Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers reported a surprising trend in disease outcomes: men were more likely to require hospitalization and die from COVID-19 than women. Researchers looked to sex-linked biology to explain these disparities, hypothesizing innate sex differences in immune function, suggesting the use of estrogens or androgen-suppressants as therapy, and even pushing for sex-specific vaccine strategies. Leading bioethicists like Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel at the University of Pennsylvania recently described the sex disparity in COVID-19 outcomes as "the unsolved mystery" (...) of the... (shrink)

Is the feminist project to bring about parity for women and men in traditionally male fields doomed? Recent headlines trumpet that "The more gender equality, the fewer women in STEM." The American Enterprise Institute proposes that it is futile to fund efforts to increase women in STEM fields, given that, “as paradoxical and counter-intuitive as it seems, female underrepresentation in STEM may actually be the result of the great advances in female empowerment, progress, and advancement that have taken place in (...) recent decades, and not the result of systemic gender discrimination.” Meanwhile, men's rights activists exalt new findings as evidence that women just naturally don’t prefer science. These bold claims stem from the “Gender Equality Paradox” hypothesis, which is simply this: Some of the countries with the highest gender equity scores on internationally-comparable indices also show the largest average sex differences in prefrences for STEM careers. In other words, in countries with more gender equality, like Norway and Sweden, fewer women choose to enter STEM fields than in countries like Algeria or Turkey. Over the past year, the GenderSci Lab has been engaged in a critical analysis of the “Gender Equality Paradox” hypothesis and its accompanying assumptions and implications. In this paper, we share our reanalysis of some of the data used by Stoet and Geary (2018) and argue that their findings are likely spurious. (shrink)

What is intellectual humility? In this essay, we aim to answer this question by assessing several contemporary accounts of intellectual humility, developing our own account, offering two reasons for our account, and meeting two objections and solving one puzzle.

Synthetic meat made from animal cells will transform how we eat. It will reduce suffering by eliminating the need to raise and slaughter animals. But it will also have big public health benefits if it becomes widely consumed. In this paper, we discuss how “clean meat” can reduce the risks associated with intensive animal farming, including antibiotic resistance, environmental pollution, and zoonotic viral diseases like influenza and coronavirus. Since the most common objection to clean meat is that some people find (...) it “disgusting” or “unnatural,” we explore the psychology of disgust to find possible counter-measures. We argue that the public health benefits of clean meat give us strong moral reasons to promote its development and consumption in a way that the public is likely to support. We end by depicting the change from farmed animals to clean meat as a collective action problem and suggest that social norms rather than coercive laws should be employed to solve the problem. (shrink)

Suppose that you are engaging with someone who is your oppressor, or someone who espouses a heinous view like Nazism or a ridiculous view like flat-earthism. In contexts like these, there is a disparity between you and your interlocutor, a dramatic normative difference across which you are in the right and they are in the wrong. As theorists of humility, we find these contexts puzzling. Humility seems like the *last* thing oppressed people need and the *last* thing we need in (...) dealing with those whose views are heinous or ridiculous. Responding to such people via humility seems uncalled for, even inappropriate. But how could this be, given that humility is a *virtue*? The purpose of the paper is to explore this puzzle. We explain what the puzzle is and then attempt to draw some lessons from it: first, the lesson that the importance of humility is limited in several ways, and second, the lesson that humility nonetheless has several important roles to play, even for people who are in the right in contexts of disparity. (shrink)

ABSTRACTInitial evaluations generalise to new contexts, whereas counter-attitudinal evaluations are context-specific. Counter-attitudinal information may not change evaluations in new contexts beca...

Le présent article, à cheval entre autobiographie et recherche, donne à lire trois récits entremêlés : dans l’un d’eux, l’autrice est temporairement prise au piège d’une situation de violence conjugale ; dans un autre, elle accepte enfin sa sexualité queer ; enfin, le dernier consiste en une réflexion sur les propos, au xviii e siècle, de Jeremy Bentham sur les « irrégularités sexuelles », pour reprendre sa formule. En particulier, l’autrice se penche sur les dynamiques de pouvoir, notamment sur la (...) subversion de la soumission apparente, devenue pouvoir, dans le cadre d’actes consentis, et interroge ce qui nous pousse à faire du _kink_ de domination/soumission un comportement interdit ou tabou. (shrink)

We have been researching the distinctive ethical issues raised by what we have called “the reset period,” when non-Covid services resumed alongside the continuing pandemic in the UK. In this commen...

