Cognitive Disability and its Challenge to Moral Philosophy

Readers of the blog who followed our Thinking in Action series of blog posts on the above-named conference, held in New York in September 2008, as well as others, might be interested in having a look at the finished papers from that conference. They have now been published in a special issue of the journal Metaphilosophy (which strikes me, at least, as a strange venue). The table of contents is below and from here you can link to the abstracts for each of the papers; for the full versions, you need an individual or institutional subscription, it seems. To see some videoclips from the conference, together with critical commentary, check out the Thinking in Action posts themselves; nearly all of these directly discuss the talks at the conference corresponding to some of the papers listed below. The videos are both closed captioned and have transcripts with them to enhance accessibility.

thanks to shortintro for the blog comment that drew this to our attention.

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ARTICLES

INTRODUCTION: RETHINKING PHILOSOPHICAL PRESUMPTIONS IN LIGHT OF COGNITIVE DISABILITY (p 307-330)
LICIA CARLSON, EVA FEDER KITTAY
Published Online: Sep 18 2009 11:37AM
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9973.2009.01609.x

Abstract | References | Full Text: HTML, PDF (Size: 161K)
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“EUGENICS AND DISABILITY: HISTORY AND LEGACY IN WASHINGTON”

The Disability Studies Program at the University of Washington presents:

“EUGENICS AND DISABILITY: HISTORY AND LEGACY IN WASHINGTON”

A one-day public symposium examining the history and significance of eugenics in Washington, which in 1909 became the second state to enact a forced sterilization law. This event will provide a forum for dialogue about the eugenic past and its current implications.

Friday, October 9, 2009
9 a.m. – 3 p.m.
UW Tower Auditorium, 4333 Brooklyn Ave. NE, Seattle, Washington 98195

Registration is required. This event is free and open to the public.
Lunch will be provided at no cost to registered attendees.

To register and for further information, go to:
http://eugenics.washington.edu
Or contact Tammi Olson, tammio@uw.edu (email), 425-774-4446 (voice), 425-774-9303 (fax), 425-771-7438 (TTY).

For information about symposium content, email Joanne Woiak, UW Disability Studies Program, jwoiak@uw.edu.

To view the live and archived web broadcast of the symposium, go to http://www.UWTV.org.

The symposium will feature panel presentations by national and local scholars and advocates, addressing “Disability in the History of Eugenics” and “Perspectives on the Relevance of Eugenics Today.” The roundtable format will include ample time for audience discussion. The intended audience includes academics, community advocates, individuals with disabilities, clinicians, service providers, policy makers, and interested members of the general public.

Co-sponsors: UW Office of the Provost, UW Center for Genomics and Healthcare Equality, Seattle Children’s Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics, DBTAC Northwest ADA Information Center.

Human Kinds–The Categories of Sexual Orientation in Law, Science, and Society–Part 3

The wrap-up of Ed Stein’s talk at the Human Kinds symposium.  Here Ed talks a little about whether there are natural human kinds, whether male and female, or gay and straight, might be such kinds, and the relationship between such questions and  issues of gay rights.

Human Kinds–The Categories of Sexual Orientation in Law, Science, and Society–Part 1

The first part of Ed Stein’s talk at the Human Kinds symposium on sexual orientation, especially in equal protection under US jurisprudence.

Did Governor Richardson get it roughly right about sexual orientation, as Ed claims?

Human Kinds–The Categories of Sexual Orientation in Law, Science, and Society–Part 2

Ed Stein’s talk at the Human Kinds symposium, Part the Second. Here Ed focuses on the appeal to immutability in equal protection analysis in American law concerning sexual orientation.

WAS Socrates a hippie? I always thought so …

Human Kinds–Ray Kurzweil and Uploading: Just Say “No”–Q & A

Panel questions for Nick Agar–from Natasha Vita-More on either / or, and Ed Stein on backing up.

If you’re interested in following this debate, you can also check out some of the comments building up directly on the Youtube posting of this right here.

