‘You can’t comment on the future if you don’t have children.’ Anyone who disagrees with this claim, or wants to understand the assumptions behind it, might enjoy watching the recording of NEE’s most recent interdisciplinary workshop.
In this online workshop, UCL academics Rachel Rosen and Judith Suissa introduced the participants to the background and key arguments of their recent paper ‘Children, Parents, and Non-Parents: To Whom Does the Future Belong?’ (2020).
Remarks such as the one just mentioned suggest that it is often believed that being a parent gives one a stake in the future. At the same time, Judith explained that the future is understood quite differently in political philosophy. It is seen as either an inevitable continuation of the present or as a very distant, abstract horizon. The authors find both conceptions of the future lacking in critical function, so instead they urge us to call into question the normative basis of the present. They argue that the future does not belong to any group in particular. Instead, Rosen and Suissa understand the future as a collective intergenerational endeavour. They believe children, parents and non-parents together can and should challenge today’s injustices in order to work towards a desired future.
After this thought-provoking overview, four respondents shared their thoughts and questions with the authors and the audience. Harriet Bergman started a conversation about what the insights in the paper might mean for efforts of social transformation. She wondered how speaking on behalf of the future might be different from speaking on behalf of others already being harmed in the present (e.g. by climate change) and invited us to think of the role of ‘prefiguration’ in this context. Leni Van Goidsenhoven introduced to the debate some remarks inspired by queer and crip theory. She touched upon ableism in popular imaginings of the future, Edelman’s No Future and alternative notions of kinship and community. This neatly connected to the next response by Lisanne Meinen. In her response, she addressed the potential of including non-human agents when imagining just alternative futures, as well as the possible role of art and fiction in imagining and producing these futures. The final response was formulated by Stefan Ramaekers, who wondered what kind of subject position the authors have in mind when they talk about a ‘we’ sharing a present, since our political and social reality seems to be that many of us do not live in the same present as others.
Rachel and Judith gave tremendously thoughtful answers to all of these responses, resulting in philosophical conversations that easily could have lasted much longer. Many thanks to the authors, the respondents and the other participants for making this such an interesting afternoon!
We are both involved in the ethics work package of the ongoing longitudinal, infant development study, i.e. Tracking Infants At Risk for Autism (TIARA). In this study, infants between the age of 5 and 36 months take part in behavioural, neurological, metabolic and genetic assessments at 5 points in time. Hereby, we came across the question whether children’s individual findings should be returned to parents throughout the study. For example, what to do, when at one point in time a child obtains an above average test result on an observation scale for autistic behaviour? Do we return this information directly, risking that from now on the child is seen and treated as ‘a little autistic’? What to do if there are multiple indicators that the child might benefit from obtaining a clinical diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder?
Contrary to genetic research, there is a rather liberal tendency for behavioural researchers to return findings to parents as a form of research compensation. We believe however that the interests of the child are not always optimally served by such systematic return; and since the child is strictly speaking the research participant, her interests should be centre stage.
In the paper we identified and discussed different bioethical principles and concepts that, we believe, can act as building blocks to design an individual return of results policy in behavioural research with minors. We argued that TIARA-participants live in a particularly vulnerable relationship towards the researchers. Therefore, the so called researchers ancillary care responsibility seems to apply. This implies an obligation to contribute to participants’ well-being beyond the minimal care to keep the study running, for example by sharing relevant study findings with them. However, we claimed that this obligation should be balanced by principles of beneficence and non-maleficence (Does the child actually benefit from the feedback? Or does it invoke a harm, for example that of unwarranted labelling), and by the child’s right to an open future (Do we close off future opportunities of the child by disclosing certain findings?).
Based on these considerations, we decided together with our clinical research colleagues to restrict the systematic return of children’s individual research findings in TIARA to cases where findings are considered clinically significant and actionable for the child. Practically, this is accomplished by making a case-by-case analysis by a multidisciplinary team. When findings are not actionable, parents receive a reassuring report stating that the team does not worry about the child’s development. In case findings are considered actionable, the relevant individual findings are disclosed and a clinical referral is made. As such, we believe to have designed a policy that acknowledges a parent’s legitimate interest in their child’s findings while also protecting the child’s stakes as a vulnerable research participant.
