**Below is AI Generated**
Eager to explore the complex world of reproductive choices? Buckle up as we journey through this invigorating discussion with Elinor Pryce, a formidable scholar from the University of Adelaide. With her, we grapple with the nuances of pro-natalism and anti-natalist policies in Australia, and their intricate interplay with immigration and environmental concerns. Elinor’s insights illuminate the need for a comprehensive approach that respects diversity, while also addressing population growth and sustainable development.
Riding on the wave of our enriching dialogue with Elinor, we steer towards the ethical dimensions of eugenics and population control. The entanglement of pronatalism, antinatalism, and societal beliefs is unravelled, stimulating a profound reflection on our own values and ideologies. Philosophers are often the unsung heroes in this narrative, as they challenge detrimental ideologies and encourage a deeper examination of ingrained beliefs when proposing remedies. It's a fascinating discourse that breathes life into the conversations happening in conferences and bioethical circles.
We then discuss the place of psychedelics in the workplace with Dr Cynthia Forlini (Deakin Health Ethics) and consider potential harms as well as general awkwardness of doing mind altering drugs with colleagues.
Finally, we dissect reflexivity and standpoint theory in bioethics with Dr Supriya Subramani (Sydney Health Ethics), Prof Jonathan Ives (Bristol) and A/Prof Mikey Dunn (National University of Singapore). Our discussion traverses the tightrope between maintaining argumentation standards and adapting them to context, bringing to light the friction between social scientific and philosophical methodologies in bioethics. With an eye on the real-world impact, we stress the importance of reflexivity, where personal biases and prejudices come to the fore. We believe that the bioethical debates are enriched by this diversity of perspectives. So tune in for an episode that is sure to leave you contemplating long after it ends – a fascinating exploration of reproductive choices, eugenics, and bioethics like never before.
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
**Below is AI Generated**
Eager to explore the complex world of reproductive choices? Buckle up as we journey through this invigorating discussion with Elinor Pryce, a formidable scholar from the University of Adelaide. With her, we grapple with the nuances of pro-natalism and anti-natalist policies in Australia, and their intricate interplay with immigration and environmental concerns. Elinor’s insights illuminate the need for a comprehensive approach that respects diversity, while also addressing population growth and sustainable development.
Riding on the wave of our enriching dialogue with Elinor, we steer towards the ethical dimensions of eugenics and population control. The entanglement of pronatalism, antinatalism, and societal beliefs is unravelled, stimulating a profound reflection on our own values and ideologies. Philosophers are often the unsung heroes in this narrative, as they challenge detrimental ideologies and encourage a deeper examination of ingrained beliefs when proposing remedies. It's a fascinating discourse that breathes life into the conversations happening in conferences and bioethical circles.
We then discuss the place of psychedelics in the workplace with Dr Cynthia Forlini (Deakin Health Ethics) and consider potential harms as well as general awkwardness of doing mind altering drugs with colleagues.
Finally, we dissect reflexivity and standpoint theory in bioethics with Dr Supriya Subramani (Sydney Health Ethics), Prof Jonathan Ives (Bristol) and A/Prof Mikey Dunn (National University of Singapore). Our discussion traverses the tightrope between maintaining argumentation standards and adapting them to context, bringing to light the friction between social scientific and philosophical methodologies in bioethics. With an eye on the real-world impact, we stress the importance of reflexivity, where personal biases and prejudices come to the fore. We believe that the bioethical debates are enriched by this diversity of perspectives. So tune in for an episode that is sure to leave you contemplating long after it ends – a fascinating exploration of reproductive choices, eugenics, and bioethics like never before.
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
Okay, so we are doing some live undisciplinary don't even know if this is recording adequately. I mean it is recording, we can see and we are meeting here at the QUT University, which is on the lands of the terrible and Yagura people, the first nation owners of the lands, and we pay respects to them and thank QUT for hosting us.
Speaker 3:The world's first high-trance land has been deployed.
Speaker 2:Medical history has been made in South Africa.
