Returning genomic research results to family members raises complex questions. Genomic research on life-limiting conditions such as cancer, and research involving storage and reanalysis of data and specimens long into the future, makes these questions pressing. This author group, funded by an NIH grant, published consensus recommendations presenting a framework. This follow-up paper offers concrete guidance and tools for implementation. The group collected and analyzed relevant documents and guidance, including tools from the Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research Consortium. The authors then (...) negotiated a consensus toolkit of processes and documents. That toolkit offers sample consent and notification documents plus decision flow-charts to address return of results to family of living and deceased participants, in adult and pediatric research. Core concerns are eliciting participant preferences on sharing results with family and on choice of a representative to make decisions about sharing after participant death. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 10, Page 54-55, October 2012.

_Philosophers consider race and racism from the perspective of lived, bodily experience._.

Emily Brady provides a systematic account of aesthetics in relation to the natural environment, offering a critical understanding of what aesthetic appreciation ...

Im Mittelpunkt der vorliegenden Studie steht die Frage nach der Tragweite und Anwendungsrelevanz der Methodenlehre Émilie du Châtelets für die Physik im 18. Jahrhundert, mit der sich die Französin an der Diskussion um Energie- und Impulserhaltung und um das Prinzip der kleinsten Wirkung beteiligte. Andrea Reichenberger zeigt, dass Prinzipien und Hypothesen für Émilie du Châtelet als Fundament und Gerüst wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis gelten. Im Zusammenspiel beider Komponenten erweisen sich das Prinzip des Widerspruchs und das Prinzip des zureichenden Grundes als regulative Leitlinien (...) und Handlungsmaxime für die auf Hypothesen gestützte Theoriebildung und -begründung. Die sich daraus ergebenden Konsequenzen für den Status und Inhalt der Newtonschen Axiome werden exemplarisch aufgezeigt. (shrink)

Standpoint theorists have long been clear that marginalization does not make better understanding a given. They have been less clear, though, that social dominance does not make ignorance a given. Indeed, many standpoint theorists have implicitly committed themselves to what I call the strong epistemic disadvantage thesis. According to this thesis, there are strong, substantive limits on what the socially dominant can know about oppression that they do not personally experience. I argue that this thesis is not just implausible but (...) politically pernicious; it is an excuse for ignorance and silence that stifles our ability to address many injustices. Moreover, I argue that if we are to avoid lending support to the SEDT while working within a standpoint theory framework, we must hold that the socially dominant can achieve marginalized standpoints. So, we must hold that men can achieve feminist standpoints, that white women (and men) can achieve black feminist standpoints, and so on. (shrink)

A vibrant history of acoustical technology and aural culture in early-twentieth-century America.

In The Sublime in Modern Philosophy: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Nature, Emily Brady takes a fresh look at the sublime and shows why it endures as a meaningful concept in contemporary philosophy. In a reassessment of historical approaches, the first part of the book identifies the scope and value of the sublime in eighteenth-century philosophy, nineteenth-century philosophy and Romanticism, and early wilderness aesthetics. The second part examines the sublime's contemporary significance through its relationship to the arts; its position with respect (...) to other aesthetic categories involving mixed or negative emotions, such as tragedy; and its place in environmental aesthetics and ethics. Far from being an outmoded concept, Brady argues that the sublime is a distinctive aesthetic category which reveals an important, if sometimes challenging, aesthetic-moral relationship with the natural world. (shrink)

This book draws its inspiration from Hilbert, Wittgenstein, Cavaillès and Lakatos and is designed to reconfigure contemporary philosophy of mathematics by making the growth of knowledge rather than its foundations central to the study of mathematical rationality, and by analyzing the notion of growth in historical as well as logical terms. Not a mere compendium of opinions, it is organised in dialogical forms, with each philosophical thesis answered by one or more historical case studies designed to support, complicate or question (...) it. The first part of the book examines the role of scientific theory and empirical fact in the growth of mathematical knowledge. The second examines the role of abstraction, analysis and axiomatization. The third raises the question of whether the growth of mathematical knowledge constitutes progress, and how progress may be understood. Readership: Students and scholars concerned with the history and philosophy of mathematics and the formal sciences. (shrink)

What is time? This is one of the most fundamental questions we can ask. Emily Thomas explores how a new theory of time emerged in the seventeenth century. The 'absolute' theory of time held that it is independent of material bodies or human minds, so even if nothing else existed there would be time.