If you are interested to read our full paper, you can find it here.
In this report we present our concluding thoughts after having read the chapters 1, 2, 5, 6 & 8 of Karen Barad’s “Meeting the Universe Halfway”. In these chapters, she explains her notion of ethico-onto-epistemology pulling together insights gained from quantum physics and the fact that our practices literally ‘matter’ (hence: New Materialism). The way we got here was in first reading Bergson’s “Time and Free Will” (see report here) to then see how Bergson’s initial challenge to psychophysics morphed into the Einstein-Bergson debate on the primacy of physics over philosophy (see report here). We then read A.N. Whitehead’s “Process and Reality” to see another principled objection to a classical-corpuscular view of mechanistic physics as the ideal scientific and philosophical view (see report here). His more holistic interpretation of the universe based on physico-mathematical interpretations (known as ‘process philosophy’) is largely ignored in contemporary analytic philosophy but serves as direct inspiration to many contemporary thinkers across scientific disciplines. Although Barad does not explicitly make reference to him, it proved worthwhile to contrast Whitehead’s thinking with that of N. Bohr (see report here). Bohr’s philosophy-physics is – for Barad – the foundation of her ethico-onto-epistemological analysis in chapters 3, 4 & 7. She argues that the epistemological lesson of Bohr needs to be extended to its ontological implications (see report here). What remains then is the link to the ethical analysis that is a fil rouge – a background motif, if you will – with all of the thinkers mentioned before. It’s also a link between quantitative insights (as in quantum physics) and qualitative insights gained from studying the lived experience (as in gender, disability and culture studies).
Barad – the conclusive:
For us there is no question Barad in fact succeeds in entangling the insights from quantum physics with those based on discursivity as discussed by Foucault and Butler’s analysis of performativity. This means that the simplistic ideas of, on the one hand, a deterministic and exact scientific view of the universe and, on the other hand, the idea of social construction ‘through-and-through’ are to be abandoned definitively. Instead, we need to accept that the actual (agential) realist view is one wherein our practices make a literal material difference. As agents or actors in this world we do not remain unmoved but, in moving, we also do not leave the world unmoved. In science we are therefore not looking for some isolated matter or some isolated practice that, on analysis, can give a definite explanation of phenomena. No, in science we’re concerned with a, necessarily indeterminate, dynamic of phenomena that produce a world in which we (humans and nonhumans) live together. While we cannot fully determine this intra-action, we are accountable for what happens since we do have a choice to exclude or include others by the practices we adopt.
Here we have added – to the epistemological and ontological dimensions discussed in our previous session – the beginning of an ethical dimension by linking the themes of quantum physical indeterminacy with the themes of (acceptance of) diversity in gender, disability as well as cultural studies. This is done by replacing the dominant exact scientific metaphor of reflection and representation by the new metaphor of diffraction and production. The latter indeed emerged from the discussion of quantum physics as an unavoidable element (this mirrors themes independently taken up by Bergson and Whitehead) in contrast to notions of exact science that, sticking with a Newtonian deterministic worldview, want to eliminate this element as a mere ‘disturbance’.
As said above, whilst we differ on whether all aspects of Barad’s analysis succeed, we do agree that the above conclusion is unavoidable: given there is unavoidably an element of entanglement or diffraction in science (as in any practice), science comes with impacts on our world that cannot be disentangled from what happens in that world. In Barad’s words – science ‘matters’ and therefore it matters what we do in science (and how we do it)..
Barad – the inconclusive:
For us there is also no question that there is more work to do on how this specifically does matter from an ethical point of view. The examples in ‘Meeting The Universe Halfway’ are, in our view, not concrete enough to provide actual guidance for instance in the field of our project: neurodevelopmental disorders.
Maybe the reason why it stays a little too abstract in connecting with ethical concerns is a consequence of laying too much focus on diffraction and disregarding the complementary aspect of reflection. Maybe (see also the discussion on humanism vs posthumanism in the previous report) this leads to a loss of connection to the typically ethical questions of doing justice to a specific other. These are interesting angles also suggested by previous reading but probably it matters less to study these angles in a very abstract way given what we’re missing is a connection to the very concrete of ethical practices in the here and now or the you and me. At least in our discussion, we spontaneously geared towards the question of how science matters and, in light of the above, what a good scientific practice is.
