Practical: Friday 28th May 15:00-17:00 online, register via mailto: jo.bervoets@uantwerpen.be, the Zoom details will be sent a couple of days ahead of the lecture
Abstract: An implicit assumption in many current debates in the moral responsibility literature is that there is a value-neutral way of identifying a group of agents upon which we can base our assumptions about responsible agency. In reality, the methodology that philosophers often use to identify the capacities possessed by responsible agents is to infer from an intuitive verdict that a neurodivergent person should not be blamed in a particular circumstance that they lack a crucial capacity of agency that responsible agents must have. In this talk I attempt to debunk this way of thinking by showing how it has arisen from decontextualized sympathy towards mental difference in lieu of genuine understanding. I identify several shortfalls of this paradigm of exemption as the explanation for why we ought to sometimes mitigate our blame towards someone when their wrongdoing has come about due to their neurodivergence. I suggest instead that we sometimes ought to alter or mitigate our blame because of the undue burdens of navigating the interpersonal world with a brain that functions outside the paradigm of the currently conventional norms.
Bio: August Gorman is a Values and Public Policy Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University co-appointed in the Center for Human Values and the Center for Health and Wellbeing. Their work focuses on how traditional debates about agency, moral responsibility, well-being, and consent intersect with neurodivergent experiences and the lived realities of psychological disability.
Agenda:
– lecture dr. August Gorman: approx. 45′
– responses Prof. Katrien Schaubroeck, Emma Moormann, Jo Bervoets: approximativ. 45′
Organized online by the University of Antwerp’s Department of Philosophy, the KU Leuven’s Institute of Philosophy and the ERC Starting Grant Project NeuroEpigenEthics.
Dates: 9thand 10thof September 2021
Keynotes:
Victoria McGeer (Princeton University)
Hanna Pickard (Johns Hopkins University)
Nick Haslam (University of Melbourne)
Maureen Sie (Tilburg University)
The main aim of this conference is to cross-fertilize research in what are up to now two separate fields. On the one hand there is the blooming field where philosophy of responsibility meets theories of psychopathology, specifically in addressing the question to what extent and in what way people diagnosed with a mental illness are to be excused for certain behaviours. On the other hand, there is an interesting line of psychological research on the link between stigma and neurological explanations of psychopathology. Going back to Peter Strawson’s articulation of the problem in terms of reactive and objective attitudes, many philosophers have thought of mental illness as a reason for exculpation. However, this objectifying treatment of people has important downsides, such as denying agency, and stirring up stigmatisation and other forms of social exclusion. Empirical research has shown that these effects are reinforced by a neurological approach to psychopathology. Exculpation of agents diagnosed with a mental illness thus seems to be a double-edged sword. Can we find a way in which we improve our understanding of psychopathology without at the same time stigmatising those diagnosed with mental illness? Should we create and adopt new forms of semi-reactive attitudes? Would it make a difference if we thought of neurological conditions in a more dynamic or interactive way? By confronting different strands of research from philosophy and psychology, we hope to find inspiration for a more balanced view of psychopathology that optimizes inclusion and acceptance of those diagnosed.
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS:
Given the conference goal of cross-fertilization, we invite contributions from the fields of ethics, moral psychology, philosophy (of mind) or (social) psychology, preferably combining 2 of the 3 themes as per the conference title. We strive for diversity of views and presenters.
Abstracts of 500 words should be sent to jo.bervoets@uantwerpen.be before May 15th 2021. They need to be attached as .pdf and need to be anonymized for reviewing. Please put all your contact information in the body of the email.
Notification of acceptance will be communicated before July 1st 2021.
We plan on organizing a physical follow-up workshop with key contributors in Antwerp, somewhere in 2022.
Organizing Committee: Prof. K. Schaubroeck (UA), Prof. P. Adriaens (KUL), Jo Bervoets (NeuroEpigenEthics), Prof. K. Hens (NeuroEpigenEthics)
About half a year ago I, Lisanne Meinen, joined the NeuroEpigenEthics team. I am working on an interdisciplinary PhD project that studies the depiction of psychiatric diagnoses (autism, depression, psychosis) in video games. In this blog post, I will explain my research and tell something about my plans for the upcoming years.
In my research, I examine how the psychiatric conditions autism, depression, and psychosis are represented in both commercial and ‘indie’ video games. I look at thematic representation, for example through the inclusion of a character with autism such as Symmetra in the RPG Overwatch. Additionally, I analyze how these psychiatric conditions are woven into the rules and structure of a game, as happens in Zoë Quinn’s autobiographical Depression Quest.
In addition, I study how interpreting games critically and ‘playing’ them against the grain can deconstruct and challenge societal prejudices and norms surrounding, for example, healthy bodies and sane minds. Such approaches are important if we want to look beyond just diagnosing game characters or looking for certain symptoms. Ultimately, I want to see how psychiatric diagnoses are incorporated into games—both from the designer’s point of view and from the game itself—but also how that affects the player’s gaming experience.
The character Symmetra in Overwatch
Currently, video games and psychiatric conditions are almost exclusively linked in research with an instrumental (usually therapeutic or educational) approach. Therapeutic studies focus on the potential of ‘gamification’ or ‘serious games’ to control or reduce certain symptoms. In such a case, the video game is used instrumentally and the focus is mainly on the diagnosis and not on the person behind it with all their feelings, thoughts, and experiences.
In the case of an educational approach, video games are seen as a unique means of increasing people’s understanding of certain psychiatric conditions and thus countering stigma. While this is a noble motivation, it also invites some criticism. For example, simulations of a certain psychiatric condition can actually encourage stigmatization. In addition, while the aim of these video games is often to elicit empathy, the term is all too quickly used as a buzzword. It is important to be specific about what is meant by empathy: what kind of emotions does a game evoke exactly?
To question this instrumental approach as a norm, I focus on games designed primarily for entertainment purposes. In doing so, I look with an open mind at the different ways in which a video game can be played, and thus at the different ways and meanings of an enjoyable gaming experience. I want to explicitly take a non-medical approach to autism, depression, and psychosis because I find the medical view too limiting. In this line, insights from fields such as crip studies and neurodiversity studies help me to be critical of dominant societal norms about ‘healthy’ or normal’ minds.
In my research I continually work in two directions. On the one hand, I want to know how our thinking about (dis)abled bodyminds in fields like disability studies can contribute to a more nuanced and better representation of autism, depression, and psychosis (and the experiences of those diagnosed with them) in video games. On the other hand, I want to think from the perspective of video games themselves and study how nuanced games can contribute to broadening the conceptualization of psychiatric diagnoses as dynamic and changeable. Because playing a video game is an interactive affair, all these different sides can be well illuminated.
The interactive autobiographical game Depression Quest
In all these approaches, I cannot do without the insights and ideas of people with lived experience with autism, psychosis, and depression. Therefore, in different ways in my research, I will actively collaborate with people who have a diagnosis themselves. For example, when I interview game designers who have incorporated their experiences with a particular diagnosis into a game. Or when I question people with a diagnosis about their experience when they play a game designed to be about them. Is it alienating to play a game about yourself, does it make you angry, or do you find recognition in it?
Ultimately, then, we can learn a lot from video games, but presumably not in the straightforward way that designers of educational games have envisioned. Instead of games aimed at identification, what we need above all are more games that teach people to respect those who are different from them. With my research project, I hope to define what such video games would look like.
