The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) waiting list was designed as a just and equitable system through which the limited number of organs is allocated to the millions of Americans in need of a transplant. People have trusted the system because of the belief that everyone on the list has an equal opportunity to receive an organ and also that allocation is blind to matters of financial standing, celebrity or political power. Recent events have revealed that certain practices and (...) policies have the potential to be exploited. The policies addressed in this paper enable those on the list with the proper resources to gain an advantage over other less fortunate members, creating a system that benefits not the individual most in medical need, but the one with the best resources. These policies are not only unethical but threaten the balance and success of the entire UNOS system. This paper proposes one possible solution, which seeks to balance the concepts of justice and utility. (shrink)

BackgroundPersonal health information and biospecimens are valuable research resources essential for the advancement of medicine and protected by national standards and provincial statutes. Research ethics and privacy standards attempt to balance individual interests with societal interests. However these standards may not reflect public opinion or preferences. The purpose of this study was to assess the opinions and preferences of patients with kidney disease about the use of their health information and biospecimens for medical research.MethodsA 45-item survey was distributed to a (...) convenience sample of patients at an outpatient clinic in a large urban centre. The survey briefly addressed sociodemographic and illness characteristics. Opinions were sought on the research use of health information and biospecimens including consent preferences.ResultsTwo hundred eleven of 400 distributed surveys were completed. Respondents were generally supportive of medical research and trusting of researchers. Many respondents supported the use of their information and biospecimens for health research and also preferred consent be sought for use of health information and biospecimens. Some supported the use of their information and biospecimens for research without consent. There were significant differences in the opinions people offered regarding the research use of biospecimens compared to health information. Some respondent perspectives about consent were at odds with current regulatory and legal standards.ConclusionsClinical health data and biospecimens are valuable research resources, critical to the advancement of medicine. Use of these data for research requires balancing respect for individual autonomy, privacy and the societal interest in the greater good. Incongruence between some respondent perspectives and the regulatory standards suggest both a need for public education and review of legislation to increase understanding and ensure the public’s trust is maintained. (shrink)

In their article “Genomic Contextualism: Shifting the Rhetoric of Genetic Exceptionalism,” Garrison and colleagues (2019) make a compelling case for moving away from the rhetoric of genetic excepti...

The popular media has repeatedly pointed to pride as one of the key factors motivating leaders to behave unethically. However, given the devastating consequences that leader unethical behavior may have, a more scientific account of the role of pride is warranted. The present study differentiates between authentic and hubristic pride and assesses its impact on leader ethical behavior, while taking into consideration the extent to which leaders find it important to their self-concept to be a moral person. In two experiments (...) we found that with higher levels of moral identity, authentically proud leaders are more likely to engage in ethical behavior than hubristically proud leaders, and that this effect is mediated by leaders’ motivation to act selflessly. A field survey among organizational leaders corroborated that moral identity may bring the positive effect of authentic pride and the negative effect of hubristic pride on leader ethical behavior to the forefront. (shrink)

A growing body of empirical literature challenges philosophers’ reliance on intuitions as evidence based on the fact that intuitions vary according to factors such as cultural and educational background, and socio-economic status. Our research extends this challenge, investigating Lehrer’s appeal to the Truetemp Case as evidence against reliabilism. We found that intuitions in response to this case vary according to whether, and which, other thought experiments are considered first. Our results show that compared to subjects who receive the Truetemp Case (...) first, subjects first presented with a clear case of knowledge are less willing to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case, and subjects first presented with a clear case of nonknowledge are more willing to attribute knowledge in the Truetemp Case. We contend that this instability undermines the supposed evidential status of these intuitions, such that philosophers who deal in intuitions can no longer rest comfortably in their armchairs. (shrink)

Though stereotype threat is most well-known for its ability to hinder performance, it actually has a wide range of effects. For instance, it can also cause stress, anxiety, and doubt. These additional effects are as important and as central to the phenomenon as its effects on performance are. As a result, stereotype threat has more far-reaching implications than many philosophers have realized. In particular, the phenomenon has a number of unexplored “epistemic effects.” These are effects on our epistemic lives—i.e., the (...) ways we engage with the world as actual and potential knowers. In this paper I flesh out the implications of a specific epistemic effect: self-doubt. Certain kinds of self-doubt can deeply affect our epistemic lives by exacerbating moments of epistemic injustice and by interacting with pernicious ideals of rationality. In both cases, self-doubt can lead to a person questioning their own humanity or full personhood. Since we have reasons to believe that stereotype threat can trigger this kind of self-doubt, then stereotype threat can affect various aspects of ourselves besides our ability to perform to our potential. It can also affect our very sense of self. (shrink)