Human Kinds–Ray Kurzweil and Uploading: Just Say “No”–Part 1

Nick Agar‘s talk at the Human Kinds Symposium focuses on Kurzweil on uploading, and gives his ideas a critical combing. Here Nick starts off with some of the basic, background ideas that Kurzweil draws on before getting ready for the view of uploading, in Part 2.

Nick’s Wikipedia page stub is here and his homepage at Victoria, Wellington, is over here.

Human Kinds–Species Typical, Sub-typical, Beyond Typical–Q@A

A couple of questions from our panel for Gregor Wolbring–one from Ed Stein on human rights, and one from Natasha Vita-More on environmentalism and uploading.

If the discussion interests you, drop back and hear Gregor’s talk in Parts 1 and 2, or drop us a line or a comment.

Human Kinds–Species Typical, Sub-typical, Beyond Typical–Part 2

Gregor Wolbring in full swing on ableism and its relationship to sexism, racism, caste bias, anti-environmentalism, consumerism. It all goes by very fast, so be prepared! Part 3 will have some panel interchange on this.

Here Gregor argues that ableism lies at the root of these other “isms”, and so is in that sense the most fundamental form of discrimination.  In the audience discussion following the talk–which, unfortunately, we did not have permission to film–there was quite a bit of discussion of, and resistance to, this idea.  Gregor also writes a regular column, The Choice is Yours, and you can find more information about him there.  On this issue, as Gregor says about most things, the choice is yours.  Is ableism the most fundamental form of discrimination out there?

Human Kinds: Design Issues Concerning Extreme Life Extension–Part 3

The final part of Natasha Vita-More’s talk, together with an audible but hard-to-hear exchange with Nick Agar at the end. Nick is asking about the prototype that Natasha designed 10 years ago, Primo Posthuman. You can get more on Primo, and on Natasha’s work more generally, from her website.

The examples that Natasha provides are provocative, and in the exchange with Nick we’re reminded of the difference between “prototype design” and “industrial design”–design at the planning (detailed as that may be) level, and design at the level of implementation. But even once implemented in some form, there’s the further question of what we might call full-blown implementation, truly industrial design, where we scale up from some kind of implementation to implement the device to realize its full promise.

Example: consider artificial intelligence vs artificial retinae (and related visual prosthetics) or cochlear implants.

Human Kinds: Introduction

Over the next few weeks, we will run videocasts from in invited symposium panel that I organized at the Pacific Division meeting of American Philosophical Association in April, 2009, held in Vancouver. The panel was on human kinds, and topics that we discussed ranged from transhumanism through to disability and sub-normalcy and gay rights and gay marriage. The speakers, in the order in which they spoke, were:

Natasha Vita-More

Gregor Wolbring

Nick Agar

Ed Stein

The talks are relatively short, and we’ll run about 1 per week before linking them all up together. No captioning yet, but we hope to have captioning done by the time the series has run.

The introduction talks a little bit more generally about the panel and the What Sorts Network. You can also watch the videos directly on Youtube, by searching for videos by Rapunzelish. Really.

Webcast of Seattle symposium on growth attenuation

The webcast of the symposium on growth attenuation, held at the Seattle Children’s Hospital in January 2009, is up on the website of the Treuman Katz Centre for Pediatric Bioethics at the hospital; Emigrl has previously posted thoughtfully and in detail on this symposium both at What Sorts here and in more detail at her Eminism blog. There are two parts to the webcast, which you can link to below, but a couple of brief things about my viewing of them first.

The Modern Pursuit of Human Perfection: The Full Story

Below are all 13 posts from our Modern Pursuit series of posts, deriving from the public dialogue that we cosponsored with the AACL and the CACL at the University of Alberta in October 2008. The public dialogue began with some opening comments from our cosponsors, continued with short presentations from our community member panelists talking of their personal experiences, and was rounded out by a series of interchanges between audience and panel. All videos now contain transcripts (thanks to Jackie Ostrem for completing the work needed here: update 21 June, 2009: all now are closed captioned, thanks again Jackie!), and the videos are also available on YouTube. Comments on the blog on any of these posts is still welcome, but we also hope that you’ll find these of interest and use down the track for individual reflection or group discussion.