Much early modern metaphysics grew with an eye to the new science of its time, but few figures took it as seriously as Emilie du Châtelet. Happily, her oeuvre is now attracting close, renewed attention, and so the time is ripe for looking into her metaphysical foundation for empirical theory. Accordingly, I move here to do just that. I establish two conclusions. First, du Châtelet's basic metaphysics is a robust realism. Idealist strands, while they exist, are confined to non-basic regimes. (...) Second, her substance realism seems internally coherent, so her foundational project appears successful.I have two aims in this paper. Historically, I show that du Châtelet's main source of inspiration was Christian... (shrink)

After several decades of intensive efforts to theorize the global in contemporary society, what are the endeavour’s main accomplishments and future challenges? This article develops five main observations in this regard: (a) that the transdisplinary promise of global theory remains largely elusive; (b) that global thinking might productively give way to transscalar conceptions of social space; (c) that global theory still struggles to move from universalist to transculturalist dispositions; (d) that global theory remains subject to substantial marginal­izing knowledge/power hierarchies; and (...) (e) that global studies can further develop an ethico-political role of helping to improve possibilities in actually lived global lives. (shrink)

As much a doubter as a believer, Emily Dickinson often expressed views about God in general—and God with respect to suffering in particular. In many of her poems, she contemplates the question posed by countless theologians and poets before her: how can one reconcile a benevolent deity with evil in the world? Examining Dickinson’s perspectives on the role played by a supposedly omnipotent and all-loving God in a world marked by violence and pain, Patrick Keane initially focuses on her (...) poem “Apparently with no surprise,” in which frost, a “blonde Assassin,” beheads a “happy Flower,” a spectacle presided over by “an Approving God.” This tiny lyric,Keane shows, epitomizes the poet’s embattled relationship with the deity of her Calvinist tradition. Although the problem of sufferingis usually couched in terms of natural disasters or human injustice, Dickinson found new ways of considering it. By choosing a flower as her innocent “victim,” she bypassed standard “answers” to the dilemma in order to focus on the problem in its purest symbolic form. Keane goes on toprovide close readings of many of Dickinson’s poems and letters engaging God, showing how she addressed the challenges posed—by her own experience and by an innate skepticism reinforced by a nascent Darwinism—to the argument from design and the concept of a benevolent deity. More than a dissection of a single poem, Keane’s book is a sweeping personal reflection on literature and religion, faith and skepticism, theology and science. He traces the evolving history of the Problem of Suffering from the Hebrew Scriptures, through the writings of Paul, Augustine, and Aquinas, to the most recent theological and philosophical studies of the problem. Keane is interested in _how_ readers today respond to Emily Dickinson’s often combative poems about God; at the same time, she is located as a poet whose creative life coincided with the momentous changes and challenges to religious faith associated with Darwin andNietzsche.Keane also considers Dickinson’s poems and letters in the context of the great Romantic tradition, as it runs fromMilton throughWordsworth, demonstrating how thework of these poets helps illuminate Dickinson’s poetry and thought. Because Dickinson the poet was also Emily the gardener, her love of flowers was an appropriate vehicle for her observations on mortality and her expressions of doubt. _Emily Dickinson’s Approving God _is a graceful study that reveals not only the audacity of Dickinson’s thought but also its relevance to modern readers. In light of ongoing confrontations between Darwinism and design, science and literal conceptions of a divine Creator, it is an equally provocative read for students of literature and students of life. (shrink)

