Daniel Callahan's concept of a “sustainable medicine” is examined by looking at experiences Old Order Amish communities have had with organ and bone marrow transplantation. The Amish possess many characteristics that might make them embrace limits on the use of expensive, life-prolonging medical treatments: they believe that the good of the individual should be subordinated to the good of the community, they are suspicious of progress as a goal, and they are more comfortable with dying than many other modern Americans. (...) However, the Amish actively pursue these treatments without the benefit of private or government insurance. Although the Amish affective response to sick individuals is worthy of emulating, their commitment to help individuals obtain and pay for transplants has had negative financial and cultural effects on some Amish communities. The Amish experience can thus teach us lessons about how to care for one another when we are sick and dying, but it can also teach us how difficult but important it is to limit some forms of expensive care for the good of our communities. (shrink)

Truth, Trust and Medicine investigates the notion of trust and honesty in medicine, and questions whether honesty and openness are of equal importance in maintaining the trust necessary in doctor-patient relationships. Jackson begins with the premise that those in the medical profession have a basic duty to be worthy of the trust their patients place in them. Yet questions of the ethics of withholding information and consent and covert surveillance in care units persist. This book boldly addresses these questions which (...) disturb our very modern notions of a patient's autonomy, self-determination and informed consent. (shrink)

The focus of this paper will be to examine the implications that a “practical” approach to conceptual engineering might have for the “traditional” conception of philosophy as uncovering truths about phenomena of philosophical interest. In doing so, I will be building on the ideas of a figure that many take to be the first major philosopher to write on conceptual engineering: Rudolf Carnap. Though the current wave of interest in conceptual engineering goes back less than a decade, many conceptual engineers (...) have found precedent for their views in Carnap’s characterization of what he called “explication.” Interestingly, however, not nearly as much attention has been paid to another Carnapian thesis which seems to me to have deep relevance to methodological questions about conceptual engineering. I have in mind here the distinction between internal and external questions proposed in “Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology” (1950b) and the accompanying claim that external questions lack cognitive content and can be cogently approached only as a matter of pragmatic decision-making. This is the aspect of Carnap’s views upon which I propose to build. I'll first make the case that there is a suggestive similarity between Carnap’s claim that external questions are matters of pragmatic choice and the practical conceptual engineer’s claim that engineering success should be characterized in terms of suitability to a function or purpose. After that, I'll look at potential worries about the Carnapian distinction—including, e.g., the concern that it relies on the analytic/synthetic distinction. Finally, I will propose a somewhat modified and expanded version of the distinction and examine its consequences for the thesis that philosophy aims at discovering truths about phenomena of philosophical interest. (shrink)

Re-evaluating dominant cultural narratives around dying and death is central to new critiques of individualism and human exceptionalism. As conceptual tools for theorizing the end of the individual proliferate, the affective dimensions of this project are often overlooked, especially as they pertain to individual subjects. In contrast, a significant number of iconic queer and feminist thinkers have suffered breast cancer and written memoirs representing the subjective experience of confronting mortality. This article identifies the affective orientations towards one’s own mortality as (...) missing from queer and feminist thinking on embodiment in the Anthropocene. As a remedy, the article reads several iconic feminist breast cancer memoirs – Sontag, Lorde, Sedgwick, Jain and Boyer – for their complex representations of affect, in particular fear, in relation to dying and death. Using the affect theory of Silvan Tomkins, this analysis contributes to critiques of cancer culture in medical humanities and of mortality and embodiment in feminist environmental humanities. (shrink)

Over the last decades, curator Nicolas Bourriaud has drawn significant inspiration for his writings on contemporary art from the theories of the Situationist International (SI), an avant-garde group in existence from 1957 until 1972. Mischaracterizing the SI’s concepts of the situation, détournement, and the dérive, Bourriaud claims to update these concepts with concepts of his own: relational aesthetics, detourage, and radicant aesthetics. This article identifies such misrepresentations and highlights the differences between Bourriaud’s paradigms and those of the SI. This contextual (...) restitution also provides an opportunity to examine Bourriaud’s general methodology of substituting conceptual formalism for art historical theory. Bourriaud’s publications repeatedly claim a historical materialist perspective on aesthetics, only to eventually eliminate this perspective; his use and abuse of Situationist theory is the foundational example for this pattern. More than the artworks showcased in Bourriaud’s exhibitions and referenced in his publications, his artistic paradigms describe and delineate his own philosophical sleight of hand. (shrink)