Thanks to all participants: Anna Macquarrie, Bruce Uditsky, Dick Sobsey, Wendy Macdonald, Sam Sansalone, Colleen Campbell, Anne Hughson, and Simo Vehmas. And thanks to Grant Wang and Lee Ramsdell at the Arts Resource Centre at the University of Alberta for the filming and post-production work, and John Simpson for organizational assistance.

Introduction

My doctor, my child

Living with trisomy 13, part I

Living with trisomy 13, part II

When disability meets social welfare

Bioethical reflections on disability, medicine, and family life

Decisions and dishonesty in medicine

Connecting with others

Vulnerability, trust, and confrontation

Good people in medicine and the disconnect

The denial of parenthood and selective abortion

Going underground and true choice

Disability, individual autonomy, and systematic devaluation

Disability, Individual Autonomy, and Systematic Devaluation

[This is the thirteenth post in a series highlighting a public dialogue held at the University of Alberta on October 23rd, 2008, titled The Modern Pursuit of Human Perfection: Defining Who is Worthy of Life. The dialogue was sponsored by the What Sorts Network, in conjunction with the Canadian Association for Community Living and the Alberta Association for Community Living. For further context, please see the introductory post in the series, which can be found here; we’ll string together all posts in this series when we have most / all of them up, or you can search by the category “Modern Pursuit” to get those already posted.]

At last, the final question and exchange, another one from Bruce Uditsky, with subsequent lively exchange, that follows on from the preceding pair of questions. Transcript below the fold.

Going Underground and True Choice

[This is the twelfth post in a series highlighting a public dialogue held at the University of Alberta on October 23rd, 2008, titled The Modern Pursuit of Human Perfection: Defining Who is Worthy of Life. The dialogue was sponsored by the What Sorts Network, in conjunction with the Canadian Association for Community Living and the Alberta Association for Community Living. For further context, please see the introductory post in the series, which can be found here; we’ll string together all posts in this series when we have most / all of them up, or you can search by the category “Modern Pursuit” to get those already posted.]

Here Anna Macquarrie from the CACL talks more openly about the history of eugenics and contemporary genetic testing. In Part 2, below the fold, there is some discussion of this, with Simo Vehmas resisting the linkage of eugenics with contemporary attitudes and practices, and some hearty discussion following from all–not everything can be heard here, but we’ve put what we could make out on the transcripts beneath the fold.

Is making the connection between past eugenic practices and contemporary practices, such as genetic testing for Down Syndrome, “playing the Nazi card”, as Simo suggests?

Going Underground and True Choice: Part 1

Note that there is no sound in the first 30-40 seconds of Part 1, which simply contains the title of the clip, the name of the speaker(s), and the location of the symposium, information that is provided in the beginning of this post.

The Denial of Parenthood and Selective Abortion

[This is the eleventh post in a series highlighting a public dialogue held at the University of Alberta on October 23rd, 2008, titled The Modern Pursuit of Human Perfection: Defining Who is Worthy of Life. The dialogue was sponsored by the What Sorts Network, in conjunction with the Canadian Association for Community Living and the Alberta Association for Community Living. For further context, please see the introductory post in the series, which can be found here; we’ll string together all posts in this series when we have most / all of them up, or you can search by the category “Modern Pursuit” to get those already posted.]

Here is Bruce Uditsky, executive director of the Alberta Association for Community Living, on the hurt that people with developmental disabilities feel on being denied the right to parent, and on the kinds of choices that we allow in our society. The latter comments here reply to some of what Simo Vehmas said in his panel presentation, shown as “Bioethical reflections on disability, medicine, and family life” earlier in this series, and Simo makes a further reply, in turn, here. A transcript follows the video.

