Tag: philosophy (Page 13 of 19)

Two researchers in neuroethics

5 December, 2016 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

Our neuroethics group at CRB currently seek two postdoctoral researchers to work in the Human Brain Project (European Commission Future and Emerging Technologies Flagship Project). The positions have different focus.

One research task focuses on the role of contexts and cultural imprinting in understanding the brain’s functional architectures. Read more and apply.

The second research task focuses on philosophical and ethical challenges of modelling cognitive processes in silica. Read more and apply.

Employments are temporary, renewable halftime positions, starting February 1, 2017 (or as otherwise agreed). If you have questions, please contact Kathinka Evers.

Application deadline is January 12, 2017.

Pär Segerdahl

The brain develops in interaction with culture

16 November, 2016 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

The brain develops dramatically during childhood. These neural changes occur in the child’s interaction with its environment. The brain becomes a brain that functions in the culture in which it develops. If a child is mistreated, if it is deprived of important forms of interaction, like language and care, the brain is deprived of its opportunities to develop. This can result in permanent damages.

The fact that the brain develops in interaction with culture and becomes a brain that functions in culture, raises the question if we can change the brain by changing the culture it interacts with during childhood. Can we, on the basis of neuroscientific knowledge, plan neural development culturally? Can we shape our own humanity?

In an article in EMBO reports, Kathinka Evers and Jean-Pierre Changeux discuss this neuro-cultural outlook, where brain and culture are seen as co-existing in continual interplay. They emphasize that our societies shape our brains, while our brains shape our societies. Then they discuss the possibilities this opens up for ethics.

The question in the article is whether knowledge about the dynamic interplay between co-existing brains-and-cultures can be used “proactively” to create environments that shape children’s brains and make them, for example, less violent. Environments in which they become humans with ethical norms and response patterns that better meet today’s challenges.

Similar projects have been implemented in school systems, but here the idea is to plan them on the basis of knowledge about the dynamic brain. But also on the basis of societal decision-making about which ethics that should be supported; about which values that are essential for life on this planet.

Personally I’m attracted by “co-existence thinking” as such, which I believe applies to many phenomena. For not only the brain develops in interaction with culture. So does plant and animal life, as well as climate – which in turn will shape human life.

Maybe it is such thinking we need: an ethics of co-existence. Co-existence thinking gives us responsibilities: through awareness of a mistreated nature; through awareness of our dependence on this nature. But such thinking also transcends what we otherwise could have imagined, by introducing the idea of possibilities emerging from the interplay.

Do not believe preachers of necessity. It could have been different. It can become different.

Pär Segerdahl

Evers, K. & Changeux, J-P. 2016. “Proactive epigenesis and ethical innovation: A neuronal hypothesis for the genesis of ethical rules.” EMBO reports 17: 1361-1364.

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What is the risk?

2 November, 2016 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

To communicate about genetic risk with patients, we need to know how people think about risk and that experts and people in general often think differently.

A common feature, however, is this: Risk has to do with future adverse events. We talk about the risk of getting sick. But we rarely talk about the risk of getting well. We must then imagine people who value their disease (perhaps to avoid enrollment in an occupation army).

The expert’s concept of risk presupposes the negative value, but does not delve into it. It focuses on the probability that the unwanted event will happen (and how certain/uncertain the probability is).

For patients, however, the value aspect probably is more in focus. A couple learning about a 25% risk of having a child with a certain disability probably considers how bad such impairment would be: for the child and themselves. Maybe it isn’t so bad? Perhaps there is no great “risk” at all! They evaluate the risk scenario rather than calculate the probability.

How can we understand this value aspect, which risk presupposes and patients ponder? Ulrik Kihlbom at CRB asks the question in an article in the Journal of Risk Research.

Kihlbom describes two common ways of understanding value. The first is in terms of preferences. People have different preferences. Most prefer health before sickness, but occasionally someone may prefer disease. Value lies in satisfying these preferences, whatever they are. There is then only one value: preference satisfaction. The problem is that we can object that these preferences are not always reasonable or well informed. Additionally, patients can adapt to their illness and prefer their lives as much as healthy persons prefer their lives. Is it valuable to satisfy even such preferences?

Not surprisingly, the other way of understanding value is more objective. Here one assumes that value depends on how well certain basic human capabilities are supported. Such as being able to use one’s senses, imagine, think, play, be healthy, etc. Here there is a more objective measure of value. The problem is the authority the measure is given. May not a person lack some of these capabilities and still live a full and dignified life? Who decides which capabilities should belong to the measure?

