Follow our live-streamed symposium: Reconsidering Humanity: Big Data, the Scientific Method, and the Images of Humans

One of the things I do since a number of years is to partake in the multi-disciplinary and cross-sectorial Technology, Institutions and Change working group of the major independent Swedish humanities and social science research funder Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, RJ. This groups is involved in a number of initiatives, among these book projects, research network funding, support of research education and conference-organisation. Within this context, members expose one another to aspects of the group theme, and initiate educational forays by site-visits to relevant research environments. A number of these inspired political scientist Urban Strandberg and me to start pondering some of the more visionary sides of a wave of so-called Big Data approaches which have been flooding both the sciences and the humanities in recent years. In particular, we centred on the most ambitious research visions with regard to areas of scientific and humanities inquiry into the basic aspects of humanity, society and their respective natures, where cross-disciplinary big data approaches have been held out promises of groundbreaking advances on basic challenges, such as bridging the gaps between the subjective and the objective perspectives on human experience, the individual/singular and collective/general aspects of society, and the materialistic and abstract stances of perceiving the essence of human and social nature. To address these visions and perceptions and – let's admit it – hopes and fears, with a simultaneously critical and constructive eye, we ventured to assemble, with the kind support of RJ, a selected multi-disciplinary and qualified assembly of researchers – and to some extent artists – all working in fields related to the grand Big Data visions, with philosophy, computer science, robotics, anthropology and neuroscience as some of the base disciplines.

The result is the symposium:

To make things manageable, we had to make the event invite only, but starting 9:30 CET the entire event will be streamed live on the web, here. More information, the program, abstracts, speaker presentations and more can be accessed here. Later, edited versions of the presentations will be made available as online videos. Please, spread the word! And if you're interested in the subject, don't hesitate to drop in virtually and become part of the flood of big data making up the core of the symposium's subject matter!

The Philosophy of Hate Crime: Special Section Edited by Myself And David Brax Published By The Journal of Interpersonal Violence

I have been posting a few times over the last couple of years about themes, events and media linked to my engagement in research on philosophical and ethical aspects of hate crimes, hate crime law, and policy relating to this. The engagement originates from my participation in the European Commission funded project When Law and Hate Collide, and I'm now happy to be able to announce the final publication of one of the main academic outputs of this project: A special section of the Journal of Interpersonal Violence on the theme of the philosophy of hate crime, guest-edited by David Brax (my main collaborator in the project) and myself:

The section features an unusually (for a philosophy publication) diverse collection of specialists, representing philosophy, ethics, law, sociology and criminology, writing on a wide selection of philosophical and ethical aspects of hate crimes and related policy. The table of content looks as follows:

David Brax's and my introduction, where the theme of the philosophy of hate crime, as well as the content of the individual contributions, are briefly explained, has been made "open access", that is freely available for reading or download by anyone. If you lack the access (through private subscription or your university library or other institutional link) to read the other contributions, please contact the individual authours to obtain copies of their respective articles!

Inaugural Issue of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association: 10 of 11 Authours Male, as Gender Imbalance Issues Are Shaking Up North American Philosophy Academia

Today, I received the announcement that the inaugural issue of the brand new Journal of the American Philosophical Association – JAPA as it will doubtlessly become known – is available. A nice touch of the editors and the publisher (Cambridge University Press) is that the issue will remain freely accessible the year out. Also, the issue features many a fine contemporary American philosopher, and displays a wide smorgasbord of tasty topics.

By ten (10) men and one (1) woman.

This in a time when North American academic philosophy is ridden by internal problems with regard to gender imbalance (also afflicting Europe, as well as Australia, Asia and Africa) and, allegedly (I say, as I watch these things from a distance), an academic social culture particularly hostile to women. For this reason, APA has instigated special codes, e.g. on sexual harrassment, and a task forces on inclusion and codes of conduct, and even a special committee on women in philosophy. Meanwhile, at blogs such as What Is It Like to Be A Woman In Philosophy and Feminist Philosophers, the documentation of the various aspect of this problem continues, as constructive actions, such as the Gendered Conference Campaign, attempt to push the situation ever so little forward.

This is when the JAPA editors decide that there is only one (1) female philosopher who may do for the eleven (11) authour line-up for its inaugural issue. And, to really ice the cake, in the editorial presenting the journal idea and the issue, editor in chief John Heil, does not touch on the subject with one word, albeit going through several other important value and ethics matters to secure a splendid journal and a splendid future for American philosophy. A powerful signal if there ever was one; if nothing else, of how strongly the JAPA editorial management simply doesn't care.

Now don't get me wrong – all of the contributors are certainly top of the line colleagues, no doubt about it, and their topics are relevant, engaging and, I'm sure, very well handled in their respective articles. But, of course, many other colleagues could very well have done as good a job (in their special areas) – and across North American philosophy academia, quite a few of those are women. Granting, to be sure, that not everyone is necessarily available, even for such a fine commission as inauguring the JAPA, I would still conjecture that a sizable portion would remain to take your pick from after such practical issues have been sorted.

But given the roaring silence on the topic from the JAPA editorial management, I suppose that they have simply not even reflected on this side of things. Thereby, they are actively promoting those very problems that the APA has been appearing to attempt to address the last decade or so, and which many academic philosophers witness about as increasingly serious. They are acting in support of perpetuating the image of the female philosopher as second rate and obscure; as perhaps capable, but not really that brilliant (*nudge, nudge, wink, wink*), at least not for this particularly splendid occasion.

Except for one (1).
Of eleven (11).

I do wonder why Martha Nussbaum has accepted this role, although I leave it to my US colleagues to sort that one out. Is it, as Mary Midgley dryly suggested recently, only when men go away to die in wars, that room can in practice made for the philosophy excellence of women? The inaugural issue of the JAPA certainly suggests as much.

Brian Leiter: from Online Harrassment and Ridiculous Legal Threats to Simple False Flag Bullying

You thought it was over, but of course it was not. Like a dung beetle will eventually find its way to a suitable habitat, where it can enjoy itself royally, University of Chicago philosopher and law professor Brian Leiter is now finally finding his way home, resorting to slander and bullying, pure and simple rural redneck style. You may inform yourself about foregone events regarding professor Leiter's manners and manoeuvres here and through the links there provided.

