Civic agriculture is characterized in the literature as complementary and embedded social and economic strategies that provide economic benefits to farmers at the same time that they ostensibly provide socio-environmental benefits to the community. This paper presents some ways in which women farmers practice civic agriculture. The data come from in-depth interviews with women practicing agriculture in Pennsylvania. Some of the strategies women farmers use to make a living from the farm have little to do with food or agricultural products, (...) but all are a product of the process of providing a living for farmers while meeting a social need in the community. Most of the women in our study also connect their business practices to their gender identity in rural and agricultural communities, and redefine successful farming in opposition to traditional views of economic rationality. (shrink)

It is common, following Quine, to look to what theories say to determine the ontological commitments of a scientific discipline. But methods and practices are equally telling. This paper considers early doctrines in econometrics. It argues that what is directly confirmed in tests of the theory will not support the applications to which the theory is to be put unless we can assume a kind of stability and atomism characteristic of capacities. The leap from confirmation to application will only be (...) valid in a world where capacities are at work. (shrink)

While individuals presented in central texts of the period are indeed often alone or separated from others, Yousef regards this isolation as a problem the texts attempt to illuminate, rather than a condition they construct as normative or ...

This factual case study is one of a series demonstrating ethical dilemmas in medicine, science, the social sciences, and public policy. Although the case is based on fact, it has been edited to preserve confidentiality and to emphasize the ethical questions. Readers are invited to submit cases for consideration for this series. Case descriptions should be typed, doubled‐spaced, and should not exceed 750 words.

Do neurosurgical procedures ever result in the patient prior to the procedure not being identical with the individual who wakes up postsurgery in the hospital bed? We address this question by offering an analysis of the persistence of persons that emphasizes narrative, rather than numerical, identity. We argue that a narrative analysis carries the advantage of highlighting what matters to patients in their ordinary lives, explaining the varying degrees of persistence of personal identity, and enhancing our understanding of patients' experiences. (...) We illustrate these points in cases involving temporal lobectomy for treatment of refractory epilepsy and deep brain stimulation for refractory Parkinson's disease. (shrink)

We currently have on offer a variety of different theories of causation. Many are strikingly good, providing detailed and plausible treatments of exemplary cases; and all suffer from clear counterexamples. I argue that, contra Hume and Kant, this is because causation is not a single, monolithic concept. There are different kinds of causal relations imbedded in different kinds of systems, readily described using thick causal concepts. Our causal theories pick out important and useful structures that fit some familiar cases—cases we (...) discover and ones we devise to fit. (shrink)

This case consultation offers three cases that illustrate a collaborative consultation model for psychiatric ethics that we have developed in outpatient clinic and in emergency psychiatry over the last 10 years. After we present these cases, we discuss three points of interest: 1) the characteristics we found to be important to our collaborative project, 2) the benefits of an integrative approach, and 3) ways that our collaborative moral reasoning developed our awareness of and sensitivity to ethical issues. We end (...) by raising some topics on which commentators could engage.Potter began working with El-Mallakh more than 10 years ago. Her impetus was that she was writing a critique of the criteria used in borderline... (shrink)

The facts are dismal. One out of five inhabitants of the earth lives in absolute poverty, while one out of seven is afflicted by hunger. Extreme poverty exists alongside extreme abundance. Empirical evidence points not to scarcity but to poor politics as the primary cause. The urgency of the situation as well as the intertwined nature of human misery and politics would lead one to expect global justice to be a major component of any respectable study of world affairs. Quite (...) to the contrary, theories of world politics are generally silent on these issues. The poor and the oppressed remain invisible, even in accounts of our brand new 'global village'. ;This dissertation aims to rectify the normative deficit of international theory by analyzing closely John Rawls's latest book: The Law of Peoples . Rawls takes on the challenge raised by global inequality and develops a theory of global justice that places moral judgment and action at the heart of world politics. The substance of this theory is filled out by using the famous original position, with its veil of ignorance, this time to generate global principles that regulate relations among peoples. The result is reassuring: human misery requires a response wherever it is experienced. In nonideal theory, the Law of Peoples necessitates global engagement for the eradication of the great evils that have historically followed from political injustice. ;In stark contrast to this global activism, Rawls defends nonintervention and rejects redistribution in ideal theory. This has provoked a heated debate in political philosophy, leading to cosmopolitan criticism of the Rawlsian enterprise. In light of such cosmopolitan objections, I assess the contributions and limitations of the Rawlsian project for global justice. I argue that the fundamental ideas of Rawls's broader thought necessitate the endorsement of Rawls's procedure, while at the same time requiring the revision of the substantive principles of the Law of Peoples. Thus reaching cosmopolitan conclusions without cosmopolitan premises, I claim that my reformulated Law of Peoples is more Rawlsian in spirit than the versions offered by either Rawls himself or his cosmopolitan critics. (shrink)

