In recent years, misogyny has become a central concept in philosophy as well as an established concept in public discourse and political policy. But where is misogyny’s supposed counterpart, namely, misandry? In this paper I argue for an ameliorative analysis of "misandry", arguing that it can be reformulated in an effort to reclaim it from its misogynistic weaponisation. The term "misandry" is used almost exclusively as a misogynistic rhetorical device for attributing unjust anger, hatred, or other similar emotions to a (...) speaker, thereby undermining their epistemic authority. Rather than dismissing the term as conceptually flawed and politically problematic, I argue that we ought to ameliorate misandry to instead refer to a felt anger, hostility, or fear toward the patriarchal social order and its valorisation and/or expression in misogynistic and machismo behaviour. To support these claims, I begin with a discussion of Kate Manne's analysis of misogyny before reflecting on how this can inform our understanding of misandry. I then demonstrate the various ways in which misandry is rhetorically deployed as a means of silencing speakers that express dissent against the patriarchy. Following this, I argue that we should ameliorate the term, not only to undermine these misogynistic practices, but also to articulate a legitimate affective and reactive attitude against the patriarchal imposition of a hierarchical gender binary. (shrink)

Over the years, phenomenology has provided illuminating descriptions of discrimination, with its mechanisms and effects being thematised at the most basic levels of embodiment, (dis)orientation, selfhood, and belonging. What remains somewhat understudied is the lived experience of the discriminator. In this paper I draw on Husserl's phenomenological account of normality to reflect on the ways in which we discriminate at the prereflective levels of perceptual experience and bodily being. By critically reflecting on the intentional structures undergirding discriminatory practices, I argue (...) that discrimination is characteristic of a naïve normalising attitude which is habitually interested in securing a familiar experience of a static normality. I first demonstrate how this attitude problematically tends to reproduce, enforce, and further sediment discriminatory and exclusionary norms. Further, I provide an internal critique which problematises discrimination—without recourse to external normative standards—on three fronts: as epistemically unproductive, experientially obscuring, and normatively non-instantiating. In discriminatory acts we see an abnormal refusal to enrich, revise, and genetically establish new normative commitments, new ways of seeing, and a new normality. (shrink)

In this paper, my aim is to develop a phenomenological understanding of discrimination from the perspective of the discriminator. Since early existential phenomenology, the phenomenon of discrimination has received a great deal of attention. While much of this work has focused on the experience of the discriminatee, recent scholarship has begun to reflect on the intentional structures on the side of the discriminator. In a contribution to this trend, I argue that our sense of what is (ab)normal plays a constitutively (...) significant role in the reiteration and reinforcement of harmful discriminatory practices. More specifically, I argue that Husserl's distinction between two forms of normality, namely, concordance-normality [Einstimmigkeit] and optimal-normality [Optimalität], is an important tool for illuminating otherwise overlooked aspects of the discriminator's experience. I achieve this by demonstrating how these two notions of normality play distinct constitutive roles when comparing deliberate acts of discrimination committed with malintent, compared with more primordial, habitual, and prereflective expectations which are already discriminatory in nucleo. I argue that at the heart of discriminatory practices there is a naïve, normalizing attempt to stabilize concordance at the expense of critical self-reflection, normative revisions, and enriched horizons of expectation. In doing so, this paper provides a novel and important contribution to philosophical discussions surrounding discrimination. (shrink)

Phenomenological discussions of sociality have long been concerned with the relations between the I, the You, and the We. Recently, dialogue between phenomenology and analytic philosophical work on collective intentionality has given rise to a corpus of literature oriented around the first-person plural 'we'. In this paper, I demonstrate how these dominant accounts of the 'we' are not exhaustive of first-person plural experiences as such. I achieve these aims by arguing for a phenomenological distinction between an experience of being part (...) of a 'we' compared to an experience of being part of an 'us'. To have a 'we-experience' there must be a plurality of (unified) subjects sharing in an experience together such that the experience has the phenomenal character of being ours. An 'us-experience', on the other hand, requires the experiential salience of an external 'Third' in a way which is constitutively significant. Drawing on Sartrean social ontology, I argue that the 'us' is distinct from the 'we' on three levels, all of which pertain to the constitutive and unifying role of the Third. I then outline two forms of us-experiences: (1) the experience of being grouped and (2) the experience of apprehending one's seriality. (shrink)

Fans of arthouse cinema may lament that über-indie idol Greta Gerwig sold out to mainstream cinema with her foray into Barbie. Yet for every film snob who refuses to watch Barbie, innumerable other...