A call for intra-action:
So, we end this reading club with a desire to produce something that builds on the reading we have done: a way to argue that – contrary to the received opinion in the modern West – science without experience is simply unscientific. This probably requires us to make more precise how quantitative and qualitative methods combine to form good science (maybe in the way that Oliver Sacks’ efforts to give people with a neurodevelopmental disorder their own voice was critical in unleashing scientific advance in this field). We believe this would be a worthwhile bridge between New Materialism and more conventional views of science and ethics, an intra-action bringing scientists and scholars in the different disciplines closer instead of digging ever deeper terminological trenches.
We finally arrived at the destination of our Book club’s journey: Karen Barad’s “Meeting the Universe Halfway”. The way we got here was reading Bergson’s “Time and Free Will” (see report here) to then see how Bergson’s initial challenge to psychophysics morphed into the Einstein-Bergson debate about the primacy of physics over philosophy (see report here). We then stopped over at A.N. Whitehead’s “Process and Reality” to see another principled objection to a classical-corpuscular view of mechanistic physics as the ideal scientific and philosophical view (see report here). His more holistic interpretation of the universe based on physico-mathematical interpretations (known as ‘process philosophy’) is largely ignored in contemporary analytic philosophy but serves as direct inspiration to many contemporary thinkers across scientific disciplines. Although Barad does not explicitly make reference to him, it proved worthwhile to contrast Whitehead’s thinking with that of N. Bohr (see report here). Indeed, the philosophical ideas of Bohr are the starting point of Barad’s Meeting the Universe Halfway and Whitehead as well as Bohr developed their ideas in explicit contrast with those of Einstein. Small wonder then that the same respectful criticism of Einstein is a fil rouge in Barad who, herself a quantum physicist, takes up the philosophical implications of physics which have proven so counterintuitive for deterministic thinking. As it is a quite massive book giving rise to a lot of intra-acting (see how dogeared it is) we split the debate in two. In this penultimate session we talk about her interpretation of quantum physics (the chapters 3, 4, 7). In the next (final) one we conclude by looking at the ethical ramifications she distills out of this interpretation (ethics is a common theme across all these thinkers!).
Barad on Bohr – the agreement:
Bohr’s ‘philosophy-physics’ is the starting point for Barad. She first disentangles it in a very meticulous way from the ‘uncertainty’ reading which is probably most well known from the like-named principle proposed by Heisenberg. Instead, according to us quite rightly so, it is argued that Bohr preferred the term ‘indeterminacy’ as this captured the lesson of quantum physics more accurately. Indeed, it is not that there is something determined in spacetime that we cannot measure without disturbing it, i.e. without uncertainty. Rather, Bohr’s idea of complementarity holds that there’s no such determined thing prior to (or separate from) our observation of it. Instead, the fact revealed by quantum physics is that, when we observe a quantum phenomenon, we need to make a choice on how we want to observe it. It is this choice that allows us to determine the phenomenon either as to its object characteristic (its position) or as to its wave characteristics (its momentum). These two complementary ways of observing it require two different, and mutually exclusive, experimental arrangements. In this way the very idea of physics as deterministics, so preferred by Einstein, is no longer a tenable position (as Barad, specifically in chapter 7 explains with reference to experiments that could not be carried out in Bohr’s time but have been carried out in the meantime).
As the below picture tries to illustrate, this puts Barad and Bohr very far removed from the contemporary Western consensus assuming that a scientific explanation needs ultimately to be grounded by concept of an isolated particular or individual. In this her analysis is to a large extent on the same wavelength as that of Whitehead who, as we saw before, started from the non-separability of phenomena based on the image of wave propagation. This is far removed from the current Western consensus, with its view of the particular importance of the thought of a conscious individual human being. This is illustrated by both Whitehead and Bohr emphasizing affinity of their philosophy and science with Eastern thought.
That said, Barad also explicitly says she wants to go further than Bohr. Maybe fittingly, this is also where our discussion group started disagreeing. This, hopefully productive, debate is summarized in the next section but before we switch to that I complete the discussion of the above picture by stating that Barad’s view emphasizes (see Whitehead’s starting point) the entangled nature of nature. As she herself says, the title Meeting the Universe Halfway is not about taking a kind of middle position in the way Bohr can be interpreted. No, she is clearly taking diffraction as the ultimate truth revealed by quantum physics.
