Neurotechnologies are revolutionizing our ability to monitor and modify the brain. As these technologies gather more data, many seek to understand whether brain data raises novel privacy concerns a...

Bringing these two emergent areas of thought into direct conversation in Before the Law, Cary Wolfe fosters a new discussion about the status of nonhuman animals and the shared plight of humans and animals under biopolitics.

The Western Middle Ages witnessed the emergence of a wide array of economic theories of public life and the common good that emphasized the worthiness (indeed priority) of ensuring a satisfactory arrangement of economic goods primarily for the sake of meeting the physical, temporal needs of individuals from all classes and orders. The chapter surveys a plethora of texts, dating from the middle of the twelfth century up to the end of the fifteenth, that considered pragmatic issues related to how (...) the material self-interest of human beings coincided with the augmentation of public wealth within a community, and especially how governmental policies promoted or hampered the goal of personal economic improvement. Despite the diversity of and occasional discordance among these writings, all of them fundamentally agree on two interrelated points: (1) the pursuit of material self-interest, rather than conflicting with or detracting from the common good, actually supports and enhances it; (2) the responsibility of government to promote the public welfare requires paying careful attention to the protection and promotion of private advantage. (shrink)

Future-bias is preferring some lesser future good to a greater past good because it is in the future, or preferring some greater past pain to some lesser future pain because it is in the past. Most of us think that this bias is rational. I argue that no agents have future-biased preferences that are rationally evaluable—that is, evaluable as rational or irrational. Given certain plausible assumptions about rational evaluability, either we must find a new conception of future-bias that avoids the (...) difficulties I raise, or we must conclude that future-biased preferences are not subject to rational evaluation. (shrink)

The sociogenomics revolution is upon us, we are told. Whether revolutionary or not, sociogenomics is poised to flourish given the ease of incorporating polygenic scores (or PGSs) as “genetic propensities” for complex traits into social science research. Pointing to evidence of ubiquitous heritability and the accessibility of genetic data, scholars have argued that social scientists not only have an opportunity but a duty to add PGSs to social science research. Social science research that ignores genetics is, some proponents argue, at (...) best partial and likely scientifically flawed, misleading, and wasteful. Here, I challenge arguments about the value of genetics for social science and with it the claimed necessity of incorporating PGSs into social science models as measures of genetic influences. In so doing, I discuss the impracticability of distinguishing genetic influences from environmental influences because of non-causal gene–environment correlations, especially population stratification, familial confounding, and downward causation. I explain how environmental effects masquerade as genetic influences in PGSs, which undermines their raison d’être as measures of genetic propensity, especially for complex socially contingent behaviors that are the subject of sociogenomics. Additionally, I draw attention to the partial, unknown biology, while highlighting the persistence of an implicit, unavoidable reductionist genes versus environments approach. Leaving sociopolitical and ethical concerns aside, I argue that the potential scientific rewards of adding PGSs to social science are few and greatly overstated and the scientific costs, which include obscuring structural disadvantages and cultural influences, outweigh these meager benefits for most social science applications. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spectral Productances and Color PrimitivismCallie McGrathViews about the metaphysics of color can be divided broadly into realist and antirealist positions. In the realist camp are views that regard colors as instantiated; the pretheoretic appearance of the world as really being colored is correct. In the antirealist camp are views that regard this appearance as illusory.Realist views can be divided into reductionism and primitivism. The former has it that for (...) each color there is a reductive analysis: a true biconditional of the form "There is an F such that for all x, x is red (or blue, yellow) just in case x is F," where F is some predicate that explains what it is for x without making reference to color.1 To put the matter another way, suppose that one were to describe the world as accurately and exhaustively as possible, except that no explicit reference is ever made to color. According to reductionism, somewhere in such a description colors have nevertheless been attributed, only not using the usual color terms.There are two common varieties of reductionism, which we can call "subjective" and "objective reductionism." According to subjective reductionism, the right-hand side of each biconditional of the above sort makes reference to some effect x has on a perceiving subject.2 For instance, Peacocke gives the following analysis of red: "x is red just in case x is disposed to produce a red* sensation in normal perceivers under standard viewing conditions," where "red*" is a term referring to [End Page 509] a sensation in one's visual field.3 Other such color reductionists attempt to provide an analysis of sensations, such as a particular state of one's brain.Objective reductionism attempts to analyze colors without making reference to a perceiving subject. Some varieties of objective reductionism regard colors as microphysical properties of objects.4 Others propose that colors are reflectance properties of surfaces or, more generally, spectral productance properties of visibilia.5Primitivism is the rejection of reductionism; it is the view that no color is a property that can be described or understood purely in nonchromatic terms. Any biconditional of the sort mentioned above must make mention of color. Or, alternatively, the best one can hope to do to explain what any color is as such is to point to one of its bearers: "redness is that [demonstrating a fire truck, or a ripe beefsteak tomato, and so on]."6 Thus, if the world is described without explicitly using color terminology, something has been left out; there are further facts that must be included to give a complete description of the world.In what follows I outline some views that have been previously advanced to elaborate upon color primitivism. I show how one research program in perceptual psychology entails certain constraints on what colors must be like, and how they motivate one form of objective reductionism, which identifies colors as spectral productance profiles.7 However, productance physicalism is seemingly undermined by the fact that there is a pervasive many–one relationship between spectral productance and each color. I defend a variety of realist primitivism that regards colors as properties constitutively related to spectral productance. This view incorporates the advantages of the productance [End Page 510] view, while providing straightforward answers to the problems primitivism is alleged to face.IWhile primitivists agree about what colors are not, they do not agree about what colors are. Gert rejects the possibility of any metaphysical analysis of colors that goes much beyond ordinary, nonphilosophical discourse about color.8 Most primitivists do not go so far as this quietist sort of primitivism. One can reject reductive analysis of colors without altogether rejecting metaphysical theorizing about color.Most primitivists regard colors as categorical properties.9 This is to say that they reject the idea that colors are any sort of disposition. Benbaji is an exception, arguing that, for instance, red is a disposition to appear red to normal perceivers in standard conditions.10 Since, unlike subjective reductionists, Benjabi does not regard the phrase "appears red" and its cognates as amenable to reductive analysis, his position is a form of primitivism. Broackes suggests that surface colors are certain... (shrink)