This volume is an interdisciplinary exploration of the modalities, meanings, and practices of silence in contemporary social discourse. How is silence treated in different cultures? In a globalized world, how is silence managed between and across cultures? Co-authored by a philosopher and an economist, the text draws on interviews with scholars and practitioners in fields as diverse as marine biology and African American history. International case studies are presented in operational contexts from the Black Lives Matter movement to the (...) creation of art installations to the struggles of transgender people in Southeast Asia. The authors examine the relationship between ethics and silence, and suggest strategies to transform social praxis through greater attention to silence. (shrink)

This paper addresses the just distribution of vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus and sets forth an ethical framework that prioritises frontline and essential workers, people at high risk of severe disease or death, and people at high risk of infection. Section I makes the case that vaccine distribution should occur at a global level in order to accelerate development and fair, efficient vaccine allocation. Section II puts forth ethical values to guide vaccine distribution including helping people with the greatest (...) need, reducing health disparity, saving the most lives and promoting narrow social utility. It also responds to objections which claim that earlier years have more value than later years. Section III puts forth a practical ethical framework to aid decision-makers and compares it with alternatives. (shrink)

This paper questions an exclusively state-centred framing of global health justice and proposes a multilateral alternative. Using the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to illustrate, we bring to light a broad range of global actors up and down the chain of vaccine development who contribute to global vaccine inequities. Section 1 (Background) presents an overview of moments in which diverse global actors, each with their own priorities and aims, shaped subsequent vaccine distribution. Section 2 (Collective action failures) characterises collective action failures (...) at each phase of vaccine development that contributed to global vaccine disparities. It identifies as critical the task of establishing upstream strategies to coordinate collective action at multiple stages across a range of actors. Section 3 (A Multilateral model of global health governance) takes up this task, identifying a convergence of interests among a range of stakeholders and proposing ways to realise them. Appealing to a responsibility to protect (R2P), a doctrine developed in response to human rights atrocities during the 1990s, we show how to operationalise R2P through a principle of subsidiarity and present ethical arguments in support of this approach. (shrink)

Developing World Bioethics, Volume 22, Issue 2, Page 112-122, June 2022.

Jonathan Lear in Radical Hope tackles the idea of cultural devastation, in the specific case of the Crow Indians. What do we mean by “annihilation” of a culture? The moral point of view that he imagines as he reconstructs the eve and aftermath of this annihilation is not second personal, of obligation, but first personal, in the collective and singular, as told by the Crows, with Lear as “analyst.” Radical Hope is a study of representative character of a people—of (...) virtue, courage, resilience, and hope in the face of cultural collapse. The leading questions are shaped by ancient Greek ethics, but with a twist: On the brink of cultural death , what counts for us as good living and what is the nature of the virtues or excellences that constitute it? How might a leader, a phronimos , exemplify it? This puts it too narrowly. The questions, also, are Wittgensteinian: How does a nation go on, when the concepts and way of life it has lived by for centuries are no more? What does it mean to go on? What does it mean to stop when the marks of going on are no longer? (shrink)

Bioethics needs an expanded moral vision. It is now time for bioethics to take full account of the problems of health disparities and structural injustice that are made newly urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects of climate change. Nancy M. P. King, Gail E. Henderson, and Larry R. Churchill make the case for a more social understanding and application of justice, a deeper humility in assessing expertise in bioethics consulting, a broader and more relevant research agenda, (...) and greater appreciation of the profound health implications of global warming. (shrink)

_Asking Good Questions_ moves beyond a traditional discussion of ethical theory, focusing on how educators can use these important frameworks to facilitate critical thinking about real-life ethical dilemmas. In this way, authors Nancy Stanlick and Michael Strawser offer students a theoretical tool kit for creatively addressing issues that influence their own environments. This text begins with a discussion of key ethical theorists and then guides the reader through a series of original case studies and follow-up activities that facilitate (...) critical thinking, emphasize asking thought provoking questions, and teach the student to address the complexity of ethical dilemmas while incorporating the viewpoints of their peers. Additionally, Stanlick and Strawser include an extensive preface, a mind-mapping technique for analyzing and formulating arguments, and a six step process for approaching complex real-life moral issues. Each chapter incorporates suggested assignments, discussion questions, and references for further reading, and a guide for instructors offering a sample course schedule and suggestions on how to use this book effectively is also available. This text is designed to help educators engage students in a meaningful discussion of how historical theories apply to their own lives, providing rich and unique resources to learn about these critical issues. (shrink)