Barad on Bohr – the disagreement:
We can be brief about the disagreement of Barad and Bohr (hence about us disagreeing in our discussion). The basic issue Barad has with Bohr is that he limited his official lesson to a lesson of epistemology (how we can know nature) where she argues his argument leads to a straightforward ontological conclusion (how nature is). For Barad, philosophy-physics as proposed by Bohr should not be limited to the way we, humans, obtain knowledge but it should be seen as the generic way in which phenomena come to matter. This allows her to introduce her key concept of intra-agency within phenomena connecting epistemology not only to ontology but also to ethics. The limit of human knowledge which Bohr self-imposed on himself is then a remnant of a humanism that still makes humans to be too exceptionala species in our world.
We disagreed on whether this extension of Bohr’s epistemological lesson is correct and – relatedly – whether his self-avowed humanism indeed restricts his ethical outlook to one in which the human species is the be all and end all of nature. Luckily, we have one session left to see whether we can find agreement based on our previous readings where, as said above already, ethical questions always lurked in the background. Whatever else we might find of Barad, she clearly has the merit of putting these questions front and center in a bold way within a principled discussion of contemporary advances in scientific knowledge!
To be continued – humanism vs. posthumanism:
Next time, and this will be the coronation of this specific book club, we therefore start with specifical ethical questions that motivated the NeuroEpigenEthics project. This will bring us to the issues why ‘New Materialist’ views are critically important in no longer separating of issues of a scientific/materialistic and an ethics/diversity nature. We will read the remaining chapters of Meeting The Universe Halfway that make a connection between interpretation of (quantum) physics and ethical theorizing (a connection that all of the thinkers discussed in this book club endorse in one way or the other). We will then see whether the humanism of Bohr is indeed incompatible with the insights of contemporary continental thought such as for instance developed in posthumanism. Or whether we can find some “golden middle” ground where we can all meet after all.
Unfortunately, Coronavirus required us to cancel our yearly team meeting where we would have been so very happy to welcome Prof. Eva Jablonka, one of the pioneers in epigenetic research and theorizing. Fortunately we had the opportunity of discussing her work online with her on the 5th of May 2020. We specifically focused on the book she wrote together with Prof. Marion Lamb: Evolution in Four Dimensions (2nd edition, 2014). It was a most lively discussion where the neurological and, mainly, the ethical were prominently present. We provide a very short reflection belo
w but not without first thanking all the friends of the NeuroEpigenEthics team who joined the discussion showing the value of interdisciplinary thinking: Luca Chiapperino (Science and Technology Studies, University Lausanne), Wim Van Daele (anthropologist, University Agder), Wim Vanden Berghe (microbiologist, University of Antwerp) and Sander Van de Cruys (experimental psychologist, University of Leuven). Covid-19 may keep us in a physical bubble, we remain determined to continue breaking academic bubbles!
We dug right in with a question on whether epigenetic effects should always be framed in the negative. The answer of Prof. Jablonka was as balanced as her work on evolution: she was not in favor of claiming epigenetics as the be all and end all of all science. She sees it rather as an additional tool in a truly transdisciplinary toolkit. On the one hand, we have to consider that there is a lot of unpredictability in epigenetic effects. A lack of stress following a ‘good’ lifestyle may well stabilize problematic effects while some stress triggers plasticity that enables learning and discovering better solutions. On the other hand, as is the core of the ideas in Evolution in Four Dimensions epigenetics really is the crossroads of biological and cultural drivers of evolution. As worked out in the paper Cultural Epigenetics(Jablonka 2016) this means one always has to consider, at least, these 2 perspectives. The example given was very much à propos the NeuroEpigenEthics mission: one can look at ADHD as a problem for which some microbiological cure is to be found, or one can look at it socially as an affordance opening up new potential. Biology has a place in both perspectives, but it will, in the second perspective, focus more on something Richard Lewontin called “meta-plasticity”. This perspective will avoid trying to fix things from a point of view of current standards and allow to be more open to creative opportunities evolution affords in creating new potential.
