Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 19 Heft: 1 Seiten: 91-106.

The rise of neurotechnologies, especially in combination with artificial intelligence (AI)-based methods for brain data analytics, has given rise to concerns around the protection of mental privacy, mental integrity and cognitive liberty – often framed as “neurorights” in ethical, legal, and policy discussions. Several states are now looking at including neurorights into their constitutional legal frameworks, and international institutions and organizations, such as UNESCO and the Council of Europe, are taking an active interest in developing international policy and governance guidelines (...) on this issue. However, in many discussions of neurorights the philosophical assumptions, ethical frames of reference and legal interpretation are either not made explicit or conflict with each other. The aim of this multidisciplinary work is to provide conceptual, ethical, and legal foundations that allow for facilitating a common minimalist conceptual understanding of mental privacy, mental integrity, and cognitive liberty to facilitate scholarly, legal, and policy discussions. (shrink)

Knowing Words will be welcomed by sinologists, classicists, and scholars of comparative philosophy and literature.

Teaching competency in bioethics has been a concern of the field since its start. In 1976, The Hastings Center published the first report on the teaching of contemporary bioethics. Graduate programs culminating in an MA or PhD were not needed at the time, concluded the report. “In the future, however,” the report speculated, “the development and/or changing social priorities may at some point allow, or even require, the creation of new academic structures for graduate education in bioethics.” Although that future (...) might be upon us, the creation of a terminal degree in bioethics has its detractors. Scholars have debated whether bioethics is a discipline with its own methods and theoretical grounding, a multidisciplinary field bringing various professional perspectives to bear on particular types of problems, a set of problem-solving skills to resolve moral disagreements, or something else entirely. Whether or not efforts to develop the methods and theory of bioethics have matured to the point that it is now a discipline in the strictest sense, new bioethics training programs have appeared at all postsecondary levels. In this essay, we examine the number and types of U.S. programs and degrees in this growing field. (shrink)

Analysing ten interviews with women diagnosed with and treated for congenital absence of the vagina, this article theorises the notion of ideal (hetero)relational normality. It explores how women in my case study negotiate, relate to and challenge this notion and examines the normative and bodily work for which it calls. The article specifically underscores the corporeal dimension of (hetero)relational normality. I argue that this notion of normality shapes the bodies of the women through medical interventions, while concurrently being reinforced through (...) the corporeal shapings that the women undergo. These corporeal shapings consolidate enacted norms concerning heterosexuality and form understandings of female and male bodies. The analysis also reveals how these women nevertheless find ways to re-negotiate and question the notion of ideal (hetero)relational normality and its intertwinement with medical practice. The article contributes both to the critical examination of genital surgery and to feminist discussions of how to critically examine heterosexuality without rejecting it. Furthermore, it provides a deeper understanding of how medical interventions designed to create a vagina, or dilate a vagina considered ‘too small’, are made meaningful by the women affected. (shrink)

Current controversy over whether the Office of Management and Budget system of racial and ethnic classification should be used in pharmacogenetics research as suggested by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration has been couched in terms of realist-social constructionist debates on race. The assumptions both parties to these debates share instead need to be relinquished—specifically, dichotomies between the social and scientific and what is descriptive and evaluative/normative. This paper defends a pragmatic approach to the question of the appropriateness of the OMB (...) group categories in pharmacogenetics research, an approach that is local and context-specific rather than global, incorporates practical and ethical as well as theoretical dimensions, and recognizes intersections of the social and the biological in the constitution of group categories. (shrink)

This introduction to the special issue on “Medicine, Health, and Publics” argues that a rhetorical understanding of publics offers conceptual, methodological, and practical benefits to health and medical humanities scholars.