Uchiyama et al. propose a unified model linking cultural evolutionary theory to behavior genetics (BG) to enhance generalizability, enrich explanation, and predict how social factors shape heritability estimates. A consideration of culture evolution is beneficial but insufficient for purpose. I submit that their proposed model is underdeveloped and their emphasis on heritability estimates misguided. I discuss their ambiguous conception of culture, neglect of social structure, and the lack of a general theory in BG.

Edited by Andrew Hunt and Cally Spooner with an introduction by Will Holder, this new title contains Cally Spooner’s complete scripts to date. As an artist who writes neither from a confessional standpoint, nor from the position of fragmented ‘art writing’, Spooner’s prose makes the verbal visual, and focuses on a visceral use of text as an invitation to act. Her narratives operate energetically in collective schisms through being performed, and often collapse to attack the spectator, observer or reader. Importantly, (...) the artist appropriates historical voices as a mode of activity, and uses theory to ignite imaginative scenarios. Scripts comprises twelve works produced between 2009 and 2015, including: A Six Stage Manifesto On Action, Collapsing In Parts, and And You Were Wonderful, On Stage. This book is the first in the ‘Slimvolume Synthesis’ series, a sequence of publications that includes texts by artists, critics, curators, poets and theorists to produce new creative disjunctions between art and writing. (shrink)

Each year, over 200 million people are infected with the malaria parasite, nearly half a million of whom succumb to the disease. Emerging genetic technologies could, in theory, eliminate the burden of malaria throughout the world by intentionally eradicating the mosquitoes that transmit the disease. In this paper, we offer an ethical examination of the intentional eradication of Anopheles gambiae, the main malaria vector of sub-Saharan Africa. In our evaluation, we focus on two main considerations: the benefit of alleviating the (...) malaria burden, and the loss of value that would accompany the eradication of the species. We outline a typology of the different ways in which species are valued or could be valuable, then use that typology to appraise the value of the species in question. We argue that Anopheles gambiae has minor (and redundant) instrumental value, little final subjective value and no objective final value. (shrink)