Emily Dickinson's poetry is deeply philosophical. Recognizing that conventional language limited her thought and writing, Dickinson created new poetic forms to pursue the moral and intellectual issues that mattered most to her. This collection situates Dickinson within the rapidly evolving intellectual culture of her time and explores the degree to which her groundbreaking poetry anticipated trends in twentieth-century thought. Essays aim to clarify the ideas at stake in Dickinson's poems by reading them in the context of one or more (...) relevant philosophers, including near-contemporaries such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Hegel, and later philosophers whose methods are implied in her poetry, including Levinas, Sartre and Heidegger. The Dickinson who emerges is a curious, open-minded interpreter of how human beings make sense of the world - one for whom poetry is a component of a lifelong philosophical project. (shrink)

The work of women philosophers in the early modern period has traditionally been overlooked, yet their writing on topics such as reality, time, mind and matter holds valuable lessons for our understanding of metaphysics and its history. This volume of new essays explores the work of nine key female figures: Bathsua Makin, Anna Maria van Schurman, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, Damaris Cudworth Masham, Mary Astell, Catharine Trotter Cockburn, and Émilie Du Châtelet. Investigating issues from eternity to free (...) will and from body to natural laws, the essays uncover long-neglected perspectives and demonstrate their importance for philosophical debates, both then and now. Combining careful philosophical analysis with discussion of the intellectual and historical context of each thinker, they will set the agenda for future enquiry and will appeal to scholars and students of the history of metaphysics, science, religion and feminism. (shrink)

The Shirreff sisters, Emily and Maria were pioneers in the field of education for girls in the wider context of women's rights. They jointly wrote the influential Thoughts on Self-Culture, Addressed to Women, and Emily was briefly the principal of the college at Hitchin which became Girton College, Cambridge. The sisters founded the Girls' Public Day School Company in 1872; by 1905 it had opened 37 girls' schools across Britain. This 1862 second edition of Emily's book on (...) intellectual education contains no alterations from the original of 1858. It considers the theory and purpose of education, and the particular issues of its application to girls, before suggesting appropriate curricula for each age group from seven to eighteen, with a final chapter on life after the classroom and 'some peculiarities of woman's social position'. (shrink)

A survey article on the metaphysics, physics and methodology of Du Châtelet.

Émilie Du Châtelet’s Foundations of Physics (Institutions de physique, 1740/42) has recently been attracting increasing interest from analytical philosophy in the anglophone world. Du Châtelet’s conception of space and time constitutes a controversial issue. I argue that the current debate underestimates the modal approach and epistemological turn in Du Châtelet’s view on space and time. A historical perspective on Abraham Gotthelf Kästner’s criticism and Jean Henry Samuel Formey’s plagiarism of Du Châtelet underlines the significance of this turning point. Against this (...) background, I revisit Leonhard Euler’s space-time realism and its influence on Immanuel Kant. -/- Les Institutions de physique (1740/1742) d’Émilie Du Châtelet suscitent depuis peu un intérêt croissant dans le monde anglophone, chez les philosophes analytiques. Une question controversée concerne les concepts d’espace et de temps de Du Châtelet. Je soutiens que le débat actuel sous-estime l’approche modale et la tournure épistémologique des considérations de Du Châtelet sur l’espace et le temps. Un regard historique sur la critique d’Abraham Gotthelf Kästner et le plagiat de Du Châtelet par Jean Henry Samuel Formey souligne l’importance de ce tournant. Dans ce contexte, je revisite le réalisme spatio-temporel de Leonhard Euler et son influence sur Emmanuel Kant. (shrink)

In Living for Pleasure, philosopher Emily Austin offers a lively, jargon-free tour of Epicurean strategies for diminishing anxiety, achieving satisfaction, and relishing joys.