In 2000, researchers from the Human Genome Project proclaimed that the initial sequencing of the human genome definitively proved, among other things, that there was no genetic basis for race. The genetic fact that most humans were 99.9% the same at the level of their DNA was widely heralded and circulated in the English-speaking press, especially in the United States. This pronouncement seemed proof that long-term antiracist efforts to de-biologize race were legitimized by scientific findings. Yet, despite the seemingly widespread (...) acceptance of the social construction of race, post-HGP genetic science has seen a substantial shift toward the use of race variables in genetic research and, according to a number of prominent scholars, is re-invoking the specter of earlier forms of racial science in some rather discomfiting ways. During the past seven years, the main thrust of human genetic research, especially in the realm of biomedicine, has shifted from a concern with the 99.9% of the shared genome — what is thought to make humans alike — towards an explicit focus on the 0.1% that constitutes human genetic variation. Here I briefly explore some of the potential implications of the conceptualization and practice of early 21st century genetic variation research, especially as it relates to questions of race. (shrink)

It is argued that the standard story of human action, as it is standardly naturalistically understood, should be rejected. Rather than seeking an agent amidst the workings of the mind (as in Velleman's "What Happens When Someone Acts"), we need to recognize an agent’s place in the world she inhabits. And in order to do so we have to resist the naturalistic assumptions of the standard causal story.

In recent years, there has been a surge in popularity of the fair-trade industry, which seeks to improve trading conditions and to promote the rights of marginalized workers. Although research suggests that fair-trade products are perceived as promoting social and economic responsibility, some individuals—namely, those who seek to maintain existing group inequalities or those induced to think inequality is a good thing—may not share this perception. Across three studies, we found that SDO relates negatively to fair-trade consumption, and this relationship (...) is mediated by the tendency for high-SDO individuals to see fair-trade products as less compatible with their conception of social justice. Our findings held after controlling for related individual-differences variables, and regardless of whether SDO was measured or manipulated. Implications for how to maximize the likelihood that people will perceive fair-trade products as “fair” are discussed. (shrink)

I recommend three revisions to experimental philosophy's ‘self-image’ which I suggest will enable experimentalist critics of intuition to evade several important objections to the 'negative' strand of the experimental philosophy research project. First, experimentalists should avoid broad criticisms of ‘intuition’ as a whole, instead drawing a variety of conclusions about a variety of much narrower categories of mental state. Second, experimentalists should state said conclusions in terms of epistemic norms particular to philosophical inquiry, rather than attempting to, for example, deny (...) that intuitions produce justified belief. Third, experimentalists should acknowledge the limitations of the ‘method of cases’ model of philosophical inquiry, and expand their experimental work accordingly. (shrink)

Returning to John P. Reeder's 1978 essay on “Religious Ethics as a Field and Discipline,” this essay explores debates surrounding the original intentions for the Journal of Religious Ethics (JRE) and for the field of religious ethics, as these have played out over the decades among an influential group of scholars involved with the JRE since its inception: Arthur Dyck, Ronald Green, Stanley Hauerwas, and Jeffrey Stout. While the JRE and its founding mission are in need of ongoing critique and (...) transformation, we might well still affirm the journal's ongoing importance as a site for the negotiation of a commons, the identification of possibilities for shared life, imagined beyond exclusion and domination. (shrink)

Environmental releases of gene edited (GEdOs) and gene drive organisms (GDOs) will likely occur under conditions of high uncertainty and in complex socioecological systems. Therefore, public deliberation is especially important to account for diverse interpretations of safety, risks, and benefits; to draw on experiential and public wisdom in areas of proposed release; to ameliorate dangers of technological optimism; and to increase the public legitimacy of decisions. Yet there is a “democratic deficit” in the United States' oversight system for GEdOs and (...) GDOs, as unconflicted experts, publics, and skeptical stakeholders are most often excluded from decision‐making and unavailable to critically examine potential risks and benefits or raise broader concerns about socioeconomic or cultural impacts. This article argues for the need to open up decision‐making for GEdOs and GDOs, discusses the challenges for doing so within the current oversight framework, and finally, proposes institutional, policy, and attitudinal changes that are likely important for overcoming barriers to public deliberation. (shrink)

