Reminder CfA: New Perspectives on Medical Paternalism

[Thomas Schramme]

Reminder!

Call for Abstracts: Intensive Graduate Course (Spring School)

New Perspectives on Medical Paternalism

Hamburg University, 21 – 29 March 2012

(Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research)



Description:

The Spring School focuses on new problems of paternalism in medicine,
specifically on paternalism in relation to public health, psychiatry, and
medical services. It also in­cludes a strand that addresses the concept of
paternalism. We will combine perspec­tives from philosophy, medical ethics,
jurisprudence, and social sciences. Post-Docs, PhD-students and other
Graduate Students are invited to submit abstracts (up to 300 words) and a
short CV by 15 October 2011 on designated topics: Paternalism in re­lation
1) to public health, 2) to medical services, 3) to psychiatry, and 4) the
concept of paternalism (see also aims and scope section below). Up to 15
participants will be chosen by a committee and invited to present their
papers at the meeting; they will be notified by mid-November. The conference
language will be English and only submissions in English will be accepted.
Although we target mainly students from European countries we will be able
to fund a small number of non-European students.

Participants will have the opportunity to discuss their ideas with renowned
scholars. Confirmed speakers and discussants include Douglas Husak
(Rutgers), Gerald Dworkin (UC Davis), Andrew von Hirsch (Cambridge), Bettina
Schöne-Seifert (Münster), and Stefan Huster (Bochum). All costs (travel and
subsistence, accommo­dation) will be covered and there will be a small
honorarium for submitting a written paper. All papers will also be
considered for publication in an edited collection. Please be advised that
attendance of the whole conference is a requirement of par­ticipation.

Please send your abstract and CV to the organizer of the event, Professor
Thomas Schramme, thomas....@uni-hamburg.de
<mailto:thomas....@uni-hamburg.de?subject=Spring%20School%202012> . He
is also happy to answer any queries.



Aims and Scope:

Modern developments in medicine raise new issues in relation to paternalism.
The Spring School will focus on four strands in the discussion:

1) Public health has become a major focus of governments. Political means
are used in combination with medical institutions to influence the decision
making of citizens, sometimes in very subtle ways. Health promotion has
therefore become an important site of issues of state paternalism. However,
it still needs to be discussed what kind of interventions really are to be
called paternalistic and how we should evaluate them. It seems that
encouraging a healthy diet and informing about potentially harmful
ingredients is different from banning particular food or even criminalizing
its consumption and production. For instance, are "nudges" to a healthier
lifestyle really cases of paternalism, and, if so, are they less problematic
than bans?

2) Another important example of new developments in medicine is medical
services, such as enhancements, health promoting drugs or services in
reproductive medicine. Occasionally a potential service has been criticized
or banned on grounds of poten­tial harm even to a willing consumer of such
services. Here, a person who wants to offer a service is intervened with in
order to protect another person, i.e. a potential client. In the
philosophical debate, this is called indirect paternalism. So far, there
have been only sparse publications on this topic. Is indirect paternalism to
be as­sessed in a different light than direct paternalism?

3) Although hardly a new topic, the issue of paternalism in psychiatry
should also be addressed, not least because it has not been sufficiently
tackled in the literature. Many people seem to assume that psychiatric
patients are incompetent by definition, hence that a paternalistic
intervention into their decision making is always a matter of so-called soft
paternalism. But this is a contested assumption and needs discussion. It is
an area that can help us to get a clearer grasp of the necessary capacities
to make a voluntary choice, which is especially important when
distinguishing between soft and hard paternalism.

4) Debates of the mentioned topics rely on a proper understanding of the
concept of paternalism. Unfortunately, there is no one uncontested
definition and there are sev­eral different conceptions available in
different contexts. It is therefore vital to discuss the very concept of
paternalism directly. Although conceptual analysis has been the main aim of
philosophers, a discussion of the concept of paternalism need not be done
only by using philosophical methods. A clearer grasp of such a contested
con­cept might be achieved by the art of separating different usages.







--------------------------------------------

Prof. Dr. Thomas Schramme
Universitaet Hamburg
Philosophisches Seminar
Von-Melle-Park 6
20146 Hamburg
+49 (0)40 42838 - 8370
http://www.philosophie.uni-hamburg.de/Team/Schramme/

http://www.philosophie.uni-hamburg.de/Team/Schramme/index_e.html (English)


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