Speaker 4:The courts of systemic racism in the healthcare system and COVID-19 has been reported.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Undisciplinary, a podcast where we are talking across the boundaries of history, ethics and the politics of health, co-hosted by Chris Mays and Jane Williams. Yeah, we're wanting to do a few little short interviews and discussions here, based on presentations at the Australasian Association for Biotics and Health Law Conference. So, jane, welcome, and we are joined by Eleanor, so I will just try to get up your beer.
Speaker 4:Eleanor Price is from the University of Adelaide in South Australia. Are you?
Speaker 5:from the PhD candidate Excellent.
Speaker 4:Well, on an amazing presentation, that's right and it was titled well.
Speaker 1:it was about pro-natalism. It was our anti-natalist policies. A permissible method to mitigate Australia's impact on the environment Generated a bit of discussion. We refrained from asking questions because we thought we'd asked them now. Jane, you had one too?
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, because I was really interested in the idea of choice.
Speaker 4:So, that by so with people who didn't have choice whether they perhaps didn't have access to contraceptives or you know a bunch of reasons then generally providing education and choice and, I guess, increasing capacity around whether or not to have a baby was seen as sufficient. I really made me curious about countries where choice is increasingly being taken away. America. Where do you know whether or not that kind of removal of choice around whether or not to have a baby has been taken up in this kind of anti-natalist environment?
Speaker 5:I think that there are discussions around what anti-natalism reveals, about, perhaps, the ethics of abortion or the permissibility of abortion. So you will have some concerns like what does this mean? Lots of people are now going to access terminations for the wrong reasons, so it's, in that other way, right. And then, of course, you have defences that I've shared, that you know abortion is a basic right, but also necessary for freedom of choice and for whatever reason you might access abortion care.
Speaker 5:I think what's unfolding in the States and in other places is quite I mean, I think it's more revealing about what influences reproductive choices. So when we're sitting and doing a philosophy about it, we're thinking about that agent who's engaging in philosophical reflection, perhaps about the impact their future child would have. But in reality, what influences the decision to have a child? Might be religion, it might be the state, it might be what your parents did. So what are you going to do? So I think the idea of choice around having children is far more complex than what I presented with. That. That's sort of very basic coercion measure. I think even ideas around choice enhancement often overlook they're really just thinking about access to contraception and perhaps abortion care, but I think there's a lot more factors at play when we really think about freely choosing whether to or not have children.
Speaker 1:So your argument, if I can summarize and fill in, is what you were presenting is that this idea of antinatalism has emerged in the context of, say, climate change, environmental concerns, the idea that having children is a potential environmental harm. You, instead of wanting to look at the various antinatalist policies that some people are putting forward some philosophers and ethicists you then quite nicely traced sort of the history of pro natalism in Australia, particularly in immigration policies as well as its incentives to have children, and you were saying that we need to look at perhaps pro natalism, more so than trying to Dig up anti natalism. And it's part of that because of, you know, there's the eugenic past of anti natalism, which is quite you know, to put it mildly unsavoury.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so Eugenics and it rears its head in philosophy yet again. And I think my concerns with anti natalism are the simplification of choice and what that looks like. But it's quite concerning when you look at and I didn't touch on this in the presentation but the pro natalist campaigns in Australia, they have the ugly other, which is the anti natalism that comes in it. So the people being targeted and those are deemed desirable to have children, but we know that queer people or disabled people or people of color, they're experiencing the anti-nicholas the other half Quill Colker wrote on that in the states in response to one of these papers. So I think that it's not only that eugenics is a thing of a past, but actually these sorts of interventions, often building on the inequalities we already see and the way that they impact people, I would say is quite eugenics.
Speaker 5:See, whether it's pronatalist or anti natalist, yeah, given these structures at play, and so I think we need to look at these structures Rather than maybe the outcomes we want to see. Ethically, yeah, which is what? Environmental, anti natalist?
Speaker 1:Do they just want to see fewer children, fewer children, yep so, and then I took bothered.
