil’s article, “The Bad Habit of Bearing Children,” is their basic scrutiny of unreflective procreation. Bearing biological children is not a bad habit in the way that smoking is a bad habit. There is nothing intrinsically harmful to a parent’s health in bearing a biological child.Nor is bearing biological children a bad habit in the way that biting one’s nails is a bad habit. There is nothing socially unacceptable in bearing (...) biological children; on the contrary, for married couples at least, it is largely a social expectation. Bearing biological children is a bad habit precisely because it is often done out of habit, rather than as the result of conscious and .. (shrink)

The claim that the Resurrection of Jesus is historical fact is often justified on the basis that the disciples died for the belief. I analyze the argument, and show that three key premises cannot be accepted. The first is the claim that the disciples died for their beliefs. I give a detailed analysis of what is involved in dying for a belief in this context, and show that we have no assurance that the disciples died for their beliefs in that (...) sense at all. The second is that the disciples could not have been sincerely mistaken, and the third is that the beliefs of the disciples were those attributed to them by apologists. I suggest that neither of these premises can be established with any certainty. (shrink)

In 1999, Susan Wolf diagnosed what was missing in bioethics: “an analysis that places race, ethnicity, and gender at the center.” Since then, not enough progress has been made in “decentering” whiteness in bioethics. The use of assisted reproductive technologies in the United States, and the bioethical discussion surrounding it, provides a window into the problem. Recent surveys of ART usage show racial disparities in access to ART and treatment outcomes. A personal testimony about egg freezing suggests a perceptual blindness (...) when white experience is taken to be the norm. Nevertheless, bioethics, including feminist bioethics, has largely framed ART within the parameters of “normative whiteness.” This paper will argue that feminist bioethics needs to put race at the center of analysis and will suggest pathways for doing so. Decentering whiteness requires a consideration of epistemic limits and privilege, a reevaluation of the goals of feminism, and an embrace of empathy in service of a more responsive and flexible worldview. (shrink)