Emily Paul has recently argued that Brian Leftow’s account of why the import of God’s becoming Incarnate is not temporal but modal fails. She argues that Leftow’s required modal variation is not satisfied. That is, we do not have the required variation across logical space concerning the Incarnation. Paul examines her argument on two possible worlds theories: theistic ersatzism and (what I call) Lewisian theism. She thinks that both possible worlds theories face difficulties. I argue that Paul fails to (...) provide a compelling argument against Leftow because, firstly, her defence of one her premises fails, and, secondly, she misjudges what is required for some of Leftow’s claims to be true. I also argue that some of the problematic consequences that Paul raises for theistic ersatzism and Lewisian theism either are not problematic or can be avoided. (shrink)

Perhaps the most striking phenomenon of visual awareness is inattentional blindness (IB), in which a surprisingly salient event right in front of you may go completely unseen when unattended. Does IB reflect a failure of perception, or only of subsequent memory? Previous work has been unable to answer this question, due to a seemingly intractable dilemma: ruling out memory requires immediate perceptual reports, but soliciting such reports fuels an expectation that eliminates IB. Here we introduce a way of evoking repeated (...) IB in the same subjects and the same session: we show that observers fail to report seeing salient events’ not only when they have no expectation, but also when they have the wrong expectations about the events nature. This occurs when observers must immediately report seeing anything unexpected, even mid-event. Repeated IB thus demonstrates that IB is aptly named: it reflects a genuine deficit in moment-by-moment conscious perception, rather than a form of inattentional amnesia. (shrink)

Emily Carr, often called Canada’s Van Gogh, was a post-impressionist explorer, artist and writer. In _Artist Emily Carr and the Spirit of the Land_ Phyllis Marie Jensen draws on analytical psychology and the theories of feminism and social constructionism for insights into Carr’s life in the late Victorian period and early twentieth century. Presented in two parts, the book introduces Carr’s émigré English family and childhood on the "edge of nowhere" and her art education in San Francisco, London (...) and Paris. Travels in the wilderness introduced her to the totem art of the Pacific Northwest coast at a time Aboriginal art was undervalued and believed to be disappearing. Carr vowed to document it before turning to spirited landscapes of forest, sea and sky. The second part of the book presents a Jungian portrait of Carr, including typology, psychological complexes, and archetypal features of personality. An examination the individuation process and Carr’s embracement of transcendental philosophy reveals the richness of her personality and artistic genius. Artist Emily Carr and the Spirit of the Land provides captivating reading for analytical psychologists, academics and students of Jungian studies, art history, health, gender and women’s studies. (shrink)

Our in-the-moment experience of the world can feel vivid and rich, even when we cannot describe our experience due to limitations of attention, memory or other cognitive processes. But the nature of visual awareness is quite sparse, as suggested by the phenomena of failures of awareness, such as change blindness and inattentional blindness. I will argue that once failures of memory or failures of comparison are ruled out as explanations for these phenomena, they present strong evidence against rich awareness. To (...) accommodate and explain these massive failures of awareness, any theory of phenomenal consciousness must downgrade phenomenology to a degree where it is functionless or, ironically, does not reflect what we experience. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics is an extraordinarily successful scientific theory. But more than 100 years after it was first introduced, the interpretation of the theory remains controversial. This Element introduces some of the most puzzling questions at the foundations of quantum mechanics and provides an up-to-date and forward-looking survey of the most prominent ways in which physicists and philosophers of physics have attempted to resolve them. Topics covered include nonlocality, contextuality, the reality of the wavefunction and the measurement problem. The discussion is (...) supplemented with descriptions of some of the most important mathematical results from recent work in quantum foundations, including Bell's theorem, the Kochen-Specker theorem and the PBR theorem. (shrink)

Emily Elizabeth Constance Jones was an English logician and contemporary of Bertrand Russell, as well as Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge. In this book, originally published in 1911, she argues for the existence of another fundamental law of thought to join the Law of Contradiction and the Law of Excluded Middle: the Law of Significant Assertion. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in logic or in Jones' work.