Julia Kristeva is one of the most creative and prolific writers to address the personal, social, and political trials of our times. Linguist, psychoanalyst, social and cultural theorist, and novelist, Kristeva's broad interdisciplinary appeal has impacted areas across the humanities and social sciences. S. K. Keltner's book provides the first comprehensive introduction to the breadth of Kristeva's work. In an original and insightful analysis, Keltner presents Kristeva's thought as the coherent development and elaboration of a complex, multidimensional threshold constitutive of (...) meaning and subjectivity. The ‘threshold' indicates Kristeva's primary sphere of concern, the relationship between the speaking being and its particular social and historical conditions; and Kristeva's interdisciplinary approach. Kristeva's vision, Keltner argues, opens a unique perspective within contemporary discourses attentive to issues of meaning, subjectivity, and social and political life. By emphasizing Kristeva's attention to the permeable borders of psychic and social life, Keltner offers innovative readings of the concepts most widely discussed in Kristeva scholarship: the semiotic and symbolic, abjection, love, and loss. She also provides new interpretations of some of the most controversial issues surrounding Kristeva's work, including Kristeva's conceptions of intimacy, social and cultural difference, and Oedipal subjectivity, by contextualizing them within her methodological approach and oeuvre as a whole. _Julia Kristeva: Thresholds_ is an engaging and accessible introduction to Kristeva's theoretical and fictional works that will be of interest to both students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

C. S. Peirce posits that the self is known only through negation—by the knower finding out that he or she is wrong. Even more importantly he considers a man to be nothing more than a sign. This is existentially inadequate. In this chapter, Stacey Ake shows the shortcomings of Peirce’s Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness in creating human identity by utilizing and developing Walker Percy’s notion of Fourthness in order to show that there is a positive way to create identity (...) and, more importantly, community. (shrink)

Digital Media: Human–Technology Connection examines the technologically textured world through case studies that illustrate the way humans and technology connect with each other and the world. An interdisciplinary array of sources from philosophy, postphenomenology, philosophy of technology, media studies, media ecology, and film studies shows that digital media and its content are not neutral. This technology textures the world in multiple and varied ways that transform human abilities, augment experience, and pattern the world.

In Tanzania, the encounter between a traditional malady called degedege and the modern malady malaria is a fight to participate in the making of the bodies of women and children as well as the agents that afflict them. In their respective settings,degedege and malaria are considered two of the most common threats to the well-being of pregnant women and their young children. Local, national, and international public-health concerns for the early treatment of malaria compel biomedical practitioners to claim that degedege (...) is malaria. This article explores the power of this translation through an examination of the processes involved in treating degedege and the processes involved in treating malaria. I examine what is gained and what is lost through scientific or public health efforts to translate concepts, objects of practice, and agents of affliction from one form of care to another. (shrink)

Philosophical and technoculture studies surrounding the existential understanding of the human–technology–world experience have seen a slow but steady increase that makes a turn to material hermeneutics in the second decade of the twenty-first century (Ihde in Postphenomenology: essays in the postmodern context. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1993; Capurro in AI Soc 25(1):35–42, 2010; Romele in Digital hermeneutics: philosophical investigations in new media and technologies. Routledge, Abingdon, 2020; among others). This renewed focus makes sense because human–technology–world experiences need to be interpreted. (...) And many of these are more complicated to study, precisely because technology is at the root of the experiences. One interesting subset of technologies is media technologies, also called digital media, which intertwines the device and the content to mediate together in the world (Irwin in Digital media: human-technology connection. Lexington Books, Lanham, 2016). Visual media technologies and media content, together, through what is called moving image technologies, create virtual role-playing, virtual and augmented reality, video games, and social media focused worlds that have become central experiences in contemporary culture. Just as image-based scientific instruments read the world in different ways, so to do these visual mediated experiences. How might this comingled “reading” of technology explain the digital film language and experience? I contend that understanding the existential “early” film experience helps understand the new age of cinema, with implications for digital media, digital representation of the visual, and technoscience and technoculture studies. The material hermeneutics perspective called postphenomenology is one way to study these visually focused human–technology–world perceptual and interpretive experiences. Don Ihde’s methodological framework (1990, 1993, 1996, 2002, 2010, 2012, 2016, 2019) is both an idea from technoscience studies and a set of nuanced vocabulary that helps to explore and reveal variations, patterns, and trajectories of the whole-body experience of technology. This use case will first explore traditional cinema and then the “new age” term “moving image”, to learn more about this complicated and radically transforming technological experience. Work by Don Ihde and Vivian Sobchack is considered. (shrink)

