This dissertation explores the bioethical construction of pregnancy as site of risk and argues that pregnancy is best characterised as sitting in a constant state of tension, as simultaneously healthy-normal-natural and risky. This tension and how it is acknowledged or ignored is a significant factor in many ethical issues centered upon pregnancy. Using a genealogical analysis, this study identifies features of the social discourse around pregnancy that impede clinical research during pregnancy despite both policy changes and educational campaigns emphasising the benefits and importance of such research. The first major finding of the project is the identification of stigma about pregnancy and pharmaceuticals arising out of the mid twentieth century pharmaceutical scandals. This stigma continues to distort the perception of risk during pregnancy, such that the risk of inaction during pregnancy is significantly undervalued and the risk of actions—particularly pharmaceutical interventions—is overestimated. This is related to both the exclusion of pregnant women from pharmaceutical research, and an accompanying tendency towards medical over-intervention in childbirth. The second major finding is how narratives of health and risk construct pregnancy as women’s initiation into ‘responsible motherhood’ and the corresponding surveillance, pressures and expectations that align with the narrative. Pregnant women’s desire to act in their child’s best interest and the knowledge that not only acting or choosing ‘wrong’ may harm their child, make women less inclined to both take risks and/or act outside of conventional norm. This thesis recommends that successful, stakeholder education needs to widen to include a broader range of issues including the effect of stigma upon risk perception, the broader bias towards inaction, and the normative strength of social narratives of good mothering and maternal responsibility. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This dissertation explores the idea of pregnancy as site of risk. It argues that pregnancy is best characterised as a state that is simultaneously healthy and at risk. The tension between these two ways of understanding pregnancy is central to many ethical issues related to pregnancy. This study identifies ideas about pregnancy that impede clinical research during pregnancy. The first major finding of the project is the identification of stigma about pregnancy and pharmaceuticals arising out of the mid twentieth century pharmaceutical scandals. The second major finding is how ideas of health and risk construct pregnancy as women’s initiation into ‘responsible motherhood’ and the corresponding surveillance, pressures and expectations that align with the narrative. This thesis recommends that stakeholder education needs to include a broader range of issues including the effect of stigma, the bias towards inaction, and the role of social narratives of good mothering and maternal responsibility.

This dissertation examines humor as a situated practice of reappropriation and transformation undertaken by a subject within a social world. I bring together insights from humor studies, philosophy of humor, and feminist philosophy (especially feminist continental philosophy) to introduce the concept of humorwork as an unstable political practice of reappropriating and transforming existing images, speech, and situations. I argue that humorwork is an unstable politics because the practice of reappropriation and transformation often exceeds the intentions of the subject practicing humor, taking on a continued life beyond the humorist’s intentions. By focusing on the practice of humor, the subject who produces it, their social and political world, the affects circulated through political humor, and the politics of popular and scholarly discourse about humor, I push against a reductive, depoliticized concept of humor and the trivializing gesture of “it’s just a joke.” Instead, I argue that humorists are responsible and connected to (if not always blameable) for the social and political life of their humorwork, despite the unstable and unpredictable uptake of humor against a humorist’s intentions.

“Spaces of Visibility and Identity” is an exploration on how being immersed in constant visibility has an effect on an individual’s identity. Visibility is not a narrow term meant to signify solely observation; rather, visibility is the state of existing within a world that does not allow for total isolation. To exist within the world is to be visible to others, and this visibility is inescapable. Visibility can be seen as a presentation or a disclosure of oneself to other beings. Existing within the world inevitably implies that one is presenting oneself to others, whether or not the presentation is deliberate. I will be going over two different spaces of visibility throughout this paper: “space of surveillance” and “space of appearance.” The “space of surveillance,” discussed by Michel Foucault, is the space where normative standards of identity are created through discursive acts. This space is meant to control, coerce, and normalize. The “space of surveillance” is important for an exploration of identity formation, because it cannot be ignored that each individual is disclosing themselves in the context of a pre-existing world. This ‘pre-existing world’ is full of normative standards that affect identity formation, but it does not have to ultimately determine an identity. The “space of appearance,” as articulated by Hannah Arendt, is meant to be a supplement to the dogmatic normative standards created within a “space of surveillance.” The “space of appearance” gives those that do not, or do not want to, adhere to the normative standards created by the “space of surveillance” a space to disclose an identity that can challenge and rearticulate what is consider normal or culturally intelligible in the first place. The “space of appearance” is not meant to replace the “space of surveillance;” rather, it has the “space of surveillance” as a contextual background that can be challenged. I have found that both spaces of visibility are necessary for an exploration on identity formation, and I have used gender identity as a concrete example to exemplify both spaces.