This article discusses three important models of concept combination—Smith and colleagues' Selective Modification model, Hampton's Composite Prototype model, and Costello and Keane's C3 model. Smith and colleagues' famous model of concept combination combines a model for producing complex concepts out of simple concepts with a prototype model of concept representation and a metric for computing the typicality of objects with respect to those concepts. The model of concept combination proposed by Smith and colleagues applies only to modifier–head complex concepts. Hampton's (...) model of concept combination includes, along with a qualitative description of the process resulting in complex concepts, a model of concepts, a model of categorization, and a model of typicality judgement. For Hampton, concept combination consists in the inheritance of typical properties from the combined concepts by the complex concept. (shrink)

This article contributes to the Deficit Discourse and Indigenous Education 1 project that aimed to investigate and shift the pervasive discourse that frames and represents Indigenous education in t...

This paper illustrates a role that bioethics should play in developing and criticizing protocols for breast cancer genetic screening. It demonstrates how a critical bioethics, using approaches and reflecting concerns of contemporary philosophy of science and science studies, may critically interrogate the normative and conceptual schemes within which ethical considerations about such screening protocols are framed. By exploring various factors that influence the development of such protocols, including politics, cultural norms, and conceptions of disease, this paper and the critical bioethics' (...) approach it endorses illuminate and critically assess some of the competing worldviews informing protocol development. One of the frequently neglected worldviews in traditional bioethics' treatment of protocols concerning breast care is constituted by women's own views of their breasts and breast cancer, both within the technologically-oriented social practice of American medicine and in light of the social construction of their breasted experience in American society. This paper attempts to redress and critically assess this neglect on the part of traditional bioethics. Finally, in contrast to traditional bioethics, critical bioethics critically interrogates its own normative and conceptual commitments. In this final capacity, a critical bioethics' approach makes a valuable contribution to the evolution of bioethics. (shrink)

Hume’s response to his very personal encounter with skepticism is well known: “I dine, I play a game of back-gammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hour’s amusement, I wou’d return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain’d, and ridiculous, that I cannot find it in my heart to enter into them any farther”.1 As many commentators have noted, this “response” to skepticism is deeply unsatisfying. For example, Brian Ribeiro writes, (...) “Having dinner and watching some TV no more ‘cures’ or ‘solves’ the skeptical problem than the drugs given to those with herpes ‘cure’ their... (shrink)

In her anchor-piece on historicizing the canon, Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee appeals to professional philosophers to develop several tools that can be implemented in historicizing the canon. Amy Donahue, David H. Kim, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, and Kris Sealey tessellate different aspects of this call. Donahue augments Rosenlee’s argument by braiding together Dharmakīrti’s “anyāpoha” theory and Charles Mills’ ruminations about “white ignorance”; Kim explores some of the nuances of Rosenlee’s account for a post-Eurocentric philosophy; Maldonado-Torres ruminates about the larger social context in (...) which thinking can be decolonized; and Sealey uses the work of Kristie Dotson to acknowledge the possibility of multiple canons. In putting on the table a number of questions, concepts, and approaches to canon-building, the symposium aims to contribute to what is by now a large array of similar reflections and engagements in different parts of the world. (shrink)

This work contributes to the development of a theoretical context of the politics of truth about animals. By applying and extending Foucault's theory of power, this work uncovers dominant and subjugated discourses about animals and describes power-knowledge associated with statements about animals that are understood to convey true things.

In late December 1998, Renada Daniel-Patterson's father offered to donate a kidney to his daughter and ignited a controversy in the bioethics community. Renada had been born with only one kidney, which began to fail early in her childhood. At age 6, Renada had to receive dialysis three times a week. She was unable to attend school or venture very far from home. This pattern continued until Renada was 13, when Mr. Patterson called from prison to offer her his kidney. (...) Renada was surprised to hear from her father, who was serving 12 years at California State Prison for burglary and drug convictions. Mr. Patterson was determined to be a compatible donor, and the family proceeded with the transplant operation. As a result of this surgery, Renada was able to live the life of a healthy girl for 2 years. Because the medication to prevent rejection of the transplanted organ made her feel ill and bloated and caused her to develop a hump on her back, Renada gradually began to skip doses. As a result, her donated kidney began to fail. It was under these circumstances that David Patterson offered to donate his second kidney to his daughter in 1998. (shrink)