If asked whether stereotypes about people have the potential to help overcome injustice, I suspect that many think there is a clear-cut answer to this question, and that answer is “no.” Many stereotypes do have harmful effects, from the blatantly dehumanizing to the more subtly disruptive. Reasonably then, a common attitude toward stereotypes is that they are at best shallow, superficial assumptions, and at worst degrading and hurtful vehicles of oppression. I argue that on a broad account of stereotypes, this (...) is not is not an inherent feature of them nor a foregone conclusion about them. At least some positive stereotypes have the potential to help resist certain forms of epistemic injustice--though they likely can only play a limited or temporary role in this regard. The takeaway is that we should approach moral and epistemic analyses of stereotypes by thinking about them as (crude) cognitive tools, and as such, focus on what these tools are being used for, and what their actual impact is. (shrink)

Walker Percy's use of the terms Umwelt and Welt as well as his separation of events into dyadic and triadic ones, where the latter involve human beings, is brought to bear on the relationship between science and religion with the upshot being that science is not equipped to really understand or explain triadic entities.

This article explores what might constitute the good-enough reader of Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts. Prompted by Nelson's use of D.W. Winnicott's theory of the good-enough mother whose insufficiencies generate the infant's capacity to tolerate ordinary frustration and move beyond both idealizations and denigrations, I argue that the good-enough reader here would be the one who resists the temptation to idealize both the book and its author. This argument is presented as an attempt to open up some spaces for the discussion (...) of ambivalent responses to this book, beyond the rather deferential fandom that has characterized the psychic life of its reception. (shrink)

John Milbank's The Future of Love is a compilation of essays written over the last twenty-five years from which a nuanced political theology takes shape. As a collection of essays, it is impossible to find here a single unitary voice, but nor is that the point. The point, I believe, is to give a sample of Milbank's tripartite method of critique, which incorporates literature, theology, and philosophy. From this sample a string of interwoven arguments emerge: the need to prioritize excellence (...) over efficiency in all walks of life; that this demands a hierarchy of values; that a hierarchy of values…. (shrink)

Supernatural illustrates two dominant ideals of masculinity, the warrior and the sovereign. The sovereign has what Isaiah Berlin described as both positive and negative liberty. Negative liberty is freedom from things, like restrictions, restraints, obstacles, coercion, or force. The season finale reveals that this feud is based on an overly simplistic understanding of their two masculine ideals. Positive liberty is the freedom to do things. For the sovereign, this means having the unfettered ability to choose goals and accomplish them. Supernatural (...) is largely about men navigating their masculinity. The characters and the show itself appear to have some vacillating opinions of women and femininity. Love is a paradox in Supernatural with its masculine ideals of strength and independence. But in order to be masculine, one must first and foremost be human. And to be human, one needs love. (shrink)

The stimulant “benefits” of amphetamine and its derivative, methamphetamine, have endured since the drugs first became popular nearly a century ago. The concepts of increasing energy for functional purposes related to work and productivity have been well studied. However, the broader idea of increased alertness, and what this means in the lives of users, has not yet been sufficiently examined. This article draws from ongoing research with active methamphetamine users to explore the perceived benefits, drawbacks, and meanings of remaining alert—awake (...) and vigilant—while most of the world sleeps. The experiences of several users are situated in the contexts of sociostructural and mental health issues that shape cycles of use and meanings of addiction. (shrink)

The central argument in this essay is that while the concept of entanglement offers materialism the promise of a conceptually rich field of new “entangled” entities, by itself, entanglement is ill-equipped to contend with the thorny questions of how power is organized among those entities. This essay proposes that decoherence provides a welcome complement to entanglement.