Actually, I would say that both proposals impose a measure of value. Preference satisfaction is, of course, a general measure too.

Kihlbom proposes a third way of understanding value. No measure of value is imposed and value is not separated from that which has value. If someone gets cancer, the negative value lies already in the disease, so to speak. A person who knows what cancer is does not ask: “Why is it bad to get cancer?” And hardly anybody would answer: “Because it frustrates my preferences” or “Because it prevents me from flourishing as a human being.”

Knowing what disease is means knowing that it is bad. It is part of the point of the word. To exclaim, “I’m so sick!” is to complain (not to rejoice). The value lies in the phenomenon itself and in the word. If some people still value their disease (perhaps to avoid military service), the value lies in the situation where the disease can appear as a good thing.

This is probably how people approach genetic risk information: What does this mean in my life? How bad is it? They immerse themselves in the value aspect, which the numerical probability presupposes. The 25-percent risk of having a child with a certain disability leads to concerns over what such a life might turn out to be like; how it can be described; how it can be valued.

So what should we keep in mind in genetic risk communication? The novelty about genetic risk information is not only that patients get difficult to interpret percentages of probability. The scenarios are new. These scenarios can involve time perspectives that extend throughout one’s future life, even to future generations. They can be about diseases and treatments that we do not know what it means to live with.

We evaluate risks daily (like the risk of missing the train), but here patients encounter novel risk scenarios that are difficult to evaluate. If I understand Kihlbom right, he thinks that the challenge is not only to explain probabilities to patients. The challenge is not least that of talking with patients about these new risk scenarios: about how they react to them in terms of value, how they describe them as “catastrophic” or “not so bad.”

Patients need support to evaluate genetic risk scenarios reasonably; not only to understand probabilities.

Pär Segerdahl

Kihlbom, U. 2016. “Genetic Risk and Value.” Journal of Risk Research, DOI: 10.1080 / 13669877.2016.1200653

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Did medicine save the life of ethics?

18 October, 2016 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

About thirty-five years ago, Stephen Toulmin wrote an article on the topic: How medicine saved the life of ethics. I think it is still worth reading.

Toulmin argued roughly as follows:

During the first six decades of the 1900s, ethics wasn’t feeling well at all. One might say that it suffered from moral aphasia: it couldn’t talk sensibly about real ethical problems.

While moral philosophers were preoccupied with formally specifying what distinguishes moral questions and judgements in general, without taking sides on specific ethical issues, ethics debaters outside of academic philosophy were trapped in the opposition between dogmatism and relativism.

Dogmatists referred respectfully to universal principles and authoritative religious systems, while relativists and subjectivists dismissed the absolute claims with reference to anthropological and psychological findings about differences in people’s attitudes.

In short, while philosophers analyzed what characterizes morality in general and left living ethical issues to their fate, dogmatists and relativists fought fruitlessly about whether these issues have absolute answers, based on universal principles, or if the answers are relative to cultural and individual factors.

In this near-death state, medicine came to the rescue. Medical practices gave rise to very definite ethical questions that insisted on answers and guidance. When philosophers in the 1960s began to pay attention to these issues, ethics was rescued from the life-threatening condition in which it found itself.

Toulmin suggests that medical ethics saved the life of ethics through four resuscitation efforts:

By focusing on situations, needs and interests, which are more objectively given than the attitudes, feelings and desires that anthropology and psychology were interested in. Whether a person’s actions threaten another’s health can be discussed in objective terms, as opposed to questions about habits and tastes.

(Here I think of the emergence of empirical ethics, where more objective aspects of ethical problems are explored in various kinds of studies.)

By analyzing concrete cases, instead of striving towards the universal principles to which dogmatists referred. Toulmin compares medical ethics to medical practice. Diseases described only in general terms become abstract and without specific relevance: they acquire practical relevance only for health professionals who learned the art of identifying real-life cases of the diseases. The same applies to ethics, which requires an art of identifying real-life cases of, for example, “disrespect”; otherwise ethical concepts become abstract and without practical significance.

(Here I think, among other things, of the emergence of ethics rounds in the ethics training of healthcare staff.)