Mechanisms are now taken widely in philosophy of science to provide one of modern science’s basic explanatory devices. This has raised lively debate concerning the relationship between mechanisms, laws and explanation. This paper focuses on cases where a mechanism gives rise to a ceteris paribus law, addressing two inter-related questions: What kind of explanation is involved? and What is going on in the world when mechanism M affords behavior B described in a ceteris paribus law? We explore various answers offered (...) by ‘new mechanists’ and others before setting out and explaining our own answers: mechanistic explanations are a species of oldfashioned covering-law explanation and this often accounts in part for their explanatory power; and B is what it takes for some set of principles that govern the features of M’s parts in their arrangement in M all to be instanced together. (shrink)

Are the laws of nature consistent with contingency about what happens in the world? That depends on what the laws of nature actually are, but it also depends on what they are like. The latter is the concern of this chapter, which looks at three views that are widely endorsed: ‘Humean’ regularity accounts, laws as relations among universals, and disposition/powers accounts. Given an account of what laws are, what follows about how much contingency, and of what kinds, laws allow? In (...) all three cases, the authors argue, the root idea of what laws are does not settle the issue of whether they allow contingency. Advocates of the different accounts may argue for one view or another on the issue, but this will be an add-on rather than a consequence of the basic view about what laws are. -/- . (shrink)

The claims of randomized controlled trials to be the gold standard rest on the fact that the ideal RCT is a deductive method: if the assumptions of the test are met, a positive result implies the appropriate causal conclusion. This is a feature that RCTs share with a variety of other methods, which thus have equal claim to being a gold standard. This article describes some of these other deductive methods and also some useful non-deductive methods, including the hypothetico-deductive method. (...) It argues that with all deductive methods, the benefit that the conclusions follow deductively in the ideal case comes with a great cost: narrowness of scope. This is an instance of the familiar trade-off between internal and external validity. RCTs have high internal validity but the formal methodology puts severe constraints on the assumptions a target population must meet to justify exporting a conclusion from the test population to the target. The article reviews one such set of assumptions to show the kind of knowledge required. The overall conclusion is that to draw causal inferences about a target population, which method is best depends case-by-case on what background knowledge we have or can come to obtain. There is no gold standard. (shrink)

The purpose of this text is to give physical therapy students and clinicians a lens through which to analyze contemporary ethical challenges.

Concept formation in science is a reasoned process, commensurate with ordinary problem-solving processes. An account of how analogical reasoning and reasoning from imagistic representations generate new scientific concepts is presented. The account derives from case studies of concept formation in science and from computational theories of analogical problem solving in cognitive science. Concept formation by analogy is seen to be a process of increasing abstraction from existing conceptual structures.

Choices rarely deal with certainties; and, where assertoric logic and modal logic are insufficient, those seeking to be reasonable turn to one or more things called “probability.” These things typically have a shared mathematical form, which is an arithmetic construct. The construct is often felt to be unsatisfactory for various reasons. A more general construct is that of a preordering, which may even be incomplete, allowing for cases in which there is no known probability relation between two propositions or between (...) two events. Previous discussion of incomplete preorderings has been as if incidental, with researchers focusing upon preorderings for which quantifications are possible. This article presents formal axioms for the more general case. Challenges peculiar to some specific interpretations of the nature of probability are brought to light in the context of these propositions. A qualitative interpretation is offered for probability differences that are often taken to be quantified. A generalization of Bayesian updating is defended without dependence upon coherence. Qualitative hypothesis testing is offered as a possible alternative in cases for which quantitative hypothesis testing is shown to be unsuitable. (shrink)