Reviews the role of intuition or an analogous concept within several divergent philosophical systems and argues that the salient feature common to various accounts of intuition is its non-inferential status. As such, it is argued to be highly relevant to contemporary theory. The paper offers several examples of points of compatibility with contemporary theory, including perception of social affordances, the apprehension linguistic rules and the construction of social norms. In claiming specific ways in which the concept of intuition is relevant (...) to contemporary theoretical psychology, the paper moves toward developing a more comprehensive and historically informed framework for intuition than is currently offered. It also underscores the historical underpinnings of contemporary debates. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The core concept of ‘the human’ that anchors so many humanities disciplines – history, literature, art history, philosophy, religion, anthropology, political theory, and others – issues from a very particular modern European definition of Man ‘over-represented’ as the human. The history of modernity and of modern disciplinary knowledge formations are, in this sense, a history of modern European forms monopolizing the definition of the human and placing other variations at a distance from the human. This article is an interdisciplinary research (...) that decenters Man-as-human as the subject/object of inquiry, and proposes a relational analytic that reframes established orthodoxies of area, geography, history and temporality. It also involves new readings of traditional archives, finding alternative repositories and practices of knowledge and collection to radically redistribute our ways of understanding the meaning of the human. (shrink)

Abstract In this paper I discuss one apparent counterexample to the rationality constraint on belief ascription. The fact that there are inconsistent believers does not seem compatible with the idea that only rational creatures can be ascribed beliefs. I consider Davidson's explanation of the possibility of inconsistent believers and claim that it involves a reformulation of the rationality constraint in terms of the believers' subscription to norms of rationality. I shall argue that Davidson's strategy is partially successful, but that the (...) emphasis on the notion of subscription badly fits with the motivations behind his theory of interpretation. (shrink)

The present article explores the applicability of the term “rhetoric” in a non-Western context and, in particular, the legitimacy of such an attempt in the case of Early China, where the Warring States period is traditionally considered as the golden age of early Chinese “rhetoric”. The pre-imperial and early imperial received literature provides good evidence for the employment of a well-established and clearly defined set of argumentative techniques in everyday political practice in ancient China. No handbook on such techniques has (...) been handed down, and a proper term to define them as part of a broader, more structured activity that could match Western “rhetoric” does not appear until the medieval period. The article argues, however, that by applying a more fluid concept of “rhetoric” and by extending its scope beyond and across cultural boundaries it is not only possible but also legitimate to a certain extent to talk about a rhetorical tradition in the case of ancient China as well. (shrink)

Rosemary Brown (1916-2001), a housewife from South-London, was one of the most famous mediums of her time. Throughout her lifetime, famous composers such as Liszt, Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy and Chopin sought her from the realm of the dead to dictate their posthumous compositions. Brown’s ‘received’ musical pieces became a case study for musicians and psychologists. None, however, ever came up with a convincing explanation for the pieces’ existence. Rather than being a story of sheer madness or clairvoyance, in this paper (...) I read Brown’s musical forgeries as a ‘testament’ to twentieth‐century Western culture’s fascination with originality and the cult of genius. Ideologies of authorship and authenticity shape our aesthetic appreciation, so that music’s essential value is for us more than just ‘sounding good’. Drawing on recent philosophical discussion in aesthetics, I question this cultural framework by scrutinizing the concept of artistic creativity. It is because art is a form of creative achievement that history and provenance count as central factors of our evaluation. This, in turn, may reveal us something about the value of musical forgeries. (shrink)

This paper is an exploration of verbal activism and animal liberation, starting with a brief explanation of Wittgenstein's views on the nature and role of language. A discussion of lexical gaps, linguistic change, and verbal activism follows: The paper introduces the word, "anymal," to fill a lexical gap and to provide a form of verbal activism.