By focusing on professional activities, giving rise to definite responsibilities and duties. To understand our duties to each other, we cannot assume an abstract image of humans as individuals. We live in communities and act in forms of life that shape our obligations. Issues in medical ethics are often about obligations shaped by professional roles and contexts.

(Here I think of the previous blog post, about boundaries between public health and healthcare, which sometimes might be transgressed. Practices such as research, healthcare and industry shape different types of obligation and responsibility, which it sometimes can be difficult to keep separate or balance.)

By reintroducing assessments of equity and personal relationships in ethics, assessments of how the circumstances alter the cases. What, in a doctor-patient relationship, is a routine examination, can outside of this context give us reason to speak of an assault. Circumstances alter the cases, and Toulmin compares medical ethics with how courts make assessments of what is just and reasonable between people, given what we know about them.

(Here I think of how medical ethics increasingly is done in dialogue with patients, health professionals and researchers, to better understand the circumstances.)

– Why do I find Toulmin’s article worth reading today?

Among other things, because it provides a broad and realistic description of ethics as a practice and art, in time and in particular contexts, partly comparable to the doctor’s or the lawyer’s practice and art. The article also makes the development of bioethics understandable, such as the emergence of empirical ethics, of ethics rounds, and of the endeavor to work in dialogue with stakeholders and with the professions.

The article also nuances a simplified understanding of how ethical questions are answered. We are inclined to think that empirical studies give us the facts. Then we add general moral principles and derive the ethical conclusions. This could resemble a relapse into dogmatism, where religious principles have been replaced by secular philosophical principles.

Finally, I want to mention that the article sheds light on a problem that we encountered in some empirical studies lately. Colleagues have made ethical education interventions in different healthcare professions. The participants appreciated the practical exercises and found them instructive. But no clear effect of the exercises could be measured by comparing results of knowledge tests before and after the interventions.

Toulmin’s description of how medicine saved the life of ethics may suggest an explanation. The exercises were practical and concerned cases with which the participants were familiar. But the knowledge tests were formulated roughly in those general terms which constituted such a large part of the illness of ethics. The interventions might have been vitalizing, but not the method of measurement.

Pär Segerdahl

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Intending a philosophical system as the truth of life

15 August, 2016 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

What a joy it is to read a real philosopher! This summer I read David Hume and was puzzled by this question: Why is Hume so stimulating to read, when the experts’ comments to his philosophical system are so tedious? If the system is what’s important, shouldn’t the exposition of the system by knowledgeable commentators be just as stimulating?

Is it because Hume’s writes so beautifully and vividly? But even Kant is philosophically more stimulating than the experts’ comments on Kant, and he isn’t known for writing well. What is it that withers away when a philosopher’s system is expounded?

Hume wants to demonstrate how to think about life. The commentator rather wants to establish how to talk about Hume’s system, as one of several historically given systems. The commentator has a bourgeois function: a philosophical grammar teacher who provides instructions for how to reason correctly as a Humean, as a Kantian, as a Husserlian.

I want to say: the scholar’s exposition stands to the philosopher’s work as a grammar book to a living language. What made it so joyful to read Hume was precisely this: spending some time with native speaker; hearing philosophy actually being spoken and thought.

What is it that flourishes in Hume’s philosophical language, but withers away in the scholarly exposition of his system?

I’d say: Hume’s meaning the system as the truth of life. In Hume, life is in focus, not only the system as a conceptual apparatus. Hume’s system germinates in an attempt to intellectually make sense of life. Hume must laboriously make each new thought evident as a true thought about life. The scholar need not make this risky work, but can confidently present the system as a conceptual apparatus that simply exists. Dubious details should, of course, be pointed out and discussed, but doubting the whole project isn’t the commentator’s task. The system was for God’s sake published in the eighteenth century and is much talked-about!

Hume lives more dangerously: “Every step I take is with hesitation, and every new reflection makes me dread an error and absurdity in my reasoning.” This he writes under the heading, “Conclusions of this book,” where one would expect a victorious summary of the system. How could Hume be unsure of his own system, even in the conclusions? It is his creation! Isn’t he its ultimate authority?

The point is precisely that Hume means his system as the truth of something bigger and more difficult to survey. The system is about life itself. What if it fails! What if there is an error in the connection to what the system should be the truth about!