This discussion naturally led to a question on relation between epigenetics and normative issues. Prof. Eva Jablonka here first drew attention to the application of Waddington’s landscape metaphor (Waddington 1957) to the social dimension. A norm can in this metaphor be seen as a strong attractor canalizing the development of organism in a direction of what are ‘stable social arrangements’. In work she co-authored (Tavory, Jablonka and Ginsburg 2012) it is explained how for instance poverty can be self-perpetuating until some change (as fortunately has happened to some extent with feminism and homosexuality) to some of the key stabilizers takes root. Unfortunately, only a case-by-case interdisciplinary study of the broad epigenetic landscape can help to identify how to uproot oppressive stabilizers so no simplifying messages here. Still we can see that there always is a dynamic between the individual change agents and some level of collective responsibility (see our discussion on Iris Marion Young for a helpful way of conceptualizing this dynamic!). Again, epigenetics is not saying things are cast in stone but rather that wherever there is canalization there are, always also, permeable boundaries allowing evolutionary plasticity to overthrow attractors.
This use of the Waddingtonian metaphor invited a long discussion on how to understand it, and specifically how to understand interactions between the genetic and social dimensions as well as the possibilities for change afforded to individual agency. Prof. Eva Jablonka did in this discussion refer to the paper she and Noble published recently (2019) in which they tried (see photograph below) to extend the metaphor to show this interaction. In it, the lower pegs are the genes as per Waddington’s original drawing but the top parachute shows the social and environmental influence on development. This allows to visualize that we aren’t just canalized by our biology but that if we change social circumstances we can – and do – have an impact on this development. Feminism and queer studies in this way have had an impact on the development outlook of more than half of the world’s population although as regards poverty we clearly have much more to do to destabilize the dynamics.
A snapshot from our discussion: on the right the adaptation of Waddington’s landscape as per Jablonka and Noble (2019), on the left Eva Jablonka, Kristien Hens (University Antwerp), Luca Chiapperino (University Lausanne) and Sander Van de Cruys (University of Leuven).
Our discussion went on for three hours and still there was much more to be said. Not only on the visualization of the epigenetic landscape (how to depict the complementary aspects of plasticity and canalization that were already the focus of Waddington’s original work) but also on how to translate these insights into the clinical and bioethical discourse, where the simplicity of the ‘traditional’ genetic model is still a very strong attractor for patients as well as clinicians. So we left it as a To Be Continued, grateful for Prof. Eva Jablonka’s time and happy that these are the very questions we pursue in our project. The last word we give to our guest: “The dynamic of stability always comes together with a dynamics of change.”
In light of the COVID-19 outbreak, the NeuroEpigenEthics team members decided to stay in touch through video conferencing. Our online team meetings take place at least once a week. This week, we organized our first online book club on Iris Young’s Responsibility for Justice.
The concept of responsibility is one of those central to the NeuroEpigenEthics project. Each of our researchers is grappling with issues related to responsibility in their own way. To start a conversation on issues of structural injustice and collective responsibility in particular, we decided to read Young’s 2011 work Responsibility for Justice. The work of this prominent feminist political philosopher proved to be a very rich ground for discussion and further thought.
In our discussion we touched upon the main concepts in the book and tried to apply them to our own research. We appreciated Young’s project of shifting the focus away from a liability model of responsibility towards a social connection model of responsibility. Rather than pointing fingers, ascribing blame or guilt, or isolating those who did something wrong, we believe it might be useful to choose a more collective and forward-looking approach to responsibility. Young explains that “all those who contribute by their actions to structural processes with some unjust outcomes share responsibility for the injustice” (p. 96). Crucially, individuals can only discharge their responsibilities of this kind by taking collective action.
We discussed how Young’s ideas and those of other authors working on forward-looking responsibility might be applied to our own project(s). We talked, for example, about the tension between responsibilities that may be felt by a clinician diagnosing people with neurodevelopmental disorders. Wanting to be responsible for both the individual well-being of a patient and improving social structures that are currently unjust (for example because they are stigmatizing) may lead to inner conflicts. Others mentioned how insights from epigenetics influence our thinking about the relation between forward-looking and backward-looking dimensions of responsibility, and vice versa.