In Book 3 of his Politics, and again in Book 7, Aristotle makes explicit his disdain for the banausos (often translated ‘mechanic’) as an occupation qualified for full civic life. Where modern admirers of Aristotle, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, have taken him at face value concerning this topic and thus felt a need to distance themselves from him, I claim that the grounds that Aristotle offers for the exclusion of banausoi from citizenship are not consistent with other important teachings (found (...) in the eighth book of the Politics as well as in several of his other writings) about the nature of poesis (‘productive science’, which is the form of knowledge characteristic of the so-called ‘mechanical arts’). I further support this claim with reference to the role played by the mechanical arts within the Aristotelian framework of knowledge that one encounters in medieval European thought between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries, with particular reference to Hugh of St. Victor, John of Salisbury, and Marsiglio of Padua. (shrink)

In What Is Posthumanism? he carefully distinguishes posthumanism from transhumanism (the biotechnological enhancement of human beings) and narrow definitions of the posthuman as the hoped-for transcendence of materiality.

In this paper I sketch a novel interpretationist account of linguistic content that has important consequences for thinking about intentionality. I solve the challenge presented by a foundational indeterminacy of reference argument to the effect that the meaning of linguistic expressions is radically indeterminate. Happily, my solution doesn’t require positing natural properties as “reference magnets”. Non-deflationist rivals to interpretationist metasemantics include various kinds of causal theories such as Fodor-style asymmetric-dependence accounts and Millikan-style teleosemantics. These accounts face their own indeterminacy challenges (...) that have yet to be solved, as well as similar indeterminacy of reference challenges at the level of individual words. Moreover, they must contend with our apparent reference to things that we are not plausibly causally acquainted with. If indeterminacy of reference arguments can be answered and we can avoid dubious use of natural properties, an interpretationist account like my own will be the strongest contender.. (shrink)

Cesario provides a compelling critique of the use of experimental social psychology to explain real-world group disparities. We concur with his targeted critique and extend “the problem of missing information” to another common measures of bias. We disagree with Cesario's broader argument that the entire enterprise be abandoned, suggesting instead targeted utilization. Finally, we question whether the critique is appropriately directed at experimental social psychologists.

It is widely accepted that the academic job market is very limited and unlikely to expand any time soon, yet enrolments in PhDs continue to rise. If the PhD is no longer preparation for academia, w...

Many have argued that the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” (henceforth: the Question) is defective in some way. While much of the literature on the Question rightly attends to questions about the nature and limits of explanation, little attention has been paid to how new work in metaontology might shed light on the matter. In this paper I discuss how best to understand the Question in light of the now common metaontological commitment to quantifiers that vary in (...) metaphysical naturalness. I show that proponents of this view have arguments at their disposal that appear to challenge the metaphysical substantivity of the Question. Then I argue that, not only are there ways to resist these arguments, the arguments do not pose a challenge to the Question if it is construed in a way that makes reference to many quantifiers. Rendering the Question with multiple quantifiers not only allows one to grant the prima facie substantivity of the Question, but allows us to express it in a way that is mode-of-being-neutral and ontology-neutral—an independently desirable aim. (shrink)

Should we research, develop, and deploy climate engineering technology? Drawing upon contemporary moral and political theory, this book offers a normative perspective on such questions, ultimately making the case in favor of research and regulation guided by norms of legitimacy, distributive justice, and procedural justice.