So my question is: How does one mean a philosophical system as the truth of life? Does one make a heroic effort to speak faithfully as a Humean, always calculating “what Hume would have said”? If you wish to become a Humean, you will probably have do something like that. But it wouldn’t suffice for Hume. The system must really be connected to life itself. The thoughts must really be true thoughts about life. This must be scrupulously ascertained, at each new step. Hume continuously makes this work. He takes responsibility for the system vis-à-vis life. He ensures that it satisfies his extraordinary demands as a sincere thinker.

I am prepared to admit that Hume’s thoughts are connected to life. This connection makes his language flourish as a philosophical language. My question is what the connection looks like and how he interprets it.

This post now takes a new turn. After having expressed the joy of reading Hume as a thinker with a living, flourishing philosophical language, I will place a question mark where commentators don’t usually place their question marks. I place my question mark not inside the system, but in Hume’s intending the system as the truth of life. I place my question mark outside of the scholarly focus on the system itself.

When I read Hume, I also find a sort of profound comedy in his work. Not in the system, but in his thinking. What is comical resides in Hume’s utterly honest claims on the system; in his systematic, causal interpretations of the psychological observations he makes. Hume’s explanation of why we feel pride in certain situations, for example, differs from the explanations we normally would give in the same situations.

We can explain: “No wonder he is proud of that chair; it is beautiful and he spent weeks at designing it!” Hume would explain: “No wonder he is proud of the chair; it has qualities that cause pleasure and it has a relationship to the person.”

The combination of “qualities in the object that cause pleasure” and “relationship to the person” must cause pride – according to the principles of Hume’s system. Hume’s explanation is super-general and uses the concepts and rules of the system. He can repeat exactly the same explanation every time someone is proud.

Hume’s systematic explanation of pride has a point that we can all recognize. Suppose I said: “I am so proud of this chair!” But when you ask, “Have you made it yourself?” I answer, “No, I haven’t seen it before, whose is it?” – You wouldn’t understand how I can be proud of a completely foreign chair!

“I cannot be proud of something that doesn’t have a relation to me.” This could serve as a reminder of a pattern in pride as human phenomenon. But Hume interprets this observation as if he glimpsed an underlying causal mechanism – “in the human mind” – which explains why pride isn’t caused in such situations.

This duality is an important reason why it is such a joy to read Hume. His system is based on fine observations of psychological traits of human life, sometimes almost like in a Jane Austen novel. But he interprets his observations as glimpses of general mechanisms – “in the human mind” – that cause these traits.

Here we have the connection to life, and also Hume’s interpretation of it! Hume interprets his observations of traits of human life as if they revealed underlying causal mechanisms (“in the human mind”) that cause these traits. The interpretation provides intellectual control over life, as if no significant feature of life could surprise Hume anymore.

I’ve noted all instances of, “No wonder, then, …” in Hume’s work. There are many! They occur when he has described an everyday phenomenon of life (such as a situation where someone is proud) and used the system to explain it. The system allows him to wander through life and exclaim, “No wonder!” before every characteristic trait he sees. – Life intellectually explained!

I thus find an unstated dualism in Hume’s thinking:

Phenomena of life / Underlying system

This dualism isn’t part the system and is therefore not in focus for the scholar who expounds the system. The dualism is located in Hume’s claim on the system as the truth of life. It is resides in Hume’s thinking, in his conscientious work to make the system true about life. It is the taken for granted form of systematic philosophical thought.

The dualism intellectualizes life as if it borrowed its traits from general principles. This tendency to always take what is general for what is primary and fundamental – as underlying life – is an intellectual instinct that I believe that today’s philosophy should scrutinize and overcome.

It is about rescuing the connection to life, clearly discernible in Hume’s thinking, from the interpretation of it as a connection to an intellectualized source of all phenomena of life. The connection needs to be rescued, so that those who philosophize about life, as Hume did, can mean their observations as observations of life; rather than as life-penetrating insights into an underlying primary order, which only would be a repetiton, in sublimated form, of what was seen.

The obstacle on our path is that this new question mark, placed not in the system but in the claim on it as the truth of life, will be incomprehensible to experts in the field. Philosophy can flourish again only by freeing itself from the current scholarly grip on it.

Pär Segerdahl

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Direct brain communication: a new book

17 May, 2016 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

Images of the brain, created with advanced technology, are known to most of us. But progress in neuroscience is fast. Less familiar are new technical opportunities to communicate directly with the brain … or however you put it!