Speaker 5:It's not that they're bothered and it would be unfair to say that you do, they do, they do reference it and they do Acknowledge it, but he keep writing. Ours argument is that and actually others is our fear of eugenics means we're not looking at. They call it population engineering as a way to to mitigate climate change, so it's given it a bad name. Actually really need to be looking at this, yeah, and in a way, I'm not sympathetic to that, but I think we are in a crisis. We do need to be looking at and talking about population and birth rates and things like that, but I don't think we can disentangle it.
Speaker 4:I think Intertwined yeah, I was looking at the examples that you had of historic Pro natalism and was thinking, imagine if you were like flipping those and we have tried that with you know, we've been like, no, you can't come in, you have to stay up. Or the baby, the idea of the baby bonus, you know, paying somebody not to have children Is, you know, it's all fraud, but it's one's more for, you know. So so all of those techniques that were that you pointed to could also be used to Lower birth rates. To what? And yeah, tricky, well, we know the end, but by what means?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so that I guess does come to a question that I had about In response to your talk and the sort of where you finished up about I guess you didn't use this phrase, I don't believe, but you know, in some sense is deflating Pro natalism, so not having pro natalism in our society. And this relates back to, you know, conversation we had with Shannon Healy about sort of infertility, on the program and the way that you know, ways of being a woman so tied up with having a child, and sort of part of this discussion In that context as well as this context, seems to be Ideological. You know, and I mean in a descriptive sense, that there are these powerful ideas at play about what it is to be a woman or, in, say, our context, what it is to be Australia, said to be Australia is to be a white, predominantly white, ish nation or, in the past, explicitly white nation. So then we have we the concern you know you shared that article Depopulation and perish.
Speaker 1:The concern is that something ontologically would be wrong if Australia sort of became, you know, if we brought in people from other countries to address the sort of declining birth rate, but these incentives to have for Australians to reproduce through the baby bonus and those sorts of things, and then also this notion of, I guess, woman voice is nearing a yes, so that's a really rambly question, but I guess that ideological dimension so there are these technical solutions, contraceptions, incentives, all that?
Speaker 1:but it seems that there's also this fundamental ideology of both what does it mean to be a nation? What does it mean to be a woman?
Speaker 5:yeah, a hundred percent. I think they collide in this debate and it's partly why I'm interested in it, because my PhD more broadly looks at philosophy does make certain ideological claims, or we have to idolise when we engage perhaps in a problem, but when we translate that something goes deeply wrong and likewise the solutions may not account for the ideological sort of state that we're in and the ideas that it is going around, and I think we're missing this really wonderful space where philosophers can challenge these harmful ideologies in a way that perhaps haven't been done before yep
Speaker 5:and that's why I worry when we get these reactive responses from philosophers who have the time to think deeply, to reflect, and rather not looking at what's at play. Because Australians, history is brought and I was surprised when I first moved here how much people talk about population rates and the role of it. It's huge here and you know, I'm sure there's similar things in the UK, but it's not, as it doesn't feel, as much talked about in the public or as it might be, being an island, I don't know population rates and real estate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the idea of.
Speaker 5:If, though, the recommendations challenged what it meant for a state to be the state that it is. That, I think is really interesting, and what it actually looks. What does it look like to fuse pronatalism? That I don't know yet. So Badger and Stardew I quoted. They do have more recommendations. I'm not sure what it looks like when I give that recommendation.
Speaker 1:I think that's what we need to move into when we think about it yeah yeah well, thank you so much for this brief, unprompted or impromptu, I should say chat. I'll give you time to get some pastry. There's the bells for the next session and okay, so welcome to the second installment of undisciplinary. This is acting out some dying. Introduction Cynthia fallini, excellent friend of the podcast and even favorite podcast. I know well, you said that during your talk, so that's why we've got you in here. How are you enjoying the conference so far?
Speaker 2:love it obviously obviously highlight of the year in bioethics. How are you enjoying the conference?