In their rich and intricate paper ‘Independence, Invariance, and the Causal Markov Condition’, Daniel Hausman and James Woodward ([1999]) put forward two independent theses, which they label ‘level invariance’ and ‘manipulability’, and they claim that, given a specific set of assumptions, manipulability implies the causal Markov condition. These claims are interesting and important, and this paper is devoted to commenting on them. With respect to level invariance, I argue that Hausman and Woodward's discussion is confusing because, as I point out, (...) they use different senses of ‘intervention’ and ‘invariance’ without saying so. I shall remark on these various uses and point out that the thesis is true in at least two versions. The second thesis, however, is not true. I argue that in their formulation, the manipulability thesis is patently false and that a modified version does not fare better. Furthermore, I think their proof that manipulability implies the causal Markov condition is not conclusive. In the deterministic case it is valid but vacuous, whereas it is invalid in the probabilistic case. 1 Introduction 2 Intervention, invariance and modularity 3 The causal Markov condition: CM1 and CM2 4 From MOD to the causal Markov condition and back 5 A second argument for CM2 6 The proof of the causal Markov condition for probabilistic causes 7 ‘Cartwright's objection’ defended 8 Metaphysical defenses of the causal Markov condition 9 Conclusion. (shrink)

In developing strategies to contest the systematic efforts to dismantle progressive social and economic policies generated through decades of activism, it is important to understand how discursive frames that were significant in social justice organizing in the United States have come to be subjugated, delegitimated, or co-opted, and have lost their power for social justice activism. Using a materialist feminist approach, I first examine the processes of subjugation and explore how movement actors choose frames within bounded discursive fields that become (...) institutionalized, but lose critical feminist or progressive intent. I then discuss the delegitimation of a citizen’s right to government support and the co-optation of progressive movement frames by conservative groups. I conclude with a materialist feminist call to attend to the multiple institutions that contour the discursive field and the everyday practices of social movement organizations. This is a call for collective research, since no single case can attend to all of these dimensions and processes. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to articulate and advocate for an enhanced role for philosophers of science in the domain of science policy as well as within the science curriculum. I argue that philosophy of science as a field can learn from the successes as well as the mistakes of bioethics and begin to develop a new model that includes robust contributions to the science classroom, research collaborations with scientists, and a role for public philosophy through involvement in science (...) policy development. Through an analysis of two case studies, I illustrate how philosophers of science can make effective and productive contributions to science education as well as to interdisciplinary scientific research, and argue for the essential role of philosophers of science in the realm of science policy. (shrink)

With the development of increasingly sophisticated sociable robots, robot-human relationships are being transformed. Not only can sociable robots furnish emotional support and companionship for humans, humans can also form relationships with robots that they value highly. It is natural to ask, do robots that stand in close relationships with us have any moral standing over and above their purely instrumental value as means to human ends. We might ask our question this way, ‘Are there ways we can act towards robots (...) that would be wrong to the robot?’ To address this, Part I lays out standard approaches to moral standing: appealing to intrinsic properties, human responses, and values inhering in relationships. Part II explores the third, relational strategy in detail. Looking beyond Western analyses, it considers Eastern philosophy and the environmental philosophy of 'deep ecology' and extends these approaches to sociable robots. Part III examines practical implications for the case of Samantha, a sex robot that was allegedly raped. Part IV identifies and replies to objections. (shrink)

This paper opens a critical conversation about the ethics of international bioethics conferencing and proposes principles that commit to being anti-discriminatory, global, and inclusive. We launch this conversation in the Section, Case Study, with a case example involving the International Association of Bioethics’ (IAB’s) selection of Qatar to host the 2024 World Congress of Bioethics. IAB’s choice of Qatar sparked controversy. We believe it also may reveal deeper issues of Islamophobia in bioethics. The Section, Principles for International Bioethics (...) Conferencing, sets forth and defends proposed principles for international bioethics conferencing. The Section, Applying Principles to Site Selection applies the proposed principles to the case example. The Section, Applying Principles Beyond Site Selection addresses other applications of the proposed principles. The Section, Objections responds to objections. We close (in the Section, Conclusion) by calling for a wider discussion of our proposed principles.One-Sentence Capsule Summary: How should bioethicists navigate the ethics of global bioethics conferencing? (shrink)

What kinds of evidence reliably support predictions of effectiveness for health and social care interventions? There is increasing reliance, not only for health care policy and practice but also for more general social and economic policy deliberation, on evidence that comes from studies whose basic logic is that of JS Mill's method of difference. These include randomized controlled trials, case–control studies, cohort studies, and some uses of causal Bayes nets and counterfactual-licensing models like ones commonly developed in econometrics. The (...) topic of this paper is the 'external validity' of causal conclusions from these kinds of studies. We shall argue two claims. Claim, negative: external validity is the wrong idea; claim, positive: 'capacities' are almost always the right idea, if there is a right idea to be had. If we are right about these claims, it makes big problems for policy decisions. Many advice guides for grading policy predictions give top grades to a proposed policy if it has two good Mill's-method-of difference studies that support it. But if capacities are to serve as the conduit for support from a method-of-difference study to an effectiveness prediction, much more evidence, and much different in kind, is required. We will illustrate the complexities involved with the case of multisystemic therapy, an internationally adopted intervention to try to diminish antisocial behaviour in young people. (shrink)

