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132Confronting SilencesTapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society 6 (1): 1-5. 2023.This open-access editorial discusses confronting silences in different disciplinary contexts, such as science and technology studies, cultural anthropology, and philosophy. It has a focus on race and concludes with thoughts about Indigenous expertise, the Australian referendum on the Indigenous Voice, to parliament, and racism.
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29Surviving EugenicsMoving Images Distribution. 2015.This film is a 44-minute documentary film based around the stories of five eugenics survivor from the province of Alberta, Canada, made as part of the Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada project.
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237Doing Philosophy: Beyond Books and ClassroomsJournal of Philosophy in Schools 10 (2): 47-64. 2023.Philosophy in community projects provide powerful, immersive introductions to philosophical thinking for both children and tertiary students. Such introductions can jumpstart transformative learning as well as diversify who seeks out philosophy in the longer term, both in schools and in universities. Using survey responses from teachers, parents, participants, staff, and volunteers of two such programs – Eurekamp Oz! and philosothons – we show how participants find value in engaging in communit…Read more
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1388Transdisciplinary Philosophy of Science: Meeting the Challenge of Indigenous ExpertisePhilosophy of Science 1. 2023.Transdisciplinary research knits together knowledge from diverse epistemic communities in addressing social-environmental challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate crises, food insecurity, and public health. This paper reflects on the roles of philosophy of science in transdisciplinary research while focusing on Indigenous and other subaltern forms of knowledge. We offer a critical assessment of demarcationist approaches in philosophy of science and outline a constructive alternative of tra…Read more
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523Eugenic family studiesEugenic Archives. 2014.This short article provides an overview of the series of eugenic family studies that began in the 1870s in the United States and that were influential in establishing eugenics as a 20th-century movement and ideology.
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547Ethnobiology, the Ontological Turn, and Human SocialityJournal of Ethnobiology 43 (3): 198-207. 2023.The ontological turn (OT) is a loose cluster of theoretical approaches within cultural anthropology that advocates a synthetic, overarching way forward for ethnographically oriented cultural anthropology. We argue that in order to contribute substantively to ethnobiology the OT needs to distance itself from a long-standing tradition of thinking within ethnography that assumes some kind of fundamental divide between the natural and the social sciences. This distancing seems especially unlikely in…Read more
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9IndividualismIn Stephen P. Stich & Ted A. Warfield (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell. 2003.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Getting to Twin Earth: What's in the Head? The Cognitive Science Gesture Functionalism, Physicalism, and Individualism The Appeal to Causal Powers Externalism and Metaphysics The Debate Over Marr's Theory of Vision Exploitative Representation and Wide Computationalism Narrow Content and Marr's Theory Individualism and the Problem of Self‐knowledge.
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268Realism, Essence, and Kind: Resuscitating Species Essentialism?In Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays, . pp. 187-207. 1999.This paper offers an overview of "the species problem", arguing for a view of species as homeostatic property cluster kinds, positioning the resulting form of realism about species as an alternative to the claim that species are individuals and pluralistic views of species. It draws on taxonomic practice in the neurosciences, especially of neural crest cells and retinal ganglion cells, to motivate both the rejection of the species-as-individuals thesis and species pluralism.
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308Philosophical Silences: Race, Gender, Disability, and Philosophical PracticeJournal of Philosophy of Education 57 (4): 1004-1024. 2023.Who is recognised as a philosopher and what counts as philosophy influence both the content of a philosophical education and academic philosophy’s continuing demographic skew. The “philosophical who” and the “philosophical what” themselves are a partial function of matters that have been passed over in collective silence, even if that now feels to some like a silence belonging to the distant past. This paper discusses some philosophical silences regarding race, gender, and disability in the co…Read more
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32Extended artistic appreciationBehavioral and Brain Sciences 36 (2): 162-163. 2013.I propose that in at least some cases, objects of artistic appreciation are best thought of not simply as causes of artistic appreciation, but as parts of the cognitive machinery that drives aesthetic appreciation. In effect, this is to say that aesthetic appreciation operates via extended cognitive systems
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443Kinmaking, Progeneration, and EthnographyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science 91 (C): 77-85. 2022.Philosophers of biology and biologists themselves for the most part assume that the concept of kin is progenerative: what makes two individuals kin is a direct or indirect function of reproduction. Derivatively, kinship might likewise be presumed to be progenerative in nature. Yet a prominent view of kinship in contemporary cultural anthropology is a kind of constructivism or performativism that rejects such progenerativist views. This paper critically examines an influential line of thinking…Read more
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357The Art of Medicine: From small beginnings: to build an anti-eugenic futureThe Lancet 10339 (399): 1934-1935. 2022.Short overview of the From Small Beginnings Project and its relevance for resisting eugenics in contemporary society.
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485Why kinship is progeneratively constrained: Extending anthropologySynthese 200 (2): 1-20. 2022.The conceptualisation of kinship and its study remain contested within anthropology. This paper draws on recent cognitive science, developmental cognitive psychology, and the philosophy of science to offer a novel argument for a view of kinship as progeneratively or reproductively constrained. I shall argue that kinship involves a form of extended cognition that incorporates progenerative facts, going on to show how the resulting articulation of kinship’s progenerative nature can be readily expr…Read more
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307How to Think with the Global South. Essay Review of Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science, Routledge, 2021. (review)Philosophy of Science 90 (1): 209-217. 2023.Extended Essay Review of the 26 chapters in the collection Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science, Routledge, 2021.