Phenomenology’s reversal of naturalism hinges on the central claim that the worldly objects that we experience acquire their ontological solidity throughout series of intentional acts that are accomplished over the course of our subjective and intersubjective lives. This posture has historically given rise to realist critiques stating that such a “correlational” ontology undermines our capacity to formulate a coherent discourse on generative natural events that predate humans, such as the Big Bang, the Earth’s accretion, the formation of the oceans, etc. (...) In this paper, I articulate a Merleau-Pontian response to this problem. I establish a continuity between the temporality that is at play in the genesis of empirical bodies and the pre-objective tension that precedes perceptual givenness. I therefore suggest treating the past of nature as a transcendental past, always at work within our present experience, instead of an objective moment that would have determined in advance a causal chain of events. (shrink)

Few critics of the received view in metaphysics that ontological disputes are generally substantive have stirred as much response as those that have developed Carnapian arguments turning on considerations of language and interpretation. The arguments from deflationists like Thomasson ( 2009, 2014 ) and Neo-Fregeans like Hale and Wright ( 2009 ), focus on features of actual language use, others like those from Hirsch ( 2002, 2009 ) focus on interpretation. In this paper, I offer a novel challenge to the (...) latter sort of argument. I argue that through their use of the principle of charity, they have unacceptable consequences beyond the ontology room: the best accounts of some natural language phenomena—most importantly, presupposition—cannot be maintained. (shrink)

With the lack of progress there has been so far on climate change, some have begun researching the potential of geoengineering to allay future climatic harms. However, others contend that such research should be abandoned. One of the most‐cited reasons as to why research into geoengineering should be abandoned is the idea that such research sits at the top of slippery slope. The Slippery Slope Argument warns that even mere research into geoengineering will create institutional momentum, ultimately leading to the (...) deployment of a technology that is untested and perhaps morally objectionable. This article clearly lays out the Slippery Slope Argument against geoengineering research and analyses its premises. I claim that both the empirical premise – that research will inevitably lead to deployment – and the normative premise – that we have decisive moral reasons to avoid deployment – are questionable. The main conclusion of the article is that while we should be cognizant of the potential for research to lead to undesirable deployment scenarios, engaging in research need not necessarily lead inexorably to deployment. While insufficient to ground a moratorium on research, the Slippery Slope Argument points to the need for regulation and oversight in order to prevent undesirable deployment. (shrink)

Patient report of functioning is one component of the neurocognitive exam following traumatic brain injury, and standardized patient-reported outcomes measures are useful to track outcomes during rehabilitation. The Traumatic Brain Injury Quality of Life measurement system is a TBI-specific extension of the PROMIS and Neuro-QoL measurement systems that includes 20 item banks across physical, emotional, social, and cognitive domains. Previous research has evaluated the responsiveness of the TBI-QOL measures in community-dwelling individuals and found clinically important change over a 6-month assessment (...) interval in a sample of individuals who were on average 5 years post-injury. In the present study, we report on the responsiveness of the TBI-QOL Cognition–General Concerns and Executive Function item bank scores and the Cognitive Health Composite scores in a recently injured sample over a 1-year study period. Data from 128 participants with complicated mild, moderate, or severe TBI within the previous 6 months were evaluated. The majority of the sample was male, white, and non-Hispanic. The participants were 18–92 years of age and were first evaluated from 0 to 5 months post-injury. Eighty participants completed the 1-year follow-up assessment. Results show acceptable standard response mean values for all measures and minimal detectable change values ranging from 8.2 to 8.8 T-score points for Cognition–General Concerns and Executive Functioning measures. Anchor rating analysis revealed that changes in scores on the Executive Function item bank and the Cognitive Health Composite were meaningfully associated with participant-reported changes in the areas of attention, multitasking, and memory. Evaluation of change score differences by a variety of clinical indicators demonstrated a small but significant difference in the three TBI-QOL change scores by TBI injury severity grouping. These results support the responsiveness of the TBI-QOL cognition measures in newly injured individuals and provides information on the minimal important differences for the TBI-QOL cognition measures, which can be used for score interpretation by clinicians and researchers seeking patient-reported outcome measures of self-reported cognitive QOL after TBI. (shrink)