In response to calls for research to improve human-machine teaming, we present a “perspective” paper that explores techniques from computer science that can enhance machine agents for human-machine teams. As part of this paper, we summarize the state of the science on critical team competencies identified for effective HMT, discuss technological gaps preventing machines from fully realizing these competencies, and identify ways that emerging artificial intelligence capabilities may address these gaps and enhance performance in HMT. We extend beyond extant literature (...) by incorporating recent technologies and techniques and describing their potential for contributing to the advancement of HMT. (shrink)

The representational distortion (RD) approach to similarity (e.g., Hahn, Chater, & Richardson, 2003) proposes that similarity is computed using the transformation distance between two entities. We argue that researchers who adopt this approach need to be concerned with how representational transformations can be determined a priori. We discuss several roadblocks to using this approach. Specifically we demonstrate the difficulties inherent in determining what transformations are psychologically salient and the importance of considering the directionality of transformations.

Motivated by a conviction that mass incarceration and state execution are among the most important ethical and political problems of our time, the contributors to this volume come together from a diverse range of backgrounds to analyze, critique, and envision alternatives to the injustices of the U.S. prison system, with recourse to deconstruction, phenomenology, critical race theory, feminism, queer theory, and disability studies. They engage with the hyper-incarceration of people of color, the incomplete abolition of slavery, the exploitation of prisoners (...) as workers and as "raw material" for the prison industrial complex, the intensive confinement of prisoners in supermax units, and the complexities of capital punishment in an age of abolition. -/- Contents -/- Introduction: Death and Other Penalties Geoffrey Adelsberg, Lisa Guenther, and Scott Zeman -/- Part I. Legacies of Slavery -/- Excavating the Sedimentations of Slavery: The Unfinished Project of American Abolition Brady Heiner -/- From Commodity Fetishism to Prison Fetishism: Slavery, Convict-leasing, and the Ideological Productions of Incarceration James Manos -/- Maroon Philosophy: An Interview with Russell Maroon Shoatz Russell Maroon Shoatz -/- Part II. Death Penalties -/- In Reality-from the Row Derrick Quintero -/- Inheritances of the Death Penalty: American Racism and Derrida's Theologico-Political Sovereignty Geoffrey Adelsberg -/- Making Death a Penalty: Or, Making "Good" Death a "Good" Penalty Kelly Oliver -/- Death Penalty Abolition in Neoliberal Times: The SAFE California Act and the Nexus of Savings and Security Andrew Dilts -/- On the Inviolability of Human Life Julia Kristeva (translated by Lisa Walsh) -/- Part III. Rethinking Power and Responsibility -/- Punishment, Desert, and Equality: A Levinasian Analysis Benjamin S. Yost -/- Prisons and Palliative Politics Ami Harbin -/- Sovereignty, Community, and the Incarceration of Immigrants Matt S. Whitt -/- Without the Right to Exist: Mass Incarceration and National Security Andrea Smith -/- Prison Abolition and a Culture of Sexual Difference Sarah Tyson -/- Part IV. Isolation and Resistance -/- Statement on Solitary Confinement Abu Ali Abdur'Rahman -/- The Violence of the Supermax: Toward a Phenomenological Aesthetics of Prison Space Adrian Switzer -/- Prison and the Subject of Resistance: A Levinasian Inquiry Shokoufeh Sakhi -/- Critical Theory, Queer Resistance, and the Ends of Capture Liat Ben-Moshe, Che Gossett, Nick Mitchell, and Eric A. Stanley. (shrink)

Academic philosophers who purport to help animals should write plainly. Engaging in infighting, bristling at others’ arguments, and writing in obscure and impenetrable language does little to actually help animals, and it quite possibly distracts those who might wish to help animals. This review of Elisabeth De Fontenay’s Without Offending Humans: A Critique of Animal Rights discusses these common problems in academic works.

Marc Bekoff & Jessica Pierce, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009, ix, 204 pp., Cloth 28, paper 17, ISBN 10: 0-226-04-163-8 ISBN 10: 0-226-04-161-1 Angie, a little mixed-bree...