Then move on to read the latest tidings on how the dear professor tries to get back at one of his self-perceived nemesis, Leigh Johnson: Here and here. Given the increasingly sorry figure Brian Leiter is in these ways making of himself, you may ask yourself if you might commit the mistake of the Black Mamba / Beatrix Kiddo judging the motivational features of Bill:

... and whether the dear professor commits that of Bill misjudging "Kiddo", of course.

As for myself, wise from my own experience of anonymous comments on matters Leiter (see first link above), there is at least no mystery with regard to the identity of "AnonUntenured", an observation of which I'm far from alone.

The Return of Lombroso? Free Access Article On the Ethics of the Scientific Vision of Screening for Risk of Criminality to Prevent Future Crime

One of my research interests is about the way in which medical science and technology may be used and misused for large-scale societal aims, and how that territory should be understood ethically. In Gothenburg, I am happy to be and have been part of the growing research environment of the Centre for Ethics, Law and Mental Health (CELAM), involving collaboration between forensic psychiatry, criminology, psychology, law, neuromedicine, political and care science, philosophy and ethics. In a freesh article coming out of this collaboration, by myself and CELAM director Susanna Radovic, a family of visionary and currently popular ideas – advocated not least by neurocriminology enthusiast Adrian Raine – about using the science of individual causes of crime for preventive screening programmes are analyzed from an ethical standpoint, connecting to the roots of such visions in the notorious ideas of 19th century Italian criminology pioneer Cesare Lombroso. The abstract runs:

The vision of legendary criminologist Cesare Lombroso to use scientific theories of individual causes of crime as a basis for screening and prevention programmes targeting individuals at risk for future criminal behaviour has resurfaced, following advances in genetics, neuroscience and psychiatric epidemiology. This article analyses this idea and maps its ethical implications from a public health ethical standpoint. Twenty-seven variants of the new Lombrosian vision of forensic screening and prevention are distinguished, and some scientific and technical limitations are noted. Some lures, biases and structural factors, making the application of the Lombrosian idea likely in spite of weak evidence are pointed out and noted as a specific type of ethical aspect. Many classic and complex ethical challenges for health screening programmes are shown to apply to the identified variants and the choice between them, albeit with peculiar and often provoking variations. These variations are shown to actualize an underlying theoretical conundrum in need of further study, pertaining to the relationship between public health ethics and the ethics and values of criminal law policy.

We have been fortunate to possess the funds of making the article so-called open access, meaning that it is now free for viewing and download by anyone – no need for subscription or the payment of any fees.

So if the topic of how medicine, science and technology can be used, for better of for worse, for preventing crime, and what are th ethical implications of such possibilities, feel free to sample our attempt at getting an initial grip on trhis topic, here. And should you want to share it along, or post it on a blog or a forum or in an archive, the open access license permits you to do so, as long as no commercial exploitation is involved.

Come and Work with Us in Practical Philosophy in Gothenburg: Post Doc Positions Open!

Today was released the first in a series of calls for application over the next coming years for research positions in practical philosophy at the University of Gothenburg, attached to our strategic Moral Responsibility Research Initiative (MRRI). MRRI, which has a broad conception of what moral responsibility research may involve, recently secured an approximately € 8.8 Million grant from the Swedish Research Council, plus matching funds from the University's central purse, to recruit Professor Paul Russell from the University of British Columbia as part time visiting professor for the next 10 years, and to strengthen our already existing MRRI programme with a number of new PhD and Post Doc positions. In addition, our research fellow, Joakim Sandberg, has recently secured a generous so-called Wallenberg Academy Fellowship, for a research programme on the philosophical and ethical aspects of sustainable financial institutions, which will also include a number of hirings ahead. On top of that, we have a few other new projects that will need to hire as well, and our regular little faculty funded recruitment of PhD's.

But this time, then, it is the MRRI intiative that starts looking for new post doctoral fellows to add to our already quite dynamic practical philosophy team. The MRRI programme, to quote the call, ...

 ... conducts research on responsibility within action theory, metaethics, and applied ethics, including healthcare ethics, business ethics, and criminal responsibility.

/... /

The postdoctoral fellow will contribute to the research environment, especially with respect to foundational and analytic issues concerning moral responsibility and free will (broadly conceived). He or she will also be expected to contribute to and actively participate in MRRI's research seminar.

Apart from research, duties may include teaching, supervising graduate students, course design, and other teaching-related activities; such supplementary duties will not exceed 20% of the position?s responsibilities.

The holder of the position is expected to carry out the vast majority of her/his research in Gothenburg and to regularly and consistently participate in the research group's various activities and programs (workshops, seminars, conferences, etc.).

 The entire call is here, where you can also find relevant contact details and all information on suitable background, criteria for assessment and how to apply. So, why not take a stab at joining myself, Paul, Joakim, Gunnar Björnsson (who coordinates MRRI), Daniela Cutas, Bengt Brülde, Susanna Radovic of the partnering Centre for Ethics Law and Mental Health, and a number of already present PhD's and Post Docs!

Some Further Developments on Brian Leiter and the PGR, following the September Statement and the Advisory Board Letter that Urges his Resignation

This is following up on the events a week or so back, which resulted in two posts here and here. A string of unprovoked* harassments, bullying and threats towards various academic colleagues online by Brian Leiter, famous philosophy blogger and coordinator of the Philosophical Gourmet Report (a sort of home-cooked, informal ranking of English-speaking philosophy departments based on mutual appraisal or lack of such by said departements), finally led to a storm of protests. These were especially strong in support of Leiter's latest victim, Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins and documented in the September Statement (to date signed by 613 academic philosophers in North America and overseas and called a "smear campaign" by Leiter himself). This letter urges academic philosophers to recline serving the PGR with any type of input as long as it is linked to Leiter. As a subsequent reaction, 30 out of 56 of the PGR's advisory board – basically what makes the PGR radiate any sort of academic authority in the first place – wrote to Leiter, asking him to hand over the management of the PGR to new regime. A more detailed update to this request was sent on October 1, and today, Leiter posted a reply on his blog, where the essential info is this:

two of the options mentioned in the letter, both involving my immediate departure from the PGR, were unacceptable:  I have already invested hundreds of hours in correcting and updating the spread sheet with more than 550 evaluators, as well as the spread sheet containing more than one hundred faculty listings.  Any report based on that work is a report I have at least co-edited.