Appeals to practices are common the humanities and social sciences. They hold the potential to explain interesting or compelling similarities, insofar as similarities are distributed within a community or group. Why is it that people who fall under the same category, whether men, women, Americans, baseball players, Buddhists, feminists, white people, or others, have interesting similarities, such as similar beliefs, actions, thoughts, foibles, and failings? One attractive answer is that they engage in the same practices. They do the same things, perhaps as a result of doing things at the same site or setting, or perhaps as a result of being raised in a similar way among members of the same group. In the humanities, appeals to practices often serve as a move to point out diversity among different communities or diversity within the same community. Communities are distinct from one another in part because their members do different things or do things in different ways. The distinct and varied ways in which different communities enact social norms or formulate law, state institutions, and public policy might be explicable in part by the different practices their members are socialized into. Appeals to practices hold the promise of explaining these differences in terms of the different background practices of the groups, cultivated through a kind of cultural isolation or sense of collective identity. In the social sciences, appeals to practices have played a central role in fundamental theorizing and theory building. Appeals to practices in the social sciences are often much more systematic and theoretical, forming the core of the systematic theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens in Anthropology and Sociology. Practice theory has thus become a growth industry in social scientific investigation, offering the promise of a central object of investigation that explains both unity and difference within and across communities and groups. But it is unclear just what practices are and what role, both ontological and explanatory, that practices are supposed to play. The term `practices' is used to pick out a wide range of things, and its relation to other terms, from `tradition' or `paradigm' to `framework' or `presupposition', is unclear. Practices are posited as ubiquitous, yet they are difficult to isolate and pin down. We are all said to participate in them, but they remain hidden. Their role, whether causal, logical, or hermeneutical, remains mysterious. After locating the historical origins of appeals to practices in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger, my dissertation uses Stephen Turner's broad and systematic critique of appeals to practices to develop a new type of account. My account is a phenomenological account that treats practices as human doings that show up to people in material and social environments and make themselves available for specific responses in those environments. I argue that a phenomenological account is an effective alternative to accounts that treat practices as either shared objects with properties or shared and implicit presuppositions. I use a phenomenological account of practices to treat important debates in feminist philosophy and the philosophy of the social sciences, particularly debates over pornography's subordination of women and the classification of mental disorders in psychiatry.

À la fin du XIXe siècle, les premières femmes arrivent à l’Université comme étudiantes dans les domaines traditionnellement attribués aux hommes. Elles sont devenues le début du processus de féminisation d’une institution avec une forte personnalité masculine, crée au Moyen Age et renforcée grâce à l’Humanisme et l’Illustration. Malgré les conceptions misogynes contre la capacité intellectuelle des femmes, pendant le XXe et le XXIe siècle elles sont devenues professeurs et même fonctionnaires administratives, directrices et doyens au sein de l’institution universitaire. Mais la participation des femmes à l’Université n’est pas accidentelle ou par hasard, c’est le produit de la relation entre l’évolution historique de l’éducation des femmes, l’évolution philosophique de la pensée féministe et l’évolution institutionnelle de la même université. La présente thèse cherche la vérification des relations de ces trois éléments dans la participation académique et administrative des femmes à l’Université de Montpellier. / At the end of the XIX century, the firs women arrive to the University like students in the domains that traditionally were attributed to men. These women become the beginning of the feminisation process of one institution with a strong masculine personality, created at the Middle Ages and reinforced during the Humanism and the Enlightenment. Despite all the misogynous conceptions about the intellectual capacity of women they become professors and even administrative officers, directors and deans within this institution. But this participation of women at the University it’s not accidental, it is the product of the relation between the historic evolution of women’s education, the philosophical evolution of feminism and the institutional evolution of the University itself. This thesis seeks for the verification of the relation of these three elements at the academic and administrative participation of women at the University of Montpellier.