In three parts, this volume in the AP-LS series explores the phenomena of captivity and risk management, guided and informed by the theory, method, and policy of psychological jurisprudence. The authors present a controversial thesis that demonstrates how the forces of captivity and risk management are sustained by several interdependent "conditions of control." These conditions impose barriers to justice and set limits on citizenship for one and all. Situated at the nexus of political/social theory, mental health law and jurisprudential ethics, (...) the book examines and critiques constructs such as offenders and victims; self and society; therapeutic and restorative; health; harm; and community. So, too, are three "total confinement" case law data sets on which this analysis is based. The volume stands alone in its efforts to systematically "diagnose" the moral reasoning lodged within prevailing judicial opinions that sustain captivity and risk management practices impacting: (1) the rights of juveniles found competent to stand criminal trial, the mentally ill placed in long-term disciplinary isolation, and sex offenders subjected to civil detention and community re-entry monitoring; (2) the often unmet needs of victims; and (3) the demands of an ordered society. Carefully balancing sophisticated insights with concrete and cutting-edge applications, the book concludes with a series of provocative, yet practical, recommendations for future research and meaningful reform within institutional practice, programming, and policy. (shrink)

The diverse array of plants at Kew is a haven for wildlife throughout the year. In spring, enchanting wildlfowl babies appear; summer flowers attract a host of insect pollinators; come autumn, parakeets and squirrels raid chestnuts, while in winter swans court – this is Heather Angel’s Wild Kew. In all, a stunning array of photographs and advice, the result of devoting a year to capturing Kew’s wildlife.

__Cultural Studies and Education_ is a timely introduction to cultural studies and the ways in which it can enrich both education scholarship and practice._ An extensive field that in the last few decades has transformed many academic disciplines, cultural studies has yet to be fully considered by educators and education scholars. Cultural Studies and Education redresses this great shortcoming, bringing cultural studies and its implications for education to the fore. The book aims to serve three main purposes. First, it is (...) an introduction for educators and education researchers to some of the most important theoretical debates and analytic frameworks that have shaped the field of cultural studies. Second, it offers an introduction to and examples of three important areas of inquiry in which education and cultural studies overlap: gender and queer studies; postcolonial and ethnic studies; and popular culture and youth studies. Third, it illustrates how education scholars have dealt with the conceptual challenges of cultural studies and how education offers unique perspectives and contributions to the broader debates in the field.". (shrink)

This paper aims to bring together the study of normative judgments in mathematics as studied by the philosophy of mathematics and verbal hygiene as studied by sociolinguistics. Verbal hygiene (Cameron 1995) refers to the set of normative ideas that language users have about which linguistic practices should be preferred, and the ways in which they go about encouraging or forcing others to adopt their preference. We introduce the notion of mathematical hygiene, which we define in a parallel way as the (...) set of normative discourses regulating mathematical practices and the ways in which mathematicians promote those practices. To clarify our proposal, we present two case studies from 17th century France. First, we exemplify a case of mathematical hygiene proper: Descartes' algebraic geometry and Newton's subsequent criticism of it, a case of (im)purity in mathematics. Then, we compare Descartes' and Newton's mathematical hygiene with verbal hygiene from this period, as exemplified by the work of the grammarian Claude Favre de Vaugelas (Ayres-Bennett 1987). We argue that these early modern normative discourses on mathematics and language respectively can be seen as emanating from a common socio-political program: the development of a new bourgeois intellectual class. We conclude that the study of mathematical hygiene has the potential to yield new understandings of the social aspects of mathematical practice, and that similarities between mathematical and verbal hygiene at certain time periods, such as 17th century France, open up a new area of inquiry at the borders of linguistics and the philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

Cognitive control is easy to identify in its effects, but difficult to grasp conceptually. This creates somewhat of a puzzle: Is cognitive control a bona fide process or an epiphenomenon that merely exists in the mind of the observer? The topiCS special edition on cognitive control presents a broad set of perspectives on this issue and helps to clarify central conceptual and empirical challenges confronting the field. Our commentary provides a summary of and critical response to each of the papers.