I have also informed the Board that I am still considering the third proposal, namely, proceeding with the 2014 PGR (with Brit Brogaard as co-editor) while simultaenously committing to turn over any future PGR to others.  I am also considering two other possibilities:  (4) proceeding with the 2014 PGR (again, obviously, with Brit as co-editor) and postponing any decisions about the future of the PGR until after the 2014 PGR and after the current controversy; or (5) simply discontinuing the PGR altogether.

My analysis: Leiter dares the gang of 30 (thereby daunting the gang of 613) to a game of chicken, where the opening play is "I do whatever I want with my baby". Possibly he does, the question is who actually cares about the baby in the long run, when he has had it drained of fat, so to speak. To be frank, although regularly having students and post docs who gravitate towards seeking foreign contacts, careers or training opportunities across the anglophone philosophy world, I never did, as my Canadian bioethics colleague Udo Schuklenk has made clear that he doesn't – classifying the PGR as a "gossip document", where "people affiliated with pre-selected programs evaluate the quality of people in pre-selected programs based on ... well, apparently, whatever criteria they choose to evaluate quality". To find good departments is easy, you look up what people publish in the field you're interested in, read it and assess it and check how it's flying in the collegial discussion, and possibly chart a bit how the seminar programs look like and what the funding situation looks like – easy enough these days.

I did and do, however, care lots about the horribly bad example set by Leiter's behaviour towards colleagues – in particular, women colleagues, as it seems – and the effects that this has on these persons. That was reason enough for me to sign the September Statement. Whether or not Leiter runs his PGR baby into the ground is not really any concern of mine, although I do think, as Udo seems to do, that it might actually do the English-speaking academic philosophy world a bit of good to get rid of at least one layer of the many layers of the mutual academic back-scratching club.

*) Addition on October 6, 2014: As can be seen by the comments below, Brian Leiter thinks that the word "unprovoked" here (as in my earlier posts) is factually incorrect. In light of the evidence he has provided and the further comments following Leiter's two posts below, I have nevertheless decided to let it stay, but with the following addendum: 

It is clear to me that BL felt strongly provoked by some complex process of events around the PGR and that he at the time, for some reason, saw Carrie Jenkin's blog post as part of what he  perceived as a "smear campaign" against him. Taking, BL's word for it, he later received information that he himself was among the philosophers, whose behaviour Jenkins distanced herself from in her post. However, to my eyes, this just confirms what I have written. The fact that someone is filled with strong negative and resenting affect, caused by some phenomenon, does not make that phenomenon into a provocation. The fact that Leiter in retrospect allegedly finds some information that, had he known it at the time, would have made the phenomenon into a provocation doesn't change this situation. But, I'd go some steps in Brian Leiter's direction and make the assumption that indeed Carrie Jenkin's had Leiter in mind as one of the philosophers she thought about as exhibiting unprofessional behaviour, and that Leiter at the time knew this to be the case. Does that in any way constitute sensible cause to do what Brian Leiter did? I cannot see how it would under any minimally reasonable standard of professional academic conduct. Thus, even then, no provocation for the actual actions of Leiter would exist – this is my position. I'm aware that Brian Leiter holds a different position on this matter, but that in itself is no reason for me to change my mind.

An Increasingly Remarkable Series of Unprovoked Bullying Attacks Puts Brian Leiter in the Sight of Open Statement Signed by A Growing Number of Philosophers in US and Worldwide

Brian Leiter, well-known philosopher at the University of Chicago law school and even more well-known philosophy blogger, has recently come under some heavy criticism from colleagues in North America and overseas, following a remarkably strange series of completely unprovoked, outright nasty, harassing and openly threatening email-attacks against Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins, philosopher at the universities of British Columbia and Aberdeen, and some others. These as well as the one against Jenkins are documented here and here. The latter of these resources also offers the following further readings and samples on the subject of Brian Leiter's manners:

• Daily Nous, Insults and Obnoxiousness
• Philosophy Adjunct, The Real Crisis in Philosophy is About Power
• Leigh M Johnson, Leiter v. Alcoff Part One and Part Two
• Julie Van Camp, Female Friendly Departments
• Brian Leiter, We Get Mail: Thomas R. Grover, Esq, Edition
• Paul Campos:
  Brian Leiter’s Slow-Motion Car Crash, Parts One and Two
  What’s Going On in the Faculty Lounge?
  “We’re dirty guys and they doubt we were ever virgins but they don’t say the story is inaccurate”
  Pathological Liars
  For the Record
• Damon Cheston, Is Brian Leiter Guilty of Cyber-Stalking

For some reason, most of the victims of his behaviour are women, not unimportant in view of the recent critical discussion of the treatment of female philosophers across US academia.

The particular attack against Carrie Jenkins was apparently due to the following blog post that Jenkins publicised due to her attaining full professorship at UBC, this summer. She here sets out the following principles of a professional ethos for herself to abide by:

1. In my professional capacity, I will treat other philosophers with respect.

• In particular, I will treat other philosophers more junior and/or professionally vulnerable than myself with respect.
• I will not make negative personal comments about individual philosophers in professional contexts.
• If I disagree with someone’s work or ideas, I will find ways to express that disagreement without suggesting the person is unintelligent, lacking in credibility, unfit to be a philosopher, or otherwise undeserving of respect.
• I will not treat other philosophers or their work in ways that are belittling, trivialising, and/or exclusionary.

2. I will not react to behaviour that does not meet the basic standards described in 1 as if it were normal or acceptable within my discipline.

• I will make clear, in public, that in my opinion behaviour which does not meet the basic standards described in 1 is both unprofessional and unethical.**
• I will not accept or treat those whose behaviour regularly fails to meet these standards as normal or representative members of my profession.
• I will not lend my professional authority or support to such behaviour or to the people who regularly engage in it.