We have good reasons to be concerned about the underrepresentation of historically marginalized people's perspectives from philosophical and academic discourse. Normative case studies provide a potential avenue through which we can address this lack of diversity. However, there is a risk that those who engage in this kind of project are “speaking for others” in ways that reproduce the inequalities we seek to remedy. While this challenge cannot be avoided, Jennifer Morton discusses here how the problem can be mitigated (...) by conceiving of normative case studies as a way to facilitate dialogue within our classrooms and with communities outside the academy. (shrink)

Abstract:This article posits Feminist Science and Technology Studies (FSTS) as a vital tool for bridging postcolonial and decolonial thought. First, FSTS forms a bridge by providing tools for reading epistemic imperialism and scientific racism as shared conditions of possibility for disparate colonizations. Second, by foregrounding the necessary links between epistemic and material violence, FSTS helps undo the theory/praxis binary that sometimes undergirds their analytic opposition. The authors argue that the careful study of science as a set of ideas, practices, and (...) attendant institutions is vital in order to better recognize and intervene in shifting modes of colonial conquest and governance. (shrink)

California is the global hub for assisted reproductive technology practices, including egg donation. The rise of egg donation in the United States is surprising given the cultural context linking genetics and motherhood and rejecting the commodification of reproduction. Scholars in the hostile worlds camp have grappled with the relationship between intimacy and economics, yet employing this theory to explain the increase in egg donation is unsatisfactory. The concept of relational work, developed by Viviana Zelizer, provides scholars with a robust analytical (...) tool to account for the rise in egg donation. This paper analyzes the relational work of egg donors and fertility center staff. I argue that donors and staff construct an understanding of egg donation that avoids directly challenging the cultural context mentioned above. Analyzing egg donation as a case of relational work demonstrates the need to move beyond the reciprocity/market dichotomy upheld by the hostile worlds framework. (shrink)

In American Nietzsche, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen delves deeply into Nietzsche's philosophy, and America’s reception of it, to tell the story of his curious appeal.

Could an accreditation, certification, or rating mechanism help the pharmaceutical industry improve both its bioethical performance and its public reputation? Other industries have used such systems to assess, improve, distinguish, and demonstrate the quality of their services, processes, and products. These systems have also helped increase transparency, accountability, stakeholder confidence, and awareness of industry best practices. This article explains how market forces can be harnessed to recognize and promote better bioethical performance by pharmaceutical companies when there are good systems to (...) accredit, certify, or rate. It concludes with a review of relevant failures of credit-rating agencies — such as conflicts of interests and revolving-door practices — to illuminate some of the pitfalls of developing a bioethics accreditation, certification, or rating system for pharmaceutical companies. (shrink)

Wherever philosophers disagree, one of the things at issue is likely to be what they disagree about, itself. In addition to asking whether moral realism is true, and which forms of moral realism are more likely to be true than others, we can also ask what it would mean for some form of moral realism to be true. The usual aspiration of such inquiry is to find definitions that all can agree on, so that we can use terms in a (...) uniform way. But we doubt that this aspiration is always possible, or even desirable. It will be our goal in this chapter to sketch out some of our reasons for such skepticism, and to lay out a picture of what philosophical inquiry can look like in metaethics and beyond, even when it is impossible to reach uniform agreement on the terms of the debate. (shrink)

Without proper recognition of the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and racism that Asian Americans and other racial minorities in the United States are facing, we cannot successfully address structural b...

