Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal最新文献

This essay applies an ethical analysis of the Jewish religious rite of hatafat dam brit to the ongoing debate on child genital cutting. Recent scholarship on the ethical and legal status of "de minimis" or "symbolic" involuntary genital cutting practices features disagreement over what, if anything, grounds their wrongfulness given that they are (relatively) physically superficial. Hatafat dam brit ("the drawing of covenantal blood") is even less physically intrusive than the most minor of the other practices commonly debated (e.g., "ritual nicking" of the vulva) yet still, as I will show, elicits moral concern-including from within the practicing religious community. As a type of genital cutting ritual that does not, in fact, modify the body, hatafat dam brit challenges those on both sides of the debate to clarify the basis for their moral objection or approval. I argue that debates about involuntary genital cutting of minors should focus on the ethics of these practices considered as (sexually) embodied interpersonal interactions, rather than as body modifications.

Theories of neurodivergence which describe divergent neurotypes as pathological, that is, as stemming from a dysfunction, represent the status quo for many institutions and caregivers. I seek to disrupt the "pathology paradigm" through a critique of the relevant notions of "function" and "dysfunction" and an examination of some oppressive therapeutic interventions promoted by the pathology paradigm. I advance an alternative analysis of neurodivergence, the "lack of fit" analysis, which aims to examine the particular ways that neurodivergent people experience a lack of fit with their environments. The "lack of fit" analysis is intended to promote self-determination through the development of adaptive relationships and collaborative interventions.

The neurodiversity movement has long advocated for "Nothing about us without us" or the necessity of including neurominoritized people, such as Autistics, in the production of public policies, social discourses, academic knowledge, and scientific research about neurominoritized profiles, including autism. Similarly, the scientific and academic communities are increasingly recognizing the importance for participatory research to be not only ethical but also emancipatory. Yet the call for "Nothing about us without us" is still too often ignored, inaccurately understood, or imperfectly applied, in ways that can be jarring and disrespectful at best, and violent and traumatic at worst. Drawing on my experience as an Autistic woman, academic, and self-advocate who has participated in studies on autism, I develop a proposal for how the principle of "Nothing about us without us," understood as reclaiming epistemic authority and agency, might best be implemented in emancipatory research with Autistic adults. Specifically, I turn to two frameworks that have so far been developed independently of each other, yet that prove to be particularly fruitful when used together in this context: namely, the frameworks of design justice and of epistemic injustice. Drawing on both frameworks, I identify four principles of justice so that participatory autism research can be conducted in both an ethical and an emancipatory manner that heeds the neurodiversity movement's call for "Nothing about us without us" - namely, the principles of thorough involvement, of nonnormative communication, of trust-building, and of accountability.

Scientists have to make trade-offs between different types of error risks when making methodological decisions. It is now widely recognized (and not disputed in this article) that in doing so they must consider how serious the consequences of each error would be. The fact that they must also consider the potential benefits of getting it right is not equally recognized (and explicitly rejected by Heather Douglas). In this article, I argue that scientists need to do both when managing epistemic risks. At the same time, I acknowledge that in some cases it intuitively seems as if considering the consequences of possible errors carries greater moral weight. I explain this intuition by arguing that in these cases the contrast between the seriousness of mistakes and the benefits of getting it right can be linked to the moral asymmetry between action and omission. I examine various reasons that might justify a stronger weighting of the consideration of the consequences of errors in light of the action-omission asymmetry. I conclude that for all but some exceptional cases, such asymmetrical consideration is not called for.

Recently, neurodiversity scholars published a letter to the editor of Autism arguing that Judy Singer should not be cited as coiner of neurodiversity; rather, the term should be attributed to earlier neurodiverse forums online. I make a similar argument for neuroqueer. Neuroqueer is typically attributed to one of the letter's authors: Nick Walker (2015). Archival information, however, demonstrates that the term was developed in neuroqueer community conversations on the NeuroQueer blog (2013-2016) and, even earlier, on the alt.support. autism Usenet forum (2003). Walker's claim to coinage, then, obscures the collective origins of the concept and erases neuroqueer people from their own story. In retracing these historiographical steps, I pursue two theoretical questions. First, what can this broader history illuminate about the concept, theory, and practice of neuroqueer? Second, what might an explicitly neuroqueer citation politics look like? If not a single-origin story, then what?

COVID-19 elicited a rapid emergence of new mutual aid networks in the US, but the practices of these networks are understudied. Using qualitative methods, we explored the empirical ethics guiding US-based mutual aid networks' activities, and assessed the alignment between principles and practices as networks mobilized to meet community needs during 2020-21. We conducted in-depth interviews with 15 mutual aid group organizers and supplemented these with secondary source materials on mutual aid activities and participant observation of mutual aid organizing efforts. We analyzed participants' practices in relation to key mutual aid principles as defined in the literature: 1) solidarity not charity; 2) non-hierarchical organizational structures; 3) equity in decision-making; and 4) political engagement. Our data also yielded a fifth principle, "mutuality," essential to networks' approaches but distinct from anarchist conceptions of mutualism. While mutual aid networks were heavily invested in these ethical principles, they struggled to achieve them in practice. These findings underscore the importance of mutual aid praxis as an intersection between ethical principles and practices, and the challenges that contemporary, and often new, mutual aid networks responding to COVID-19 face in developing praxis during a period of prolonged crisis. We develop a theory-of-change model that illuminates both the opportunities and the potential pitfalls of mutual aid work in the context of structural inequities, and shows how communities can achieve justice-oriented mutual aid praxis in current and future crises.