This paper examines social determinants of resource competition among Tsimane Amerindian women of Bolivia. We introduce a semi-anonymous experiment (the Social Strategy Game) designed to simulate resource competition among women. Information concerning dyadic social relationships and demographic data were collected to identify variables influencing resource competition intensity, as measured by the number of beads one woman took from another. Relationship variables are used to test how the affiliative or competitive aspects of dyads affect the extent of prosociality in the game. (...) Using a mixed-modeling procedure, we find that women compete with those with whom they are quarreling over accusations of meat theft, mate competition, and rumor spreading. They also compete with members of their social network and with those who were designated as cooperative helpers or as close kin. Women take fewer beads from desired friends, neighbors, and from those viewed as enemies. We interpret favoritism toward enemies as resulting from fear of retribution. Our results suggest that social relations among women are multifaceted and often cannot be simplified by exclusive focus on genetic relatedness, physical proximity, or reciprocity. We argue that a complex understanding of cooperation and competition among women may require important contextual information concerning relationship history in addition to typical features of resource ecology. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The purpose of the present research was to investigate if and when leaders’ trait-like tendency to experience contempt would result in a lack of constructive attitudes and behaviors towards subordinates and an increase in destructive attitudes and behaviors towards subordinates. Previous research shows that increased power aligns individuals’ behavior with their trait-like tendencies. Accordingly, we hypothesized that leader contempt and power will interact to predict leaders’ people orientation, ethical leadership, dehumanization, and self-serving behavior. Across three studies, we indeed found that (...) contempt was more negatively associated with leaders’ people orientation and ethical leadership, and more positively associated with dehumanization and leaders’ self-serving behavior, when the leader had higher levels of power rather than lower levels of power. These results are discussed in the context of corporate ethical scandals demonstrating leaders’ focus on personal gain to the detriment of the needs of their subordinates. (shrink)

While the NSIGHT program was driven by a desire to define and gather data about both the benefits and harms of introducing genomic sequencing into the care of newborns, it remains to be seen how much influence these data will have in shaping the use of this technology in newborns. Ultimately, three additional forces—commercial interests, the technological imperative, and advocates—may play a significant role in shaping the use of sequencing in newborns. Policy‐makers and clinicians should be aware of the effects (...) of these additional forces when considering the appropriate use of this technology in clinical practice and public health screening programs. (shrink)

This essay provides a critical analysis of early-20th-century American postcards, focusing on the portrayal of black and white children as an aesthetic tool of white supremacy and pedophilic racist pleasures. These representations not only reflected but also perpetuated colonial ideologies and racial stereotypes, directly influencing educational practices and policies, and contributing to a social environment where discrimination and sexualization of children was normalized. The article begins with the contrast in the depiction of white and black children, revealing a pattern in (...) which white children were often fetishized as embodiments of innocence and purity, while black children were subjected to pornified portrayals that reinforced negative stereotypes and sought to ensure the continued intergenerational subjugation of African Americans in the afterlife of slavery. A significant aspect of this analysis delves into the role of the zealous purity crusader Anthony Comstock in shaping societal views on childhood innocence and obscenity during the Progressive Era. As a U.S. postal inspector, Comstock wielded influence over public discourse and policy, particularly through his campaigns against the distribution of what he considered morally objectionable representations. This examination extends to the racial implications of Comstock’s adult-centric actions, exploring how they contributed to the differential treatment of black and white children in both media representations and broader societal contexts. The article argues that these images were not merely passive reflections of societal beliefs; rather, they were active tools used to shape and influence the educational and socialization processes of children, and they contributed to the perpetuation of Jim Crow violence, which was manifested through the sexual assault, castration, and lynching of black youth. Furthermore, this essay examines the broader socio-historical context in which racist and pedophilic images were produced and circulated. These postcards are still trafficked today under the false designation of ‘Black Memorabilia,’ reaching significant prices as vintage collector’s items, but the article reframes them as a genre of child pornography. This perspective critically challenges prevailing narratives that may sanitize or downplay the exploitative and violent nature of these images. This essay urges a reconsideration of these consumer items’ historical significance as instruments intricately complicit in sustaining colonial structures and ideologies surrounding childhood innocence in North America. Within this analytical framework, the dehumanization of black children through pedophilic pornography reflects a long heritage of anti-child violence in Western traditions and the colonial strategy of exploiting children of color as a lucrative mechanism for profit and libidinal pleasure. (shrink)

