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13Preconception expanded carrier screening (PECS) informs prospective parents about the risk of conceiving a child with a heritable genetic condition. PECS will also, for many, become an important screening test, and websites will likely play a vital role in providing information on this practice. The aim of this article is to examine rationalities in the information on PECS on Dutch websites. The method used is multimodal critical discourse analysis. This method allows an examination of norms and…Read more
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415 Franz KafkaIn Adam Kotsko & Carlo Salzani (eds.), Agamben's Philosophical Lineage, Edinburgh University Press. pp. 154-161. 2017.
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626Narrating Truths Worth Living: Addiction NarrativesAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 3 (4): 77-78. 2012.Self-narrative is often, perhaps primarily, a tool of self- constitution, not of truth representation. We explore this theme with reference to our own recent qualitative interviews of substance-dependent agents. Narrative self- constitution, the process of realizing a valued narrative projection of oneself, depends on one’s narrative tracking truth to a certain extent. Therefore, insofar as narratives are successfully realized, they have a claim to being true, although a certain amount of self-d…Read more
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13Including Non-Medical Traits in the NIPT: What Can We Learn from an Ethics of Care Approach?American Journal of Bioethics 23 (3): 32-33. 2023.Bowman-Smart and colleagues (2023) argue that techniques to screen and analyze the fetal genome are rapidly evolving, and are sometimes already offered commercially. These new developments will all...
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Franz KafkaIn Adam Kotsko & Carlo Salzani (eds.), Agamben's Philosophical Lineage, Edinburgh University Press. 2017.
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8How to overcome self-illness ambiguity in addiction: making sense of one’s addiction rather than just rejecting it. A reply to McConnell and GolovaPhilosophical Explorations 26 (1): 86-90. 2022.Volume 26, Issue 1, March 2023, Page 86-90.
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12Neuroparenting: the Myths and the Benefits. An Ethical Systematic ReviewNeuroethics 14 (3): 387-408. 2021.Parenting books and early childhood policy documents increasingly refer to neuroscience to support their parenting advice. This trend, called ‘neuroparenting’ has been subject to a growing body of sociological and ethical critical examination. The aim of this paper is to review this critical literature on neuroparenting. We identify three main arguments: that there is a gap between neuroscientific findings and neuroparenting advice, that there is an implicit normativity in the translation from n…Read more
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23Parental substance and alcohol abuse: Two ethical frameworks to assess whether and how intervention is appropriateBioethics 35 (9): 916-924. 2021.Ethical frameworks can support professionals’ decision‐making. Here, we identify two ethical frameworks to analyse the best support for families that struggle with parental substance or alcohol abuse. The first framework, which we call ‘the framework of conflicting interests’, is most prominent in the literature. Here, the interests of parents and children are weighed against each other using the medical ethical principles of respect for autonomy, justice, beneficence, and non‐maleficence. The s…Read more
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7‘I’ve Been Trying to Change My Life Heaps But I Always End Up Back Here’. The Complex Relationship Between Poverty, Parental Substance Dependency, and Self-ControlIn Nicolás Brando & Gottfried Schweiger (eds.), Philosophy and Child Poverty: Reflections on the Ethics and Politics of Poor Children and Their Families, Springer. pp. 189-207. 2019.The aim of this chapter is to question the punitive approach towards substance dependent parents, especially substance dependent parents struggling with poverty, by outlining the complex ways in which poverty can shape reasoning, and hence capacities for self-control. I will outline two ways in which poverty can shape reasoning: a rational shift from a global to a local perspective, and a more invasive one: resignation. I will argue that when people with addictions become resigned, it is especia…Read more
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15Neuroparenting: tussen apocalyps en utopieAlgemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 111 (4): 525-543. 2019.Neuroparenting: Between apocalypse and utopia Neuroscience increasingly invades all domains of our lives, including the intimate realm of child raising and parenting. The current trend of neuroparenting, that is parenting advice based on neuroscientific research, fits this development. This article analyses this development from an ethical point of view. We will outline the current developments in the domain of neuroparenting with a special focus on the so-called ‘baby brain’ and ‘adolescent bra…Read more