Even the unconscious brain is alive. It has been possible to depict responses in the “unconscious” brain to what occurs in its environment. In some cases one has been able to establish communication, where the “unconscious” patient answers yes/no-questions by thinking of one thing if the answer is “yes” and on another thing if the answer is “no.” This activates different parts of the brain. Since researchers/doctors can detect which part of the brain is activated, the patient can answer questions and communicate with the outside world. (Here is an earlier post on this.)

Other examples of this development are new interfaces between brain and computer, where people learn to control a computer, not through the muscles, but via electrodes connected in the brain. People who cannot communicate verbally can thus get computer support. They can also learn to control prostheses. The brain is obviously exceptionally plastic and interactive!

A new anthology, with Michele Farisco and Kathinka Evers from CRB as editors, systematically assesses the philosophical, scientific, ethical and legal issues that this development implies: Neurotechnology and Direct Brain Communication (Routledge, 2016).

The book addresses scientific and clinical implications of the possibility to communicate with patients who may not be quite as unconscious as we thought. Perhaps we should rather talk about altered states of consciousness. But also infant care is discussed, as well as ethical and legal issues about authority, informed consent and privacy.

The book is written for researchers and graduate students in cognitive science, neurology, psychiatry, clinical psychology, medicine, medical ethics, medical technology, neuroethics, neurophilosophy and philosophy of mind. It may interest also healthcare professionals and a broader public fascinated by the mind.

Michele Farisco and Kathinka Evers both work in the European flagship project, Human Brain Project.

(You find more information about the book and about the editors here.)

Pär Segerdahl

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Oppositional words simplify thought: A or B?

3 May, 2016 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

Parties can stand in opposition to each other. But so can words. The word good stands in opposition to the word bad; the word right to the word wrong. And in everyday talk, the word human stands in opposition to the word animal.

Oppositional words are efficient in conversation. If I tell you that I saw an animal, you immediately know that it wasn’t a human I saw. Oppositional words are splendid communicational instruments. They enable quick inferences, like the one about what I saw and didn’t see.

However, oppositional words are not always good to think with. This sounds odd, because we associate thinking with inferences. If oppositional words support inferences, shouldn’t they be absolutely essential to thinking?

The problem is that oppositions support quick inferences, when we need slow ones. They assume a given order, when we need to explore a neglected order.

This we felt intensely at the seminar last Monday, when we discussed empirical ethics. More and more bioethicists do empirical studies (questionnaires, interviews, etc.) of how people look at medical research and care. Based on the empirical studies they then develop normative conclusions, for example, about how ethical guidelines should be formulated.

Empirical ethics thereby seems to sin against a fundamental opposition: that between is and ought. If it is a fact that people from time immemorial cut off the hands of thieves (and thought one should do so), it still does not follow from this fact that one ought to cut off the hands of thieves.

One might say: the is/ought-opposition supports quick inferences about what kind of inferences one cannot make: from an is an ought cannot be extrapolated.

Empirical ethics immediately appears like a ridiculous error. Nothing normative can be derived from mere facts disclosed by surveys and interviews. If such inferences nonetheless are made, they are illegitimate. Empirical studies drain bioethics of normativity, by scooping out of the wrong well.

But is this an accurate description of empirical ethics? Is it just a mistake; like trying to scoop water out of a dry well?

It is easy to accuse empirical ethics in terms of the is/ought-opposition. This makes it seductively easy to think that the only way of defending empirical ethics is by either showing that it honors the is/ought-opposition or rejecting the opposition as false.

– As if oppositions had to be either true or false: another opposition!

You notice here how oppositional words, which work well in conversation, push our thoughts now in this direction, now in that. Instruments that support us when we talk can give us paralyzing shocks when we think. (Don’t try to talk your way out of philosophical problems!)

The discussion about empirical ethics is likely to continue at the seminar. I’m looking forward to it.

Pär Segerdahl

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Legal abortion: the right to move on

13 April, 2016 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

With brave new ideas you can astonish the world. In the past months the youth association of the Swedish party, the Liberals, made several proposals that astonished not least the mother party – for example, that incest and necrophilia should be allowed. The state should not control individuals’ love life.

Probably, the young politicians are quite proud of their radicalism. They are more liberal than liberalism itself. But what is their radicalism made of?

In March, another radical proposal was made. This time it was about abortion. Women have the right to choose abortion until the 18th week of pregnancy. But men don’t have a corresponding right to opt out of their parenthood. The proposal is about correcting this unfair distribution of the freedom to decide about parenthood.