A decade after the ‘‘Sokal Hoax,’’ Alan Sokal and Paul Boghossian still claim that postmodern arguments are incoherent attacks on reason and truth. However, both also continue to mischaracterize ‘‘constructivist’’ epistemology, to engage in highly problematic logical gymnastics to defend their own views, and to ignore changes in philosophy of science and science studies since 1996. I offer a brief description of my own, rather different understanding of postmodern science criticism in order to contextualize my dissatisfaction with Sokal and Boghossian’s (...) arguments, and to highlight the value of cross-subfield anthropological collaboration based on the constructivist perspective articulated by Barbara Herrnstein Smith. Downloaded by [New York University] at 03:33 19 July 2011.. (shrink)

El presente trabajo explora las conceptualizaciones actuales de la capacidad de resistencia que se aplican a personas con habilidades-diversas. El concepto de ‘ableísmo’ es presentado y se demuestra su utilidad como un lente analítico. Los resultados indican que un enfoque ecológico a la capacidad de resistencia representa un problema para el avance de los derechos de las personas con habilidades diversas. En concreto, la presencia de asunciones y lenguaje ‘ableístas’ demuestran una continua necesidad de examen crítico de las políticas relacionadas (...) con la capacidad de resistencia y su capacidad para incorporar a la población con habilidades diversas. Sugerimos que una ética feminista del cuidado de personas con habilidades diversas contribuye a la comprensión de la capacidad de resiliencia, promoviendo una agenda positiva de los derechos de las personas con habilidades diversas y dando una dirección positiva para políticas en esta área. Los resultados seguramente ayudaran a hacer frente a las lagunas existentes en la literatura de este tema, y serán de gran importancia para los responsables de políticas, investigadores, y la población con habilidades diversas. (shrink)

In this paper, we explain and showcase the promising methodology of testimonial network analysis and visualization for experimental epistemology, arguing that it can be used to gain insights and answer philosophical questions in social epistemology. Our use case is the epistemic community that discusses vaccine safety primarily in English on Twitter. In two studies, we show, using both statistical analysis and exploratory data visualization, that there is almost no neutral or ambivalent discussion of vaccine safety on Twitter. Roughly half the (...) accounts engaging with this topic are pro-vaccine, while the other half are con-vaccine. We also show that these two camps rarely engage with one another, and that the con-vaccine camp has greater epistemic reach and receptivity than the pro-vaccine camp. In light of these findings, we question whether testimonial networks as they are currently constituted on popular fora such as Twitter are living up to their promise of delivering the wisdom of crowds. We conclude by pointing to directions for further research in digital social epistemology. (shrink)

[penultimate draft; prepared for publication in Aristotle’s Parts of Animals: A Critical Guide, ed. Sophia Connell – please cite final version] -/- Parts of Animals II.10 makes a new beginning in Aristotle’s study of animals. In it, Aristotle proposes to “now speak as if we are once more at an origin, beginning first with those things that are primary” (655b28-9). This is the start of his account of the non-uniform parts of blooded animals: parts such as eyes, noses, mouths, etc., (...) as opposed to uniform parts like blood and flesh. PA II.10 proposes a new strategy for studying these parts: “one ought to speak about the human kind first” (656a10). Beginning “first” with the “primary” things thus amounts to beginning with humans (655b28-9). -/- Why does Aristotle think this strategy is appropriate for his project? One answer is that it reflects a fundamental anthropocentrism. Lloyd, for instance, has raised the possibility that the basic assumptions that guide Aristotle’s biology may to some extent reflect the anthropocentrism of his culture, where the relation of humans to animals was “a preoccupation of popular beliefs”. In this paper, I develop an interpretation that both builds on and challenges this suggestion. I do so by investigating how Aristotle thinks this strategy works in theory and in practice: his justifications for adopting it and its interaction with his scientific commitments. I argue that Aristotle adopts it in part because he thinks that humans are such that his scientific concepts apply to them in a particularly clear way. (This too is a form of anthropocentrism: one that might be resisted by arguing that humans are not the best illustrations of these concepts—that Aristotle ought to look elsewhere for models with the features he desires.) -/- More specifically, Aristotle holds that starting with humans helps establish the causal explanations of the parts of other animals, particularly when they are recalcitrant. What makes humans suitable for this role is a special teleological relation between their parts and the ends they serve: in humans, he supposes, this connection is particularly tight (in a way I explain below). Consequently, Aristotle thinks he can use humans to illuminate which sorts of features tend to be for the sake of which ends, and then extend the results of this inquiry to the parts of the other animals. (shrink)

Viewed this way, the texts yield striking examples of language and notation that are irreducibly ambiguous and productive because they are ambiguous.