Speaker 4:yeah, very nice. Yeah, learning lots. Very nice to see so many people I know and this is the only conference that happens for me at, and it's so pleasant it's a great place to float ideas to that you're thinking about for the first time you float an interesting idea, which is what we're, and I'd say that it was sort of one of the standouts from the, from the conference program, in the sense that it was quite different to everything else.
Speaker 1:It was also a high quality.
Speaker 2:So basically you were talking about psychedelics in the workplace you know it made me think because remember when you did that episode about is it okay to have cake in the workplace great episode, so many issues you know what.
Speaker 2:I'll have to think about that a little bit closer, but the premise of the presentation that I gave with who I need to acknowledge, emma tumulting from UTM being well, another great friend of the show and what got us to think about this was this article in the Economist that said that there were certain companies who were offering psychedelic experiences as part of their either workplace well-being insurance, coverage of therapeutic interventions, but also things like psychedelic retreats that promise some kind of enlightenment.
Speaker 2:That might be creativity, it might be empathy and it would be like team bonding, like you get to know your colleagues, you could see you're not doing it with your colleagues yeah, I mean you could do with your colleagues, it could be, you know, like a C-suite kind of experience, but there's potential then to do this across the workplace. I guess the idea is that we don't really know how this plays out, so there obviously aren't any guidelines or standards, and we started thinking about is this okay? There are so many facets to it. On the one hand, even in terms of the therapeutic uses and benefits of psychedelics, huge problems with the methodology of the clinical trials, and so can you really rely on the evidence that's being used to say that there's a benefit to this for patients, for employees? But you can also draw parallels to any other substance in the workplace, right?
Speaker 4:Kind of, except for the predictability bit, and that was what was I mean. A I'm not going on a psychedelic retreat with my colleagues and I actually love my colleagues, but absolutely not me. That kind of melding of work and private is just no worries. Sorry, that should just yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's okay. No, no, I just want to tell you how many of you were at Liz's start? No, liz is just out there. This is real life. No, no, no, we're going to go to life. No, right, we can do some editing, but it's going to be a bit loose.
Speaker 4:I was just complaining about the idea of taking psychedelics with my colleagues. I say no. However, the interesting thing is that. So you might say you know you have drinks in the office all the time, but generally if you have a drink in the office you kind of have an understanding of what that looks like, what that feels like. It's not.
Speaker 2:Until you feel that you can't make a choice about whether you participate or don't know, can't stop, or it feels that if you're not participating you are not benefiting from that connection or that time with your colleagues. But there's also kind of like performance related issues to this right. Is that psychedelic experience going to impact your work performance and Positively or negatively, right, positively or negatively.
Speaker 2:So the idea that what we floated was the context of any kind of workplace related psychedelic experience is really important and that context needs to be safe, which is something that we can't guarantee now because we don't know about all the effects, both positive and negative, and the psychedelic experience itself can be unpredictable.
Speaker 2:You don't necessarily know how you're going to react, and people we know are a bit more suggestible when they're on psychedelics, and so what might you be made to do?
Speaker 2:Which leads into the second thing is that there has to be consent to that context, and how do you ensure free and informed consent when we don't know what the effects might be? And this isn't a workplace environment, right, you have to remember that their potential power imbalance is here at play. And the last one, I think, is the combination of that safety and consent, which is privacy it's really difficult to ensure that the experience will be private but also the information exchange Do employers have to make certain disclosure about, potentially, the diagnosis that they have, what medications they might be on, what else, any trauma that might be triggered by using a psychedelic, and all of this is these are things that you don't necessarily tell your employers, your colleagues? What about information they might share while experiencing the effect of the psychedelic? You can't put that back in the box. What if they pee? They might pee, which is also a risk at work drinks.
Speaker 4:Didn't even think you'd be bad Anything.
Speaker 1:No, no, no.
Speaker 6:I was thinking about the pleasure aspect of this, or the workplace. I mean. Usually, when they just get into, I mean, like some of the companies which we were talking about, I was like do they just think about? Hey, just I want to make my employees just chill and then have fun. The idea of pleasure, how does that play out?
