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1166The Porosity of Autonomy: Social and Biological Constitution of the Patient in BiomedicineAmerican Journal of Bioethics 16 (2): 34-45. 2016.The nature and role of the patient in biomedicine comprise issues central to bioethical inquiry. Given its developmental history grounded firmly in a backlash against 20th-century cases of egregious human subjects abuse, contemporary medical bioethics has come to rely on a fundamental assumption: the unit of care is the autonomous self-directing patient. In this article we examine first the structure of the feminist social critique of autonomy. Then we show that a parallel argument can be made a…Read more
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816I Eat, Therefore I Am: Disgust and the Intersection of Food and IdentityIn Anne Barnhill, Mark Budolfson & Tyler Doggett (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics, Oxford University Press. 2017.
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749Bioethics and the Hypothesis of Extended HealthKennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 28 (3): 341-376. 2018.Dominant views about the nature of health and disease in bioethics and the philosophy of medicine have presumed the existence of a fixed, stable, individual organism as the bearer of health and disease states, and as such, the appropriate target of medical therapy and ethical concern. However, recent developments in microbial biology, neuroscience, the philosophy of cognitive science, and social and personality psychology (Ickes...
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740Nudging and the Ecological and Social Roots of Human AgencyAmerican Journal of Bioethics 16 (11): 15-17. 2016.
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633Enhancement, Authenticity, and Social Acceptance in the Age of IndividualismAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 10 (1): 51-53. 2019.Public attitudes concerning cognitive enhancements are significant for a number of reasons. They tell us about how socially acceptable these emerging technologies are considered to be, but they also provide a window into the ethical reasons that are likely to get traction in the ongoing debates about them. We thus see Conrad et al’s project of empirically investigating the effect of metaphors and context in shaping attitudes about cognitive enhancements as both interesting and important. We sket…Read more
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555The Gay Science, Interview with Michel Foucault by Jean Le BitouxCritical Inquiry 37 (3): 385-403. 2011.
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485Why We Never Eat Alone: The Overlooked Role of Microbes and Partners in Obesity Debates in BioethicsJournal of Bioethical Inquiry 17 (3): 435-448. 2020.Debates about obesity in bioethics tend to unfold in predictable epicycles between individual choices and behaviours and the oppressive socio-economic structures constraining them. Here, we argue that recent work from two cutting-edge research programmes in microbiology and social psychology can advance this conceptual stalemate in the literature. We begin in section 1 by discussing two promising lines of obesity research involving the human microbiome and relationship partners. Then, in section…Read more
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482Relational Agency: Yes—But How Far? Vulnerability and the Moral SelfAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 8 (2): 83-85. 2017.Peer commentary on: Goering, S., Klein, E., Dougherty, D. D., & Widge, A. S. (2017). Staying in the loop: Relational agency and identity in next-generation DBS for psychiatry. AJOB Neuroscience, 8(2), 59-70.
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466Toward an Ecological BioethicsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 16 (5): 35-37. 2016.Peer commentary on: Blumenthal-Barby, J. S. (2016). Biases and heuristics in decision making and their impact on autonomy. The American Journal of Bioethics, 16(5), 5-15.
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424"The Human Microbiome: Ethical, Legal, and Social Concerns" edited by Rosamond Rhodes, Nada Gligorov, and Abraham Paul Schwab (review)Environmental Philosophy 11 (2): 362-366. 2014.
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284Introduction to Foucault Studies (April 2014), Special Issue on Foucault and DeleuzeFoucault Studies 17 4-10. 2014.
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162Implicit Cognition and Gifts: How Does social Psychology help Us Think Differently about Medical Practice?Hastings Center Report 46 (3): 33-43. 2016.This article takes the following two assumptions for granted: first, that gifts influence physicians and, second, that the influences gifts have on physicians may be harmful for patients. These assumptions are common in the applied ethics literature, and they prompt an obvious practical question, namely, what is the best way to mitigate the negative effects? We examine the negative effects of gift giving in depth, considering how the influence occurs, and we assert that the ethical debate surrou…Read more
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156Biodiversity at Twenty-Five Years: Revolution Or Red Herring?Ethics, Policy and Environment 18 (1): 16-29. 2015.A quarter of a century ago, a group of scientists and conservationists introduced ‘biodiversity’ as a media buzzword with the explicit intent of galvanizing public and political support for environ...
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131Against the Yuck Factor: On the Ideal Role of Disgust in SocietyUtilitas 26 (2): 153-177. 2014.The view we defend is that in virtue of its nature, disgust is not fit to do any moral or social work whatsoever, and that there are no defensible uses for disgust in legal or political institutions. We first describe our favoured empirical theory of the nature of disgust. Turning from descriptive to normative issues, we address the best arguments in favour of granting disgust the power to justify certain judgements, and to serve as a social tool, respectively. Daniel Kahan advances a pair of th…Read more
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78Bioethics and the Challenge of the Ecological IndividualEnvironmental Philosophy 13 (2): 215-238. 2016.Questions of individuality are traditionally predicated upon recognizing discrete entities whose behavior can be measured and whose value and agency can be meaningfully ascribed. We consider a series of challenges to the metaphysical concept of individuality as the ground of the self. We argue that an ecological conception of individuality renders ascriptions of autonomy to selves highly improbable. We find conceptual resources in the work of environmental philosopher Arne Naess, whose distincti…Read more
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63An Empirically Informed Critique of Habermas’ Argument from Human NatureScience and Engineering Ethics 21 (1): 95-113. 2015.In a near-future world of bionics and biotechnology, the main ethical and political issue will be the definition of who we are. Could biomedical enhancements transform us to such an extent that we would be other than human? Habermas argues that any genetic enhancement intervention that could potentially alter ‘human nature’ should be morally prohibited since it alters the child’s nature or the very essence that makes the child who he is. This practice also commits the child to a specific life pr…Read more
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53The Birth of the Concept of Biopolitics – A Critical Notice of Lemke's Biopolitics (review)Theory and Event 15 (4). 2012.
