Quill Kukla

This paper discusses a crisis of accountability that arises when scientific collaborations are massively epistemically distributed. We argue that social models of epistemic collaboration, which are social analogs to what Patrick Suppes called a “model of the experiment,” must play a role in creating accountability in these contexts. We also argue that these social models must accommodate the fact that the various agents in a collaborative project often have ineliminable, messy, and conflicting interests and values; any story about accountability in a massively distributed collaboration must therefore involve models of such interests and values and their methodological and epistemic effects

This issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal offers essays about risk, social values, and how to act in the face of risk, especially when our risk assessments are socially freighted. It is made up of two clusters of related papers.The first cluster consists of two papers that explore the ways in which our risk assessments are shaped by moral panic around HIV, and its accompanying legacy of fear, homophobia, and stigma. These papers take up ethical and social dimensions of PrEP and of blood donation in the face of social and medical policies based on risk distortions.The second cluster of papers is a back-and forth exchange in response to...

I explore the role that values and interests, especially ideological interests, play in managing and balancing epistemic risks in medicine. I will focus in particular on how diseases are identified and operationalized. Before we can do biomedical research on a condition, it needs to be identified as a medical condition, and it needs to be operationalized in a way that lets us identify sufferers, measure progress, and so forth. I will argue that each time we do this, we engage in epistemic risk balancing that inevitably draws upon values and interests, often including social and ideological values. My main interest here is in the conceptualization of infertility as a disease. Infertility is a rich test case for exploring the interplay between interests and epistemic risk management. There is no uncontested or standardized definition of infertility. The various definitions of it are internally ambiguous and tension-ridden, and in spectacular contradiction with one another. Many interest groups who are invested in framing infertility as a pressing problem deserving of social and medical redress are quick to insist that it is a legitimate ‘disease,’ but they cannot agree on which disease it is, what its symptoms or diagnostic markers are, or even what its basic ontology is. I suggest that there are political explanations for this epistemic mess. Indeed, I contend that there are good scientific and ethical reasons to reduce away the category of ‘infertility,’ especially understood as a scientific or medical category; I argue that we should excise the concept from our research and clinical practices.

This issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal contains a couple of papers that may be difficult to read for some: one concerning the sexual violation of young Black boys and one on the Guatemalans who were intentionally infected with sexually transmitted diseases and sexually abused in the hands of the United States government and other US-based institutions. I’m honored and proud to be publishing these papers in the journal; both dive headfirst into formidably painful topics of enormous social and ethical importance. However, readers should understand before reading these papers that they contain descriptions of sexual violation within relationships of gross power inequality...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Studying Human Behavior: How Scientists Investigate Aggression and Sexuality by Helen LonginoRebecca KuklaReview: Helen Longino, Studying Human Behavior: How Scientists Investigate Aggression and Sexuality, University of Chicago Press, 2013In Studying Human Behavior: How Scientists Investigate Aggression and Sexuality, Helen Longino meticulously examines a wide variety of research programs devoted to studying human behavior, specifically aggression and sexual orientation. She teases apart the methodologies of the various approaches, examining their epistemic structure, the assumptions they must hold fixed, the research questions they enable and those they necessarily occlude, their underlying ontologies, the interests that motivate them, the ideological investments they help buttress, and the practical and political uses they serve. By the end of the book she has made clear that the so-called ‘nature-nurture’ debates invoke a hopelessly simplistic and distorting dualism when it comes to any interesting question about the etiology of a behavior. This is a readable, informative, rigorous, and elegantly organized new work from a leading scholar who has had a major hand in turning the interplay among science, ethics, and social interests into a topic of rigorous philosophical study.In the first part of the book, Longino devotes a chapter or substantial section to each major methodological approach to studying aggression and sexual orientation, including (using her labels): quantitative behavioral genetics, social-environmental approaches, molecular behavioral genetics, neurobiological approaches, and several ‘integrative’ approaches (such as developmental systems theory) that focus on the interactions and dynamics between causal factors over time rather than trying to isolate one causal contribution. She also briefly discusses human ecology, which takes the unit of study to be the behavior of a population, studied in its material environment, rather than the behavior of an individual.Longino shows elegantly how each of these research programs is equipped to reveal certain specific kinds of truths about behavior, while making other important dimensions of the phenomena invisible. Many of her examples are technical and detailed, but I can recap a few relatively simple and powerful examples: (1) Behavioral researchers have no shared understanding of what an ‘environment’ is or which features of it we need [End Page E-97] to measure. Whatever operationalization of ‘environment’ is used within a study or set of studies, this operationalization is not itself scientifically validated, but merely presupposed (33). Thus how much of a behavior shows up in a study as due to the ‘environment’ depends on just what we measure. On the behavioral genetic approach this will include everything other than genes, but on, say, the neurobiological approach this will be everything other than neural structure. But these are quite different senses of ‘environment’ with different scopes, and there’s no good reason to think they are easily commensurable. (2) ‘GxExN’ researchers use techniques to study the etiology of behavior that were developed expressly for studying disorders (112). This work thus presupposes that we can understand whatever behavior is under study on the disorder model, and will yield no well-formed results to the extent that this model does not fit. But it is at best non-obvious that a disorder model is unproblematic when it comes to aggression or—especially!—sexual orientation. (3) Most of the research programs Longino covers treat the behaving individual as the unit of analysis and study, as opposed to, for example, human ecologists’ focus on whole populations. But as she demonstrates, this affects what kinds of causes we can study, because patterns at the population level may not be detectable using the kinds of measures that can be manipulated at the individual level. Furthermore, some kinds of behaviors may require more than one participant to exist at all; for instance, the very same thing that counts as an aggressive act within one interaction may be a peaceful act in another (175).Longino does a lovely job of showing what sorts of social interests are served and buttressed by which kinds of research. For example, social-environmental approaches will, in virtue of their methodology, focus on social factors that are manipulable, and this makes them particularly amenable to generating suggestions for social interventions. Such research thus better serves the ends of those who are looking to implement...