Good people in medicine and the disconnect

[This is the tenth post in a series highlighting a public dialogue held at the University of Alberta on October 23rd, 2008, titled The Modern Pursuit of Human Perfection: Defining Who is Worthy of Life. The dialogue was sponsored by the What Sorts Network, in conjunction with the Canadian Association for Community Living and the Alberta Association for Community Living. For further context, please see the introductory post in the series, which can be found here.]

Here Michael Shaw draws on his dual experience as a child in a medical family and as a parent of a child with Down Syndrome, and as a parent advocate working with the Canadian Down Syndrome Society to ask a question about how doctors and others often fail to connect with the concerns of parents of children with disabilities. The video is in two parts; Part 2 beneath the fold, with transcripts for both videos there (thanks to Jackie Ostrem!). A response from Dick in Part 1, and responses from Sam and Wendy in Part 2. If you have trouble listening to or viewing the videos here, you can also listen to or view them directly at Youtube: Part 1 and Part 2.

Vulnerability, trust, and confrontation

[This is the ninth post in a series highlighting a public dialogue held at the University of Alberta on October 23rd, 2008, titled The Modern Pursuit of Human Perfection: Defining Who is Worthy of Life. The dialogue was sponsored by the What Sorts Network, in conjunction with the Canadian Association for Community Living and the Alberta Association for Community Living. For further context, please see the introductory post in the series, which can be found here; Part 1, containing the video clip, was just posted.]

Here is Part 2 of the response to the question about vulnerability, trust, and confrontation. Sam talks about the variation in responses he has experienced from both bioethicists and doctors, and links some of these responses to a continuation of eugenics by other means. Colleen supports this, and brings us back to reactions from one’s own family. Transcript below the video.

Connecting with others and more from Colleen

[This is the eighth post in a series highlighting a public dialogue held at the University of Alberta on October 23rd, 2008, titled The Modern Pursuit of Human Perfection: Defining Who is Worthy of Life. The dialogue was sponsored by the What Sorts Network, in conjunction with the Canadian Association for Community Living and the Alberta Association for Community Living. This series will bring forward the videos made of this event twice a week, roughly every Wednesday and Saturday. For further context, please see the introductory post in the series, which can be found here; we’ll string together all posts in this series when we have most / all of them up, or you can search by the category “Modern Pursuit” to get those already posted.]

Here we move onto the “dialogue” part of the public dialogue, with the first of a series of questions raised by the stories we’ve heard from Sam, Wendy, and Colleen. We start with questions about connecting with others and what happens when doctors and others are confronted by vulnerable people whose trust has been violated by those in a position of authority. This one is in two parts, with discussion of child welfare, parental struggle, and connecting with others coming through in this part, adding an important part to Colleen’s story that was left out first time round coming out in Part 1 below. A transcript follows the video.

Have Mercy: Jennifer Eberhardt on Implicit Racial Bias @ PLMS

Over at the mostly awesome Project on Law and Mind Sciences (PLMS) blog, they have opened up PLMS Tube about a week ago. It’s a collection of about 80 videos so far, chiefly it seems from their first two annual conferences and visiting speakers. One of the videos, which they have running on their blog right now, is an amazing 30 minute talk from Jennifer Eberhardt‘s talk from 2007, “Policing Racial Bias”. Eberhardt is a psychologist working on the implicit cognition of racial bias, and its relevance for policing, the justice system, and ordinary cognition. Some of the experimental results are truly scary. Check it out.

If you think that racial bias is a thing of the past, or something that those who profess only the most liberal and inclusive attitudes about race are free of, watch the video below; it’s Part 3 of the talk, running to around 8 minutes. The whole talk covers ways in which implicit bias operates on racial grounds, and some of the results are staggering. In Part 3, Eberhardt focuses on punishment and racial proxies for evil or wickedness, but works up to the study results that had her exclaim “Have Mercy!”, starting at around 3.45 or so of this clip with a reminder from W.E.B. DuBois. Links to the whole thing beneath the fold. Update: Kudos to the folks at PLMS for getting these videos captioned!