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24Gilbert et al. argue that the concerns about the influence of Deep Brain Stimulation on – as they lump together – personality, identity, agency, autonomy, authenticity and the self are due to an ethics hype. They argue that there is only a small empirical base for an extended ethics debate. We will critically examine their claims and argue that Gilbert and colleagues do not show that the identity debate in DBS is a bubble, they in fact give very little evidence for that. Rather they show the cha…Read more
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31Ethical issues in research on substance‐dependent parents: The risk of implicit normative judgements by researchersBioethics 32 (9): 620-627. 2018.When doing research among vulnerable populations, researchers are obliged to protect their subjects from harm. We will argue that traditional ethical guidelines are not sufficient to do this, since they mainly focus on direct harms that can occur: for example, issues around informed consent, fair recruitment and risk/harm analysis. However, research also entails indirect harms that remain largely unnoticed by research ethical committees and the research community. Indirect harms do not occur dur…Read more
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47The Importance of Self-Narration in Recovery from AddictionPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 25 (3): 31-44. 2018.Addiction involves a chronic deficit in self-governance that treatment aims to restore. We draw on our interviews with addicted people to argue that addiction is, in part, a problem of self-narrative change. Over time, agents come to strongly identify with the aspects of their self-narratives that are consistently verified by others. When addiction self-narratives become established, they shape the addicted person’s experience, plans, and expectations so that pathways to recovery appear implausi…Read more
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39Does DBS Alienate Identity or Does It Simply Fail to Restore Identity Already Eroded by Illness?American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 8 (2): 114-115. 2017.This article critical examines Gilbert and colleagues’ study (Gilbert et al. 2017) claims on how deep brain stimulation (DBS) as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease (PD) can influence people’s self-concept.
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20The Importance of the Self for Autonomous BehaviorAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 4 (4): 62-63. 2013.Neuroscientific findings have often been argued to undermine notions of free will and to require far-reaching changes of our political and legal systems. Making a difference between the metaphysical notion of free will and the political notion of autonomy,Dubljevi´c (2013) argues this switchover to be mistaken. While we appreciate attention to the social limits of neuroscientific findings, we also have a twofold concern with his proposal. The first covers the nontransparent way in which he eithe…Read more
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45Stigma and Self-Stigma in AddictionJournal of Bioethical Inquiry 14 (2): 275-286. 2017.Addictions are commonly accompanied by a sense of shame or self-stigmatization. Self-stigmatization results from public stigmatization in a process leading to the internalization of the social opprobrium attaching to the negative stereotypes associated with addiction. We offer an account of how this process works in terms of a range of looping effects, and this leads to our main claim that for a significant range of cases public stigma figures in the social construction of addiction. This rests …Read more
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59How to Recover from a Brain Disease: Is Addiction a Disease, or Is there a Disease-like Stage in Addiction?Neuroethics 10 (1): 185-194. 2017.People struggling with addiction are neither powerless over their addiction, nor are they fully in control. Lewis vigorously objects to the brain disease model of addiction, because it makes people lose belief in their self-efficacy, and hence hinders their recovery. Although he acknowledges that there is a compulsive state in addiction, he objects to the claim that this compulsion is carved in stone. Lewis argues that the BDMA underestimates the agency of addicted people, and hence hinder their…Read more
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62Introduction: Testing and Refining Marc Lewis’s Critique of the Brain Disease Model of AddictionNeuroethics 10 (1): 1-6. 2017.In this introduction we set out some salient themes that will help structure understanding of a complex set of intersecting issues discussed in this special issue on the work of Marc Lewis: conceptual foundations of the disease model, tolerating the disease model given socio-political environments, and A third wave: refining conceptualization of addiction in the light of Lewis’s model.