The picture below provides those interested with an overview of the points that were raised in this thought-provoking book club.
Iris Young, 2011, Responsibility for Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
An overview of our thoughts and the subsequent discussion
We started our journey towards Karen Barad’s “Meeting the Universe Halfway” by reading Bergson’s “Time and Free Will” (see report here). We then saw Bergson’s initial challenge to psychophysics morphing into the Einstein-Bergson debate about the primacy of physics over philosophy (see report here). We saw that Bergson was not the only one contesting a classical-corpuscular view of mechanistic physics as the ideal for science (and, therefore, philosophy). We discussed A. N. Whitehead’s proposal (see report here) of a more holistic interpretation of the universe based on physico-mathematical interpretations. Although this ‘process philosophy’ was largely ignored in contemporary analytic philosophy, it serves as direct inspiration to a lot of contemporary thinkers outside of that tradition. Our last stop will be dedicated to the philosophical ideas of Niels Bohr explicitly discussed in Karen Barad’s Meeting the Universe Halfway. Bohr also contrasted his ideas explicitly with those of Einstein which made it interesting to look at (the many) alignments and (some) discrepancies of his views, as founding father of quantum physics with the philosophy proposed by Whitehead.
On February 18th, on Audre Lorde’s birthday (to whom the lecture was dedicated), feminist killjoy Sara Ahmed talked to a full Kaaitheater about doors. More precisely about closing, slamming, hitting doors. The title of her lecture was “Closing the door. Complaint as diversity work.” She did not only talk about closing doors, but also about revolving doors, about brick walls and long corridors. She talked about how doors can be slammed upon you when you try to enter as being invited but not welcomed, or how you can feel trapped in a revolving door, hit by a brick wall, and disoriented in endless corridors.
Within NeuroEpigenEthics we value qualitative research. One of our team members, Leni Van Goidsenhoven, is especially interested in those qualitative research methods that are going against the prevailing tendency to take qualitative data as ‘face value’, as ‘self-evident truths’, as data that can be ‘objectified’ by different forms of coding. Inspired by the work of, among others, Bronwyn Davies, Carolyn Ellis, Maggie MacLure, Norman Denzin, who are emphasizing that the truth found in qualitative data is relative and situated and sometimes even contains fictional elements, Leni is drawn towards innovate data collection tactics, creative-relational inquiry and ‘methods’ as, for instance, collaborative writing.
That’s why she went off to Malta, where the 4th European Conference for Qualitative Inquiry took place. There, Leni had the chance to immerse herself in an impressive amount of lectures and workshops, focusing on issues as ‘the potential of multi-sensory research data’, ‘problematizing interviews’, participatory visual inquire’, ‘slow inquiry’, ‘action research practices’, to name but a few.
She also presented her own research, Listening Beyond Words: Swinging Together, in which she investigates how posthuman and new materialist theories disrupt the production of the ‘non-verbal child’.
We started our journey towards Karen Barad’s “Meeting the Universe Halfway” by reading Bergson’s “Time and Free Will” (see report here). We then saw Bergson’s initial challenge to psychophysics morphing into the Einstein-Bergson debate about the primacy of physics over philosophy (see report here). From a contemporary, modern Western, point of view it was Einstein’s point of view that prevailed, so entrenching the classical-corpuscular view of mechanistic physics as the ideal science (and therefore philosophy) should strive for. Such a view was however not only contested by Bergson but in his own way by A. N. Whitehead who thereby inspired contemporary thinkers such as Donna Haraway. We were fortunate enough to get introduced to Whitehead by Ronny Desmet (author of the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on him). Although Whitehead is almost erased from the history of analytic philosophy, his approach was of a thoroughly mathematical and physicist nature and at the same time embraced elements of Eastern philosophy. As shown in the picture of a letter by Whitehead, he directly interacted with Einstein and, whilst in Harvard, was mentor of many leading analytic philosophers like Quine. Therefore he may well be pivotal in controversies between the current philosophical traditions. In the following we provide a short reflection on this session. After this we’ll have one session on the interpretation of quantum physics by Whitehead and Bohr. This makes us well prepared for our final goal of an informed discussion of Karen Barad’s Meeting the Universe Halfway.