3. I will work with like-minded colleagues to find ways to make philosophy a discipline in which junior and otherwise professionally vulnerable academics are not routinely subject to behaviour that does not meet the basic standards described in 1

This, for some reason that is beyond me, had Brian Leiter write and send the following:

From: Leiter, Brian
Date: Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Subject: I'm curious about your threats aimed at me
To: "Jenkins, Caroline"
Cc: "Leiter, Brian"

Dear Carrie:
Since you have issued the following threats aimed at me on your blog:

• I will make clear, in public, that in my opinion behaviour which does not meet the basic standards described in 1 is both unprofessional and unethical.**
• I will not accept or treat those whose behaviour regularly fails to meet these standards as normal or representative members of my profession.
• I will not lend my professional authority or support to such behaviour or to the people who regularly engage in it.

I’m curious what you’re going to do, especially regarding the second and third. Are you going to spit at me if I see you at the APA or chase me from the room with a bat? That would be bad. Does this mean I can’t list you as a reference? That’s OK. Does it mean you will defame me whenever the opportunity presents itself? That would also be bad.
Also, calling me “unprofessional” is probably defamatory per se in Canada, so I’d suggest you stick to “unethical” (since “ethical” as we all know has no cognitive content). It may be in the US too, I haven’t asked my lawyer yet, but I will.
I’ve grown used to the fact that lots of philosophers are sanctimonious assholes (“SAs” for short), but I’m really curious what you’re “thinking” if anything? I know you only from social media, where you come across as an SA, but it may be in real life you’re a civilized person and not an SA.
So what should I expect going forward? I’m trying to plan out my litigation strategy for the next year!
Thanks for your help!
Best wishes,
Brian
P.S. Don’t worry I’m not going to embarrass you in public about this (though I may quote some of if without attribution, since it is quite remarkable).

As a particularly sour seasoning to this sorry brew of unprovoked hostility, Leiter is in charge of coordinating the so-called Philosophical Gourmet Report, PGR, a sort of ranking list of philosophy departments in the USA and the rest of the English speaking world, which means Leiter is a power figure of sorts throughout this territory. This position has been activated by Leiter in his initial reaction to the complaints against him, insinuating that there is a covert operation initiated to undermine the standing of the PGR, as well as corrupting polls launched by Leiter on his blog about the usefulness/desirability of updating the PGR and, more recently this, as he has apparently started to realise that his own linking of PGR to his own bizarre and inconsiderate behaviour towards professional colleagues may have started to hurt his baby. In the first of these posts, Leiter basically repeats or recounts chosen tidbits of the attacks on the people mentioned earlier originally sent via the emails displayed above and through the links above. 

However, it seems that Brian Leiter has gotten all of these things wrong – just as he (heaven knows why) got it into his head that Carrie Jenkins personal ethos was directed at him personally. It is, in fact, his own behaviour against colleagues that now has prompted, as I write, 149 and counting academic philosophers across North America and overseas to sign an official statement against his actions – in particular the completely unmotivated nastiness towards Carrie Jenkins, and to call into question not the PGR, but Leiter's association with it. These signatories not only protest against the distasteful power abuse and bullying of Leiter, they also midly suggest that they themselves and other colleagues so positioned will withdraw any association with the PGR as long as Laiter is associated with it. This statement/letter can be read here, and I quote it verbatim (minus the signatories, which can be inspected via the link just provided):

A serious issue has arisen that impacts Professor Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins.
Professor Jenkins has been targeted by Professor Brian Leiter (University of Chicago) with derogatory and intimidating remarks privately by email in July, and recently with further derogatory remarks publicly on Twitter.
Professor Jenkins wrote the following blog post in July:
    http://csi-jenkins.tumblr.com/post/90563605390/day-one
in response to which Professor Leiter sent her an email saying that she comes across as a "sanctimonious asshole" (and indicating that he is not sure whether "in real life" she is a sanctimonious asshole or a "civilized person"). The email also intimates that Professor Leiter is contemplating litigation against Professor Jenkins, states that he is wondering "what she is 'thinking' if anything", and asks if she plans to spit at him at the APA or chase him with a bat.
He has now followed this up by saying publicly on Twitter that he has called Carrie a "sanctimonious arse". He sent her another email in an attempt to apologise for 'upsetting her', which only succeeded in causing further harm.
The effects of this on Professor Jenkins since July have been very serious, impacting her health, her capacity to work, and her ability to contribute to public discourse as a member of the profession. In the light of this recent incident on Professor Leiter's public Twitter feed, we feel compelled to act. We are now standing with Carrie publicly, as colleagues and friends.
Professor Leiter has the power to have this kind of impact on Professor Jenkins in part because of his control over the Philosophical Gourmet Report. We don't find what has happened to our colleague acceptable, and don't wish voluntarily to help provide Professor Leiter the power that makes it possible.
It is up to each of us individually to decide what we will volunteer to do. The undersigned members of the philosophical community have decided to decline to volunteer our services to Leiter's PGR. While we recognise that there are other ways to condemn Professor Leiter's behaviour and to support our colleague, we think the best choice for us involves publicly declining to assist with the PGR. We cannot continue to volunteer services in support of the PGR in good conscience as long as Brian Leiter continues to behave in this way. We therefore decline to take the PGR survey, we decline to serve on the PGR advisory board, and we decline to send Professor Leiter information to help him compile the survey (e.g. updated faculty lists and corrections). We are only declining to volunteer our services to the PGR while it is under the control of Brian Leiter. With a different leadership structure, the benefits of the guide might be achieved without detriment to our colleague.
We feel that we need to consider very carefully what kind of example we are setting for graduate students, and for philosophers across the whole discipline, when something like this happens. Tolerating this kind of behaviour signals to them that they can expect the same in their own professional lives. We wish to set a clear example of how to respond appropriately but firmly.