We can understand objectivity, in the broadest sense of the term, as epistemic accountability to the real. Since at least the 1986 publication of Sandra Harding’s The Science Question in Feminism, so-called standpoint epistemologists have sought to build an understanding of such objectivity that does not essentially anchor it to a dislocated, ‘view from nowhere’ stance on the part of the judging subject. Instead, these theorists have argued that a proper understanding of objectivity must recognize that different agential standpoints offer different access to objective truths, with some standpoints holding better epistemic potential than others. As Harding puts it, standpoint epistemology calls for “a critical evaluation of which social situations tend to generate the most objective knowledge claims” so as to identify those standpoints that “produce empirically more accurate descriptions and theoretically richer explanations” (1991, 142, 149). Which standpoints enable the most objectivity with respect to a particular inquiry is, for the standpoint theorists, always an empirical at least as much as a conceptual question; it requires attention to the actual, material relationship between knowers, knowledge practices, and objects known. Standpoint epistemology was developed primarily by self-identiªed feminist epistemologists. Virtually all developments of standpoint episte-.

It is with great pleasure and a sense of urgency that we present this KIEJ double issue on ethical issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic. The sheer range of ethical concerns raised by the pandemic, combined with the speed with which these problems emerged, is staggering and unprecedented in our generation. We have tried to give space to papers that raise immediately pressing ethical issues that have not received much discussion in popular media. Topics range from fundamental questions about how we set up our public health infrastructure, to ethical issues in scientific communication and the translation of science into policy, to the impact of the pandemic on people with intellectual disabilities, to the ethics of...

This issue's lead article, Alison Reiheld's "Rightly or For Ill: The Ethics of Individual Memory," takes up a topic that is manifestly deserving of philosophical analysis, and routinely important in our private and public interactions, and yet as far as I know it has never before received systematic treatment: the ethics of memory. That is, Reiheld asks, when are we morally blameworthy or praiseworthy for remembering, forgetting, or encoding a memory in a specific way, and what are the ethical principles that should govern our practices of remembering and forgetting? As Reiheld points out, this set of questions only makes sense once we understand remembering and forgetting as constructive activities involving...

How can we conceptualize and promote agential choices in a complicated social world—one in which institutional, cultural, and marketing pressures convey values and norms that may not be in the best interest of individual patients? In this issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, Eric Racine and his colleagues explore this difficult question in the context of “preclinical” Alzheimer’s disease and complementary and alternative medicines. This is an especially murky and vexed context in which to think about patient agency, for at least two reasons. First...