Judges are typically tasked to consider sentencing benefits but not costs. Previous research finds that both laypeople and prosecutors discount the costs of incarceration when forming sentencing attitudes, raising important questions about whether professional judges show the same bias during sentencing. To test this, we used a vignette-based experiment in which Minnesota state judges reviewed a case summary about an aggravated robbery and imposed a hypothetical sentence. Using random assignment, half the participants received additional information about plausible negative consequences of (...) incarceration. As predicted, our results revealed a mitigating effect of cost exposure on prison sentence term lengths. Critically, these findings support the conclusion that policies that increase transparency in sentencing costs could reduce sentence lengths, which has important economic and social ramifications. (shrink)

I’m sick of being treated like a dumb Mum who doesn’t understand the science. As far as I’m concerned, my family’s health is just too important. … If the government can’t protect the safety of my family, then I will.Recent Greenpeace activism in Australia resulted in the destruction of a field trial of a line of wheat “designed” to improve human nutrition. This incident demonstrates that, while there is significant ongoing public and private investment in genetically modified crop research and (...) development in Australia, many people continue to oppose GM foods strongly. We noted with interest that Greenpeace described this activism with language that explicitly connected the actions to the gender.. (shrink)

When ethics committees are consulted about patients who have or need court-appointed guardians, they lack empirical evidence about several common issues, including the relationship between guardianship and prolonged, potentially medically unnecessary hospitalizations for patients. To provide information about this issue, we conducted quantitative and qualitative analyses using a retrospective cohort from Veterans Healthcare Administration. To examine the relationship between guardianship appointment and hospital length of stay, we first compared 116 persons hospitalized prior to guardianship appointment to a comparison group (n (...) = 348) 3:1 matched for age, diagnosis, date of admission, and comorbidity. We then compared 91 persons hospitalized in the year following guardianship appointment to a second matched comparison group (n = 273). Mean length of stay was 30.75 days (SD = 46.70) amongst those admitted prior to guardianship, which was higher than the comparison group (M = 7.74, SD = 9.71, F = 20.75, p. (shrink)

Splitting livers allows two people (usually an adult and a child) to receive a liver transplant from one donated adult liver, but the risks to the adult recipient are greater than if they had received the equivalent whole liver. It has been suggested, therefore, that splitting livers harms adult recipients. Without liver splitting, however, there would be few livers available for children, and paediatric waiting time and waiting list mortality would significantly increase. In this paper, we argue that although splitting (...) livers makes adults worse off, this should be considered sub-optimal benefit rather than harm. We explore justifications for sub-optimally benefitting adults in this way and consider alternatives to the current approach. We argue that splitting livers masks the more fundamental problem of low paediatric donation rates and that increasing the number of paediatric donations would improve the situation for both adult and paediatric liver patients. (shrink)

Essays in Memory of Richard Helgerson: Laureations brings together new essays by leading literary scholars of the British and European middle ages and early modern period who have been influenced by the groundbreaking scholarship of Richard Helgerson. The contributors evince the ongoing impact of Helgerson's work in critical debates including those of nationalism, formal analysis, and literary careerism.

This book presents a new theory of the relationship between vagueness, context-sensitivity, gradability, and scale structure in natural language. Heather Burnett argues that it is possible to distinguish between particular subclasses of adjectival predicatesDLrelative adjectives like tall, total adjectives like dry, partial adjectives like wet, and non-scalar adjectives like hexagonalDLon the basis of how their criteria of application vary depending on the context; how they display the characteristic properties of vague language; and what the properties of their associated orders (...) are. It has been known for a long time that there exist empirical connections between context-sensitivity, vagueness, and scale structure; however, a formal system that expresses these connections had yet to be developed. This volume sets out a new logical system, called DelTCS, that brings together insights from the Delineation Semantics framework and from the Tolerant, Classical, Strict non-classical framework, to arrive at a full theory of gradability and scale structure in the adjectival domain. The analysis is further extended to examine vagueness and gradability associated with particular classes of determiner phrases, showing that the correspondences that exist between the major adjectival scale structure classes and subclasses of determiner phrases can also be captured within the DelTCS system. (shrink)

