We summarize the ethnographic literature illustrating that “abnormal birth” circumstances and “ill omens” operate as cues to terminate parental investment. A review of the medical literature provides evidence to support our assertion that ill omens serve as markers of biological conditions that will threaten the survival of infants. Daly and Wilson (1984) tested the prediction that children of demonstrably poor phenotypic quality will be common victims of infanticide. We take this hypothesis one stage further and argue that some children will (...) be poor vehicles for parental investment yet are not of demonstrably poor quality at birth. We conclude that when people dispose of infants due to “superstitious beliefs” they are pursuing an adaptive strategy in eliminating infants who are poor vehicles for parental investment. (shrink)

While recently reading the 1914-1919 Congressional Record debates over woman suffrage, I was struck by the familiarity of the content. The concerns of the early 1900s mirror those of the early 2000s: concentration of wealth within a tiny percentage of the population, equal pay across sex and race lines, the risk of U.S. entanglement in foreign wars, food safety, workers' rights, potable water, taxation, and so on. I also was struck by the familiarity of the debate's form. Much like the (...) rebuttal speeches I was trained to deliver as an intercollegiate debater, the pro-suffrage speeches contain systematic, comprehensive, and specific refutation of anti-suffrage arguments.Yet, it took decades of activism outside of... (shrink)

Recognizing the importance of health‐promoting relationships in engaging people who are experiencing homelessness in care, most research on health clinics for homeless persons has involved some recognition of client–provider relationships. However, what has been lacking is the inclusion of a critical analysis of the policy context in which relationships are enacted. In this paper, we question how client–provider relationships are enacted within the culture of community care with people who are experiencing homelessness and how clinic‐level and broader social and health (...) policies shape relationships in this context. We explore these questions within a critical theoretical perspective utilizing a critical ethnographic methodology. Data were collected using multiple methods of document review, participant observation, in‐depth interviews and focus groups. The participants include both clients at a community health clinic, and all clinic service providers. We explore how clients and providers characterized each other as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. For providers, this served as a means by which they policed behaviours and enforced social norms. The means by which both providers’ and clients’ negotiated relationships are explored, but this is couched within both local and system‐level policies. This study highlights the importance of healthcare providers and clients being involved in broader policy and systemic change. (shrink)

The value of and the need for rich data for criminal justice research is increasingly apparent, especially following recent restrictions on primary data collection due to COVID-19. Whilst the benefits of using administrative data for research are well established, less understood are the perspectives of data contributors and their expectations for the ethical governance and use of these data. This study describes the findings from a preliminary study comprising four focus groups with a total of seventeen adult males serving sentences (...) in a Category A prison in England. Participants were asked to offer opinions about the possibility of making survey data collected from them as part of the prison inspection process more widely accessible, beyond the organizational priorities for which it was initially collected. Generally, participants were content for survey data to be shared with recipients who intended to use the data to bring about change within prisons; this aligns with the purpose for data collection. Participants were opposed to data being made accessible to recipients who might produce spurious findings. We discuss implications for the future accessibility of a vast wealth of prisoner survey data in England and Wales and highlight the importance of consultation with incarcerated persons on this subject. (shrink)

Five studies examined the extent to which autobiographical memory retrieval is hierarchical, whether a hierarchical search depends on central executive resources, and whether retrieving memories that are “higher” in the hierarchy impairs problem‐solving ability. The first study found that random generation (assessed using a button‐pressing task) was sensitive to changes in memory load (digit span). The second study showed that when participants fail to retrieve a target event, they respond with a memory that is higher up the hierarchy. The third (...) study showed that memory is more generic only when participants use low imageable cues under cognitive load. The final two experiments showed that experimental manipulation of memory specificity affects problem solving (MEPS performance). The data are consistent with Conway and Pleydell‐Pearce's hierarchical retrieval model of autobiographical memory, and suggest that overgeneral memory in nonclinical participants is associated with reduced executive capacity only when retrieval is “top‐down” (generative). (shrink)

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need (...) to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innovations, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent. (shrink)

New concepts may prove necessary to profit from the avalanche of sequence data on the genome, transcriptome, proteome and interactome and to relate this information to cell physiology. Here, we focus on the concept of large activity-based structures, or hyperstructures, in which a variety of types of molecules are brought together to perform a function. We review the evidence for the existence of hyperstructures responsible for the initiation of DNA replication, the sequestration of newly replicated origins of replication, cell division (...) and for metabolism. The processes responsible for hyperstructure formation include changes in enzyme affinities due to metabolite-induction, lipid-protein affinities, elevated local concentrations of proteins and their binding sites on DNA and RNA, and transertion. Experimental techniques exist that can be used to study hyperstructures and we review some of the ones less familiar to biologists. Finally, we speculate on how a variety of in silico approaches involving cellular automata and multi-agent systems could be combined to develop new concepts in the form of an Integrated cell (I-cell) which would undergo selection for growth and survival in a world of artificial microbiology. (shrink)

