Here is information about this term’s UCL STS seminar series

All seminars take place at 4:30pm-6pm, with tea and coffee available from 4pm

 

Room: UCL Physics A1/3

 

 

Date	Speakers
14/10/15	Professors Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin, UCL Geography
04/11/15	Dr Luke Fenton-Glynn, UCL philosophy
18/11/15	Dr Silvia Camporesi, King’s College London
02/12/15	Professor Mike Kelly, NICE
16/12/15	Dr Carina Fearnley, UCL STS

 

 

14/10/15

Professors Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin, UCL Geography

 

Title - “The Anthropocene as history, politics and philosophy”

Date and time – 14 Oct 2015, 4:30-6pm (Tea and coffee available from 4pm) 

 

Abstract:

Earlier this year, Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin and from UCL Geography published a landmark paper in Nature (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v519/n7542/full/nature14258.html) that suggested a start date for the Anthropocene (the age of humans) around the year 1610. The idea of the Anthropocene and the debate about its start goes well beyond science. The Anthropocene, as Lewis and Maslin acknowledge, is also historical, political and philosophical. In this first seminar of the 2015/16 series, we are delighted to welcome Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin to present their work and enter a conversation with the UCL STS community.

 

 

04/11/15

Luke Fenton-Glynn, UCL philosophy

 

Title: “Ceteris Paribus Laws and Minutis Rectis Laws”

 

Abstract: Special science generalizations admit of exceptions. Among the class of non-exceptionless special science generalizations, I distinguish (what I will call) minutis rectis (mr) generalizations from the more familiar category of ceteris paribus (cp) generalizations. I argue that the challenges involved in showing that mr generalizations can play the law role

are underappreciated, and quite different from those involved in showing that cp generalizations can do so. I outline a strategy for meeting the challenges posed by mr generalizations.

 

 

18/11/15

Dr Silvia Camporesi, King’s College London

 

Title: CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing debate and the emergence of sociotechnical imaginaries in the UK and US

 

Abstract

In this paper I apply the concept developed by Jasanoff and Kim of ‘sociotechnical imaginaries’ to the CRISPR/Cas9 bioethics debate in the US and the UK. Sociotechnical imaginaries are “collectively imagined forms of special life and social order reflected in the design and fulfilment of nation-specific scientific and/or technological projects, which have a performative role as while they are created, they shape policy-making” (Jasanoff and Kim 2009; 2015). I discuss the emergence of specific narratives around possible futures construed around the germ-line applications of CRISPR/Cas9 technology in the US and in the UK.

I argue that the narrow focus of the bioethics debate on germ-line applications of the technical risks becoming a “technolog[y] of elicitation” (Lezaun and Soneyrd, 2007) which seeks to produce public opinion in a strategic way, and by doing so, prevent alternative narratives from surfacing in the debate. I conclude that CRISPR/Cas9 represents an opportunity for bioethicists to engage creatively with science outside well-known schema of promises and fears and beyond the current anthropocentric and nucleocentric debate.

 

 

02/12/15

Professor Mike Kelly, formerly of NICE

 

Title: Relational and individual conceptions of health inequalities: an historical, philosophical and political analysis.

 

Abstract

Over many decades data have been collected linking socio economic status with health status; health and socio economic status being measured in a variety of ways.  The  undeniable conclusion to be drawn from these data is that there is a  health gradient across the population with on average those in the best health being those in the best of socio economic circumstances.  This is a global pattern.  In the last twenty years in the UK and the home countries individually, policy makers have sought to tackle the problem of health inequalities  and to reduce the gradient.  The results of these actions  and interventions have had some success but  the problem stubbornly refuses to go away.  In this paper  the philosophical origins of  the concepts, used to describe health inequalities  and the difficulties these present for contemporary policy makers will be described.  The origin of the approach , beginning with William Farr in the nineteenth century, in the philosophy of utilitarianism, will be considered.  The pervasive nature of the individualistic  ontology at the heart of utilitarianism will be explained.  This will be  contrasted with a relational understanding of social life.  The relational approach of the Elizabethan Poor law and the writings of Amartya Sen will be analysed in this regard.  The paper will conclude with an outline of a an approach to understanding the mechanisms operating between the exposure to social disadvantage and consequent biological outcomes  based on a relational perspective,  and consider what some of the political implications of this might be.”

 

Professor Mike Kelly is Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow in the Primary Care Unit at the Institute of Public Health at the University of Cambridge.  Between 2005 and 2014, when he retired, he was the Director of the Centre for Public Health at the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) where he oversaw the production of all the public health guidelines that NICE developed.   Intrinsic to the NICE guidelines was an ambition, underwritten in policy, to identify interventions which would help to reduce health inequalities.  From 2005 to 2007 he directed the methodology work stream for the WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health.  He has published more than two hundred and fifty papers, reports and chapters in medical, sociological, philosophical, business and public health journals and books and is author/ editor of seven books. In 2010 he was awarded the Alwyn Smith Prize of the Faculty of Public Health in recognition of his work on cardiovascular disease and alcohol misuse prevention.

 

 

16/12/15

Dr Carina Fearnley, UCL STS

 

 Title and abstract tbc