PEA Soup

Open Letter Regarding Compensation for Bone Marrow Cell Donation

I hope the Soupers won't mind a bit of public philosophy! http://donationethics.com

Arguably, the jury is still out regarding the ethics of compensation for organ donation (and even more so for allowing organ purchase). Legally speaking, in the United States such compensation is outlawed under 1984's National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA). New technology has recently altered the relevant legal landscape. It is now possible to collect bone marrow stem cells for transplantation, not through the traditional, invasive procedure of inserting a needle into the donor's marrow itself, but by giving the donor a drug that stimulates and releases stem cells into the surrounding blood, where it can be collected through something akin to a traditional blood donation procedure ("aphoresis") . In Flynn v. Holder, it was ruled that given this procedure's similarity to blood and plasma donation, for which compensation is legal, NOTA does not apply. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is proposing an amendment to NOTA that would effectively prohibit compensation for donation through aphoresis. My friend and colleague, Peter Jaworski, has written an open letter (with input from myself and others) to HHS opposing this amendment. He, myself, and the others who signed the letter agree that there is no legitimate ethical basis for the amendment. Importantly, I think even many of those who are wary of compensation for organ donation generally should share this view. Most if not all of the ethical concerns that attach to (e.g.) kidney markets simply do not apply here. 

Peter is inviting other ethicists to sign the letter. If you're interested, please check out the website (which I'm managing). If you'd like to add your name, you can contact Peter or myself. And, of course, comments are welcome, here or via email.

Populus: A Hopefully-Soon-to-Be Journal with Crowd-Sourced Peer Review

As has been widely discussed both here (at least a couple of times) and elsewhere, there are numerous problems with traditional publishing models. Some of these have been admirably addressed by the move to open access journals like Philosophers' Imprint and Ergo. For the most part, however, these journals have simply exported the traditional publishing process to the Internet. I think it's time we try something genuinely new. To that end, I've put together a prospectus for a new project, Populus, that will be both a curated archive (think (the non-horrific parts of) Reddit meets PhilPapers) and a philosophy journal with an experimental crowd-source peer review process. I am coming to you, Soupers, because:

• I'm looking for feedback on the project itself and/or its expression through the prospectus. 
• I'm hoping those of you who support the project, or at least think it's worth a go, will help me spread the word.
• I'm looking for help.
  • I'd like to put together an editorial board whose association with the project will boost its credibility. I anticipate this' requiring little actual work. If you are a famous person who likes my idea and would like to get on board, that would be great.
  • This project will likely require some funding. I'm looking for suggestions for sources.
  • I need people with web development or other relevant technical experience who would like to donate (or, if we get funding, be paid for) their time. 
  • I'm looking for people who want to help or get involved in any other way, especially ones with the general entrepreneurial skills I lack. 

Here that's link one more time: Populus Prospectus

Call for Applications: Junior Faculty Manuscript Workshop

The Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics (GISME), located in Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, invites applications for the 2015 Junior Faculty Manuscript Workshop. The aim of the workshop is to provide critical feedback to junior scholars (i.e., junior faculty members, postdocs, or non-tenure-track professors) who are working on book-length manuscripts that address important normative issues related to the functioning of contemporary market societies.

Normative Necessity and Normative Knowledge

I hope Ralph won't mind if I piggyback on his post, but I'm just getting started on a paper that's partly about normative necessity, and I thought I'd get the old juices flowing with some PEA Soup discussion. (Plus it's February and my name starts with a D!)

Philosophical Trajectories Official Launch

I am pleased to announce the official launch of Philosophical Trajectories, a data-collection project dedicated to helping philosophers learn from each other's publishing experiences. Many thanks to those of you who helped with the beta testing. I encourage everyone to participate; the more data we collect, the more useful the site will become. If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please don't hesitate to email me.

New Project Beta Test

I am starting a new project to help philosophers share and learn from each other's publishing experiences. The project combines some of the goals of my (essentially defunct) Venue Poll project with ideas I got from using Andrew Cullison's fantastic Journal Surveys site. The project is currently in beta, and I'm asking people to check out the site, play with the survey, and provide feedback. All data collected during the beta is for testing purposes and will be deleted when the site officially goes live, at which point I encourage people to return and take the survey for real. In addition to looking for general feedback, I ask about a specific issue below the fold. 

Philosophical Trajectories [http://personal.bgsu.edu/~faracid/pt.html]

The Good vs. The Desirable

I was just reading the bit of Gibbard's Thinking How to Live where he talks extensively about the good and the desirable—specifically, about its being a conceptual truth that they are one in the same. I know that this is a common line people take, and I'm curious how many of you agree with it, because I'm not entirely convinced.

A New Blog: The Venue Poll

Thanks to everyone who offered feedback on my new blog ideas. After considering the comments, I have decided to forge ahead with one of the projects: The Venue Poll. This will be a blog dedicated to helping Philosophers get feedback on the best potential venues for their work. The blog is now live, though publication of abstracts will be delayed a week or two to make time for ironing out any kinks and getting a stockpile of abstracts from people. If you are interested in submitting, commenting, offering further feedback on the blog's format, or just seeing what this is all about, please head over to:

http://thevenuepoll.blogspot.com

I hope others will be as excited about this project as I am.

Feedback on Two (Potential) New Blogs

I'm thinking of starting two new blogs. Rather than just jumping in and creating them, I thought I would turn to the folks here at PEA Soup to get some feedback. I am interested, first, in feedback on whether these blogs are good ideas. This includes both the question of whether there are independent reasons to (not) have such blogs as well as the question of whether people would actually read and/or contribute to these blogs (i.e., whether I would be wasting my time creating them). Assuming one or both of these blogs is a good idea, I'm also looking for more specific feedback concerning how they should be set up.

Metaethics Flowchart

I am teaching a graduate-level metaethics survey course this semester and would like to give my students a flowchart to help them keep track of the field. I've seen a couple around but none were quite what I was looking for. So I'm making my own. I'm posting it here in the hopes that (selfishly) I get feedback and (somewhat less selfishly) others will be able to make use of it. The current draft is here:

http://filebox.vt.edu/users/faraci/metaethics.pdf