Girolamo Mercuriale (1530-1606) presents an especially striking example of the participation of physicians in the broader culture of late humanism. Throughout a long and successful career as a practitioner and, subsequently, professor of medicine, Mercuriale combined medicine with antiquarian and historical interests. In particular, his De arte gymnastica, a work that combines an account of ancient athletics with health advice, shows that he had many contacts among antiquarians in Rome. This article explores the relation and intersection of medicine, history, and (...) antiquarianism in Mercuriale's writings, successful search for patronage, and rise to fame as an eminent professor of medicine. (shrink)

This essay aims to clarify the value of developing systematic studies of ignorance as a component of any robust theory of knowledge. The author employs feminist efforts to recover and create knowledge of women's bodies in the contemporary women's health movement as a case study for cataloging different types of ignorance and shedding light on the nature of their production. She also helps us understand the ways resistance movements can be a helpful site for understanding how to identify, critique, (...) and transform ignorance. (shrink)

There is substantial evidence that traditional instructional methods have not been successful in helping students to restructure their commonsense conceptions and learn the conceptual structures of scientific theories. This paper argues that the nature of the changes and the kinds of reasoning required in a major conceptual restructuring of a representation of a domain are fundamentally the same in the discovery and in the learning processes. Understanding conceptual change as it occurs in science and in learning science will require the (...) development of a common cognitive model of conceptual change. The historical construction of an inertial representation of motion is examined and the potential instructional implications of the case are explored. (shrink)

This paper is a personal account of the events associated with the author’s work at the University of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children on a drug, deferiprone, for the treatment of thalassaemia. Trials of the drug were sponsored by the Canadian Medical Research Council and a drug company which would have been able, had the trials been successful, to seek regulatory approval to market the drug. When evidence emerged that deferiprone might be inadequately effective in a substantial proportion of patients, (...) the drug company issued legal threats when the author proposed informing her patients and the scientific community. Until protests were made by international authorities in her field of research, the hospital and university did not adequately support the author’s academic freedom and responsibilities as a medical practitioner. It is argued that underlying cause of this, and of other similar cases, is the political philosophy which is driving the commercialisation of universities and bringing about the deregulation of drug approval procedures. Together these changes constitute a serious threat to the public good. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Holding Doctors Responsible at Guantánamo*Nancy Sherman (bio)I recently visited the Guantánamo Bay Detention Center with a small group of civilian psychiatrists, psychologists, top military doctors, and Department of Defense health affairs officials to discuss detainee medical and mental health care. The unspoken reason for the invitation to go on this unusual day trip was the bruising criticism the Bush administration has received for its use of psychiatrists and (...) psychologists in the interrogation of suspected terrorist detainees.1We disembarked from our Navy jet to find an island lush and green from recent storms. A small boat took us from the airfield to the naval hospital. From the boat there was no sign of Camp Delta, where the detainees are actually held. Nor was there a sign of prisons or barbed wire or the detention facility's 505 inmates.Our host was the commanding officer of Gitmo, Major General Jay W. Hood (an artillery officer by training), who had replaced Major General Geoffrey Miller, implicated in the "migration" of torture methods from Gitmo to Abu Ghraib. Dressed in fatigues, General Hood briefed us using PowerPoint. His intelligence director told us that interrogators have not used harsh "fear up" tactics—the ones designed to terrify—since 2003.We went by bus from the naval hospital to the 30-bed detainee hospital for quick briefings from a psychiatrist and a physician. Still, we were not permitted to see any detainees or hunger strikers, despite our requests. During our six hours on the ground, we had only a fleeting glimpse of a few detainees outside their cellblocks behind barbed wire and screened fences.Indeed, when I got home and saw the play "Guantánamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom," by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo, I had the disquieting feeling that I had absorbed more about detainee life at the theater than I had from actually being at Gitmo. This only amplified my anxiety that what I had heard and seen during my VIP visit sidestepped the central moral issue of whether abuse is still occurring at Gitmo and whether health professionals are, or have been, a party to coercive interrogation. [End Page 199]The question that the Pentagon leadership has been focusing on, and which was a key subject of discussion during our day at Gitmo, is whether there is an ethical difference between using psychologists or psychiatrists on interrogation teams—what the Pentagon calls, "behavioral consultation teams," or BSCTs, pronounced "biscuit." Some in the Pentagon would like to have doctors and psychiatrists, who are bound by the Hippocratic teaching to "do no harm," be the clinicians treating detainees. Psychologists, who are not as bound by Hippocratic dicta, would consult with and advise interrogators. But this is a red herring. It is hair-splitting that detracts from the real issue of whether health professionals of any stripe can ethically be involved in interrogations that may involve coercive techniques or torture. The answer is clearly no. They should not be involved, directly or indirectly, in situations that may lead to the breach of confidential medical records; to torture or to cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment; or to exploitation of fears or phobias. Mental health professionals simply should not be collaborating with interrogators in inflicting psychological torture.Hood said that "rapport building" was the preferred and an effective interrogation technique, but that is no guarantee that rougher tactics will not be used. The fact is that there is enormous pressure on the people at Guantánamo Bay to get good intelligence for the war on terror, and it is as easy for behavioral scientists as it is for interrogators to compromise their moral standards. Cunning and deception to extract information may be acceptable in some cases. But many people have been outraged to learn from media reports that methods developed by military psychologists to train our own troops to resist torture—the so-called "survival, evasion, resistance, and escape" methods taught at Ft. Bragg—have been "reverse engineered" at Guantánamo Bay to create coercive, psychologically manipulative interrogation techniques for use against detainees.Plato warned long ago that a doctor's skill, abstracted from good character and wisdom, is a neutral... (shrink)

