Virginia Ghiara
Reconstructing the mixed mechanisms of health: the role of bio- and socio-markers.
It is widely agreed that social factors are related to health outcomes: much research served to establish correlations between classes of social factors on the one hand and classes of disease on the other hand. However, why and how social factors are an active part in the aetiology of disease development is something that is gaining attention only recently in the health sciences and in the medical humanities. In this paper, I advance the view that, just as bio-markers help trace the causal continuum from exposure to disease development at the biological level, socio-markers ought to be introduced and studied in order to trace the social continuum from exposure to disease development. I explain how socio-markers differ from social indicators and how they can be used in combination with bio-markers in order to reconstruct the mixed mechanisms of health and disease, namely mechanisms in which both biological and social factors have an active causal role.
Gavin Thomson
Illusions, Hallucinations, and Objects of Perception
The philosophy of perception has been galvanised by the explosive growth in neuroscience since the 1950s, to the point where experimental results may even shed light on the traditional debate between direct realism (championed by Scottish common-sense philosopher Thomas Reid) and representationalism (defended by Locke). The well-known arguments from illusion and from hallucination are often used to frame this debate. But in fact, even some specific examples of perceptual illusions have provided ample fodder for philosophers of mind and perception (perhaps most famously, Fodor’s appeal to the Müller-Lyer illusion in his defense of the modularity of mind hypothesis – to say nothing of duckrabbits). In this informal talk we survey the significance of perceptual illusions to modern theories of mind and perception. We consider: the distinction between illusion and hallucination; the paradigm of mid-, high-, and low-level visual processes; and the capacities of perceptual constancy as discussed in Burge’s Origins of Objectivity. We aim to show that cognitive science can point toward a naturalistically acceptable resolution of traditional philosophical debates.
Daniel Auker-Howlett
Evidence-Based Homeopathy
Homeopathy is proposed to be a medical treatment, but one whose underlying theory is not supported by scientific evidence. Homeopathy had been available on the NHS, but has recently been banned for prescription. This is argued for on the basis of a lack of high-quality clinical evidence. However, as John Worrall argues, there is an evidence-based case to be made where homeopathy should be available for prescription, on the grounds that it is a low-risk way to induce the placebo effect, which is a way to relieve symptoms in a restricted set of conditions. Worrall does eventually conclude that Homeopathy should still be banned, but on the ethical grounds that re-enforcing false beliefs about the pseudo-scientific basis of Homeopathy is worse, ethically, than the benefit to patients. I agree with his evidential argument, but will argue that his ethical argument discounts patient values too readily. I conclude that on the basis of the evidence, Homeopathy should be prescribed on the NHS for a restricted set of conditions, and that ethical matters are to be considered on a patient by patient basis.
James Hoctor
Twins and Empathy
Tony Lau
Holistic competence and its partial manifestations
Virtue epistemology (VE) suggests that S knows just in case S’s true belief is creditable to S’s competence. While Lackey’s (2007, 2009) objection from testimonial knowledge had raised concerns that VE is too strong, some virtue epistemologists (Sosa 2007, Pritchard 2012) adopted a weaker condition requiring only partial credit on agent’s part. Attentions had been paid to determining how much partial credit attributed to the agent is significant enough for knowledge. This paper, however, argues that in addition to the creditable relation, the agent’s competence manifestation could be partial too – in the sense that only part of his/her whole competence regarding the cognitive task is manifested. Interesting consequences follow as we explore this new way of dissecting cognitive agency – in particular, difficult cases arise when ones cognitive competence is partly virtuous and partly vicious.
Michael Wilde
Being an Early Career Researcher and Communicating Your Research
Dr. Wilde has recently completed his post-doc at Kent, and is now a Lecturer in the department. In this talk, he will tell us about his experiences as an early-career researcher, and give us an example of how he communicates his research to non-specialist audiences.