Neuroprediction, the use of neuroscientific data to predict human behavior, can sound like science fiction. But with the advent of neuroimaging and the continuing rapid development of other non-invasive brain measurements, neuroprediction is increasingly a real-world phenomenon.
Deep philosophical, legal, and neuroscientific questions arise regarding the use of these methods to predict behavior. Like all scientific tools, whether or not these technologies are used responsibly depends on who uses them. For instance, recent research illustrates the potential use of neuroprediction to assess an individual’s risk of (re-)engaging in antisocial conduct in forensic contexts. While the use of brain-based data may add predictive value to existing risk assessment tools, at the same time, the use (or misuse) of neuroprediction in courtrooms may imply violations of individual rights and liberties under the pretext of enhancing public safety. In addition to these legal implications, neuroprediction presents several technological and neuroscientific challenges. The non-invasive measures currently available are only indirect measures of cognitive activity. Understanding the conceptual, ethical, and legal dimensions surrounding the use of neuroprediction technologies helps crystallize the issues at hand and potentially provides moral guidance for those who wish to capitalize on these new tools as their prevalence and specificity continue to advance.
In this seminar, four experts from neuroscience, law, and philosophy will discuss recent findings in neuroprediction research, the predictive power of brain-based evidence compared to behavioral evidence, as well as the ethical and legal concerns emerging from the entrance of neuroprediction in the courts of law.
Speakers:
Arielle Baskin-Sommers, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Yale University
Martha Farah, Annenberg Professor of Natural Sciences, University of Pennsylvania
Kent Kiehl, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of New Mexico
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Chauncey Stillman Professor of Practical Ethics, Duke University
Discussant:
Jeffrey A. Fagan, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and Professor of Epidemiology, Columbia University
Moderator:
Federica Coppola, Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience, Columbia University
Free and open to the public, but RSVP is required via Eventbrite. This event is part of the Seminars in Society and Neuroscience series.
Working Papers in Ethics and Moral Psychology is a speaker series conducted under the auspices of the Icahn School of Medicine Bioethics Program. It is a working group where speakers are invited to present well-developed, as yet unpublished work. The focus of the group is interdisciplinary, with an emphasis on topics in ethics, bioethics, neuroethics, and moral psychology. The meetings begin with a brief presentation by the invited speaker and the remaining time is devoted to a discussion of the paper. The speakers will make their papers available in advance of their presentation to those who sign up for the Working Papers mailing list.
Upcoming Speakers:
11 Oct: Jordan Mackenzie, NYU
8 Nov: Susana Nuccetelli, St. Cloud State
13 Dec: Michael Brownstein, John Jay
14 Mar: Kyle Ferguson, CUNY
18 Apr: Jeff Sebo, NYU
23 May: Johann Frick, Princeton
STEFAN BERNARD BAUMRIN was a husband, father, philosopher, lawyer, colleague, teacher, and friend. As a professional philosopher, Baumrin wrote sparingly, but incisively, on moral and political philosophy, medical ethics, the history of philosophy, and on matters of both theoretical and practical import. We, his students, colleagues, and most importantly friends, celebrate his memory with this symposium on his philosophy.
THE PROGRAM
Welcome
Professors David Rosenthal and Manfred Philipp
Session I
I. “Baumrin’s Hobbes”: Rosamond Rhodes
II. “A possibility for Moore’s Faulty Fallacy” Mark Sheehan
Discussion
Break (Light Refreshments)
Session II
I.“Baumrin on Autonomy” Katherine Mendis
II. “‘Physician, Stay Thy Hand!’ Revisited” Kyle Ferguson
III. “Our Immorality” Joseph S. Biehl
Discussion
Farewell
PARTICIPANTS
DAVID ROSENTHAL, PhD, is professor of philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center, and Coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Concentration in Cognitive Science there. He taught at Lehman College from 1971 to 2009. He works mainly in philosophy of mind.
MANFRED PHILIPP, PhD, is professor emeritus at the CUNY Graduate Center and at Lehman College. He was Chair of CUNY’s University Faculty Senate, and member of the CUNY Board of Trustees and of the CUNY Research Foundation Board of Directors. He was President of the CUNY Academy for the Humanities & Sciences, Board President of the Fulbright Association in Washington, and President of the US Alumni Association for the German Academic Exchange Service. At Lehman College he was a Department Chair and Chapter Chair of the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY. He currently serves as a Trustee of the Belle Zeller Scholarship Fund for CUNY.