Johnson conceptualizes the social responsibilities of digital media platforms by describing two ethical approaches: one emphasizing the discursive freedom of platform-users, the other emphasizing protecting users from harmful posts. These competing concerns are on full display in the current debate over platforms’ obligations during the COVID-19 pandemic. While Johnson argues both approaches are grounded in democracy, we argue that democratic commitments transcend the freedom/harm dichotomy. Instead, a commitment to democracy points toward social media companies’ responsibilities to structure their platforms in (...) ways that facilitate perspectival diversity and collective deliberation. (shrink)

One important way in which neuroscience, particularly neuroanatomy, contributes to cognitive science is by providing a model of the brain's architecture, which, in turn, can be utilized as a guide to the architecture of cognition. This project assumes commitment to a view, now well established, that different mental processes, such as perceiving and remembering, employ different parts of the brain (where part is loosely construed so as not to exclude entities which may themselves be composite). These parts may differ according (...) to their internal organizational structure, information processing capacities, and degree of informational connectivity with other parts. Later I will present an example of research in visual processing where researchers are currently attempting to realize the heuristic potential of the brain's architecture in order to understand cognitive organization. Of prior importance, however, is an understanding of how neuroscientists decipher the architecture of the brain itself. This task of mapping the brain, of carving it up into distinct areas, is not as straightforward as one might think. There are, for example, several different criteria by which one might fix a given boundary between brain regions. Below, I not only highlight some of the more interesting facets of brain mapping research but also elaborate on why such research is of interest to cognitive scientists. (shrink)

Book synopsis: Original essays on a very hot topic Wide-ranging analysis and exploration of the truthmaker principle Excellent line-up of seasoned experts and younger talent.

This paper draws from critical data studies and related fields to investigate police officer-involved homicide data for Los Angeles County. We frame police officer-involved homicide data as a rhetorical tool that can reify certain assumptions about the world and extend regimes of power. We highlight the possibility that this type of sensitive civic data can be investigated and employed within local communities through creative practice. Community involvement with data can create a countervailing force to powerful dominant narratives and supplement activist (...) projects that hold local officials accountable for their actions. Our analysis examines four Los Angeles County police officer-involved homicide data sets. First, we provide accounts of the semantics, granularity, scale and transparency of this local data. Then, we describe a “counter data action,” an event that invited members of the community to identify the limits and challenges present in police officer-involved homicide data and to propose new methods for deriving meaning from these indicators and statistics. (shrink)

Public trust of conventionally produced food is now a pivotal issue for the Canadian food supply chain as consumers are increasingly demanding traceability, transparency and sustainability of the agri-food system. To ensure that Canadians understand what farmers do, how they do it, and why—there has been significant human and financial investment by both the agri-food industry and government over the last decade. Farmers, civil servants, and non-farming agricultural professionals alike are being encouraged to join the national conversation promoting the legitimacy (...) of conventional agriculture. As part of this large-scale effort, women in agriculture are advocating, in gendered ways, for the safety and legitimacy of the agri-food system and its conventional farming practices. This is being done by utilizing their motherhood capital. This motherhood capital legitimizes the authority granted to mothers as expert decisionmakers regarding their children’s food consumption. Through the usage of their motherhood capital, women are being positioned—and are positioning themselves—as an important voice in re-narrating the story of conventional agriculture through the circulation of their maternal foodwork experiences. Using their authority as mothers they are advocating for the safety, necessity, and trustworthiness of conventional agriculture to counter narratives of mistrust and risk. (shrink)

Market incentives in capitalist economies and public health requirements are contradictory. In the COVID-19 pandemic, market-rewarded self-interested behavior has been exposed as a source of mortality and morbidity. Profit-motivated behaviors can keep people from accessing necessities for health thereby harming individuals and possibly damaging population health. The profit motive can also undermine healthcare system capacity by maldistributing goods that are inputs to healthcare. Furthermore, because profit-seeking is economically rational in capitalism, capitalist imperatives may be incompatible with public health. The ways (...) markets misallocate resources provide a rationale for state responsibility for health, which is a public good. (shrink)