/.../

ADDENDUM
On September 24, the people listed above, motivated to decline to volunteer services to the PGR by these specific incidents impacting Carrie, signed this statement.
Others may also be similarly moved by these incidents, or may know of other relevantly similar incidents, and thus may not wish to participate in the PGR while it is under the control of Brian Leiter.
If you wish to add your name to those declining for these reasons to volunteer their services to the PGR while under the control of Brian Leiter, please email septemberstatement@gmail.com with your name and affiliation.
Please use your verifiable university email account to avoid confusion.
Those who email are being added to the list posted below this addendum. The people signing are writing as individuals; like the philosophers listed above, each signatory declines to volunteer his or her individual services to the Philosophical Gourmet Report while it is under the control of Brian Leiter. This list will be updated as time allows.

 As you can see, the statement is open for additional signatories and I myself just sent an email to add my own. Any professional academic philosopher may do the same, using the same method I did (also described above):

Reproductive Public Health Ethics at the MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory, 2014.

In a few hours, I'm off to Manchester, UK, for participation in a so-called panel ( ≈ special symposium) at the MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory 2014. The panel is on the topic of Reproductive Public Health Ethics and has been conceived of and convened by myself. The topic itself is described thus, at the Mancept website:

Human reproduction and resulting population patterns is a classic concern of public policy, yet philosophical and ethical applications to this area remain imprecise, scattered and unsystematic. The point of this workshop is to stimulate a more integrated addressing of this area for social and political philosophical analysis from a public health standpoint. Reproductive bioethics hosts established interest in the regulation of reproductive technology, yet mostly ignoring overarching societal concerns to the benefit of a discourse focusing on individual reproductive liberty. This individualism has stimulated the emergence of public health ethics, where queries regarding health policy are put at a population level, but reproduction- and population issues have not been in focus, partly due to a common conflation in public health between reproductive and sexual health. In parallel, biopolitics subjects cultural layers of policy to critical scrutiny regarding “identities” and concepts central to laws across the world – e.g. parenthood and family – in light of, e.g., technological developments. Also here, public health ethical perspectives are scant, while dimensions of justice otherwise often ignored are addressed, making possible, e.g., explorations of hidden presumtions behind reproductive policies. More basic research on population ethics, while having somewhat informed reproductive bioethics, remains largely unexplored as to more conrete political and policy implications in either of the mentioned dimensions, e.g. in the face of environmental challenges and expected consequences in the form of resource scarcity and global migration. There are also theoretical conundrums which need attention, e.g. how justice-oriented discourses of biopolitics can be squared with the intricate problems of population ethics, or how the combination of these and a globalised public health ethical approach relates to the individualist assumptions of reproductive bioethics. The workshop assembles a selected group of presenters from the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden and the UK.

The same website also lists an, alas, not so up to date speaker list, as I've had a few cancellations and a few new people entering the program since it was initially presented to the Mancept organisation. The actual program looks like this:

• Session 1: Sept 8, 2 PM - 5:30 PM

Christian Munthe, University of Gothenburg: Reproductive Population Health and the Goals of Public Health: Exploring a Territory of Moral Unease

Angus Dawson, University of Birmingham: Public Health Reproduction: Defending the Very Idea

• Session 2: Sept 9, 9:30 AM - 1 PM

Daniela Cutas, Umeå University & University of Gothenburg: The Nuclear Family and Reproductive Policy: Ethical Challenges

Marian Verkerk, University of Groningen & Ulrik Kihlbom, Uppsala University: Preconception Genetic Testing and Reproductive Counselling as Challenge to the Family as Social Institution

Anca Gheaus, Sheffield University: Biological Parenthood: Gestational not Genetic – Implications for Reproductive and Family Law

• Session 3: Sept 9, 2 PM - 5:30 PM

Stephen Wilkinson, Lancaster University: The Public Health Ethics of Selecting Future Children

Anna Smajdor, University of East Anglia: Postponed Motherhood and the State

Rebecca Brown, University of Aberdeen: Incentives for Reproductive Public Health

• Session 4: Sept 10, 9:30 AM - 1 PM

Kalle Grill, Umeå University: Population Policy in the Face of Environmental Challenge: What Place for Reproductive Liberty?

General discussion on future developments and prospects of the topic in forthcoming endeavours


If you happen to be at the Mancept Workshops event, please don't hesitate to drop in on our panel, or approach about interest in the general topic!

What is Derek Parfit to do with the Prize Money? Preliminary Explorations

As I reported yesterday, All Souls (Oxford) emeritus and moral philosophy giant Derek Parfit has been selected as the 2014 Rolf Schock Logic and Philosophy laureate and, in effect, will receive about € 68 000. After having cheered at this excellent choice for about 24 hours (this affirming him as a worthy winner), I'm now moving to the next, obviously more pressing question:

Whatever should he do with the money??

There are, to start with, three crude options – a sort of A, B, C of the philosophy of Derek Parfit, if you want – needed scrutiny to commence exploring this complex issue, which has received far too little attention since Sartre refused the Nobel Prize, before getting philosophically serious with some deeper complications. I will here preliminary probe this exciting topic, employing only some of the tools sharpened and left ready for use on the kitchen zinc by the master himself.

Thus:

Consider:

The three options:

The Grand Gesture
Derek refuses the money in a grand gesture of public display - e.g., as a protest against the lack of female Schock laureates, the ridiculousness of scientific prizes, or somesuch.

Well-earned Enjoyment During the Fall of Life
Derek receives the money and then spends it on having a good time for himself and his close ones after a long life of hard academic work and duty.

Making the World a Better Place
Derek receives the money and uses it for a morally good cause (better than giving them away to elderly philosophy professors, that is).

Some philosophers would doubt that any of these strategies can be justified. I claim, however:

The Parfit As the Assumed Subject – Holding Certain Positions which Will Not Change Just Because Someone or Else Doubts them – of this Blog Post Justificatory Principle Claim:
 A blog post discussing a subject related to Derek Parfit which is not literally about the issue of the possibility of justifying normative positions, can assume the Parfit stance on the possibility of justifying normative positions.

That is, that it exists. A little bit, I'm sure. In principle, at least. And being in the land of principles at the moment, this will do until I'm done (see the latter part of this post).