ROSAMOND RHODES, PhD, is Professor of Medical Education and Director of Bioethics Education at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Professor of Philosophy at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and Professor of Bioethics and Associate Director of the Clarkson-Mount Sinai Bioethics Program. She writes on a broad array of issues in bioethics and has published more than 200 papers and chapters. She is co-editor of The Human Microbiome: Ethical, Legal and Social Concerns (Oxford University Press, 2013), The Blackwell Guide to Medical Ethics (Blackwell, 2007), Medicine and Social Justice: Essays on the Distribution of Health Care (Oxford University Press, first edition 2002; second edition 2012), Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate (Routledge, 1998), and the author of the forthcoming monograph, The Trusted Doctor: Medical Ethics and Professionalism (Oxford University Press, 2019). Professor Rhodes also serves on the editorial board of the journal Hobbes Studies and as Sovereign of the International Hobbes Association (2013-2018).
MARK SHEEHAN, PhD, leads the Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) Ethics Group and is Oxford BRC Ethics Fellow at the Ethox Centre in the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford. He is Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at St. Benet’s Hall and a Research Fellow at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics also in the University of Oxford. He is currently a member of the NICE’s Highly Specialised Technology Evaluation Committee, a member of the Health Research Authority’s National Research Ethics Advisors Panel, a member of the Thames Valley Healthcare Priorities Forum and Co-leader of the Ethical Analysis of Key Concepts GECiP sub-domain in the 100K Genome Project. He was a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Working Party on research in children, a member of the Royal College of General Practitioners Ethics Committee and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics.
KATHERINE MENDIS is a doctoral candidate in the philosophy program at the CUNY Graduate Center and a Clinical Professor of Bioethics at the CUNY School of Medicine, where she serves on the St. Barnabas Hospital Ethics Committee. She has also been an Ethics Fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai for several years. She founded and for many years administered the CUNY Graduate Center Philosophy Program’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament pool, in which Stefan Baumrin was the only faculty participant.
KYLE FERGUSON is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center. He also teaches philosophy at Hunter College, CUNY, and medical ethics at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He will soon defend his dissertation, “Metaethical Intentionalism and the Intersubjectivity of Morals,” a project he began with Stefan Baumrin and is completing under the supervision of Jesse Prinz. This summer, he begins a postdoctoral fellowship at the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU School of Medicine.
JOSEPH S. BIEHL, PhD, is the founder and Executive Director of the Gotham Philosophical Society, Inc., a non-profit organization that uses philosophy to transform the civil, political, and educational institutions of New York City. Through its youth program, Young Philosophers of New York, it encourages elementary, middle, high school students to think critically, imaginatively, and normatively about their lives and the city they call home. Stefan Baumrin, who supervised Biehl’s dissertation, “The Ways of Wrongdoing: The Cognitivist’s Conundrum,” served on the Gotham Philosophical Society’s Board of Directors. Dr. Biehl is the co-editor of the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of the City (Routledge, 2019).
There are no reliable statistics on how many children are created in the United States from donated gametes. The CDC, which collects statistics on in vitro fertilization, reported that roughly 9,000 children were born from IVF with donated eggs in 2015. But according to the Donor Sibling, Registry, a survey of such parents found that 40% of those responding were never asked to report the birth of their child. And most births from donated sperm do not require IVF and are therefore not counted at all. Journalists writing about donor conception tend to rely on an outdated report of the Office of Technology Assessment, which estimated 30,000 births from donor insemination in the year 1986/87. The fertility industry has grown enormously since that date.
Although many countries have outlawed or restricted anonymous donor conception, the practice is virtually unregulated in this country. And because the U.S. has never debated legislation or regulation for donor conception, there has been almost no public discussion of whether it is ethical and, if so, under what circumstances and conditions.
On May 3-4, 2019, the NYU Department of Philosophy, together with the New York Institute of Philosophy and the NYU Center for Bioethics, will convene a conference of bioethicists to discuss the ethics of donor conception. The conference will be open to the public and free of charge. Required online registration will open a month before the conference.
Speakers
Elizabeth Brake (Arizona State University)
Reuven Brandt (University of California, San Diego)
Erin Jackson (journalist, San Diego)
Matthew Liao (New York University)
Inmaculada de Melo-Martin (Cornell-Weill Medical College)
Douglas NeJaime (Yale Law School)
Rivka Weinberg (Scripps College)
Working Papers in Ethics and Moral Psychology is a speaker series conducted under the auspices of the Icahn School of Medicine Bioethics Program. It is a working group where speakers are invited to present well-developed, as yet unpublished work. The focus of the group is interdisciplinary, with an emphasis on topics in ethics, bioethics, neuroethics, and moral psychology. The meetings begin with a brief presentation by the invited speaker and the remaining time is devoted to a discussion of the paper. The speakers will make their papers available in advance of their presentation to those who sign up for the Working Papers mailing list.