This book on the philosophy of science argues for an empiricism, opposed to the tradition of David Hume, in which singular rather than general causal claims are primary; causal laws express facts about singular causes whereas the general causal claims of science are ascriptions of capacities or causal powers, capacities to make things happen. Taking science as measurement, Cartwright argues that capacities are necessary for science and that these can be measured, provided suitable conditions are met. There are case (...) studies from both econometrics and quantum mechanics. (shrink)

A cognitive ethnography of how bioengineering scientists create innovative modeling methods. In this first full-scale, long-term cognitive ethnography by a philosopher of science, Nancy J. Nersessian offers an account of how scientists at the interdisciplinary frontiers of bioengineering create novel problem-solving methods. Bioengineering scientists model complex dynamical biological systems using concepts, methods, materials, and other resources drawn primarily from engineering. They aim to understand these systems sufficiently to control or intervene in them. What Nersessian examines here is how cutting-edge (...) bioengineering scientists integrate the cognitive, social, material, and cultural dimensions of practice. Her findings and conclusions have broad implications for researchers in philosophy, science studies, cognitive science, and interdisciplinary studies, as well as scientists, educators, policy makers, and funding agencies. In studying the epistemic practices of scientists, Nersessian pushes the boundaries of the philosophy of science and cognitive science into areas not ventured before. She recounts a decades-long, wide-ranging, and richly detailed investigation of the innovative interdisciplinary modeling practices of bioengineering researchers in four university laboratories. She argues and demonstrates that the methods of cognitive ethnography and qualitative data analysis, placed in the framework of distributed cognition, provide the tools for a philosophical analysis of how scientific discoveries arise from complex systems in which the cognitive, social, material, and cultural dimensions of problem-solving are integrated into the epistemic practices of scientists. Specifically, she looks at how interdisciplinary environments shape problem-solving. Although Nersessian’s case material is drawn from the bioengineering sciences, her analytic framework and methodological approach are directly applicable to scientific research in a broader, more general sense, as well. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 66.4 (2005) 541-556 [Access article in PDF] Historical Priorities Nancy S. Struever Johns Hopkins University One of the morals of Christopher Celenza's excellent The Lost Italian Renaissance is, simply, that an impoverished sense of philosophy delivers an impoverished history of philosophy. Salvatore Camporeale's enriched sense of philosophy, responsive to his strong positions on philosophy of religion, invests his brilliant work on Lorenzo (...) Valla; the work marks a historiographical advance, for the innovative account of Valla makes a new case for the seriousness, intrinsic merit of humanistic thought of the fifteenth century.I will argue that Camporeale's early focus in Umanesimo e teologia on Valla's rhetorical investments is crucial to his later accounts of Valla's strong contributions to Renaissance thought. Here Camporeale's devotion to the task of defining a "rhetorical theology" or a "humanistic theology" is an exemplary instance of a much broader initiative in intellectual history: an initiative that exploits the very rich resources of the rhetorical tradition for considering, and contesting, the positions of traditional philosophy.In the same work, Celenza raises another pertinent, major issue when he contends that a history of serious inquiry requires a pragmatic sense of inquiry as both responsive to and intrusive in surrounding dispositions and actions; it must give an account of what a mode of inquiry does, in time—its applications and its failures—misfires.1 Celenza proposes a combination of social and intellectual historical methods, thus developing a sense of intellectual communities and their allegiances and contests: focusing, for example, on the constraints of orthodoxy and the temptations of honor.Celenza's historiographical survey