Harrison, Helen Adelaide's first bishop, Francis Murphy, was baptised in Navan, County Meath, Ireland, on 24 May 1795. His parents were Arthur Murphy and Bridget nee Flood. Baptismal records suggest his siblings included John Joseph, Arthur, Catherine, John Joseph Michael and Christopher. It is unlikely that all of these survived for long because by the time Francis Murphy was Bishop of Adelaide, he was writing to 'my sister' and 'my brother'.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Epistemic Microaggressions and Their HarmsCatherine Sherron (bio)In Microaggressions in Medicine (2024), Lauren Freeman and Heather Stewart raise many philosophical issues undermining, and practical advice for improving, the practice of medicine. Here I offer some thoughts specifically on chapter 4, "Epistemic Microaggressions."Epistemic microaggressions "pertain to our status as knowers" and are "defined as intentional or unintentional verbal or gestural slights made by healthcare professionals that dismiss, ignore, or otherwise fail (...) to recognize knowledge claims made by patients" (Freeman and Stewart 2024, 98). Note that intention is irrelevant; only the impact of how the harm befalls the patient is the focus here. Could there be extenuating circumstances for any particular healthcare professional? Possibly, but the point is to acknowledge the harm and do better both as individual healthcare professionals and within healthcare systems (subsequent chapters of the book point out various specific steps and strategies to address and rectify both individual and systemic shortcomings).Epistemologically, healthcare professionals (hereafter "practitioner") are experts on human medicine, but each patient is generally an expert on their own body. Here I organize some thoughts around specific issues in order to further our thinking about where the knowledge construction goes wrong and see where we might improve.1. Issue 1: Epistemic agencyQuestions in this realm pertain to, for example, who is a knower, whose knowledge counts, and who has epistemic privilege? Epistemologically, subjective knowledge about pain or what is normal for my body is my individual knowledge. While a patient might not have a sufficient vocabulary to accurately describe how it feels to them, the practitioner cannot know better than them. What a practitioner might be able to do is help the patient figure out how to communicate their experience, as well as values, more clearly or effectively. [End Page 147] One way that microaggressions function is by freezing out or shutting down the patient and thus limiting their epistemological contributions to the shared problem.In contrast, building on the work of feminist philosopher of science, Helen Longino (1990), medical knowledge, like scientific knowledge, can be conceived as social knowledge. It is built on the experiences and studies of the scientific and medical communities. The knowledge is held across individuals, not within any one person and no one person can override the community's knowledge. Note that like all scientific knowledge, it is falsifiable or defeasible such that if new evidence arises, the scientific community or subcommunity might need to reassess. In this way, scientific knowledge is dynamic, not static.Returning to the practice of medicine, we would say that is a shared epistemological endeavor across both practitioner and patient. Both parties bring something to the knowledge table, so to speak. But this "table" is not equally welcoming to all people. As we try to understand microaggressions in a US societal context, we would notice that whole groups of people are often not taken seriously by our society as epistemic agents. Most people, including practitioners, hold implicit and explicit racial bias. Statistically, people of color are devalued. Women are consistently devalued, not taken as credible even about their own bodies and experiences (Freeman and Stewart 2024, 114). Specifically in medicine, practitioners consistently have underestimated the claims women make about pain. Freeman and Stewart call this "medical gaslighting" in chapter 5. An additional example to the cases in the book can be found in the 2023 New York Times podcast, The Retrievals, about dozens of women (perhaps as many as 200) undergoing fertility treatment, including egg retrievals that were performed without pain medicine because, as it was later discovered, someone on staff with a drug problem was replacing the fentanyl used for sedation with saline. Even when the women were visibly in pain and requesting more relief, they were told things like "if you want a baby, you have to suffer" and "we are giving you all that we can—you just need to tough it out" (Burton 2023, "The Clinic"). Some of the women reported they felt they were being treated like "hysterical women" (Burton 2023, "The Patients").With a social tendency for people with less power and status to present as less confident, more deferential, and less willing to speak up, we... (shrink)