Upcoming Speakers:
11 Oct: Jordan Mackenzie, NYU
8 Nov: Susana Nuccetelli, St. Cloud State
13 Dec: Michael Brownstein, John Jay
14 Mar: Kyle Ferguson, CUNY
18 Apr: Jeff Sebo, NYU
23 May: Johann Frick, Princeton
Critique is an assertion of values pitted against a state of affairs. To say that things should not be the way they are–to respond to questions such as ‘Why do I think this political or economic arrangement is wrong (and why should I care?)?’ implies an ethical stance. Critique thus draws together fact and value, domains that a long tradition of moral thought has argued exist on distinct planes. For there are dimensions of political life that are incomprehensible without this conjunction between ethical motivations and social realities. But if they are to have political consequences, such questions cannot be confined to private introspection. Scale matters. This talk looks at the articulation between everyday interactions and social movements to show the interplay among the first, second, and third person stances that characterize ethical life. Drawing ethnographic examples from American feminism and Vietnamese Marxism, it considers some of the ways in which ethical intuitions emerge, consolidate, and change, and argues that objectifications and the reflexivity they facilitate help give ethical life a social history.
Rebecca Comay, Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature, The University of Toronto discusses Hegel and Beckett followed by a response from Paul Kottman of The New School for Social Research.
Columbia University’s Department of Philosophy, the Morningside Institute, and the Thomistic Institute invite graduate students in philosophy, theology/religious studies, literature, and related disciplines to submit papers for “The Moral Imagination of the Novel.” The conference will examine the ways in which individual novels and the novel as a literary genre can be understood both to depict the search for moral, philosophical, and religious truth and to engage in this very search themselves. Is the novel a realistic or idealistic genre? Can novels expand our sense of moral possibilities? Can they contract them?
The conference will begin with four twenty-minute graduate student papers on Friday, October 4, followed by talks that day and the next from faculty. Confirmed speakers include:
Paul Elie (Georgetown)
Ann Astell (Notre Dame)
Thomas Pavel (Chicago)
Lauren Kopajtic (Fordham)
Dhananjay Jagannathan (Columbia)
Limited financial assistance is available to defray the cost of travel for student presenters, but students are encouraged to seek funds from their own institutions as well.
One-page proposals should be emailed to Molly Gurdon at mcg2197@columbia.edu by Saturday, August 31 to be considered. Invitations to present papers will be sent by Friday, September 6. Submissions should not contain any identifying information except for a title, but the author’s institution and program, along with the title of their proposed submission, should be noted in the e-mail submission.
The Vanishing Point of Existence: Kierkegaard and the Ethics of the Novel.
Presented by: Yi-Ping Ong, Associate Professor, Department of Comparative Thought and Literature, Johns Hopkins University.
Presented by Liberal Studies at The New School of Social Research
According to a pervasive and widespread literature, we came, whether we want it or not, to surround our existences with all sorts of narratives: retrospective interpretations of what came before us and how we were born, anticipative stories about what is to come and what we should expect, and, most of all, restless attempts to describe what our present is made of so that we know how to make sense of it. First-person narratives occupy a central position amongst these varieties of narratives, as they give each of us a chance to provide meaning to our lives and achieve some kind of self-understanding.
Taking a resolutely opposite stance, Sartre (in)famously declared through the voice of the main character of his novel La Nausée that stories cannot but betray the lives they claim to describe, and necessarily fail to be faithful to the very experiencing of life that constitutes its specific grain and texture. In which sense is this failure a failure? In which sense must we consider it a failure, if narratives are the privileged device we use to make sense of existences in general, and ours in particular? Wouldn’t it be both tragic and ironical, from that perspective, that we live our lives in a way that remains impervious to our attempts to bring some meaning over our existence, and that first-person narratives should be regarded as fundamentally inadequate to account for life as we live it?
This paper will address these questions in light of the definition of ‘tragic irony’ that Richard Moran draws from his interpretation of Sartre, understanding tragedy as a clash between forms of significance displayed by incompatible perspectives. We will examine in particular the problem raised by first-person narratives, which conflate the seemingly incompatible perspectives of the narrator and of the character of the story. I will argue that Moran’s view fails to show in which sense the failure of first-person narratives are also, according to Sartre, the condition of their success, and that the irony of life might rely first and foremost on its ability to succeed even when and where it fails. After all, isn’t it the most ironical of it all that Sartre, notwithstanding his harsh critique of the fundamental inadequacy of life narratives, ended his literary career with the publication of his most acclaimed autobiography?
Bio:
Pierre-Jean Renaudie is Assistant Professor of philosophy (phenomenology and contemporary German philosophy) at the University of Lyon. He is the author of a book on Husserl’s theory of knowledge (Husserl et les categories. Langage, pensée et perception, Paris, Vrin, 2015), co-edited a book on phenomenology of matter (Phénoménologies de la matière, with C.V. Spaak, Paris, CNRS Editions, 2020) and published many articles, in French and in English, on the phenomenological tradition and its connection with contemporary issues in philosophy of mind. He is a member of the Institut de recherches philosophiques de Lyon (IRPHIL) and an associate member of the Husserl Archives in Paris.