How? By giving men the right to disclaim paternity until the 18th week of pregnancy: so-called legal abortion. Through the proposal, men get the same right as women to decide if they want to become parents. Thus, justice is restored.

One can surmise that the mother party dreams of making their own little abortion. But listen to how splendid it can sound when one astonishes the world with brave new ideas:

“It’s about men also being able to choose whether they want to become parents or not.”
“Men should have the same right to opt out of parenthood.”

Indeed, it sounds magnificent: the liberal youth association wants to correct a fundamental asymmetry between the rights of men and women! They are fighting for a more equal society!

I suggest that the “equality” here is purely verbal. It sits on the surface of an individualist language of rights and freedoms, with the words “man,” “woman” and “equal right.” Scratch the surface and the beautiful symmetry disappears.

One thing that is hidden by the jargon, for example, is that the woman’s decision concerns a fetus. But if she doesn’t abort, the man’s abortion decision will be about a child who will be born, and who will live, “legally aborted.”

Another thing that is hidden is that if the woman chooses abortion, neither party becomes a parent, because no child is born. But if she gives birth to the baby, the man will be the father of the child, whether he disclaims legal paternity or not. Law is not everything in life. When a child is born, there is a parenthood that cannot be disclaimed, for the child can say: “My father aborted me.” Only the woman’s abortion decision can completely abolish parenthood.

A third thing that is hidden is that something rings false in the individualist talk about parenthood as my parenthood and your parenthood; as the woman’s parenthood and the man’s. To crown it all, the fetus as well as the child are absent in this reasoning about male and female parenthood – curious! Are they already aborted? Did the young politicians forget something rather central, in their eagerness to develop truly liberal ideas about parenthood?

In order not to be disturbed by all this, in order not hear how false it rings, one must purify an individualist jargon of rights and freedoms, and then lock oneself in it. This is where the youth association’s radicalism lies: in language. It purifies (parts of) the language of liberalism, but as mere linguistic exercises with the words “man,” “woman” and “equal right.”

The radicalism isn’t political, but linguistic. Therefore, one feels instinctively that the discussion that the youth association wants to start up cannot be political, but merely continued exercise of pure concepts – like when schoolchildren plod through grammatical examples to one day be able to speak a language that still is foreign to them.

Ludwig Wittgenstein described such pure conceptual exercises as language that idles, like an engine can idle without doing its work. In this case, it is the language of liberalism that is idling.

I propose a good dose of Wittgenstein.

Pär Segerdahl

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Global bioethics: each culture its own “ethnobioethics”?

6 April, 2016 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

With globalization bioethics is spread over the world. The process isn’t without friction, since bioethics is associated with Western philosophy. Is that thinking applicable to other cultures? Parts of the world where bioethics is spread may also have a colonial history, such as Africa. Should they now once again come under Western influence?

In an article in the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, Sirkku K. Hellsten discusses the role of philosophy in global bioethics. She uses the example of Africa, where discussions about a unique African philosophy have been intense. But she also quotes Henry Odera Oruka, wondering why so much time is spent discussing what distinguishes African philosophy, when so little time is devoted to actually practicing it.

To investigate the role of philosophy in global bioethics, Hellsten distinguishes (inspired by Odera Oruka) four forms of philosophy. I reproduce two of them here:

Ethnophilosophy: Here it is assumed that different cultures often have incommensurable conceptions and worldviews. Bioethical key concepts – personhood, rationality, autonomy, consent, human nature, human well-being – have as many interpretations as there are cultures. The aim seems to be to develop these interpretations of Western ethical concepts and principles, to develop culture specific “ethnobioethics.”
Professional philosophy: Professional philosophers, says Hellsten, are academically trained in critical, impartial, logical argument. (She distinguishes professional philosophy from the ideological tendencies of Peter Singer and John Harris). Although professional philosophers are influenced by their culture, they can recognize these biases and subject them to self-critical examination. Professional philosophy is self-correcting.

Hellsten points out that ethnophilosophical thinking, in its quest to carve out culture specific “ethnophilosophies,” on the contrary tends to make sweeping generalizations about cultural views, creating false oppositions. Moreover, ethnophilosophical thinking is at risk justifying double standards in biomedical practices. It can make it seem reasonable to ask for individual consent in individualistic cultures but not in collectivist.