However, affirming (tentatively) this possibility does not imply that it is easy. On the contrary, I claim:

The Very Much Difficulty of Solving Intricate Moral Problems Related to Derek Parfit Claim

Which, I trust, explains itself (and, if you insist, can be confirmed by at least 15 years of Swedish practical philosophy students at the BA level).

Now, consider the option of The Grand Gesture. It is obvious from his writings that Parfit is enough of a consequentialist to hold this option as justified only if it leads to some sort of sufficiently good relevant effect, such as a future adjustment of the gender imbalance of the prize laureates or the refusal of the Rolf Schock Foundation to award any more prizes. However, it is equally obvious that any such effect depends on not only what Derek Parfit does, but how this is fitted in with what a large number of other agents do (and in this case, have done). Therefore:

Consider:

The Possibly Endlessly Divided Possible Protest
Many people, some now, some in the past and some, yet unidentified, in the future may together act to form an effective and justified protest for the worthy cause C. However, some in the past have already failed to do their part and it is undecided how many in the future will, although we assume that it is possible for enough of the latter (whose total number is unknown) to act in a such a way as to make a choice of the presently deliberating agent Derek to participate in the possible protest into actually participating in an actual effective protest which will eventually be completed.

What should Derek do?

This is a conundrum demanding theory X, and thus we presently lack the theoretical context to properly assess The Grand Gesture and I for one will dub any attempt at doing it in the absence of X as the 6th mistake in moral mathematics.

Therefore, instead consider the option Well-earned Enjoyment During the Fall of Life. It is obvious that any worse wise-cracker than me would here begin invoking puns relating to problems of personal identity and thereby believe something of relevance to the philosophy of Derek Parfit having thus been linked to a ridiculous attempt at being funny at the expense of his obvious aging. I reject this claim. Instead, I affirm the claim that relation R is what creates trouble for the Well-earned Enjoyment During the Fall of Life. While it is patently obvious that the Derek receiving the prize is also the Derek who deserves it whatever his ages at different stages might have been, and thus the right to enjoy it – he has the same social security number as that young man winning an All Souls fellowship without having a doctorate and who eventually went on writing an influential little essay called "On doing the best for our children", doesn't he?! Duh! – so, that's obviously settled as a deepest of deep further facts. However, lacking enough of relation R – I mean, just look at that hair!....

....and no glasses as in some other and earlier pictures I have seen – this is of no help, as relation R is what matters.*

Thus pending theory Y, which would provide the missing reason for why a laureate should enjoy a prize in the absence of relation R, it is time to move on to the option Making the World a Better Place. 

Consider:

(Q) Quirky as it may be to determine what is a morally good cause in the case of Derek, there actually exists one.

(P) The good cause referred to in (Q) is (as it were!) (N)**

Even if that is so, however, it may be undetermined what N is. Many would claim the opposite (and truth to be told, so would I if I had only eaten a better lunch), but I nevertheless claim that although N does exist, there is no definite N, such that Derek should choose promote that particular N with his (well-earned) prize-money. In effect, there is no reason for Derek to choose option Making the World a Better Place.

Oh, well, Nagel might object, so:

Consider:

The Many Equally Important Beneficiaries of Derek's Doing Good
Depending on exactly how Derek goes about doing good with his prize money by choosing a particular version of N, different people will travel around differently, meeting different people and so on, after 5000 years resulting in a great number of different spermatozoa to exist than if Derek had made another choice of N. Perhaps all of the ova will be the same, how would I know? But the central fact we assume is this: the good of Derek's action for the world will not occur earlier than in 5000 years time. Thus completely different people will benefit and let us – when we're at it, what the heck – assume that they would all benefit the same. Some economists would question that claim. I, however, claim the opposite of that questioning, thus affirming my original claim as positively supported from a theory of rationality yet to be formulated.

In any case, the upshot is that we need theory – obviously!! – Z to be able to provide a reason for picking out any particular way of doing N in order be justified in any sort of rational support of Making the World a Better Place. We are back were we started in our Derek Parfit A, B, C:

X, Y, Z.

Ta! from Gothenburg!

*) Some readers may not remember the famous relation R from the now lost 34th edition postscript to Reasons and Persons, where the overly abstract notion of the original analysis of R had been ironed out to more concrete form; now signifying the As Ravingly Dashing Head of Hair as Ever relation.
**) If you ask yourself what (N) is, you obviously know nothing of philosophy and needs to attend university.

Derek Parfit Wins the 2014 Royal Swedish Academy of Science Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy

I'm happy to announce that this year's Rolf Schock prize in philosophy and logic has been awarded to University of Oxford All Souls College emeritus fellow Derek Parfit. The prize, which also is awarded in mathematics and the musical and visual arts is of a sizeable sum of 600 000 Swedish krona ≈ € 68 000 ≈ $ 93 000 and is one of, if not the, largest research prizes in philosophy. Former laureates include W.V.O. Quine, John Rawls, Hilary Putnam, Thomas Nagel, Saul Kripke and some other monumental names of 20th and 21th century Western academic and, let's be fair, anglophone philosophy. The list still waits to include a female receiver, I'm sorry to say.

But this takes nothing away from Derek Parfit, who has single-handedly transformed contemporary systematic moral philosophy more than anyone after John Rawls. Already his 1984 modern classic Reasons and Persons earned him the motivation of the selection committee that he receives the prize “for his ground-breaking contributions concerning personal identity, regard for future generations and analysis of the structure of moral theories”. This is a book that no even semi-serious scholar of ethics can avoid, as Parfit picks apart established ethical traditions and theories in to their bare bones, and further on into their marrow, to finally come out on the other side with a completely new research program for academic ethics scholars and moral philosophers, regarding, for instance, how to think about part-whole conflicts, personal identity and demarcation, future generations and population policy, the structure and role of theories of the good life, and the relationship between practical rationality, morality and the normativity of moral deliberation. He works in the very best of the British academic philosophical tradition, where Hume and Sidgwick are two of the most obvious influences, and has a now well-known style of writing that, as in the case of Quine, is imitated by many but mastered by only one. A few years back, he published the more synthetic and rather monumental work On What Matters, but to me R and P is what makes Parfit the giant he is, as his refusal of being content with any of the suggestions he contemplates there and the constant unfolding of new layers of paradox of human moral thought has produced fuel for philosophers to work on for, I'd say, at least a few centuries ahead.