Speaker 2:We don't know. There's lots of we don't know. For everybody listening, that is Supria.
Speaker 4:Supria, Supria. Right, we will talk with her shortly.
Speaker 2:That is I mean. But in the work, in the workplace, can it be recreational like that? And if you do have a recreational practice, does that align with or does it kind of is it negated Because people do use substance or substances recreationally? Right, and so if this is now, I would, it's it's. I don't think it'll ever be a requirement of a workplace, but if it is an option for performance enhancement, coping with a difficult work environment which is something we also know people use substances for, those, I think, are really really difficult issues that we are not prepared for, because ultimately, workplaces do have a duty of care for their employees that I'm not sure we are able to satisfy right now with the way in which some types of psychedelic, workplace psychedelic experiences are being offered.
Speaker 1:Well, I for one would prefer psychedelics than lunchtime Pilati classes, but anyway, that's what's he can get to offer at the moment. So thank you. Thank you, Supria.
Speaker 4:Always a pleasure to talk to you, thank you.
Speaker 3:That's great. Famous last word Must be doing something with an old colleague.
Speaker 4:I will. I'll do some very quick introductions as, as you'll know, we're here at the Apple conference. We're going to be talking to Supria Subramani, who is at the University of Sydney, professor John Ives, a possibly first ever professor from the University of. Bristol. We have a thing about professors and might you done associate professor at National University of Singapore? We will be.
Speaker 1:And in the background of Cynthia, who can chime in as she's. So she was a student.
Speaker 4:So yesterday, along with Jackie Professor, jackie Leach Scully, the three of them did a panel on reflexivity and bioethics. It was excellent and had a lot of really good engagement. I was so well-chaired I think that was probably the thing that made it best out of all the sessions. So, yeah, chaired by me. And so, chris, did you have a question that you wanted to ask them? Because, you were on my list yesterday.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is very selfishly. The whole point is I didn't get a chance to ask my question, so I thought I'd organize an exclusive boutique panel. No, I mean, I mean, firstly, I think it would be good maybe for someone monsters for the listeners who weren't at the panel to just talk about sort of reflexive bioethics or this sort of approach. You know that you were. Does anyone have a third view? I mean, everyone obviously had slightly different positions on that, but it, yeah, I guess coming out of empirical. These conversations around empirical bioethics and what is it to do bioethics and how, as bioethicists, do we situate ourselves in our work, seem to be sort of one of the things we're speaking about.
Speaker 6:So I mean as a social researcher. So I identify myself as a social researcher who is interested in ethics and morality. That's how I position the way I work and then the way I see reflexivity is something as an epistemic practice but also an ethical, so ethical, epistemological project demands. And so if bioethics is in itself, you position that it's not just out there. You know, the knowledge you create is not just out there, but you're part of the knowledge construction process. That means one has to practice reflexivity, and that's a political one and also an epistemic one. That's how I position our understanding of practicing reflexivity. I mean that does touch on.
Speaker 1:I think, something that I was curious about in how you or anyone else would see it in relation to, say, debates around standpoint epistemology, and standpoint epistemology is, I guess, would you see it as, I guess, part of a kinship of different sorts of practice.
Speaker 6:I definitely see it as a kinship and also for, I think, reflexivity as a scholarship.
Speaker 6:It is a world within qualitative health research and health services research, but also a huge work within sociologists, now Peri-Borders work.
Speaker 6:You know, epistemic reflexivity has so much to offer us and if I take into the consideration standpoint theory, which is a feminist lineage in itself and I feel it's yeah, we are all sisters and then we are learning from each other in that sense and the difference, I think its standpoint, of course, really the positionality, plays such a central role.
