Prof. Vardit Ravitsky, Ph.D.
Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT) is a new technology that allows genetic testing of a fetus with a simple maternal blood test, by isolating cell-free fetal DNA in the mother’s plasma. Introduced in 2011, it is now available globally, its cost is declining, and the number of conditions it can test for is increasing. Technically, this technology can be used to sequence the entire genome of a fetus early in the first trimester of pregnancy. Should this use of prenatal testing be banned? Limited? Offered? Encouraged? Covered by insurance? This talk will explore some ethical implications of this possibility. It will focus on reproductive autonomy and the transition from ‘knowledge is power’ to ‘knowledge is vulnerability’ in the context of informed choice.
Vardit Ravitsky, PhD, is Associate Professor at the Bioethics Programs within the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine of the School of Public Health at the University of Montreal. She is also Director of the Ethics and Health Branch of the CRE, an interuniversity research center in ethics. Prof. Ravitsky’s research focuses on reproductive ethics and the ethical aspects of genetic and genomics. Her research interests in bioethics also include health policy and cultural perspectives. She is particularly interested in the various ways in which cultural frameworks shape public debate and public policy in the area of bioethics. Her research projects are funded by CIHR, FRQSC, SSHRC, and Genome Canada. She published over 100 articles, book chapters and commentaries on bioethical issues, and is lead-editor of “The Penn Center Guide to Bioethics”.
Born and raised in Jerusalem, Ravitsky brings international perspectives to her research and teaching. She holds a BA in philosophy from the Sorbonne University in Paris, an MA in philosophy (with a specialization in bioethics) from the University of New Mexico in the US, and a PhD in philosophy (with a specialization in bioethics) from Bar-Ilan University in Israel. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Bioethics of the NIH and at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI).
Ravitsky is an elected Board member and Treasurer of the International Association of Bioethics (IAB). She is a member of Canadian Institutes of Health Research (the ‘Canadian NIH’) Standing Committee on Ethics. She is also member of the University of Montreal’s Public Health Research Institute (IRSPUM), the Quebec Reproduction Network (RQR), and of the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society (CFAS). Previously, she was faculty at the Department of Medical Ethics, School of Medicine, at the University of Pennsylvania. She was also a Senior Policy Advisor at CIHR’s Ethics Office and a GE3LS consultant to Genome Canada.
A number of puzzles concerning how truth-ascriptions are grounded have recently been discovered by several theorists, following Fine (2010). Most previous commentators on these puzzles have taken them to shed light on the theory of ground. In this paper, I argue that they also shed light on the theory of truth. In particular, I argue that the notion of ground can be deployed to clearly articulate one strand of deflationary thinking about truth, according to which truth is “metaphysically lightweight.” I will propose a ground-theoretic explication of the (entirely bearable) lightness of truth, and then show how this broadly deflationary view yields a novel solution to the puzzles concerning how truth is grounded. So, if the proposal I sketch is on target, the theory of truth and the theory of ground interact fruitfully: we can apply the notion of ground to offer a clear explication of the deflationist claim that truth is “metaphysically lightweight” that both captures the motivations for that claim and solves the puzzles.
In public discourse, but also in political theory, the opinion prevails, that democracy is incompatible with aspirations of truth. Some assume, in the Hobbesian tradition, that civic peace requires that truth assertions be restricted to science and religion (normative positivism), whereas the political sphere is constituted by interests, bargaining and collective decisions based on interests, bargaining and rules of aggregation, be they implicit or explicit. In this perspective Collective Choice as preference aggregation is paradigmatic for the understanding of democracy. Postmodernist and neo-pragmatist thought dismisses truth, because it threatens solidarity and belonging. Libertarian political thought relies on market mechanisms reducing citizens to consumers and producers of material and immaterial goods like security and welfare. Accounts of deliberative democracy focus on reasoning in the public sphere but dismiss a realistic understanding of truth, because it is thought to threaten collective and individual self-determination.
In my talk I will argue that a realistic understanding of empirical and normative truth is compatible, even necessary, for an adequate understanding of democracy, that truth assertions do not threaten civic peace, that postmodernist relativity undermines democratic practice, that libertarian market-orientation is incompatible with the status of citizens in democracy and that even deliberative, but anti-realist, accounts of democracy do not allow for an adequate understanding of democracy. My argument is based on a Davidsonian, or pragmatist, understanding of truth, therefore one might say: it critizises normative positivism, postmodernism, libertarianism, and critical theory using pragmatist insights.
Julian Nida-Rümelin presently holds a chair for philosophy and political theory at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, is a member of the European Academy of Sciences, was president of the German Philosophical Association (DGphil) and state-minister for culture and media in the first government of Gerhard Schröder. The topics of his books include Democracy as Cooperation (1999); Democracy and Truth (2006), translated in Chinese and Italian, Philosophy and the form of Life (2009), Realism (2018) and A Theory of Practical Reason (2020, forthcoming, de Gruyter and PUP).
Generous support provided by the New York Institute of Philosophy.