Is disgust morally valuable? The answer to that question turns, in large part, on what we can do to shape disgust for the better. But this cultivation question has received surprisingly little attention in philosophical debates. To address this deficiency, this article examines empirical work on disgust and emotion regulation. This research reveals that while we can exert some control over how we experience disgust, there’s little we can do to substantively change it at a more fundamental level. These empirical (...) insights have revisionary implications both for debates about disgust’s moral value and for our understanding of agency and moral development more generally. (shrink)

Middle childhood, the period from 6 to 12 years of age, is defined socially by increasing autonomy and emotional regulation, somatically by the development of anatomical structures for subsistence, and endocrinologically by adrenarche, the adrenal production of dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). Here I suggest that DHEA plays a key role in the coordinated development of the brain and body beginning with middle childhood, via energetic allocation. I argue that with adrenarche, increasing levels of circulating DHEA act to down-regulate the release of glucose (...) into circulation and hence limit the supply of glucose which is needed by the brain for synaptogenesis. Furthermore, I suggest the antioxidant properties of DHEA may be important in maintaining synaptic plasticity throughout middle childhood within slow-developing areas of the cortex, including the insula, thamalus, and anterior cingulate cortex. In addition, DHEA may play a role in the development of body odor as a reliable social signal of behavioral changes associated with middle childhood. (shrink)

Dogs are known for their incredible ability to detect odours, extracting them from a “complex” environment and recognising them. This makes sniffer dogs precious assets in a broad variety of security applications. However, their use is subject to some intrinsic restrictions. Dogs can only be trained to a limited set of applications, get tired after a relatively short period, and thus require a high turnover. This has sparked a drive over the past decade to develop artificial sniffer devices—generally known as (...) “chemical sniffers” or “electronic noses”—able to complement and possibly replace dogs for some security applications. Such devices have been already deployed, or are intended to be deployed, at borders, airports and other critical installation security checkpoints. Similarly to dogs, they are adopted for detecting residual traces that indicate either the presence of, or recent contact with, substances like drugs and explosives. It goes without saying that, as with sniffer dogs, the use of artificial sniffer devices raises many sensitive issues. Adopting an ethical and legal perspective, the present paper discusses the privacy and data protection implications of the possible deployment of a hand-held body scanning sniffer for screening passengers at EU airport security checkpoints. (shrink)