Given emerging evidence that learning to play a musical instrument may lead to a number of cognitive benefits for older adults, it is important to clarify how these training programs can be delivered optimally and meaningfully. The effective acquisition of musical and domain-general skills by later-life learners may be influenced by social, cultural and individual factors within the learning environment. The current study examines the effects of a 10-week piano training program on healthy older adult novices’ cognitive and motor skills, (...) in comparison to an inactive waitlisted control group. Fifteen participants completed piano training led by a music facilitator in small groups (max n = 4 per lesson class; two experimental, two waitlisted control groups). Data was collected using an explanatory sequential design: quantitative data from a battery of cognitive and motor tests was collected pre/post-test on all participants, with further post-test data from the waitlisted control group (n = 7). Qualitative data included weekly facilitator observations, participant practice diaries, and an individual, semi-structured, post-experiment interview. Bayesian modelling demonstrated moderate evidence of a strong positive impact of training on part A of the Trail Making test (TMT), indicating improved visuo-motor skills. Moderate evidence for negative impacts of training on part B of the Trail Making Test (and difference score delta) was also found, suggesting no benefit of cognitive... (shrink)

This article raises the question of whether in both the United States and in France, an individual’s autonomy and private decision-making right in matters of health care and access to reproductive technologies can be conciliated with the general interest, and more specifically, the role of the State. Can a full-fledged right to privacy, the ability to exercise one’s autonomy, exist alongside the general interest, and depend neither on financial resources like in the United States nor on centralised government decisions or (...) the medical hierarchy like in France? The contrast between these two modern democracies justify the importance of comparing them. I will demonstrate that overlaps do exist: the free exercise of religion and opinion, freedom of expression, the inherent value of each individual. What differs, however, are the institutions and how they provide, protect, promote, or frame access to and expressions of these democratic principles. The impact of the global economy, the exposure of people around the world to each other via the internet, and the mirror effects of social media, blogs, and other such forums, have created new perspectives that countries project onto one another. For example, does France now seem to tout ‘autonomy’ as a new and important value because it appears to be an ‘American success story’? Does the United States now seem to value human rights and a social-democratic approach because of the ‘French model’? There seems to be some truth behind these assertions, but as this article will demonstrate, the portrayals of what the ‘right to privacy’ is in the United States and what ‘socialised medicine’ is in France are not necessarily fully accurate. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I examine our mental health concepts to see what work they are currently doing as well as what work they could be doing. In 1976, Christopher Boorse stated that the mental health literature is a “web of obscurities” (p. 51). To resolve some of this confusion, I argue that we need to consider the goals we should have for our mental health concepts and then give accounts of those concepts that meet our stated goals. I argue that (...) our goals for our mental health concepts should be twofold: first, we need concepts that will work to alleviate the stigmatization of mental disorder as this stigmatization gets in the way of providing and receiving medical help, and second, we need concepts that will be useful tools for medical practitioners to use in their diagnosis and treatment practices. -/- I begin by arguing that our mental disorder concept is not currently a useful tool for medical practitioners. Moreover, I argue that our mental disorder concept is confused in such a way that it is unlikely that it could ever be a useful tool for medical practitioners. If we cannot give an account of the mental disorder concept that is a useful tool for medical practitioners, then perhaps we can give an account of the mental disorder concept that can be used toward our goal of alleviating the stigmatization of mental disorder. Before we can do that, however, we need an account of the stigmatization concept so that we can understand what our mental disorder concept needs to be alleviating. -/- I argue that stigmatization is a process whereby some entity becomes marked as disgraceful or shameful. This stigmatization process includes (1) an attitude against the entity for reasons found in the social ideology, and (2) acts against the entity. I then argue that acts of stigmatization take two forms: direct stigmatization (where stigmatizors take acts against the stigmatized entity) and indirect stigmatization (where potential victims of stigmatization take acts to avoid becoming victims of stigmatization). With that in mind, we learn that if we are to alleviate the stigmatization of mental disorder, we need to work on alleviating both direct and indirect stigmatization. It is at this point that I argue for a new account of our mental disorder concept that can be utilized to alleviate the direct and indirect stigmatization of mental disorder. With our mental disorder concept redesigned to achieve that goal, I turn to the goal of providing medical help for persons that need that help. I argue that we need to reconceptualize what it means to be a ‘diagnosable condition’ so that we can develop a new framework for diagnosis and treatment that will be more efficacious than our current system. In conclusion, I suggest that we can untangle the current confusion that is the mental health literature by imbuing our mental health concepts with specific purposes and then utilizing them to achieve those purposes as I outline in this dissertation. (shrink)