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593Eugenics OffendedMonash Bioethics Review 39 (2): 169-176. 2021.This commentary continues an exchange on eugenics in Monash Bioethics Review between Anomaly (2018), Wilson (2019), and Veit, Anomaly, Agar, Singer, Fleischman, and Minerva (2021). The eponymous question, “Can ‘Eugenics’ be Defended?”, is multiply ambiguous and does not receive a clear answer from Veit et al.. Despite their stated desire to move beyond mere semantics to matters of substance, Veit et al. concentrate on several uses of the term “eugenics” that pull in opposite directions. I arg…Read more
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883Rethinking Incest Avoidance: Beyond the Disciplinary Groove of Culture-First ViewsBiological Theory 16 (3): 162-175. 2021.The Westermarck Effect posits that intimate association during childhood promotes human incest avoidance. In previous work, I articulated and defended a version of the Westermarck Effect by developing a phylogenetic argument that has purchase within primatology but that has had more limited appeal for cultural anthropologists due to their commitment to conventionalist or culture-first accounts of incest avoidance. Here I look to advance the discussion of incest and incest avoidance beyond cultur…Read more
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457This letter was submitted to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, Government of Canada, on 29th January, 2021, as final debate over Bill C-7 was being undertaken in the Senate regarding MAiD and the strong opposition to the legislation expressed across the Canadian disability community. It draws on our individual and joint work on eugenics, well-being, and disability.
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816Eugenics, Disability, and BioethicsIn Joel Michael Reynolds & Christine Wieseler (eds.), The Disability Bioethics Reader, Routledge. pp. 21-29. 2022.This paper begins by saying enough about eugenics to explain why disability is central to eugenics (section 2), then elaborates on why cognitive disability has played and continues to play a special role in eugenics and in thinking about moral status (section 3) before identifying three reasons why eugenics remains a live issue in contemporary bioethics (section 4). After a reminder of the connections between Nazi eugenics, medicine, and bioethics (section 5), it returns to take up two more spe…Read more
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249Interrogating Incoherence and Prospects for a Trans-Positive PsychiatryAustralasian Philosophical Review. forthcoming.Invited commentary on Nicole A. Vincent and Emma A. Jane, “Interrogating Incongruence: Conceptual and Normative Problems with ICD-11’s and DSM-5’s Diagnostic Categories for Transgender People” Australasian Philosophical Review, in press. The core of Vincent and Jane’s Interrogating Incongruence is critical of the appeal to the concept of incongruence in DSM-5 and ICD-11 characterisations of trans people, a critique taken to be ground-clearing for more trans-positive, psychiatrically-infused medi…Read more
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393Continuing After Species: An AfterwordIn John S. Wilkins, Igor Pavlinov & Frank Zachos (eds.), Species Problems and Beyond: Contemporary Issues in Philosophy and Practice, Routledge. pp. 343-353. 2022.This afterword to Species and Beyond provides some reflections on species, with special attention to what I think the most significant developments have been in the thinking of biologists and philosophers working on species over the past 25 years, as well as some bad jokes.
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2788Dehumanization, Disability, and EugenicsIn Maria Kronfeldner (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, Routledge. pp. 173-186. 2021.This paper explores the relationship between eugenics, disability, and dehumanization, with a focus on forms of eugenics beyond Nazi eugenics.
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237Looking Back to Look Forward: Disability, Philosophers, and Activism.Diversity and Inclusion Section, APA Blog. 2020.How have and how might philosophers contribute to linking disability and activism in these peri-COVID-19 times, especially in forms of public engagement that go beyond podcasted talks and articles aimed at a public audience? How do we harness philosophical thinking to contribute positively to those living with disability whose vulnerabilities are heightened by this pandemic and the ableism highlighted by collective responses to it?
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353The Cognitive Sciences: A comment on 6 reviews of The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive SciencesArtificial Intelligence 130 (2): 223-229. 2001.As the pluralization in the title of MITECS suggests, and as many reviewers have noted, the stance that we adopted as general editors for this project was ecumenical. We were particularly concerned to generate a volume whose range of topics and perspectives indicated that “cognitive science” was different things to different groups of researchers, and that many even fundamental questions remain open after at least four decades of various interdisciplinary ventures. Implicit in this view is a war…Read more
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279Review of Eva Kittay, Learning from My Daughter: The Value and Care of Disabled Minds (Oxford 2018) (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2020. 2020.This is a 2000-word review of Eva Kittay's recent book on cognitive disability.
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3206Eugenics UndefendedMonash Bioethics Review 37 (1-2): 68-75. 2019.This is a critical response to "Defending Eugenics", published in MBR in 2018.
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1341PhilosophyIn Robert A. Wilson & Frank C. Keil (eds.), MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, . 1999.This is an introduction to the 80 articles on philosophy in MITECS.
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356Explaining ExplanationIn Robert A. Frank C. And Wilson Keil (ed.), Explanation and Cognition. pp. 1-18. 2000.It is not a particularly hard thing to want or seek explanations. In fact, explanations seem to be a large and natural part of our cognitive lives. Children ask why and how questions very early in development and seem genuinely to want some sort of answer, despite our often being poorly equipped to provide them at the appropriate level of sophistication and detail. We seek and receive explanations in every sphere of our adult lives, whether it be to understand why a friendship has foundered, wh…Read more
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159MovingAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 66 (2). 1988.This article discusses Jennifer Hornsby's account of action in her *Actions*, together with Brian O'Shaughnessy's in *The Will*.
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437Prologue: Eugenics and its StudyIn Frank Stahnisch & Erna Kurbegovic (eds.), Exploring the Relationship of Eugenics and Psychiatry: Canadian and Trans-Atlantic Perspectives 1905 – 1972, Athabasca University Press. 2020.This is the prologue to a collection of essays on eugenics and psychiatry.
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