This season’s issue includes two articles on a quickly expanding topic in bioethics: the ethics of enhancement. There are many kinds of enhancement both actual and imagined: we can enhance people’s physical, aesthetic, cognitive, or moral capacities, for instance; individuals might choose particular enhancements, parents might choose them for their future children, or states might institute them at the widespread population level; the enhancements might be technologically complex or take the form of low-tech education and training; they might be permanent genetic features or swappable technological prosthetics; and so forth. Many discussions of the ethics of enhancement are concerned..

This work seeks to take seriously the common philosophical claim that individual subjects are constituted by their social world. A detailed understanding this claim requires an analysis of what is involved in being a subject, of the nature of 'the social', and of the possible constitutive relationships between these. I begin with a critical history of the idea that subjects are norm-followers, and that social groups constitute individuals by demanding their conformity to norms. I trace this 'conformity theory' through the thought of Rousseau, Hegel, Mead, and Althusser, to its manifestation in contemporary continental and Anglo-American philosophy. I criticize this theory for being unable to sufficiently accommodate creativity and social resistance. I go on to develop an account of subjects as not only norm-followers but also sense-makers, who have identities in virtue of their engagement in narrative dramas. Such subjects are socially constituted in at least two ways: through their 'dialogical' interactions with particular others , and through their position in a public culture which determines what counts as a meaningful possibility for action. This understanding of subjectivity allows me to develop a new account of the nature of social groups--such as groups based on gender, class and nationality--which provides an alternative to the conformity theory. Social groups contribute to individual identities not only by imposing norms, but also by providing sense-making resources, in the form of literary and artistic traditions as well as the actual lives and dramas of members. My account allows us to understand creativity and social resistance as enabled by subjects' membership in social groups, and it reveals how the internal diversity of a group can strengthen rather than compromise its role in individual identities. I end with a discussion of the political implications of my work

This volume explores the relationship between Kant's aesthetic theory and his critical epistemology as articulated in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of the Power of Judgment. The essays, written specially for this volume, explore core elements of Kant's epistemology, such as his notions of discursive understanding, experience, and objective judgment. They also demonstrate a rich grasp of Kant's critical epistemology that enables a deeper understanding of his aesthetics. Collectively, the essays reveal that Kant's critical project, and the dialectics of aesthetics and cognition within it, is still relevant to contemporary debates in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and the nature of experience and objectivity. The book also yields important lessons about the ineliminable, yet problematic place of imagination, sensibility and aesthetic experience in perception and cognition.

Practical ethics is a peculiar field; it has no agreed-upon methods or foundations and takes a wide variety of forms. Its relationship to traditional “pure” philosophical ethics is contested and inconsistent. Since its beginnings, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics has been at the forefront of methodological reflections on the nature, grounding, and appropriate standards for practical ethics. Institute scholars such as Tom Beauchamp, Robert Veatch, and Henry Richardson have been among the most influential philosophers engaged in such metaethical conversations. Correspondingly, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal has hosted some of the most vigorous debates in this subfield. In this issue of the journal, we..

Many recent theorists have argued that the self is socially constituted, or “decentered” by its social world. With surprising consistency, and in various ways, this decentered self has been gendered feminine, by feminists and non‐feminists alike. In this paper I explore whether there is any special link between femininity and decenteredness. I distinguish between two different ways that the self might be decentered – by its position within a cultural order, or by its interactions and relations with particular others. I then ask whether either of these potential forms of decenteredness bear a specific connection to femininity, and I try to spell out several such connections that are suggested by contemporary feminist theoretical writings. I argue that most of these cannot be made plausible or coherent. However, I conclude that there are some senses in which feminine selves are especially decentered, although it appears that the link depends upon women's disempowered social position, and not upon anything to do with femininity as a distinctive identity.