Sociality of science has long been the topic of investigation in science studies and the social constructivist approaches advanced within critical race theory and feminist epistemology. Helen Longino’s career has provided a number of canonical and crucial advances in philosophical understanding of the sociality of science, and recently, she has argued that it is the sociality of interaction within scientific groups that makes them knowledge producing. In this article, forthcoming in a volume dedicated to the work of Longino's career, (...) we use case studies in potato science research to offer a friendly but important amendment to Longino's recent analysis of the sociality of interaction. (shrink)

Philosophical investigation in synthetic biology has focused on the knowledge-seeking questions pursued, the kind of engineering techniques used, and on the ethical impact of the products produced. However, little work has been done to investigate the processes by which these epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical forms of inquiry arise in the course of synthetic biology research. An attempt at this work relying on a particular area of synthetic biology will be the aim of this chapter. I focus on the reengineering of (...) metabolic pathways through the manipulation and construction of small DNA-based devices and systems synthetic biology. Rather than focusing on the engineered products or ethical principles that result, I will investigate the processes by which these arise. As such, the attention will be directed to the activities of practitioners, their manipulation of tools, and the use they make of techniques to construct new metabolic devices. Using a science-in-practice approach, I investigate problems at the intersection of science, philosophy of science, and sociology of science. I consider how practitioners within this area of synthetic biology reconfigure biological understanding and ethical categories through active modelling and manipulation of known functional parts, biological pathways for use in the design of microbial machines to solve problems in medicine, technology, and the environment. We might describe this kind of problem-solving as relying on what Helen Longino referred to as “social cognition” or the type of scientific work done within what Hasok Chang calls “systems of practice”. My aim in this chapter will be to investigate the relationship that holds between systems of practice within metabolic engineering research and social cognition. I will attempt to show how knowledge and normative valuation are generated from this particular network of practitioners. In doing so, I suggest that the social nature of scientific inquiry is ineliminable to both knowledge acquisition and ethical evaluations. (shrink)

L’introduction et la traduction de ce texte ont constitué un mémoire de diplôme à l’E.P.H.E. soutenu en 1996. La Préface de S. Mimouni (p. 7-17) est intitulée « Présentation générale des traditions sur l’enfance de Jésus et de Marie ». Elle s’adresse à des lecteurs sachant ce que peuvent être « la stagnation adoptionisante » et « la déviation docétisante », avertis de « la fameuse opposition entre la ’christologie d’en bas’ et la ’christologie d’en haut’ » (p. 8) et (...) au fait des ébionites et d.. (shrink)

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 4, Page 553-554, July 2012.

As Helen Longino's overview of Hypatia's engagement with feminist epistemology suggests, the last twenty-five years’ contributions to this field reveal a strong focus on the topic of knowledge. In her short outline, Longino questions this narrow focus on knowledge in epistemological inquiry. The main purpose of this article is to provide a framework for systematically taking up the questions raised by Longino, one that prevents us from running the risk of becoming unreflectively involved in sexist, racist, or otherwise problematic (...) inquiry. I argue that a specific form of the method of Reflective Equilibrium, as it is widely discussed in moral epistemology, logic, and theories of rationality, enables us to cope with the problems of traditional epistemology, which feminist theorizers such as Sally Haslanger have pointed to. With the account of Reflective Equilibrium I am offering—drawing in many respects on the model provided by Catherine Z. Elgin—we have an ameliorative method that allows us to rethink epistemological values, goals, and standards in a systematic way, and that largely avoids implicit and explicit biases in epistemology. (shrink)

Essentialism--roughly, the view that natural kinds have discrete essences, generating truths that are necessary but knowable only _a posteriori_--is an increasingly popular view in the metaphysics of science. At the same time, philosophers of language have been subjecting Kripke’s views about the existence and scope of the necessary _a posteriori_ to rigorous analysis and criticism. Essentialists typically appeal to Kripkean semantics to motivate their radical extension of the realm of the necessary _a posteriori_; but they rarely attempt to provide any (...) semantic arguments for this extension, or engage with the critical work being done by philosophers of language. This collection brings authors on both sides together in one volume, thus helping the reader to see the connections between views in philosophy of language on the one hand and the metaphysics of science on the other. The result is a book that will have a significant impact on the debate about essentialism, encouraging essentialists to engage with debates about the semantic presuppositions that underpin their position, and, encouraging philosophers of language to engage with the metaphysical presuppositions enshrined in Kripkean semantics. (shrink)