Gene drive technology has immense potential. The ability to bypass the laws of Mendelian inheritance and almost ensure the transmission of specific genetic material to future generations creates boundless possibilities. But alongside these boundless possibilities are major social and ethical issues. This article aims to introduce gene drive technology, some of its potential applications, and some of the social and ethical issues that arise during research into the technology. For example, is investigation into gene drives hubristic? Would applications of gene (...) drives count as technological fixes? Or does research into such a technology sit on a slippery slope or lock us in to its full‐scale use? Are there perverse effects of engaging in research, and, most importantly, who ought to be included in the decision‐making process regarding research and field trials? Understanding the basic ethical landscape of this technology will prove invaluable to the public, scientists, and policy‐makers as research moves forward. (shrink)

In Animal Rites, Cary Wolfe examines contemporary notions of humanism and ethics by reconstructing a little known but crucial underground tradition of theorizing the animal from Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Lyotard to Lévinas, Derrida, ...

Comedy is sacred—it's woven through the Bible. James Cary has rare first-hand experience of writing comedy for the BBC—and has a degree in theology. He and former actor and comedian, Barry Cooper (co-writer of Christianity Explored) do a weekly podcast called Cooper and Cary Have Words. This is an intelligent, funny, informative book for anyone who likes comedy.

Academic integrity establishes a code of ethics that transfers over into the job force and is a critical characteristic in scientists in the twenty-first century. A student’s perception of cheating is influenced by both internal and external factors that develop and change through time. For students, the COVID-19 pandemic shrank their academic and social environments onto a computer screen. We surveyed science students in the United States at the end of their first COVID-interrupted semester to understand how and why they (...) believed their peers were cheating more online during a pandemic. Almost 81% of students indicated that they believed cheating occurred more frequently online than in-person. When explaining why they believed this, students touched on proctoring, cheating influences, and extenuating circumstances due to COVID-19. When describing how they believed cheating occurred more frequently online, students touched on methods for cheating and surreptitious behavior. The student reasonings were associated with four theories that have been used to examine academic dishonesty. Our results can aid institutions in efforts to quell student concerns about their peers cheating during emergencies. Interestingly, most student beliefs were mapped to planned behavior theory while only a few students were mapped to neutralization theory, suggesting it was a novel modality of assessment rather than a pandemic that shaped student perceptions. (shrink)

For many years before his composition of the Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli produced a vast body of writings in a range of genres, which are seldom studied. The Rope and the Chains examines these texts in order to locate the intellectual origins of the Machiavelli with whom people are widely familiar.

ABSTRACT: There is general agreement amongst those involved in the normative discussion about geoengineering that if we are to move forward with significant research, development, and certainly any future deployment, legitimate governance is a must. However, while we agree that the abstract concept of legitimacy ought to guide geoengineering governance, agreement surrounding the appropriate conception of legitimacy has yet to emerge. Relying upon Allen Buchanan’s metacoordination view of institutional legitimacy, this paper puts forward a conception of legitimacy appropriate for geoengineering (...) governance, outlining five normative criteria an institution ought to fulfill if it is to justifiably coordinate our action around geoengineering. (shrink)

Animal studies and biopolitics are two of the most dynamic areas of interdisciplinary scholarship, but until now, they have had little to say to each other. Bringing these two emergent areas of thought into direct conversation in _Before the Law_, Cary Wolfe fosters a new discussion about the status of nonhuman animals and the shared plight of humans and animals under biopolitics. Wolfe argues that the human­­­-animal distinction must be supplemented with the central distinction of biopolitics: the difference between those (...) animals that are members of a community and those that are deemed killable but not murderable. From this understanding, we can begin to make sense of the fact that this distinction prevails within both the human and animal domains and address such difficult issues as why we afford some animals unprecedented levels of care and recognition while subjecting others to unparalleled forms of brutality and exploitation. Engaging with many major figures in biopolitical thought—from Heidegger, Arendt, and Foucault to Agamben, Esposito, and Derrida—Wolfe explores how biopolitics can help us understand both the ethical and political dimensions of the current questions surrounding the rights of animals. (shrink)