gives a wonderfully detailed context for Camporeale's work. While Camporeale rarely indulged in programmatic statements, a pragmatic bent, a basic pragmatic allegiance informs both the topics and procedures of his account of Renaissance classicism. I suggest an analogue: just as modern intellectual history adds pragmatic value to "internalist" history of philosophy, so rhetoric encases, motivates the vital philosophical [End Page 541] critique Camporeale finds in Valla. The investigative "agency" of humanist rhetorical philologues co-opts the activity of modern intellectual historians in focusing on response, effect, appropriatenesss, and application. The opposition—"history of philosophy/intellectual history"—gains new life in the discussions of Renaissance humanism. For the philosopher, it is the distressing case that the intellectual historian is not so much too little disciplined in philosophy as too humanistic, too engaged with moral-aesthetic affect.I would contend that Camporeale's pragmatic historical effort represents another degree of interest: it is itself ambitious as serious inquiry in that it takes its place in a historical chain of classical replications: the originary Hellenic stipulation of rhetoric as the "practical" dialogic partner of "pure" philosophy; the humanist retrieval of classsical rhetorical pragmatic aspirations and techniques; and Camporeale's retrieval of the retrieval. In his use of humanist rhetorical hermeneutic as strategy in his reformist philosophy of religion, his practice is making a case for the case the humanists made.And, as I have argued earlier, there is a sense in which Camporeale's is a retrieval of an earlier twentieth-century retrieval. Camporeale's narrative of Renaissance rhetorical innovation and inclusion fits with a particular twentieth-century narrative that revises the standard history of Hellenic thought to reorder the historical relations of rhetoric, logic, and dialectic.2 Thus, in the Summer Semester 1924 lectures, "Die Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie," Martin Heidegger employs Aristotle's Rhetoric to gloss the major philosophical texts of metaphysics, physics, politics, and ethics. Heidegger hypothesizes an "original argument" as transpiring within the political discourse of the courts, assemblies, and the oratory of the games; and, the original discipline that studied and regulated this discourse was rhetoric. With the Aristotelian definition of man as the political animal possessing language, with language as the mode of political capacity and action, rhetoric becomes Heidegger's "first fundamental hermeneutic of the dailyness (timefullness) of living together."3 Rhetoric illumined the domain of Dasein, of being-in-the-world, of historically specific existence. Heidegger claimed this Hellenic rhetoric functioned entirely within... (shrink)

My essay explores the connections between Spinoza’s theory of biblical interpretation and his conception of prophecy, linking the two through what he calls “moral certainty.” The question of what prophecy conveys is connected to the question of how to read Scripture because readers are in a similar position to both the prophets, who attain sure knowledge of some matter revealed by God, and the audience of prophecy, who have access to this knowledge only through faith. Like prophets, readers are interpreters (...) of something that can not be known by way of reason alone; hence the effort to secure certainty involves factors other than purely rational ones (the history of the text, for readers; a vivid imagination, signs, and virtue for the prophet). But like the prophet’s audience, the knowledge of texts that we can attain is not always “sure,” since texts “transcend” us in a certain sense. That is, they introduce novelties---laws, customs, histories---that we wouldn’t know without reading them, and we therefore have to take their authors, prophets in this case, at their word-as it were, on faith. While most of the focus on Spinoza’s concept of biblical interpretation has centered on his maxim that “the method of interpreting Scripture is no different from the method of interpreting Nature,” I hold that it is just as crucial to investigate his claims concerning the nature of prophecy, and in particular to allow prophetic knowledge to shed light on Spinoza’s concepts of words, history, and the corruption and incorruptibility of texts. (shrink)