Participant observation, focus groups, and in-depth interviews were used to study the professionalization of women enrolled in engineering school. Two aspects of the professionalization process were examined: adapting to the professional culture and internalizing the professional identity. The study found support for a Goffmanesque interpretation of professionalization; engineering students learn how to manage others' impressions of them as professionals to gain their trust and confidence. Women also must learn to manage impressions male engineers hold of them. They present themselves as (...) competent, nonthreatening, and solidary members of the profession. (shrink)

If, as the new tenseless theory of time maintains, there are no tensed facts, then why do our emotional lives seem to suggest that there are? This question originates with Prior’s ‘Thank Goodness That’s Over’ problem, and still presents a significant challenge to the new B-theory of time. We argue that this challenge has more dimensions to it than has been appreciated by those involved in the debate so far. We present an analysis of the challenge, showing the different questions (...) that a B-theorist must answer in order to meet it. The debate has focused on the question of what is the object of my relief when an unpleasant experience is past. We outline the prevailing response to this question. The additional, and neglected, questions are, firstly—‘Why does the same event elicit different emotional responses from us depending on whether it is in the past, present, or future?’ And secondly—‘Why do we care more about proximate future pain than about distant future pain?’ We give B-theory answers to these questions, which appeal to evolutionary considerations. (shrink)

The primary goal of this paper is to propose a working analysis of the disposition of closed-mindedness. I argue that closed-mindedness (CM) is an unwillingness or inability to engage (seriously) with relevant intellectual options. Dogmatism (DG) is one kind of closed-mindedness: it is an unwillingness to engage seriously with relevant alternatives to the beliefs one already holds. I do not assume that the disposition of closed-mindedness is always an intellectual vice; rather I treat the analysis of the disposition, and its (...) status as an intellectual vice, as separate questions. The concluding section develops a framework for determining the conditions under which closed-mindedness will be an intellectual vice. (shrink)

Many studies have documented a close timing relationship between speech prosody and co-speech gesture, but some studies have not, and it is unclear whether these differences in speech-gesture alignment are due to different speaking tasks, different target gesture types, different prosodic elements, different definitions of alignment, or even different languages/speakers. This study contributes to the ongoing effort to elucidate the precise nature of the gesture–speech timing relationship by examining an understudied variety of American English, i.e., academic-lecture-style speech, with a focus (...) on an understudied type of gesture: Non-Referential gestures, which make up the majority of this corpus. Results for the 1,334 Stroke-Defined Gestures in this 20-min sample suggest that the stroke phase of a Non-Referential gesture tends to align with a pitch-accented syllable, just as reported in studies of other gesture types (e.g., deictic gestures) and in other speaking styles (such as narration). Preliminary results are presented suggesting that trajectory shapes of these Non-Referential gestures are consistent across a higher-level prosodic grouping, supporting earlier proposals for kinematic constancy across spoken prosodic constituents ( Kendon, 1972, 1980, 2004 ). Analysis also raises the possibility that the category of Non-Referential gestures is not solely made up of ‘beats,’ defined as simple bi-phasic flick-like movements that beat out the rhythm of the speech, but includes gestures with multiple phases and various types of rhythmicity. Taken together, the results of this analysis suggest (1) a wide range of gesture configurations within the undifferentiated category of Non-Referential gestures or ‘beats,’ which requires further investigation, and (2) a close coordination between co-speech gestures and the prosodic structure of spoken utterances across speaking styles and gesture referentiality, which has profound implications for modeling the process of planning an utterance. (shrink)

This essay surveys the varieties of disjunctivism about perceptual experience. Disjunctivism comes in two main flavours, metaphysical and epistemological.