This dissertation considers the “strategic naturalism” of Sandra Harding’s standpoint theory in the philosophy of science, and it should be applied to epistemology. Strategic naturalism stipulates that all elements of inquiry are historically and culturally situated, and thereby subject to critical reflection, analysis, and revision. Allegiance to naturalism is de rigueur, yet there is no clear agreement on the term’s meaning. Harding’s standpoint theory reads the lack of definition as indicative of its generative possibilities for epistemic progress. The driving question is why Harding’s approach has not been considered a viable candidate for determining progress in epistemology. Beyond the fact that epistemic labor, in its scientific and non-scientific forms, is a social activity, Harding’s approach recognizes that it is situated in and reinforced by a broader network of social institutions, beliefs, and practices. Harding’s strategic naturalism would invigorate epistemology by increasing the awareness, acceptance, and respect for epistemic difference and drive epistemic progress that not only acknowledges pluralistic ways of knowing but also gives a more accurate account of the knowing subject. Chapter one is a discussion of non-naturalized epistemology and Quinean Naturalized Epistemology (QNE), framed by Harding’s historical account of the related projects of modern epistemology and science. This chapter highlights two important issues. The first issue is that epistemology is more complex than the story Quine offers. The second, and decisive issue is that the shared history of modern epistemology and science demonstrates the influence of social and cultural values on that history, and the long shadows they cast on naturalism debates in epistemology, science, and philosophy of science. Chapter two is an exegetical account of the origins of and motivations for critical feminist responses to both the received epistemological theory and QNE discussed in chapter one. The justifications for the feminist critiques and the problematic issues that motivate these critiques provide the backdrop for the initial, positive response to QNE, as well as their disenchantment with Quine’s influential proposal. Ultimately, feminist epistemologists and philosophers of science assess QNE as not naturalized enough to address their concerns. Chapter three considers several feminist standpoint theories to show that they are more naturalistic and better at providing a multi-faceted theory that is based on actual scientific practice, and re-introduces social values and interests as having a positive influence on epistemology and philosophies of science. This chapter shows that given the closely shared histories and assumptions of modern epistemology and science, FSE would be a viable resource for a more naturalistic epistemology. The final chapter argues that the project of naturalizing epistemology could incorporate FSE insights and the positive role FSE’s controversiality would play in naturalizing epistemology and philosophies of science. If we are to take seriously the concept of situatedness and what that entails, then naturalism must also be situated, and revisited with a critical and reflective eye. The implications on both our epistemic theories and our accounts of what kinds of knowing subject we are would foster epistemic progress.

Sen and Nussbaum generate very different degrees of obligation for the affluent under their theories of justice, despite each of them deriving their theory of justice from capability as a metric for quality of life. On one hand, Sen’s account of obligation seems very weak, while Nussbaum’s seems overwhelmingly robust. I argue that the sufficient/decisivereasons framework as put forth by philosopher Derek Parfit captures the nuances of their extremely different accounts of obligation. Further, I argue that this framework convincingly demonstrates that the accounts of obligation that Sen and Nussbaum offer in each of their versions of the capability approach are unsatisfying, as each approach occupies such extremes that they are unreasonable. In spite of this, supplementing the capability approach with a different and perhaps more centrist account of obligation can make the capability approach a more consistent and appealing theory of justice. To this end, I appropriate Thomas Pogge’s account of obligation.

Against Sally Haslanger’s influential position, I argue that gender is not needed to ensure the just treatment of sexually differentiated human bodies. Gender is only needed if the just treatment of socially important sexual differences is most effectively realized through the use of gender terms, such as “woman” or “man.” In light of this aforementioned condition, I assess the following phenomena: sex differences relevant to health and medicine, reproduction, and childcare. In all of these cases, compared to gender terms, non-gender terms, such as “female,” “pregnant person,” or “lactating person,” more simply and accurately capture the morally relevant features of socially important sexually specific phenomena. For this reason, I find that the gender is not needed for justice.

Morality of abortion is a topic that tends to prompt heated politic debates. Setting politics aside, it is useful for one to contemplate certain questions if they wish to understand the complex moral dilemmas which abortion poses. One can philosophize and grapple with some of the following questions: Does the human embryo have moral status? Is the human embryo a person? Is it owed the same rights to life protection that a human baby or human adult have? Do we have a strong reason not to harm it? These questions often do not have definitive yes or no answers which apply universally to all cases yet; exploring them will allow one to gain a better understanding of one’s position on the issue of morality of abortion. If one’s intuition tells them that it is morally wrong or morally permissible to kill an early human embryo therefore, ending its potential to experience a future life similar to ours, grappling with these philosophical questions pertaining to the ethics of killing will provide insight that will either validate or contradict these intuitions. This thesis examines morality of abortion by analyzing theories proposed by Don Marquis and Elizabeth Harman in effort to get a sense of what characteristics are necessary for an entity to experience significant levels of harm, be granted moral status and have a strong reason not to be killed. These characteristics help one determine whether or not it is morally permissible to end the life of a developing human organism such as a human embryo.

Ectogenesis has been billed a revolutionary new advancement in technology that could have a profound impact in the area of human reproduction. My aim is to investigate the supposed benefits and objections to the development of human ectogenesis with a particular focus on potential consequences on the abortion debate and reproductive equality between men and women. I will conclude that arguments for human ectogenesis are not well supported and there fails to be a strong motivation to develop it further, other than as advancement to the area of providing better neonatal care for premature babies.