On of Parfit's exceptional qualities is his straightforward and simple way of moving effortlessly from highly technical exercises of intricate problems into the most engaging narrative examples, broadly fleshed out to provide humanity to the philosophical issues he engages with. This excerpt from Reasons and Persons, where the theme of personal identity is introduced is a well-known example:

When I started to get serious about philosophy and together with a friend, while still studying on the undergrad level, was invited to attend the "higher seminar" of practical philosophy in Stockholm, Reasons and Persons had just come out and was the topic for a term's discussions, and it was refreshing to watch how all of the seniors around were as shaken by the radical and far-reaching challenges presented by that book as I was. A term later, I wrote my B.A. thesis on 25 pages in the beginning of the book, where Parfit defends a theory of practical rationality that allows for "intrinsically irrational desires" (such as preferring suffering on tuesdays, while otherwise disliking suffering as much as any other one). I was critical of that theory, as I have been of much other of Parfit's own philosophical claims over the years, for instance in my extensive use of his seminal analysis of the morality of creating and influencing future people taking place in part four of the book for the purpose of explicating a consequentialist theory of the morality of abortion in my Ph.D. thesis. But the great thing about Parfit, is that he is not the sort of philosopher whose value is found in him "being right" (or, as is usually the case with such specimen – wrong) – it's rather the way in which he is often able to demonstrate that most of the things we have been taken for granted as obvious or unproblematic must, in fact, be rejected and new, hitherto unknown, answers must be sought out in a project forcing us to rethink just about everything.

Congrats!

Slides to Two Recent Talks Connecting the Themes of Ethics, Crime and Psychiatry are Now Online

Just to inform that the slides to my two talks at the 33rd International Congress of Law and Mental Health, held in Amsterdam earlier this summer, are now available online for viewing, download and sharing via my Academia.edu site. Both talks represent work in progress, where I am in the beginning of combining thinking on different topics that I have been touching on in isolation before, but which are nevertheless related through their connection to certain aspects of criminal law policy connecting to medical views of human nature.

They are:

1. The Return of Lombroso? Ethical and Philosophical Aspects of  (Visions of) Forensic Screening

Abstract
Italian nineteenth century criminologist Cesare Lombroso is notorious for his seminal ideas about criminality and anti-social behaviour resulting from physiological anomalies that should be detected by society and used for forensic preventive purposes. After an extended period of disrepute following World War II, similar ideas have been resurrected in psychiatry, genetics, neurology and criminology in the past decade or two. In particular, there is a growing focus on early detection and application of preventive measures. This development actualizes a complex web of ethics and policy issues having to do with the well-known fact that screening and prevention in the health area are far from ethically clear-cut activities and actualize vivid prospects of doing extensive harm to individuals as well as society. Also, taken to its extreme, it actualizes the idea of using prenatal or preimplantation testing to preselect against children with a predisposition for criminal or antisocial behaviour. In the forensic case, such screening-prevention strategies will connect further to a complicated issue about the proper use of risk-assessment models for societal decision-making for precautionary purposes. Based on former work in all of these areas, this presentation will outline and analyze the basic issue of the defensibility of activities of this sort, with the perspective of forestalling unintentional harm to individuals and society.

And.....

2. Hate Crime, Mental Disorder and Criminal Responsibility

Abstract
Hate crimes are ordinary crimes committed in connection with a negatively prejudiced, biased, disparaging, or antagonistic attitude towards the victim in terms of a perceived membership of a social group. Some hate crimes are elaborate political acts of terror or elaborate persecution, some are so-called “hate speech”, but the overwhelming majority are instances of mundane criminality, involving everything from murder to theft and harassment. Hate crime policies rest on the idea that the bias or “hate”feature make such crimes worse, and that offenders for this reason should be held more firmly responsible. At the same time, the attitude of making a crime into a hate crime involves more or less distorted ideas about reality, together with a willingness to transgress social norms on that basis. In some cases, these views amount to major delusions, resistant to rational scrutiny. In other cases, we may move closer to a point where the belief-desire cluster can be seen as ordinary negligence. Thus, many hate crimes have features that may be argued acting to diminish responsibility according to standard ideas in the philosophy of punishment. The presentation maps underlying value conflicts, tensions, and incoherence in legal practice connected to this complexity of criminal law.

Enjoy for what it's worth!

Video: The Philosophy of Hate Crime: Concepts, Values and Tensions in the European Context

As some may have noticed, from time to time I have posted materisls and ideas coming out of a European research project on hate crime policy of which I have been a part. The project When Law and Hate Collide is now officially over, but material will keep coming out throughout this as well as the next few years. For instance, at the moment, me and my philsopher colleague in the project, David Brax, are in the process of preparing a special issue on the philosophy of hate crime of the cross-disciplinary research periodical Journal of Interpersonal Violence, to appear in 2014, and earlier this year, we made public our report on the philosophy of hate crime, available open access for online reading and download by clicking the link above.

Now you can also view online videos from the final conference of the project, held in Brussels, January 29, available via youtube here, and the presentation of our philosophical perspective, The Philosophy of Hate Crime: Concepts, Values and Tensions in the European Context, is embedded for direct viewing here below (the slides are not very visible on the video, so these can be downloaded separately via the link above)!



All earlier posts connecting to this project, including videos from earlier symposia on the philosophy as well as psychology of hate crime, are here.

Follow the 4th Hate Crime Symposium via web streaming!

As you may recall, I have now and again posted in connection to the project When Law and Hate Collide, where I and my assistant David Brax have been active since two years, collaborating with researchers at the law school of the University of Central Lancashire and psychologists and special education researchers at the Göthe Universität Frankfurt. These earlier posts are all assembled here, and among other things they link to videos from symposia arranged within the project in 2011 and 2012.

We are now in the final stages of this project and on tuesday we will hold the final and 4th of these symposia. This will take place on Tuesday, the 29th of January, starting 9 a.m. (CET) in Brussels, but for anyone who wants to follow it, it will be streamed on the web. To do this, 9 a.m. on tuesday, you simply click this link, and the live streaming should start. If there is a problem, wait a while and try again.