Speaker 6:But reflexivity, where we need to add positionality as part of the reflexivity, especially when we talk about epistemic reflexivity in that sense. So, for example, I as a social researcher coming from, let's say, global south, coming from some indigenous background, if I want to say and that is the standpoint theory argument which I bring in but then if I make it a bigger step forward to think from a point of it's not just my identity playing out but also the way I see the world, the social reality and the way I construct my argument let's say I'm making an ethical statement or an ethical argument then I would see it as much more taking forward where standpoint theory is part of it, but not necessarily that case. That's how I would position it, but I'm curious to see what Mikey and John has to say.
Speaker 7:Yeah, I guess I have a slightly weaker view on it than you, supreme, I think for me I'm a social scientist by training as well, but I would brag to myself now as a biologist interested in these normative questions that are very practical in nature. So for me the kind of journey to reflexivity is a recognition of the ways in which arguments ought to properly function in practical settings, when the argument is in sense embedded in that practical environment or has some connection to it in some sense. So I think for me reflexivity is a strategy for thinking about the real world, making of arguments in ways that attenuate the claims to the context of the person making them, because I don't think we can simply make arguments free. I think even the most hard nailed analytic philosophers, you can see the ways in which their claims, their counter arguments, are going to reflect their own life and their experiences and they know how very odd premises can be introduced because of the person's own commitments. So I do see reflexivity as a mechanism to sort of ground and sensitize this practical project of bioethics, the sort of practical project of making arguments.
Speaker 7:I don't think we need to do that in a way that commits ourselves to a radical epistemological standpoint. I don't use that in the sense that I don't think one has to embrace the standpoint set of conditions to do that. I think the question is, how do we and for me the really hard question is how do we maintain a commitment to sensitizing arguments to context whilst maintaining the standards of argumentation more generally? I think I do hold on to the view that we can argue together coherently, logically and consistently understand each other, engage in arguments and counter argument without, as it were, committing to a view that says only you can say that because of where you stand. So that for me is a really interesting tension and in respect to this podcast, I guess it's a real disciplinary clash, I think, between a set of social, scientific commitments that are going to find very little resonance with certain kinds of ways of thinking about argumentation and philosophy.
Speaker 3:And I'm struggling to think of what I can add to what Supreme Mikey has already said. I mean, it takes a slightly different attack. I mean I guess Mikey kind of talked about the difference between kind of analytic philosophy and then bioethics and the question is raised for me kind of why it matters, why reflexivity matters in bioethics, and I think we see a lot of resistance to it, partly because of the way that bioethics is arguably, I think, dominated by philosophical approaches. And what you're trying to do in philosophy is actually take the person away. I say philosophy, kind of Western analytic philosophical traditions. Philosophy is much wider than that, but I'd say Western bioethics is dominated by Western analytic philosophy.
Speaker 3:And that's trying to take the person out of it, is trying to focus on the argument and say it doesn't matter who's arguing, which is the title of the paper Mikey and I wrote about this years and years ago. It doesn't matter who is arguing. What matters is whether the argument is consistent, whether it's rational, and I think in a way you can get away with that in philosophy, because philosophy is at that high level. It's an abstract discipline. It might have practical applications, but if we're just practicing philosophy in the academy, you're not necessarily concerned about that. I think bioethics is a fundamentally different enterprise, where we're not only dealing with those abstract problems but we're trying to apply them and we're genuinely engaging with people who are living these problems and having to enact solutions to them and saying you ought to do this and we're wanting to have an impact. I think when you're doing that, you have a responsibility to situate yourself and acknowledge where your biases, where your prejudices might come from, because it's not just about you.
Speaker 7:I think that's right. I think there's a practicality dimension of bioethics that gives rise to responsibility of that kind. You're entering into people's worlds or practices or life spaces in which they make judgments, and you are working with them or interrogating with them the right course of action. It just seems that that gives rise to certain responsibilities that don't arise in the armchair, in a pure philosophical exercise.