ABSTRACTAutonomous weapons systems pose many challenges in complex battlefield environments. Previous discussions of them have largely focused on technological or policy issues. In contrast, we focus here on the challenge of trust in an AWS. One type of human trust depends only on judgments about the predictability or reliability of the trustee, and so are suitable for all manner of artifacts. However, AWSs that are worthy of the descriptor “autonomous” will not exhibit the required strong predictability in the complex, changing (...) contexts of war. Instead, warfighters need to develop deeper, interpersonal trust that is grounded in understanding the values, beliefs, and dispositions of the AWS. Current acquisition, training, and deployment processes preclude the development of such trust, and so there are currently no routes for a warfighter to develop trust in an AWS. We thus survey three possible changes to current practices in order to facilitate the type of deep trust that is required for appropri... (shrink)

One of the primary concerns in animal research is ensuring the welfare of laboratory animals. Modern views on animal welfare emphasize the role of animal sentience, i.e. the capacity to experience subjective states such as pleasure or suffering, as a central component of welfare. The increasing official recognition of animal sentience has had large effects on laboratory animal research. The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (Low et al., University of Cambridge, 2012) marked an official scientific recognition of the presence of sentience (...) in mammals, birds, and cephalopods. Animal sentience has furthermore been recognized in legislation in the European Union, UK, New Zealand and parts of Australia, with discussions underway in other parts of the world to follow suit. In this paper, we analyze this shift towards recognition of sentience in the regulation and practice in the treatment of laboratory animals and its effects on animal welfare and use. (shrink)

Heather, Bede Review of: Neither jew nor Greek: A contested identity, by James D. G. Dunn, Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2015, pp. 946, $62.19.

In the past three years, Heather Ford—an ethnographer and now a PhD student—has worked on ad hoc collaborative projects around Wikipedia sources with two data scientists from Minnesota, Dave Musicant and Shilad Sen. In this essay, she talks about how the three met, how they worked together, and what they gained from the experience. Three themes became apparent through their collaboration: that data scientists and ethnographers have much in common, that their skills are complementary, and that discovering the data (...) together rather than compartmentalizing research activities was key to their success. (shrink)

In colonial states and settings, constitutional arrangements are often forged within contexts that serve to maintain structural racism against Indigenous people. In 2013 the New Zealand government initiated national conversations about the constitutional arrangements in Aotearoa. Māori leadership preceded this, initiating a comprehensive engagement process among Māori in 2010, which resulted in a report by Matike Mai Aotearoa which articulated a collective Māori vision of a written constitution congruent with te Tiriti o Waitangi by 2040.This conceptual article explores the Matike (...) Mai Aotearoa report on constitutional transformation as a novel means to address structural racism within the health system as a key domain within the constitutional sphere. Matike Mai suggests alternative conceptual structural formations through its focus on the kāwanatanga, the relational and the tino rangatiratanga sphere. This framework is informed by a range of Indigenous ethical values such as tikanga, belonging, and balance that can usefully inform the redesign of the health sector.We assert that constitutional transformation and decolonization are potentially powerful ethical sources of disruption to whiteness and structural racism. We argue that, to eliminate entrenched health disparities, change processes need to be informed by the Indigenous inspirations expressed in the Matike Mai report. (shrink)

With increasing attention given to wild animal welfare and ethics, it has become common to depict animals in the wild as existing in a state dominated by suffering. This assumption is now taken on board by many and frames much of the current discussion; but needs a more critical assessment, both theoretically and empirically. In this paper, we challenge the primary lines of evidence employed in support of wild animal suffering, to provide an alternative picture in which wild animals may (...) often have lives that are far more positive than is commonly assumed. Nevertheless, while it is useful to have an alternative model to challenge unexamined assumptions, our real emphasis in this paper is the need for the development of effective methods for applying animal welfare science in the wild, including new means of data collection, the ability to determine the extent and scope of welfare challenges and opportunities, and their effects on welfare. Until such methods are developed, discussions of wild animal welfare cannot go beyond trading of intuitions, which as we show here can just as easily go in either direction. (shrink)

The individual self and its critics -- The individualist assumptions of bioethical frameworks -- The genetic self is the connected self -- The failures of individual ethics in the genetic era -- The communal turn -- Developing alternatives: benefit sharing -- Developing alternatives: trust -- The ethical toolbox part one: recognising goods and harms -- The ethical toolbox part two: applying appropriate practices -- Possible futures.