Notes
- The project’s website is BUMP: Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy.
- I was reminded of this project – and that it is still on-going, by an alert via Philos-List for a conference due to take place late October 2024. I’ve reproduced the CfP below.
- I’ve been following this project – on and off – since soon after it began in 2016 and attended a seminar in March 2019. I was alerted to in by Suki Finn’s paper on Aeon, cited below.
- Using the BUMP Website, I now have the following papers:-
- There are further items that would be worth following up, but the texts are not yet available on-line. Where the Abstracts are available, I note them as footnotes:-
- Finally, there are a few items that are not really worth following up because they are either too peripheral or are popularizations of longer works. I ignored the audios and a few other papers (including those in Dutch):-
CfA - BUMP Project Conference ‘The metaphysics of pregnancy and beyond’
- The European Research Council funded project ‘Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy’ (BUMP) is delighted to invite submissions for a conference to be held at King’s College London from Friday 25th to Sunday 27th of October 2024.
- The BUMP project has been running since 2016, under the leadership of Professor Elselijn Kingma. Its aim was to launch the metaphysics of pregnancy as an important and fundamental area of philosophical research. This workshop will mark the conclusion of the project, and look towards the future.
- The theme of the workshop is ‘The metaphysics of pregnancy and beyond’. The main focus of this workshop will be metaphysical or ontological questions related to pregnancy, parenthood and childbirth; however, we also invite submissions which engage with metaphysical or methodological questions through the lens of ethics, epistemology and feminist philosophy, or that investigate the social, political and ethical context and/or consequences of such metaphysical questions. We aim for this workshop to be a launching pad for future paths of research in the field of the metaphysics of pregnancy, with a specific view to identifying new questions or avenues of inquiry which remain unaddressed in the existing literature.
- Possible topics include (but are not limited to):
- What is the metaphysical relationship between the foetus and the pregnant organism?
- What does mereology tell us about pregnancy, and vice versa?
- Does the foetus bear any necessary or essential relation to the pregnant organism?
- When does a new organism, or a new entity that will later be an organism, emerge in the course of pregnancy?
- How does pregnancy bear upon the problem of biological individuality?
- How do traditional issues in the metaphysics of biology intersect with questions related to reproduction and child rearing?
- How does the metaphysics of pregnancy impact on its epistemology, particularly in the context of scientific research? And, vice versa, how do epistemic issues and scientific research bear upon metaphysical issues in pregnancy?
- What is the relationship between the metaphysics of pregnancy and distinctively feminist approaches to philosophy?
- How does the particular metaphysical organisation inherent to pregnancy affect phenomenological experience? What implications are there for the kinds of knowledge one can have about pregnancy?
- How might particular views on the metaphysics of pregnancy affect ethical, social and political questions?
- What can historical and or sociological approaches contribute to our understanding of pregnancy itself or its dominant social and scientific depiction, and how does this impact the metaphysics of pregnancy?
- How does pregnancy intersect with the metaphysics of sex and gender?
- Deadline: 6th of September
- Please send abstracts of up to 500 words, prepared for blind-review, with ‘BUMP Workshop’ the subject line to PhilAndMed@kcl.ac.uk. Please note your affiliation/current position in the body of the email.
- We especially welcome submissions from postgraduate and early-career researchers, researchers in clinical/empirical fields, as well as from women and other groups underrepresented in philosophy. We will cover accommodation as well as meals, and have bursaries available for reasonable travel (subject to request).
- Dr Harriet Fagerberg,
→ Visiting Fellow & Research Associate, Sowerby Philosophy & Medicine Project, King’s College London
→ Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
Comment:
See BUMP: Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 1: Footnote 2:
- The only obvious connection between this paper – and the one above – and BUMP is that of personnel and the fact that it was funded from the BUMP budget!
- However, it’s a useful paper. It’s part of a special issue, several of whose papers seem worth following up: Philosophical Studies: Hybrid Views in Animal Ethics. Not all are Open Access, however.
Footnote 3:
- Abstract: “Ectogenesis” derives from ecto meaning “outer,” and genesis meaning “origin.” A preliminary distinction to draw here is between full and partial ectogenesis: full ectogenesis sees the whole process of pregnancy occurring outside the uterus; partial ectogenesis sees only part of the process of pregnancy occurring outside the uterus. The chapter argues that full ectogenesis likely cannot be conceived of without depending on a Fetal Container Model, and because of this inextricability, the author ought to be suspicious of any notions about its potential to help liberate women. Ectogenesis is a workable concept only if one assumes that the embryo and the mother are two separate and therefore separable entities. The possibility of ectogenesis may be taken as evidence that perhaps there never existed a parthood relationship between a fetus and its gestator; that it may be precisely because there is no parthood relationship in general between fetus and gestator that ARTs like the partial ectogenesis of IVF and incubation “work.”
- This is important because – as the Abstract seems to admit – it may defeat the ‘Parthood’ model and show that the ‘Container’ model was right all along.
- See "Isaac (Sasha) - Is artificial-womb technology a tool for women’s liberation?".
- The above paper illustrates how this whole debate (as is that on Abortion) is fatally influenced – from a metaphysical perspective – by feminism.
Footnote 4:
- Abstract: Ectogestation — that is, ‘artificial’ or extramammalian pregnancy — may soon be within technological reach. This confronts us with questions about the correct moral and legal attitude towards the subjects of this technology, which are called ‘gestatelings’. Colgrove argues that gestatelings are a kind of newborn, and consequently should have the same moral and legal protections as newborns. This paper responds that both claims are unsupported by his arguments, which equivocate on two understandings of the term ‘newborn’. Questions about the appropriate moral and legal status of gestatelings are therefore (once again, and correctly) left unanswered, but in the course of attempting to answer them, we are well advised to continue using the term gestateling. .
- See my comments in the above footnote.
Footnotes 5, 6: Footnote 7: Footnote 8:
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025
- Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)