Children and pregnant women are often excluded from clinical research. This has resulted in a paucity of evidence on how medicines work for fetuses, neonates, infants, and adolescents. It also raises bioethics, scientific, and public health concerns. For over half a century, doctors have prescribed medicines to children largely on the basis of how they work in adults, despite children’s varied physiologies and differences in how their bodies absorb and metabolize drugs. Regulations and legislation have led to an increase in (...) the number of pediatric studies and to better drug labeling. However, children at all stages of their lives often remain “therapeutic orphans” owing to insufficient evidence about how medicines work for them. (shrink)

When faced with an ambiguous pronoun, comprehenders use both multimodal cues and linguistic cues to identify the antecedent. While research has shown that gestures facilitate language comprehension, improve reference tracking, and influence the interpretation of ambiguous pronouns, literature on reference resolution suggests that a wide set of linguistic constraints influences the successful resolution of ambiguous pronouns and that linguistic cues are more powerful than some multimodal cues. To address the outstanding question of the importance of gesture as a cue in (...) reference resolution relative to cues in the speech signal, we have previously investigated the comprehension of contrastive gestures that indexed abstract referents – in this case expressions of personal preference – and found that such gestures did facilitate the resolution of ambiguous statements of preference. In this study, we extend this work to investigate whether the effect of gesture on resolution is diminished when the gesture indexes a statement that is less likely to be interpreted as the correct referent. Participants watched videos in which a speaker contrasted two ideas that were either neutral or moral acceptable). A gesture to the left or right side co-occurred with speech expressing each position. In gesture-disambiguating trials, an ambiguous phrase was accompanied by a gesture to one side or the other. In gesture non-disambiguating trials, no third gesture occurred with the ambiguous phrase. Participants were more likely to choose the idea accompanied by gesture as the stimulus speaker’s preference. We found no effect of scenario type. Regardless of whether the linguistic cue expressed a view that was morally charged or neutral, observers used gesture to understand the speaker’s opinion. This finding contributes to our understanding of the strength and range of cues, both linguistic and multimodal, that listeners use to resolve ambiguous references. (shrink)

Many critics of Locke have worried that restricting knowledge to relationships among ideas would bar knowledge from extending to the outer reality which "corresponds to" these ideas. The question of how well Locke can answer such concerns leads us into a number of peculiar and intriguing passages on knowledge and the relationships between perception, reality, pain, and pleasure. This chapter examines what John Locke has to say about sensitive knowledge, to investigate several ways in which his remarks on this topic (...) can be reconciled with what he says elsewhere. It also talks about the idea of sensation, and assesses the merits of Locke's conception of sensitive knowledge both as a response to skepticism and as a part of the larger picture of human understanding painted in the Essay. Two passages in the Essay describe sensitive knowledge in some detail, both beginning with a description of the skeptical problem. (shrink)

This study explores society's attitudes towards medicine, as reflected in the language of Patient Information Leaflets, and attempts to explicate how they have changed over the last century. For this purpose, Halliday's transitivity model is employed as a method of discourse analysis in order to carry out a systematic, comparative investigation of the language of early 20th-century PILs and that of their modern equivalents. The study demonstrates how the transitivity choices in the respective samples cumulatively realize a particular `world-view', and (...) considers the implications this has for the construal of the wider social/cultural context and the projection of particular ideologies. The analyses show significant differences in transitivity patterns between the two samples, which reflect changes in the way medicine is viewed in Western culture. (shrink)

The probing readings of Putting On Virtue offered by Sheryl Overmyer, Darlene Weaver, and James Foster provide a welcome opportunity for further reflection on key questions: Was Aquinas really concerned with the status of pagan virtues? Can we properly understand a thinker whose driving questions are not the same as our own without taking up a stance of pure deference? Can an inquiry into hyper-Augustinian anxiety over acquired virtue assist us in arriving at an account of positive self-regard? Can an (...) account that stresses the graced character of all virtue formation be coherent? And can it do justice to the ways in which Christians reached for accounts of infused virtue precisely in order to affirm how grace overcomes the ways in which fortune hounds acquired virtue? I respond affirmatively to all of the above. (shrink)