Introduction: The man who drank the hemlock -- Socrates' philosophy -- Politics and society -- Plato and others : who created the death of Socrates? -- 'A Greek chatterbox' : the death of Socrates in the Roman Empire -- Pain and revelation : the death of Socrates and the death of Jesus -- The apotheosis of philosophy : from enlightenment to revolution -- Talk, truth, totalitarianism : the problem of Socrates in modern times.

This groundbreaking book provides an analytical tool to understand how and why evil works in the world as it does. Deconstructing memory, history, and myth as received wisdom, the volume critically examines racism, sexism, poverty, and stereotypes.

There is a long tradition, in the history and philosophy of science, of studying Kant’s philosophy of mathematics, but recently philosophers have begun to examine the way in which Kant’s reflections on mathematics play a role in his philosophy more generally, and in its development. For example, in the Critique of Pure Reason , Kant outlines the method of philosophy in general by contrasting it with the method of mathematics; in the Critique of Practical Reason , Kant compares the Formula (...) of Universal Law, central to his theory of moral judgement, to a mathematical postulate; in the Critique of Judgement , where he considers aesthetic judgment, Kant distinguishes the mathematical sublime from the dynamical sublime. This last point rests on the distinction that shapes the Transcendental Analytic of Concepts at the heart of Kant’s Critical philosophy, that between the mathematical and the dynamical categories. These examples make it clear that Kant's transcendental philosophy is strongly influenced by the importance and special status of mathematics. The contributions to this book explore this theme of the centrality of mathematics to Kant’s philosophy as a whole. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy. (shrink)

Exploring the intimate tie between body movement and space and time, Lee begins with the position that body movement generates space and time and explores the ethical implications of this responsibility for the situations one’s body movements generate. Whiteness theory has come to recognize the ethical responsibility for situations not of one’s own making and hence accountability for the results of more than one’s immediate personal conscious decisions. Because of our specific history, whites have developed a particular embodiment and body (...) movement that generates places that can only be characterized as more comfortable and more enabling to whites. (shrink)

Proclaiming empiricism -- Guiding experiment -- Gaining loss -- Despairing hope.

What kinds of ethical considerations, if any, are relevant to research, management, or conservation efforts involving insects? What limits might be appropriate for those actions? These are questions we ask as members of a profession—one that’s devoted to the study of certain organisms. We probably won’t make any progress as a discipline by beginning the way philosophers generally do: namely, by trying to assess whether insects have intrinsic value; that is, whether they have value even when we don’t value them. (...) It is better, we submit, to reflect more carefully on our own values and practices, paying special attention to the role that insects play in our scientific endeavors, whether those endeavors are basic research, vector control, integrated pest management, or insect conservation and biodiversity assessment. -/- From a professional standpoint, the goals of entomologists center around learning about, working with, and responding to insects. Because insects are living organisms, the tie that binds the many strands of entomology together, we should affirm the significant role that insects play in everyday life and encourage examination of how to relate to them. (shrink)

'Voices of Feminist Liberation' brings together a wide range of scholars to explore the work of Rosemary Radford Ruether, one of the most influential feminist and liberation theologians of our time. Ruether's extraordinary and ground-breaking thinking has shaped debates across liberation theology, feminism and eco-feminism, queer theology, social justice and inter-religious dialogue. At the same time, her commitment to practice and agency has influenced sites of local resistance around the world as well as on globalised strategies for ecological sustainability and (...) justice. 'Voices of Feminist Liberation' examines the potential of Ruether's thinking to mobilize critical theology, social theory and cultural practice. The scholars gathered here present their personal engagements with Ruether's thinking and teaching. The book will be invaluable to scholars, policy-makers, and activists seeking to understand how colonial and patriarchal oppression in the name of religion can be confronted and defeated. (shrink)