Will Levack-Payne (University of Kent)
Visible Pathways: Representing Links Between Social Class and Death
Mechanistic explanations can be complex especially when featuring indeterministic and multi-causal relationships. In this talk I will argue in favour of using causal networks as a representation of mechanisms. This involves first, arguing that causal networks can represent mechanisms, and then arguing that it is beneficial to do so, even if we lose some expressiveness over typical forms of representation as we can greatly improve tractability.
Hugh Robertson-Richie (University of Kent)
How Doctors Think: When They Get It Right, and When They Get It Wrong
What reasoning do doctors use when they are making their critical decisions? Can doctors’ reasoning when making these decisions be justified as giving true knowledge? How do medical errors happen? What reasoning do doctors use when making errors? Could doctors reduce their errors by thinking in a different way, including using different reasoning? We will use the work of Sadegh-Zadeh, Kahneman, Reason, Croskerry and others to explore these questions.
Olga Chivilgina (University of Basel)
Digital Technologies on a Global Scale: A Call for Equitable Access
In the Western world, the digitalisation of health systems is increasing progressively, while in developing countries the lack of infrastructure and insufficient healthcare resources represent barriers to the use of digital Big Data technologies. According to a report published by Medecins Sans Frontieres, on the African continent less than 20% of the population has access to mental health services, despite evidence of the high demand of such services due to the aftermath of political violence and conflicts in countries like Uganda or Sierra Leone, for instance.
In light of these considerations, this presentation will examine global trends in the digitalisation of mental healthcare and analyse several ethical implications for public health. First, I’ll outline how the use of digital technologies can benefit individuals in countries with limited resources, particularly as it relates to patient education and treatment compliance as well as a means to the destigmatization of psychiatric disorders. Second, I’ll argue that there is an ethical obligation to close the gap in the use of digital technologies between first world countries and third world countries. Ethical debates should focus on addressing issues of health disparities to increase access to novel digital technologies to lessen the burden of neurological and psychiatric disorders not only on a global scale but in countries lacking the resources to provide adequate mental health services.
Joe Jones (University of Kent)
Marx vs. Arendt: The Ontological Importance of Work
The looming presence of automation is being felt in a number of industries, whether this presence is positively or negatively perceived. This raises questions of the ontological capacity of work, the future of work, and the ontological nature of human beings in a ‘post-work’ society. In light of these concerns, this paper will discuss two distinct approaches to the ontological capacity of work, and apply these approaches to an automated system of working. First, I will consider Karl Marx’s ontological arguments surrounding the nature of labour-power, outlining the key ways in which a human beings’ labour constitutes their ontological being. In response to the Marxist view, I will discuss Hannah Arendt’s refutation of labour-dominate thinking, and outline her own ontological model that favours public political action over labour. To conclude, I will turn to an investigation of a ‘post-work’ society in view of each thinker’s arguments, ultimately claiming that the three-tiered Arendtian model better serves an automated ‘post-work’ society that does the Marxist.
Vittorio Serra (University of Kent)
What is a Faculty?
Faculties are everywhere. There are faculties of reason, judgement, language, imagination and oh-so-many others – in the Critique of Pure Reason, for example, Kant mentions 45 different faculties that we are meant to possess. Clearly they are being used as explanatory tools, but authors often posit them without explanation and readers often blithely accept them. On what grounds – by virtue of what – can a faculty stand? With the help of chess-sets and step-ladders, this presentation will try to shine a light on what writers might be asserting when they claim that we have a faculty of something.
Veli Mitova (University of Johannesburg)
How to Decolonise Knowledge without too much Relativism
According to a popular line of thought, we should decolonise knowledge, science, and our university curricula for relativist reasons. Very crudely: the West has illegitimately claimed monopoly on what counts as knowledge, science, and rationality; this is a kind of epistemicide; so, epistemic decolonisation requires, at a minimum, that we accord different perspectives equal epistemic authority. In this talk I do two things. I first argue that such relativist thinking far from supporting, in fact subverts, the call to epistemic decolonisation. The imperative to decolonise is an absolute one, and so cannot be supported by relativist arguments. I then try to crack the puzzle of how to stay absolutist while still acknowledging that a certain epistemic perspective has been unjustly imposed on many of us.