The program includes the following presentations:

Bogusia Puchalska (Uclan): European-wide policy and initiatives on hate crime

Christian Munthe & David Brax (Gothenburg): The philosophy of hate crime: concepts, values and tensions in the European context

Michael Fingerle & Caroline Bonnes (Frankfurt): A different perception? What NGOs and victims think about hate crime legislation

Michael Salter & Kim McGuire (Uclan): Issues concerning the victim's recollection of hate crime: avoiding revictimisation

- Keynote invited comments from:
Paul Iganski (Hate crime scholar, Lancaster University)

Joanna Perry (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the OSCE).

Paul Gianassi (Hate crime law enforcement expert, UK Ministry of justice)

Henri Nickels (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, FRA)

See you on the web, if not in Brussels!

J.J.C. "Jack" Smart - R.I.P.

I just learned via various sources on Facebook and Twitter that the Australian philosopher J.J.C. a.k.a. Jack Smart passed away today at the age of 92. The very fact that this sad news is immediately echoing around the world tells you something about his stature, and a further glimpse of this can be caught by visiting his webpage at Monash University, which besides his distinguished carreer reveals that he was busy publishing high quality papers as late as at the age of 86.

His most well-known philosophical achievements were his championship of physicalism in the philosophy of mind (sometimes known as the identity theory) and of utilitarianism in ethics. The significance of the former work, Smart has described best himself here. My own contact with his work mainly connected to the latter. As so many others in my own and several subsequent generations of philosophy students, I was introduced both to advanced normative ethical theory, to sophisticated utilitarianism and to the art of debating the most heated and basic ethical issues without any loss of civility or philosophical depth through Smart's and Bernard William's little pro & con gem, Utilitarianism: For and Against.

I met Jack Smart only once, when he was visiting Stockholm University some time in the late 1980's or early 1990's and I remember how impressed I was by his kind gentleness that in no way cut down any of the stark clarity I had met in his writing. No less impressive, of course, since he was already then far from young. More information about his life and philosophy can be found here.

Fun, Fun , FUN for All of Us Philosophy Geeks: Fauxphilnews

Philosophy humour is, I think, about the most geeky and esoteric there is in the world of academic comedy. But for all of us who are on the inside, it is a sheer pleasure when someone pulls it off well. For, as you would expect, philosophers are no less ready to unleash their entire battery of critical scrutiny in cases where the subject is used for other purposes than, well..., the subject, than they are in those seminar rooms where the subject is in fact the subject and not something else - like having fun. Anyway, this new site, Fauxphilnews, does it better than most, I would say. And judging by the very happy and frequent sharing of every post on Twitter and Facebook by my colleagues – as well as prestigious mention by The Splintered Mind, I'm not alone in my appreciation.

Happy Birthday, Dave!

I may just as well quote The Royal Institute of Philosophy:

The mighty David Hume was born on 7 May 1711. Enthusiasts might find an excuse to raise a glass twice, because before Parliament’s reform of the calendar in 1752, Hume’s date of birth was 26 April.  

For philosophers or those who have had some philosophy education, it would clearly be overdoing things to remind about the importance of Hume's achievements and legacy for just about all of contemporary philosophy – as well as psychology and behavioural, cognitive and social science. On this blog, but one post has referred explicitly to Hume, but I assure you that the legacy of his thinking and intellectual temperament can be traced in all posts. As Isiah Berlin put it in The Age of Enlightenment:

No man has influenced the history of political thought to a deeper and more disturbing degree.

And this may be said just as much about the development of science – not least the still very much lively and evolving sciences of human mind and action.

So, if you don't know much about Hume, but becomes curious – where should you start? Well, here nuances of taste would divide the advice you would get from different philosophers. My own favourite is the magnum opus of his youth, A Treatise of Human Nature – where, with a young person's passion, Hume sets out much of the ideas he would later work on in more concentration. It is only in the Treatise, though, where we can meet the wide philosophical grip of Hume in its entirety and most radical form. Here you will find ideas that are still radical and provoking and that, in contemporary linguistic dressing, are not seldom presented as the latest achievement of this or that currently upcoming academic star. Many of my colleagues prefer the more balanced approach of the "Enquiries" that Hume wrote in his later years, but as a primer, I still prefer the Treatise due to its passionately revisionary programme and style.

Both texts (and more) are available for free online inspection. If you can bear with the older style of English in which Hume himself wrote, the Hume collection at the Project Gutenberg is a good start (you need to scroll down a bit on the page linked to here). If you find it tiresome to read those texts, the distinguished contemporary philosopher Jonathan Bennett has made his own "translations" of Hume's texts into contemporary English.

Happy birthday, Dave!

Renowned Philosophy Journal Synthese (Temporary?) Corrupted by Religious Lobby

Brian Leiter tells the story here. Note the boycott initiative!

RIP Philippa Foot (1920-2010)

The news just reached me that Philippa Foot passed away yesterday, 90 years old. Reportedly, death was peaceful and the upshot of a series of serious health problems. The blog world has so far relayed the news here, here, here, here, here and here.

Being, in Brian Leiter's words, "one of the towering figures of post-WWII Anglophone moral philosophy", my own relation to Professor Foot has always been that of an inspiring opponent at a distance. Having never met her in person, her work on non-consequentialist ethics has given me many a good kick in the backside in my struggles with my essentially consequentialist moral intuitions. My first encounter was with her analyses of and critical inquiries into the doctrine of the double effect and, subsequently, the doing/making – allowing distinction (where she "invented" the Trolley problem). She also made essential contributions to metaethical discussion, launching a sort of neo-humean position which, in lack of better words, might be described as an objectivist social constructivism (the idea of moral norms as institutions or institutional spin-offs). That's only a taster of Professor Foot's work, though, as this dip into The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy demonstrates.

Although an English speaking philosopher, Professor Foot early transcended crude characterizations in terms of "Analytic philosophy". In my book, she stands tall in the so far short history of what Derek Parfit has described as non-religious, systematic ethics.