Human allografts for life-threatening organ failure have been demonstrated to be lifesaving and are now considered to be standard of care for many conditions. Transplantation of non-vital anatomic body parts has also been accomplished. Hand transplantation after limb loss in adults has been shown to offer some promising benefits in both functional and psychological measures in preliminary studies. It has been suggested to expand eligibility criteria to include minors, with one such operation having already been performed. With this in mind, (...) we examine the current state of hand transplantation research in the context of available alternatives. We examine the ethics of carrying out these operations in minors, including under the protections of clinical research. We argue that children should not be considered for this surgery due to the substantial risks of immunosuppressive medication, the likelihood that the graft will need to be replaced during the patient’s lifetime and the lack of significant compensatory advantages over modern prosthetics. (shrink)

A common quest among theoretical psychologists is the transformation of psychology to accommodate human agency and meaning. Several strong experimental methods are used in cognitive neuroscience but are based almost entirely upon a mechanistic ontology. A step toward rapprochement is proposed using precise and powerful experimental methods that are holistic, individualized, and compatible with an agentive ontology. Such methods must be applicable to all aspects of human experience, the subjective and agentive aspects, as well as the behavioural and the neurophysiological (...) Multivariate methods are capable of expressing and capturing the holistic isomorphism among multiple aspects of human existence and might even help provide insight into the mind-body problem. Results from a cognitive neuroscience study are used to illustrate this approach. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Often regarded simply as a nuisance in clinical drug trials in which the aim is to separate drug response from placebo response in a statistically significant manner, the placebo response has important implications. These implications relate to the nature of illness, the study of non-specific factors in the treatment setting that are related to clinical improvement, methods of enhancing these non-specific sources of benefit, and the neurobiology that is associated with the placebo response. Specific sources of clinical improvement in medical (...) and psychological treatment generally consist of drugs or clear interventions that appear to directly contribute to the desired treatment. Non-specific factors, on the other hand, include the clinician–patient relationship, installation of hope, relationship with authority, and other such factors that are more implicit to treatment and may contribute to the placebo response. Our understanding of how these non-specific aspects of treatment relate to clinical improvement and ways of enhancing these non-pharmacological elements of therapy may form important aspects of treatment. Furthermore, an important, albeit potentially overlooked element of the placebo response are clinical-trial designs and methodologies, themselves. Specific neurobiological changes also appear to be associated with the placebo response in at least some cases. Finally, it is suggested that the placebo response may in some instances represent a type of brain plasticity in which expectation and desire — agency — can result in specific changes in brain function that either may mirror or differ from the effects of certain drugs. (shrink)

Cinema has long played a crucial role in the way that societies remember and represent themselves. In the last quarter century, film has been an important medium in the public debate around the memory of the Holocaust and of Hiroshima; of the Algerian war for independence and of the Spanish Civil War; of the Allende legacy in Chile, the utopian dreams of 1968, and the aborted project of the German Democratic Republic; in identity formation in Palestine and in the African (...) diaspora. Hedges discusses the role of cinema within a global perspective that spans five continents, and proposes an original typology of cultural memory. In the process, she re-evaluates the contributions of major directors and uncovers hitherto neglected yet important works. The author develops her arguments in an approachable style that will encourage readers to rethink their own memories of films and to reflect on the way that cinema contributes to collective and cultural memory. The book's innovative approach should transform the way that we think of film and its social effects. (shrink)

Today, health systems around the world are under pressure to create greater value for patients and society [81, p. 1, 119]; increasing access, improving client orientation and responsiveness, reducing medical errors and safety, restraining utilization via managed care, and implementing priority allocation of resources for high-burden health problems are examples of strategies towards this end. The quality paradigm by virtue of its strategic consumer focus and its methods for achieving operational excellence has proved an effective approach for creating higher value (...) in many sectors. If applied in a deliberate and holistic manner, the quality paradigm can bring about a more cost-effective organization of the health systems. In this article, we apply quality concepts to healthcare in a conceptual format; we characterize the health system’s customers and outputs with their quality dimensions. The product of this effort is a blueprint for a customer-driven health system which identifies six types of customers, nine types of outputs and the associated operations. As a preliminary step, a new analysis and definition of health and disease is provided. Rethinking the structure of health system in this manner and the related conceptual model can guide medical research, health sciences education, and health services policy, and help the practitioner to integrate all modern trends in healthcare delivery. (shrink)