This Article aims to draw the connection between how we conceptualize legal rights over information resources and our capacity to develop technologically neutral legal norms in the information age. More specifically, it identifies and critically examines three competing approaches to the idea of technological neutrality apparent in copyright jurisprudence. Ultimately, it is argued that true technological neutrality requires not simply the seamless expansion of legal rights into new technological contexts, but the careful, contextual recalibration of rights and interests in light (...) of shifting values and changing circumstances. As a normative principle, technological neutrality in copyright law thus demands a nuanced and relational understanding of the rights at play, and the social values that they seek to foster as technologies evolve. (shrink)

The persistently high rates of sexual assault on college campuses have led to an increasing demand for a solution to the problem. In response, research in the field is growing rapidly. With any expanding field, proper focus needs to be given to ethical dilemmas that may arise when studying a sensitive topic. College students who have experienced a sexual assault are a highly vulnerable population. As the current literature is limited, this article considers the ethical implications of conducting research with (...) college sexual assault victims. Drawing upon the 2010 American Psychological Association Ethics Code, specific ethical concerns including respect for persons, competence, confidentiality and privacy, and beneficence and nonmaleficence are discussed. Recommendations for researchers studying sexual assault in college students are provided. (shrink)

In their target article, Madole & Harden offer an account of “what it means for genes to be causes” of social outcomes to bolster their claim that genetics should be incorporated into social science with practical implications. Here I object to several key features of their arguments, their representation of the state of science, and claims about the utility of genetics for social science and society.

Patients with apraxia perform poorly when demonstrating how an object is used, particularly when pantomiming the action. However, these patients are able to accurately identify, and to pick up and move objects, demonstrating intact ventral and dorsal stream visuomotor processing. Appropriate object manipulation for skilled use is thought to rely on integration of known and visible object properties associated with ‘ventro-dorsal’ stream neural processes. In apraxia, it has been suggested that stored object knowledge from the ventral stream may be less (...) readily available to incorporate into the action plan, leading to an over-reliance on the objects’ visual affordances in object-directed motor behaviour. The current study examined grasping performance in left hemisphere stroke patients with (N = 3) and without (N = 9) apraxia, and in age-matched healthy control participants (N = 14), where participants repeatedly grasped novel cylindrical objects of varying weight distribution. Across two conditions, object weight distribution was indicated by either a memory-associated cue (object colour) or visual-spatial cue (visible dot over the weighted end). Participants were required to incorporate object-weight associations to effectively grasp and balance each object. Control groups appropriately adjusted their grasp according to each object’s weight distribution across each condition, whereas throughout the task two of the three apraxic patients performed poorly on both the memory-associated and visual-spatial cue conditions. A third apraxic patient seemed to compensate for these difficulties but still performed differently to control groups. Patients with apraxia performed normally on the neutral control condition when grasping the evenly weighted version. The pattern of behaviour in apraxic patients suggests impaired integration of visible and known object properties attributed to the ventro-dorsal stream: in learning to grasp the weighted object accurately, apraxic patients applied neither pure knowledge-based information (the memory-associated condition) nor higher-level information given in the visual-spatial cue condition. Disruption to ventro-dorsal stream predicts that apraxic patients will have difficulty learning to manipulate new objects on the basis of information other than low-level visual cues such as shape and size. (shrink)

In this response, I focus on clarifying my arguments, highlighting consensus, and addressing competing views about the utility of polygenic scores (PGSs) for social science. I also discuss an assortment of expansions to my arguments and suggest alternative approaches. I conclude by reiterating the need for caution and appropriate scientific skepticism.

From the very beginning German dentists and their scientific and professional organizations were involved in the disastrous developments following the Nazi assumption of power of 1933. After purging and both organisational and ideological streamlining which had been comparatively rapidly accomplished in 1933/34 a development started which was characterized by extreme professional confrontation and lust for power in close entanglement with Nazi health policy objectives and deformation of scientific dentistry. A decisive role was assigned to the Reichszahnärzteführer Ernst Stuck (1893-1974) who (...) was the highest representative of the dental profession throughout the Nazi Regime. However, up to the present his life and position has not been thoroughly researched. What is more, history of dentistry has been looking at his activities in a merely cursory and appeasing way.In fact, his function as Reichszahnärzteführer needs to be critically scrutinized and evaluated. (shrink)