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838Reactive attitudes, relationships, and addictionIn S. Ahmed & Hanna Pickard (eds.), Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Science of Addiction, Routledge. forthcoming.In this chapter we focus on the structure of close personal relations and diagnose how these relationships are disrupted by addiction. We draw upon Peter Strawson’s landmark paper ‘Freedom and Resentment’ (2008, first published 1962) to argue that loved ones of those with addiction veer between, (1) reactive attitudes of blame and resentment generated by disappointed expectations of goodwill and reciprocity, and (2) the detached objective stance from which the addicted person is seen as less bla…Read more
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87Drug addiction and criminal responsibilityIn Neil Levy & Jens Clausen (eds.), Handbook on Neuroethics, Springer. pp. 1065-1083. 2014.Recent studies reveal some of the neurophysiological mechanisms involved in drug addiction. This prompts some theorists to claim that drug addiction diminishes responsibility. Stephen Morse however rejects this claim. Morse argues that these studies show that drug addiction involves neither compulsion, coercion, nor irrationality. He also adds that addicted people are responsible for becoming addicted and for failing to take measures to manage their addiction. After summarizing relevant neurosci…Read more
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59Beyond dualism : a plea for an extended taxonomy of agency impairment in addictionAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 3 (2): 56-57. 2012.Pickard (2012) claims that the neurobiological or disease model of addiction hinders the recovery of people because it undermines their feeling of self-efficacy and agency. Sub- stance users are “not aided by being treated as victims of a neurobiological disease, as opposed to agents of their own recovery” (40).Although Pickard acknowledges that claims of powerlessness or loss of agency can have a functional role in the self-narratives of substance users in excusing them from blame, she primaril…Read more
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41Pleasure and addictionFrontiers in Psychiatry 4. 2013.What is the role and value of pleasure in addiction? Foddy and Savulescu have claimed that substance use is just pleasure-oriented behavior. They describe addiction as "strong appetites toward pleasure" and argue that addicts suffer in significant part because of strong social and moral disapproval of lives dominated by pleasure seeking. But such lives, they claim, can be autonomous and rational. The view they offer is largely in line with the choice model and opposed to a disease model of addic…Read more
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70Lessons in Biopolitics and Agency: Agamben on AddictionThe New Bioethics 21 (2): 128-141. 2015.The concepts of ‘biopolitics’ and ‘naked life’ have become increasingly relevant in the debate on substance dependency due to the growing prominence of neuroscience in defining the nature of addiction1 and its threat to agency. However, these concepts are not necessarily well understood, and therefore may lead to oversight rather than insight. In this article we review the literature on Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, whose founding works on both concepts shed a different light on addiction…Read more
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70Agamben's Foucault: An overviewFoucault Studies 10 44-67. 2010.This article gives an overview of the influence of the work of Michel Foucault on the philosophy of Agamben. Discussed are Foucault’s influence on the Homo Sacer cycle, on (the development) of Agamben’s notion of power (and on his closely related notion of freedom and art of life), as well as on Agamben’s philosophy of language and methodology. While most commentaries focus on Agamben’s interpretation of Foucault’s concept of biopower, his work also contains many interesting references to Foucau…Read more
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19Among super soldiers, killing machines and addicted soldiers : the ambivalent relationship between the military and synthetic drugsIn Jai Galliot & Mianna Lotz (eds.), Super Soldiers, Ashgate Publishing. pp. 95-106. 2015.In this paper I will analyze several cases from the American Civil War, the two World Wars and the American Vietnam War, and contemporary research in enhancement substance, to determine how drug use can be analyzed and understood in both physical and moral (ethical) terms. This will require a discussion of drug use at different levels. First, I will address the consequences of drug use for the physical and mental sanity of soldiers, during and after wartime, irrespective of the reason for drug u…Read more
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Continental Philosophy |