SummaryThis study seeks to investigate what influences intelligence in early childhood. The Singapore Cohort Study of the Risk Factors of Myopia is used to assess determinants of childhood IQ and changes in IQ. This longitudinal data set, collected in 1999, includes a wealth of demographic, socioeconomic and prenatal characteristics. The richness of the data allows various econometric approaches to be employed, including the use of ordered and multinomial logit analysis. Mother's education is found to be a consistent and key determinant (...) of childhood IQ. Father's education and school quality are found to be key drivers for increasing IQ levels above the average sample movement. (shrink)

This paper details research which investigated a probable causal connection between taking an introductory logic course and significant improvement in logical skills. The authors first detail the setting (a two-year, open-access unit of the University of Cincinnati), the student body (the authors note that many students enter the college with several notable types of academic disadvantage), and the content of an introductory logic course. Following this, they summarize and defend their research protocol and the results of their study. Findings include (...) a statistically significant increase in students’ logical skills after enrollment in a one-quarter introductory logic course. After a statistical analysis of their findings, the authors discuss several possible applications, extensions, and improvements of their research protocol, concluding that the generalizability of their study is limited due to the myriad variables that attend teaching. (shrink)

Behavior and cognition, once conceived as psychological or interpersonal in origin, are increasingly thought to arise from biology. After investigating the validity of this trend of thinking, the article attempts to interpret what it means to the discipline of psychology. Two main categories of interpretation are discussed. First, this trend could mean that biological factors ultimately underlie traditionally psychological explanations i.e., biological factors are a sufficient condition for understanding behavior and cognition. Second, this trend could indicate that biological factors are (...) important, and perhaps even traditionally overlooked, but are not sufficient in themselves to explain human behavior and cognition i.e., biological factors are necessary conditions among other necessary conditions. The practical and methodological implications of each of these two interpretations are clarified, with a special focus on relevant research limitations. We conclude that the evidence does not bear out a sufficiency thesis and, instead, supports more convincingly a necessity understanding of these trends. (shrink)

As part of a (bio)colonial project, the biological information of Indigenous Peoples has historically been under scientific scrutiny, with very limited benefits for communities and donors. Negative past experiences have contributed to further exclude Indigenous communities from novel developments in the field of omics research. Over the past decade, new guidelines, reflections, and projects of genetic research with Indigenous Peoples have flourished in Australia, providing opportunities to move the field into a place of respect and ethical relationships. This review explores (...) the ethical and cultural implications of the use of biological samples from Indigenous communities in biomedical research. A structured framework outlining emerging topics of interest for the development of respectful omics research partnerships with Indigenous Australians is presented. This paper highlights aspects related to Indigenous governance, community and individual consent, respectful handling of biological samples, data management, and communication in order to protect Indigenous interests and rights and to promote communities’ autonomy. (shrink)

Despite revisions to curriculum in ethics education in business schools, there continues to be high profile examples of unethical decision making regularly spotlighted in the media. Rather than simply teaching about behaviors and how they might impact decision makers and stakeholders, we describe a suite of activities used to highlight various behaviors and biases that impact the decisions individuals might make. These activities are intertwined with course materials regarding ethics and corporate governance to remind and help students better understand how (...) decision making can be influenced and challenged by personal ethics. We provide lesson planning suggestions including adapting to remote delivery, and student handouts. This suite of activities can be incorporated into any undergraduate or graduate level course that has content dealing with ethical decision making. (shrink)

Fans of arthouse cinema may lament that über-indie idol Greta Gerwig sold out to mainstream cinema with her foray into Barbie. Yet for every film snob who refuses to watch Barbie, innumerable other...

Fans of arthouse cinema may lament that über-indie idol Greta Gerwig sold out to mainstream cinema with her foray into Barbie. Yet for every film snob who refuses to watch Barbie, innumerable other...