Hellsten suggest that what global bioethics needs is professional philosophy. It can impartially scrutinize arguments and reveal contradictions and unclear thinking, and it can keep ethics at arm’s length from politics and rhetoric. It is a universal form of human thought that should be accessible to all cultures. Through professional philosophy, global bioethics can become universal bioethics.

What do think about this? I believe that Hellsten’s emphasis of “universality” does not quite strikingly describe the point I think she actually has. In order to understand in what sense she has a point, I believe we need to understand that bioethics is not only as a form of “thinking,” but also a concrete component of contemporary social structure.

Law (to take another example) isn’t just a form of “thinking” but also an organized part of the social structure: a legal system. During the twentieth century, we saw the birth of bioethics as another part of the social structure: as an organized way to deal with certain issues of health care and biomedical research (other parts of the social structure). Bioethics therefore has an obvious place in the social structure, and that place is: the university, with its resources for research and education.

So where do I locate Hellsten’s point when she claims professional philosophy’s role in global bioethics? Not in the view that professional philosophy supposedly is “universal thinking,” but in the fact that the university is the place of bioethics in the social structure. If we build hospitals and invest in advanced medical research and education, and if we develop legislation for these activities, it is in the university that bioethics finds the resources it needs to play its role.

So why is “professional philosophy” relevant for bioethics in Africa? In my view, precisely because one builds hospitals and makes investments in medical research and education. It would be odd if the efforts to build such a society were combined with an emphasis on tradition-bound “ethnophilosophy.”

We need to be clear about where we are: in the midst of an ongoing construction of society. And we need to be clear about the fact that ethics, in addition to being a personal concern, also has become an important “apparatus” in the social structure. In Africa, and elsewhere, it will certainly be faced with unique bioethical issues, like the legal system is faced with unique problems in different parts of the world.

At the same time, it is important to emphasize, as Hellsten does, the open and self-critical nature of global bioethics.

(I want to thank the Global Bioethics Blog for drawing my attention to Hellsten’s article.)

Pär Segerdahl

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Notebook, not Facebook

30 March, 2016 / Pär Segerdahl / 0 Comments

I take the liberty of striking a blow for the notebook.

I miss the voices people develop when they use to keep their own notes. The conversation with yourself gives depth – “I have thought about this” – to your conversation with others.

The erosion of collegial structures at universities is worrisome. But what especially concerns me is the notebook culture, which I believe needs to be rediscovered. Without own notebooks, no real education and no real knowledge.

It isn’t about withdrawing to one’s study to write esoteric notes. It is about developing one’s own groundwork in the life with others. It is developed in (temporary) seclusion, in response to life with others. Then you can converse, because you will have something to say, something of your own.

Cultures deepen through the rumination in diaries and notebooks. Without this simple practice, cultures erode and voices sound thinner. We need to carry culture on our own shoulders.

Kafka recorded in one of his notebooks a picture that I often think of. It is the image of messengers rushing around with messages that they received from other messengers. But it turns out that there is no author of these messages. There are only messengers. I see this as an image of a world without notebooks.

Kant spoke of human authority and autonomy. In Kafka’s picture there is no authority and no autonomy, for no one is the author of their own words: just the messengers of words from other messengers. For once being the author, not only the messenger of what other messengers passed on: wouldn’t that be something!

Become the author of your own words by taking notes! The notebook is the origin of all messages worth communicating. I am a notebook individualist.

To think and reflect is not only about having time. It is about using the time to converse with yourself. That conversation is lifelong. When you converse with others, you convey the lifelong conversation with yourself.

Artists have probably more than others retained the practice of using sketchbooks, of regularly practicing music more informally and privately, of making drafts of stories and novels. That practice gives them a basis to create. We have much to learn from the artists. They are the last to maintain culture, through the sketchbooks in which they constantly scribble.

Nothing is more responsible and authoritative than keeping your own notes. The notes don’t have to be brilliant or groundbreaking. Only your own sincere words with yourself. That is originality! Through the notebook you develop the integrity that is worth defending. And that is worth sharing with others, who of course also have notebooks.

I don’t want to read your Facebook updates, but perhaps your notes. You read mine here. So get a notebook if you don’t already have one. It is the most radical thing you can do today.

Pär Segerdahl

This post in Swedish

Tag: philosophy (Page 13 of 19)

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Notebook, not Facebook

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