This essay considers two concepts of repetition in thinking about canon, the history of ideas, and the work of an opponent, both real and fantastical. I take up these motifs in a variety of figures and cases, but principally in Søren Kierkegaard’s reading of the biblical Abraham in Fear and Trembling, a text rich in interpretive challenges. How might readers in the humanities contend with interpretive rivals while investing in the power of diverse readings? The argument turns on the relationship (...) between the struggle for self‐consciousness, understood through Hegel and Freud as an appointment with otherness, and the work of interpretation, understood as the endeavor to understand others, including other texts, other minds, and one’s own mind. What is the aim of interpretation? How does interpretation fail? To which history of ideas is a reader responsible? (shrink)

In this presidential address, the author argues that being disabled is being a “misfit,” and that being a philosopher is often considered to be something like a disability, rendering philosophy, and philosophers, misfits as well. But not all disabilities are negative, and there are even cases in which disability can be something for which the disabled person and others can be grateful. Comparing her own physical disability that renders her a “misfit” to philosophy as a misfit discipline, the author argues (...) that there is a connection between gratitude as a virtue, disability, and philosophy as an academic discipline and as a way of life. (shrink)

With respect to wrongdoing and harm, most accounts of forgiveness focus on benefits of forgiving to the forgiver and others; some advocate vengeance against a wrongdoer; and others argue for reconciliation. However, forgiveness, revenge, and traditional reconciliation may be impossible, inappropriate, or morally undesirable in cases in which people suffer from wounds and scars not healed by time that can and do alter irrevocably one’s ability to make choices, take actions, or enjoy life fully. In these cases, a form of (...) “reconciliation” that is morally appropriate and morally preferable is reconciliation with, but not to, harm. I argue for an alternative conception of reactions to wrongdoing, wrongdoers, and harm that is a moral competitor to forgiveness, revenge, and traditional reconciliation that centers on the sufferer of harm. Reconciling with harm is morally superior to traditional notions of forgiveness, revenge, and reconciliation with a perpetrator, all of which give more power to the perpetrator than is warranted and less to the harmed person than is deserved. Reconciling with harm is therefore an affirmation of the value of the harmed person and, I argue, a virtue to be cultivated. (shrink)

: The idea of an exact science unified and complete has been advocated throughout the history of thought, but the sciences continue to cover only small patches of the world we live in. We may dream that the exact sciences will some day cover everything. But I argue that the very ways we do our exact sciences when they are most successfully done seems likely to confine them within limited domains. I discuss three cases to illustrate: the use of broad-scale (...) non-experimental statistics for causal modelling across the social sciences, an economic model on skill-loss during unemployment, and the quantum theory of superconductivity. In all cases, where we can expect exact order depends on where we can fit our models. And by the nature of how models do-and should-get constructed in exact science, they fit readily onto only very special bits of the world around us. I also maintain that an ill-supported belief in the universality of our favourite exact science can lead us to adopt bad methodologies for carrying out the central aim of the sciences, namely to make the world the way it ought to be. (shrink)

Unlike bioethics mediators who are employed by healthcare organizations as outside consultants, mediators who are embedded in an institution must be authorized to chronicle a clinical ethics consultation (CEC) or a mediation in a patient’s medical chart. This is an important privilege, as the chart is a legal document. In this article I discuss this important part of a bioethics mediator’s tool kit in my presentation of a case illustrating how bioethics mediation may proceed, and what this approach using (...) both bioethics and mediation may add. (shrink)

Since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, the proportion of AIDS cases among women has continued to rise. Women constituted 23 percent of the AIDS cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1995, and 81 percent of these women were of childbearing age. It was not until 1991, however, that epidemiological studies of women were initiated. By comparison, the representation of HIV-infected women in clinical trials gradually has grown. Undoubtedly, a consequence of the increased numbers of (...) women in clinical and epidemiological research is the earlier identification of and more appropriate treatments for HIV-related syndromes when women present in the clinical setting. Despite this expanded focus on women, however, clear information to guide the treatment of HIV-infected women who are pregnant is still lagging behind. (shrink)

We often hold people morally responsible for their emotions. We praise individuals for their compassion, think less of them for their ingratitude or hatred, reproach self-righteousness and unjust anger. In the cases I have in mind, the ascriptions of responsibility are not simply for offensive behaviors or actions which may accompany the emotions, but for the emotions themselves as motives or states of mind. We praise and blame people for what they feel and not just for how they act. In (...) cases where people may subtly mask their hatred or ingratitude through more kindly actions, we still may find fault with the attitude we see leaking through the disguise. (shrink)