Over the last several years, as cesarean deliveries have grown increasingly common, there has been a great deal of public and professional interest in the phenomenon of women 'choosing' to deliver by cesarean section in the absence of any specific medical indication. The issue has sparked intense conversation, as it raises questions about the nature of autonomy in birth. Whereas mainstream bioethical discourse is used to associating autonomy with having a large array of choices, this conception of autonomy does not seem adequate to capture concerns and intuitions that have a strong grip outside this discourse. An empirical and conceptual exploration of how delivery decisions ought to be negotiated must be guided by a rich understanding of women's agency and its placement within a complicated set of cultural meanings and pressures surrounding birth. It is too early to be 'for' or 'against' women's access to cesarean delivery in the absence of traditional medical indications – and indeed, a simple pro- or con- position is never going to do justice to the subtlety of the issue. The right question is not whether women ought to be allowed to choose their delivery approach but, rather, taking the value of women's autonomy in decision-making around birth as a given, what sorts of guidelines, practices, and social conditions will best promote and protect women's full inclusion in a safe and positive birth process.

The summer issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal highlights a range of controversial issues that will incite spirited disagreement amongst our readers. These five papers each take up complex contemporary ethical challenges and develop creative strategies to resolve them. Together they represent our continued commitment to publishing theoretically rigorous, empirically informed, and practically relevant work in bioethics.In “HPV and the Ethics of CDC’s Vaccination Requirements for Immigrants,” Mark Navin offers a timely defense of immunization mandates for migrants, extending the contentious debates taking place in the United States to the domain of immigration justice. Navin begins by critiquing the..

Several accounts of representation in cognitive systems have recently been proposed. These look for a theory that will establish how a representation comes to have a certain content, and how these representations are used by cognitive systems. Covariation accounts are unsatisfactory, as they make intelligent reasoning and cognition impossible. Cummins' interpretation-based account cannot explain the distinction between cognitive and non-cognitive systems, nor how certain cognitive representations appear to have intrinsic meaning. Cognitive systems can be defined as model-constructers, or systems that use information from interpreted models as arguments in the functions they execute. An account based on this definition solves many of the problems raised by the earlier proposals

In this book, Paul Redding argues both that Hegel’s thought is making a resurgence in some quarters of analytic philosophy, and that such a resurgence is well-deserved and will bear future fruit. He begins with Bertrand Russell’s story of analytic philosophy as born out of a rejection of Hegelian thought, and traces the development of an alternative path through analytic philosophy that moves through Frege, Wittgenstein, Sellars, and Evans, and finds its fullest contemporary form in Brandom and McDowell. This alternative path, he claims, has important historical roots in Hegel, although not in Russell’s caricatured version of him.Redding reads Hegel as the direct inheritor of Kant and Aristotle, especially with respect to logic, the role of the singular in thought, and the nature of evaluative judgment, and he argues that Hegel gives us the materials with which to overcome Sellars’ myth of the given productively. He also gives extended readings of Hegel’s principle of determinate negation and rejection of the principle of non-contradiction, as well as of the ontology of Hegelian Spirit as the unity of substance and subject, all designed to reveal these components of Hegelian thought as productive resources for analytic philosophers

This quarter’s issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal is unusual, because it hosts a symposium focused Brian Earp’s provocative and groundbreaking article, “Between Moral Relativism and Moral Hypocrisy: Reframing the Debate on ‘FGM.’” Along with Earp’s article, we are presenting critical responses by Richard Shweder, Robert Darby, and Jamie Nelson. Earp tackles the ethics of female genital cutting or “mutilation”. This is a difficult topic that brings on board gender inequity, the integrity of the body, the value of cultural traditions, sexuality, colonialism, ethnocentrism, and other fraught axes of reflection. Earp argues against the common view that all...

Mothers serve as an important layer of the health-care system, with special responsi-bilities to care for the health of families and nations. In our social discourse, we tend to treat maternal “choices” as though they were morally and causally Self-contained units of influence with primary control over children's health. In this essay, I use infant feeding as a lens for examining the ethical contours of mothers’ caretaking practices and responsibilities, as they are situated within cultural meanings and institutional pressures. I give a close critical reading of the content and strategy of the new breastfeeding advocacy campaign sponsored by the United States Department of Health and Human Services. I argue that the campaign is unlikely to substantially increase breastfeeding rates, unresponsive and even hostile to many women's actual concerns about breastfeeding, and well positioned to produce shame and compromise agency among the women it targets.