Speaker 6:That's interesting, the way I feel like standpoint theory doesn't necessarily see this dichotomy of looking at. You know, it's me who's saying and the knowledge is something, but I feel it's so in the subjective space which allows so reflexive. For me it's much more demystified as the way the knowledge construction is, or the process in itself. So, yeah, I think this kind of anticoagulatophore sometimes when they make this very strong that you should be away from what you're doing. Yet because in the name of objectivity and that's where I think I feel like, okay, something we need to talk more about reflexivity it's because it's not the case, and I think especially qualitative researchers who are within the empirical ethics or bioethics feel should be aware of this.
Speaker 3:At least that's how I would put it as I guess I don't think this reflexive and in bioethics, is just becoming as a result of its engagement with social sciences. I think that's part of it. But there are philosophical additions. I mean, I call, I read. I went through a bit of a nature phase when I was an undergraduate philosopher and read every thing and there was a, an aphorism that really struck with me that I think influenced me in ways I didn't realize until I started having conversations about it with my kids years ago. That he said something like all philosophy to date is merely the personal confession of its author.
Speaker 6:I like that on your slide yeah.
Speaker 3:It's a lovely slide. It's also quite disruptive, if you like, and Nietzsche was a disruptive philosopher. Some people don't even think he was a philosopher, but in this idea that we are all everything we're generating as a product of ourselves and we're separating the philosophy from the philosopher is a bit of a nonsense.
Speaker 1:And I liked that aphorism and your comments about that yesterday and just now.
Speaker 1:But the other philosopher that I was thinking of, who is much more boring than Nietzsche, who's sort of you know I say that in an endearing way because I really love his work Charles Taylor. So Charles Taylor is a pretty woolly sort of halfway house between analytic and continental philosophy, but he in his book Sources of the Self and then he's also written an article on this he sort of talks about the adhiminin attack as being a fallacy, basically because of the interconnection between who we are and our moral commitments, and he also talked about our ontological commitments shape so much of our sort of moral outlook. And so I think, as well as that Nietzschean tradition and maybe some of the more radical sort of standpoint theory, there are also some. I guess you know some people would see someone like Charles Taylor as a pretty sort of conservative kind of philosopher who's also coming to these questions. As you know, who we are very much shapes and our histories and our collective history shape the kinds of questions that are interesting.
Speaker 4:I think time to. I did get drawing on Justice Kirby, who gave his aeration yesterday, to get buttonhulled after the session yesterday by somebody who was saying the whole point of reflexivity is to be able to create the argument that comes from nowhere. I'm just like very confused by that. So I was going to ask you to respond, but the fact that my response was yeah, I don't really see that.
Speaker 1:Well, just if I can just elaborate on that, just because I think you're touching on some of the things that have already been said, I think the history of bioethics one coming out of that analytic philosophy tradition and then also the dominance of medical science, I think has a strong attachment to objectivity, and so it seemed that a lot of the discussion following your panel yesterday for people who were either like there can be no objectivity, it's just all, then got to be sort of solipsism or a motivism, and you know we just choose whatever we want. So it was, more than you know, the other extreme of let's not go reflexive and let's hold on to objectivity.
Speaker 6:I feel that's a sad output. I'm not saying that's the outcome.
Speaker 1:I'm saying that there were the sort of two extremes, where people who were, I think, missing the point of what you were saying Sometimes it feels like you have to pick one.
Speaker 3:Right, you've got to be in one camp or the other, and I think that's just quite a sad state of affairs to be under in the world's becoming increasingly polarised. That's right. Yeah, we've got to be. Either everything is subjective, or it's objectivity or nothing. Truth is probably like somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 7:I think it's just hard to start with reflexivity to debate because it already presupposes a certain set of views about the field and what it's trying to achieve. And I think you know much of the dispute is not going to be around whether certain kind of reflexive practices are appropriate. It's going to be about what are we trying to achieve in the world of why we're fixing the way that we practice it. Our alignment on the paper originally came about because we just saw the field in the same kind of way. We saw certain kinds of responsibilities and encounters.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for this conversation. I see Cynthia's trying to hold back the tide of a whole bunch of people about to enter this room. That really appreciate it, thank you.