This reflection focuses on lived experience with the Technological Other (Quasi-Other) while pursuing creative video and film activities. In the last decade work in the video and film industries has been transformed through digital manipulation and enhancement brought about by increasingly sophisticated computer technologies. The rules of the craft have not changed but the relationship the artist/editor experiences with these new digital tools has brought about increasingly interesting existential experiences in the creative process. How might this new way of being (...) with technology change the craft and the crafter? Through a phenomenological understanding of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Don Ihde, and their contributions to the human-technology conversation, this essay moves to reveal the lived experiences of artists/editors who use computers to create by means of film and digital video formats. Exploring notions of lived space, lived body, lived time, and lived relation through the computer interface allows for digging deeper into inhabiting technology and experiencing the Technological Other. (shrink)

This article engages legal positivism conceived of as a political project rather than as a descriptive account of law. Jeremy Waldron’s ‘democratic jurisprudence’ represents such a politicized legal positivism—a normative argument for legal positivism rather than a non-normative claim that legal positivism is true. Unsurprisingly, the essential institutional elements of this democratic jurisprudence turn out to be the familiar features of classical legal positivism, and the case Waldron makes against judicial review grows out of his overarching political position. But, consequently, (...) if there are reasons to doubt the strength of Waldron’s case against judicial review, there are surely reasons to doubt the normative bases of his case for positivism, and in turn, descriptive or conceptual positivism more generally. This article investigates this claim, noting that Waldron’s political case for positivism is based on Kantian notions about moral autonomy given circumstances of moral disagreement, but that Waldron’s conclusions about the role of judges undermine both these Kantian foundations and the aims of democratic jurisprudence. While Waldron’s arguments revive a tradition of political positivism that goes back to Bentham, engagement with those arguments suggests that legal positivism ultimately must embrace a radical democratic form of anti-constitutionalism. (shrink)

Under the umbrella of the burgeoning neurotransdisciplines, scholars are using the principles and research methodologies of their primary and secondary fields to examine developments in neuroimaging, neuromodulation and psychopharmacology. The path for advanced scholarship at the intersection of law and neuroscience may clear if work across the disciplines is collected and reviewed and outstanding and debated issues are identified and clarified. In this article, I organize, examine and refine a narrow class of the burgeoning neurotransdiscipline scholarship; that is, scholarship at (...) the interface of law and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). (shrink)

This essay provides a literary history of the restitution narrative in colonial New England; using Cotton Mather's The Angel of Bethesda, I argue that Puritan medical texts employ theological and medical epistemologies to enable patient agency. In these texts, individuals must be involved in reforming the sinful behaviors that they believed caused their conditions, and must also engage in a form of public health by sharing their stories so that others may avoid future sins—and therefore illnesses. Ultimately, recognizing how restitution (...) has been historically defined allows for alternate understandings of recovery that place patients at the center. (shrink)

Research that has been sponsored by pharmaceutical, medical device and biotechnology companies is often presented at scientific and medical conferences. However, practices vary between organizations and it can be difficult to follow both individual conference requirements and good publication practice guidelines. Until now, no specific guidelines or recommendations have been available to describe best practice for conference presentations.This document was developed by a working group of publication professionals and uploaded to PeerJ Preprints for consultation prior to publication; an additional 67 (...) medical societies, medical conference sites and conference companies were also asked to comment. The resulting recommendations aim to complement current good publication practice and authorship guidelines, outline the general principles of best practice for conference presentations and provide recommendations around authorship, contributorship, financial transparency, prior publication and copyright, to conference organizers, authors and industry professionals.While the authors of this document recognize that individual conference guidelines should be respected, they urge organizers to consider authorship criteria and data transparency when designing submission sites and setting parameters around word/character count and content for abstracts. It is also important to recognize that conference presentations have different limitations to full journal publications, for example, in the case of limited audiences that necessitate refocused abstracts, or where lead authors do not speak the local language, and these have been acknowledged accordingly. The authors also recognize the need for further clarity regarding copyright of previously published abstracts and have made recommendations to assist with best practice.By following Good Practice for Conference Abstracts and Presentations: GPCAP recommendations, industry professionals, authors and conference organizers will improve consistency, transparency and integrity of publications submitted to conferences worldwide. (shrink)