Novel targeted genetic modification (TagMo) techniques for plants have the potential to increase the speed and ease of genetic modification and fall outside existing regulatory authority. We conducted 31 interviews with expert-stakeholders to explore the differing visions they have for the future of plant TagMo environmental regulation. To guide our analysis we review the tenets of anticipatory governance in light of future studies literature on emerging technology, focusing on how to contribute to reflexivity by making explicit the assumptions within envisioned (...) futures. Our findings reveal that the environmental regulation futures articulated by expert-stakeholders could be classified into three categories—optimistic, pragmatic, and critical—based on their differing underlying assumptions concerning what constitutes environmental risk and the adequacy of existing U.S. genetically modified plant regulations. By gathering these diverse perspectives on the future and studying how they differ, we hope to further the anticipatory governance-informed engagement with regulation and foster a more productive discussion of plant TagMo regulation. (shrink)

What makes a life meaningful and how do we know when our lives have meaning? This paper provides an answer to these questions drawing on the experience of grief. Grief, I argue, is a unique kind of personally and epistemically transformative experience. The experience of grief provides a subject with new insight into what-it-is-like to experience a transformative loss. But not only does one learn what-it-is-like to be personally transformed by loss in the way that one is, in the dynamic (...) process of grieving one often gains retrospective access to facts about the meaningfulness and value that even the most seemingly mundane aspects of their day-to-day lives have had all along. These are facts that can go underappreciated and even unrecognized until the source of that meaning is lost. I propose an explanation for why these facts aren’t more easily known through a simple process like introspection or reflection, and instead require an experience as disorienting as loss. I end by discussing what the epistemic account suggests about a theory of life’s meaningfulness. (shrink)

This study assesses how variations in heteronormative culture in high schools affect the well-being of same-sex-attracted youth. The authors focus on the stigmatization of same-sex attraction to better understand how heteronormativity may marginalize a wide range of youth. Specifically, the authors use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine how variation across schools in football participation, religious attendance, and urban locale affects same-sex-attracted adolescents' depressive symptoms, self-esteem, fighting, and academic failure. The results suggest that though same-sex-attracted (...) youth are at greater risk for decreased well-being, these youth are at higher risk in nonurban schools and in schools where football and religion have a larger presence. Results vary for boys and girls: The urban locale of a school has a larger impact for boys, while school religiosity has a greater impact for girls. (shrink)

This paper is one of four interrelated action papers resulting from the 2008 National Summit on Legal Preparedness for Obesity Prevention and Control. Summit participants engaged in discussions on the current state of the law with respect to obesity, nutrition and food policy, physical activity, and physical education. Participants also identified gaps in the law at all jurisdictional levels and relevant to numerous sectors and disciplines that have a stake in obesity prevention and control.The companion paper, “Assessment of Laws and (...) Legal Authorities for Obesity Prevention and Control,”identified numerous laws and policies enacted to target the three domains of healthy lifestyles, healthy places, and healthy societies. That paper identified several gaps in the law that require attention and action. This paper addresses those gaps and presents applicable laws and legal authorities that public health professionals and lawyers can consider to implement to close the gaps. (shrink)

This article argues that a state-centered theory of global justice exhibits an epistemic problem of perspective, and that this worry exhibits a gendered character. Within a liberal domestic theory of justice, the public/private distinction has been repeatedly shown to be bad for women because it creates a domain for injustice that becomes invisible to public policy and the law. This article argues that state-centered theories of global justice create an analogous space that is cut off from questions of global justice. (...) The article therefore suggests that this way of framing questions of global justice is problematic, and is problematic for women in particular. Just as the public/private distinction in liberal domestic justice leaves cases of injustice outside the vision of the law, the hard distinction between the domestic (state) sphere and the international realm of justice leaves cases of injustice invisible to international law. For the question of global justice, the privileging of sovereignty and non-intervention compromises the ability of the theory to achieve its purported goal of universal justice. (shrink)