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The Search For Certainty: A Pragmatist Critique Of Society’S Focus On Biological Childbearing, Jamie P. Ross

Jamie P Ross

The Search for Certainty: A Pragmatist Critique of Society’s Focus on Biological Childbearing Abstract I suggest that a form of biological determinism rests on what philosopher John Dewey calls a misplaced “search for certainty.” This search is a process whereby a constructed desire is normalized within a cultural context and naturalized in the body in a manner that substantiates the desire as predictable. Predictability, therefore, justifies a biological basis of desire. In this paper I focus specifically on a desire to bear or produce a biological child: a desire that becomes predictable within a medical model of emotion based on …