What can an analysis of power in local communities contribute to debates on women’s legal empowerment and the role of paralegals in Africa? Drawing upon theories of power and rights, and research on legal empowerment in African plural legal systems, this article explores the challenges for paralegals in facilitating women’s access to justice in Tanzania, which gave statutory recognition to paralegals in the Legal Aid Act 2017. Land conflicts represent the single-biggest source of local legal disputes in Tanzania and are (...) often embedded in gendered land tenure relations. This article argues that paralegals can be effective actors in women’s legal empowerment where they are able to work as leaders, negotiating power relations and resisting the forms of violence that women encounter as obstacles to justice. Paralegals’ authority will be realised when their role is situated within community leadership structures, confirming their authority while preserving their independence. (shrink)

The present article considers the avant-garde as experience, and primarily as the experience of perceiving avant-garde art in terms of interruption, estrangement, and arrest. The focus is on the “internal”—utopian—time of the avant-garde, or the dimension of the social imagination. This is directly related to Walter Benjamin’s concept of history, and his idea of the interruption of time. The article analyzes the connection between the continuing interest in the avant-garde and the problem of representing utopia. Avant-garde art is considered as (...) a “sign of history” according to Kant: it takes on the function of an index in that it delineates space for new social relations. Avant-garde art is a form of mapping out a new community, which precedes any institutionalization. Such an intrusion of the “invisible” into avant-garde imagery is explored with the example of Jean-Luc Marion’s reflections on Rothko and Marie-José Mondzain’s conception of the icon as the forerunner of modern abstract art. (shrink)

During the 16-year civil war in Mozambique thousands of children were separated from their families as a direct or indirect result of conflict and displacement. International organizations lent support to a national family tracing and reunification programme coordinated by the government Department for Social Action. Drawing on the findings of an empirical study of the sustainability of substitute family care, this article describes the tensions associated with the involvement of international organizations during the emergency conditions of the war, in post-war (...) rehabilitation and in longer term development. It explores the ethical dimensions of social welfare interventions across borders and continents and concludes by arguing a case for international humanitarian agencies to base their interventions to ?help? separated children on deeper knowledges of the social and political history, and the values, beliefs and normative practices of the populations with whom they work. (shrink)

This workshop was designed for faculty teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels who incorporate or wish to incorporate climate change and sustainability into their teaching repertoire. Following an introduction, the workshop addressed challenges, frameworks, and models for teaching about climate change and sustainability. Breakout sessions then focused on these three aspects of our teaching. The workshop concluded with a sharing of ideas from the breakout sessions and thoughts on moving forward. A resource list for teaching about climate change (...) was discussed at the workshop and is included herein. (shrink)

The author analyzes the interrelations of the concepts of symbol, sign, image, and consciousness. She establishes connections between the theories of Mamardashvili and his colleagues and those of the French semioticians Derrida and Deleuze.

Recent law and ethics literature has been inundated with recommendations of the "best interests" criterion as the appropriate guide for neonatal and maternal-fetal decision-making. Increasingly, however, its adequacy is being questioned. In Chapter 1, I survey the arguments of "best interests" defenders and critics and suggest one problem is that the "best interests" criterion has yet to be subjected to a systematic conceptual and ethical analysis. In Chapter 2, therefore, I conduct such an analysis to evaluate more systematically its appropriateness (...) as a decision-making guide in neonatal and maternal-fetal medicine, concluding that the "best interests" criterion cannot assist us in seeing and addressing all that is at stake in neonatal and maternal-fetal decision-making because it excludes any consideration of the "interdependent" and other interests of family members. Therefore, I suggest that an ethical criterion or set of criteria which can explicitly consider and adequately balance the interests of infants or fetuses and family members would be a more helpful guide for neonatal and maternal-fetal decision-making. ;In Chapters 3-7, I attempt to move beyond the "best interests" criterion, drawing on fieldwork I conducted in the United States, Sweden, and India to point out some conceptual and normative gaps to be addressed in the development of a more adequate guide for neonatal and maternal-fetal decision-making. In Chapter 3, I describe this fieldwork and explain its purpose as illustrating the clinical ethical strategies employed in these countries to balance the interests of various parties in actual decision-making. In Chapters 4-6, I describe these strategies. Finally, in Chapter 7, I point out some conceptual and normative gaps in these decision-making strategies, noting that these gaps have also been unaddressed by the "best interests" critics reviewed in Chapters 1 and 2. I suggest that we must address these gaps to develop theoretical structures that will enable us to explicitly consider and adequately balance the "interdependent" and other interests of infants or fetuses, their family members, and even society in neonatal and maternal-fetal decision-making. (shrink)