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43Biopower: Foucault and Beyond (edited book)University of Chicago Press. 2015.Michel Foucault’s notion of “biopower” has been a highly fertile concept in recent theory, influencing thinkers worldwide across a variety of disciplines and concerns. In The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Foucault famously employed the term to describe “a power bent on generating forces, making them grow, and ordering them, rather than one dedicated to impeding them, making them submit, or destroying them.” With this volume, Vernon W. Cisney and Nicolae Morar bring together leading cont…Read more
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43Biodiversity? Yes, But What Kind? A Critical Reassessment in Light of a Challenge from Microbial EcologyJournal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 32 (2): 201-218. 2019.Biodiversity has become one of the most important conservation values that drive our ecological management and directly inform our environmental policy. This paper highlights the dangers of strategically appropriating concepts from ecological sciences and also of uncritically inserting them into conservation debates as unqualified normative landmarks. Here, I marshal evidence from a cutting-edge research program in microbial ecology, which shows that if species richness is our major normative ta…Read more
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42Can Moral Enhancement Address Our Environmental Crisis? A Call for Collective Virtue-Oriented ActionAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 12 (2): 124-126. 2021.Proponents of moral enhancement present this biotechnology as a viable solution to social and political problems. The projected imperative to enhance ourselves morally is a direct response to our p...
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39Bioethics and the Challenge of the Ecological IndividualEnvironmental Philosophy 13 (2): 215-238. 2016.Questions of individuality are traditionally predicated upon recognizing discrete entities whose behavior can be measured and whose value and agency can be meaningfully ascribed. We consider a series of challenges to the metaphysical concept of individuality as the ground of the self. We argue that an ecological conception of individuality renders ascriptions of autonomy to selves highly improbable. We find conceptual resources in the work of environmental philosopher Arne Naess, whose distincti…Read more
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36The Conceptual Ecology of the Human MicrobiomeQuarterly Review of Biology 94 (2): 149-175. 2019.It has become increasingly clear that there is a vast array of microorganisms on and in the human body, known collectively as the human microbiome. Our microbiomes are extraordinarily complex, and this complexity has been linked to human health and well-being. Given the complexity and importance of our microbiomes, we struggle with how to think about them. There is a long list of competing metaphors that we use to refer to our microbiomes, including as an “organ” containing our “second genome,” …Read more
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33The epistemic and ethical onus of ‘One Health’Bioethics 33 (1): 185-194. 2018.This paper argues that the practical reach and ethical impact of the One Health paradigm is conditional on satisfactorily distinguishing between interconnected and interdependent factors among human, non-human, and environmental health. Interconnection does not entail interdependence. Offering examples of interconnections and interdependence in the context of existing One Health literature, we demonstrate that the conversations about One Health do not yet sufficiently differentiate between those…Read more
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29Introduction: Why Biopower? Why Now?In Vernon W. Cisney & Nicolae Morar (eds.), Biopower: Foucault and Beyond, University of Chicago Press. pp. 1-26. 2015.
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23Error, Reliability and Health-Related Digital Autonomy in AI Diagnoses of Social Media AnalysisAmerican Journal of Bioethics 21 (7): 26-28. 2021.The rapid expansion of computational tools and of data science methods in healthcare has, undoubtedly, raised a whole new set of bioethical challenges. As Laacke and colleagues rightly note,...
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23Dynamic Aspects of Human Genetics: Is the Human Germline the Bioethical Key to Human Genetic Engineering?American Journal of Bioethics 22 (9): 46-49. 2022.The advent of CRISPR has drastically moved the possibility of genetically modifying human genomes from the space of science fiction into nearby reality. Whether one considers the positive results f...
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23Interconnectedness and Interdependence: Challenges for Public Health EthicsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 17 (9): 19-21. 2017.An increasing number of contemporary voices in both bioethics and environmental ethics have grown dissatisfied with the schisms, abysses, and raging torrents that continue to flow between those two...
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23Brain Exceptionalism? Learning From the Past With an Eye Toward the FutureAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 15 (2): 139-141. 2024.Discussions about brain data and privacy, particularly those advocating for human rights frameworks, at times, have embodied problematic undercurrents of, if not overt appeals to, neuro-exceptional...
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21New Perspectives on AnarchismLexington Books. 2009.The study of anarchism as a philosophical, political, and social movement has burgeoned both in the academy and in the global activist community in recent years. Taking advantage of this boom in anarchist scholarship, Nathan J. Jun and Shane Wahl have compiled twenty-six cutting-edge essays on this timely topic in New Perspectives on Anarchism
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Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Philosophy of Biology |
Continental Philosophy |