For much of human history knowledge was communicated orally. Moral understandings were shared, developed and contextualized from generation to generation. Current moral theorists have argued that storied accounts may better serve to motivate ethical action and engage emotionally than standalone arguments. Over the years I found myself developing a story – which I spoke aloud to students in my introductory classes when we are starting work on non-human animal ethics, altering it and layering on elements year after year. Below is (...) a written version. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that the way American bioethics has traditionally conceived of the distinction between public and private has given rise to some ethically problematic blind spots in its analyses to date. Furthermore, I argue that bioethics's view of the public and private spheres has reinforced a shortsighted view of bioethics's analytical sphere of influence. In particular, it has led bioethics to conceptualize issues largely from the perspective of health professionals, eschewing analyses of the problems of health and (...) health information that patients and their intimates face outside of professional relationships and traditional health-care settings. It has also led some bioethical analyses to reflect, and to some degree reinforce, relationships of power that they might instead challenge. (shrink)

How will we as feminists theorize these borders? How will we as beings whose very bodies are objects of globalization theorize a border which we dwell within? Ofelia Shutte asks whether it is “possible for Western feminism to disentangle itself from the historical forces of Western colonialism and from the erasure of otherness that such forces entail? (Shutte 2000, 59) I ask whether it is possible for feminism, Western or non-Western, Northern or Southern, to utilize the theoretical and political resource (...) that others, who are “othered” on both sides of the border, offer to feminist struggle. (shrink)

Impaired hand proprioception can lead to difficulties in performing fine motor tasks, thereby affecting activities of daily living. The majority of children with unilateral cerebral palsy experience proprioceptive deficits, but accurately quantifying these deficits is challenging due to the lack of sensitive measurement methods. Robot-assisted assessments provide a promising alternative, however, there is a need for solutions that specifically target children and their needs. We propose two novel robotics-based assessments to sensitively evaluate active and passive position sense of the index (...) finger metacarpophalangeal joint in children. We then investigate test-retest reliability and discriminant validity of these assessments in uCP and typically developing children, and further use the robotic platform to gain first insights into fundamentals of hand proprioception. Both robotic assessments were performed in two sessions with 1-h break in between. In the passive position sense assessment, participant's finger is passively moved by the robot to a randomly selected position, and she/he needs to indicate the perceived finger position on a tablet screen located directly above the hand, so that the vision of the hand is blocked. Active position sense is assessed by asking participants to accurately move their finger to a target position shown on the tablet screen, without visual feedback of the finger position. Ten children with uCP and 10 age-matched TDC were recruited in this study. Test-retest reliability in both populations was good >0.79). Proprioceptive error was larger for children with uCP than TDC, indicating discriminant validity. The active position sense was more accurate than passive, and the scores were not correlated, underlining the need for targeted assessments to comprehensively evaluate proprioception. There was a significant effect of age on passive position sense in TDC but not uCP, possibly linked to disturbed development of proprioceptive acuity in uCP. Overall, the proposed robot-assisted assessments are reliable, valid and a promising alternative to commonly used clinical methods, which could help gain a better understanding of proprioceptive impairments in uCP, facilitating the design of novel therapies. (shrink)

Informing the Superior General of the Society of Jesus that the cornerstone of the Jesuit mission in China – that is, Father Matteo Ricci – had passed away on 3 May 1610, Father Pasio wrote:Fu servito Nostro Signore di chiamare al paradiso il buon P. Matteo Ricci, tanto antico nella Cina, e che accreditò molto la legge di Dio e la Compagnia con la sua santità, prudentia e patientia, aprendo il cammino agli altri Padri in quella folta selva di gentilità.Approximately (...) three centuries later, a man whom Father Delattre unhesitatingly called “our indefatigable Sinologist” – Father Léon Wieger – also died on Chinese soil. (shrink)

From accessible and affordable health care to old or new reproductive technologies, human or animal research, and beyond, the justice and well‐being of our society depends on the ability of key groups—such as scientists and health care providers—along with members of the public to identify the key issues, articulate their values and concerns, deliberate openly and respectfully, and together find the most defensible ways forward.The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues and The Hastings Center are committed to improving (...) the ethical literacy of the American public in the domain of bioethics. But what are the best educational practices to spur and support these sorts of societal conversations? And where are the greatest gaps in our collective knowledge of how best to inspire and increase moral understanding, analytical thinking in the moral domain, and professional integrity? (shrink)