Post-Normal Challenges of Covid
Written by Stephen Rainey
How to manage the inevitable disruptions to life brought about by the emergence of a viral pandemic – a question that for many seemed remote has now had us all preoccupied for well over a year. With our just-published article, entitled The Post-Normal Challenges of COVID-19: Constructing Effective and Legitimate Responses, in the Journal Science and Public Policy, Maru Mormina, Sapfo Lignou, Joseph Nguyen, Paula Larsson and I set out to investigate some of the perplexing difficulties especially relating to effectiveness and legitimacy. We examine these in the light of pandemics as wicked problems and lay out how ‘post-normal science’ can contribute to a sound pandemic response.
In any pandemic response, the measures undertaken by authorities must effective in the sense of actually addressing the viral threats. A strategy that didn’t slow the rate of viral spread, for instance, wouldn’t work and for that reason would be due criticism. The concept of legitimacy is one perhaps less easy to cash out. In any pandemic response, the measures undertaken by authorities must be legitimate in the sense of fairly and justifiably constraining liberties enjoyed prior to the viral outbreak. A strategy that placed undue or disproportionate burdens on societal sub-groups, for instance, wouldn’t be legitimate and for that reason would be due criticism. For effectiveness in a medical crisis particularly, science is an essential element of any response. Continue reading
Lockdown Erodes Agency
By Charles Foster
A couple of lockdown conversations:
- The other day I met a friend in the street. We hadn’t seen one another for over a year. We mimed the hugs that we would have given in a saner age, and started to talk. ‘There’s nothing to tell you’, she said. ‘Nothing’s happened since we last saw you. And that’s just as well, because, as you’ll find, I’ve forgotten how to talk, how to relate, and how to read ordinary cues. We’ve not been out. We’ve not changed anything. I wonder if we’ve been changed?’
- Another friend. ‘Zoom’s great, isn’t it? You switch off your camera and your microphone, and the meeting just goes on perfectly happily without you. Everyone thinks you’re there. Your name’s up on their screen. But you are just getting on with your own business.’
And a lockdown fact: Lockdown has been great for book sales. 2020 saw an estimated rise of 5.2% in volume sales of print books in the UK compared with 2019 sales. This was the biggest annual rise since 2007: Continue reading
Daunte Wright: Policing and Accountability
Written by Jake Wojtowicz and Ben Davies
On April 11th, Daunte Wright was pulled over by police in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. Shortly afterwards, he was shot and killed by police officer Kim Potter. Police Chief Tim Gannon described this as an ‘accidental discharge’. But framing events like this as accidents can be misleading and is just one way the police may insulate themselves from appropriate accountability.
The word ‘accident’ can bring to mind what we might call ‘sheer accidents’: bad fortune, acts of god, cars hitting the ice and veering off of the road. Even the language of an ‘accidental discharge’ can sound like Potter had the gun in her hand and it just somehow went off. But that isn’t what happened. Potter pointed the gun at Wright and pulled the trigger. She claims she meant to fire her taser.
This Machine Kills Viruses
Written by Stephen Rainey
If we had a machine that could eradicate coronavirus at the press of a button, there would likely be a queue to do the honours. Rather than having such a device, we have a science-policy interface, and a general context of democratic legitimacy. This isn’t a push-button, but a complex of socio-political liberties and privations. We can’t push the button, but we can learn how to use the technology we do have – by collectively following policies like staying inside, wearing masks outside, and keeping distance from others.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic a novel form of this scientific research, technological application, and influence or control of nature (including humans) is emerging. In this case, the application is public policy, as based on multitudes of scientific advice. That over which control is sought is twofold: the virus, and people. Control of the virus is not really possible without some control over the people. Likewise, control of the people becomes harder where the virus is not controlled. Public trust in tough policies wanes if there is no end in sight, or no clear rationale in place. Continue reading
Legacies
By Stephen Rainey
Joe Biden won the recent US election. As yet, the normal concession speech from the losing candidate has not been forthcoming. Donald Trump’s actions since losing the presidency have been, well, Trumpian, prompting Biden to label them an ‘embarrassment.’ He also suggested that The Donald was endangering his legacy in not reacting more gracefully. But what use is talk of ‘legacy’? What matters most about it?
It would be easy to ‘Goldwater’ Trump, that is, diagnose some mental incapacity from afar. One could suggest he was ill-equipped to absorb his defeat. He has behaved in ways that could be seen as pathological. Maybe, we might continue, he really doesn’t believe this is the end. If that were the case, there would be no need to consider legacy. It would also be easy to have suspected that, far from sticking around, 45 would flounce out of the White House, his pride wounded. Legacy wouldn’t matter in that case, because the electorate, the people, would have shown themselves to be unworthy, having voted the wrong way. Sad. Continue reading
The Duty To Ignore Covid-19
By Charles Foster
This is a plea for a self-denying ordinance on the part of philosophers. Ignore Covid-19. It was important that you said what you have said about it, but the job is done. There is nothing more to say. And there are great dangers in continuing to comment. It gives the impression that there is only one issue in the world. But there are many others, and they need your attention. Just as cancer patients were left untreated because Covid closed hospitals, so important philosophical problems are left unaddressed, or viewed only through the distorting lens of Covid. Continue reading
We’re All Vitalists Now
By Charles Foster
It has been a terrible few months for moral philosophers – and for utilitarians in particular. Their relevance to public discourse has never been greater, but never have their analyses been so humiliatingly sidelined by policy makers across the world. The world’s governments are all, it seems, ruled by a rather crude vitalism. Livelihoods and freedoms give way easily to a statistically small risk of individual death.
That might or might not be the morally right result. I’m not considering here the appropriateness of any government measures, and simply note that whatever one says about the UK Government’s response, it has been supremely successful in generating fear. Presumably that was its intention. The fear in the eyes above the masks is mainly an atavistic terror of personal extinction – a fear unmitigated by rational risk assessment. There is also a genuine fear for others (and the crisis has shown humans at their most splendidly altruistic and communitarian as well). But we really don’t have much ballast.
The fear is likely to endure long after the virus itself has receded. Even if we eventually pluck up the courage to hug our friends or go to the theatre, the fear has shown us what we’re really like, and the unflattering picture will be hard to forget.
I wonder what this new view of ourselves will mean for some of the big debates in ethics and law? The obvious examples are euthanasia and assisted suicide. Continue reading
Forced Medical Feeding
By Roger Crisp
At a recent New St Cross Special Ethics Seminar Prof. Noam Zohar of the Dept. of Philosophy, Bar Ilan University and a member of Israel’s National Bioethics Council, spoke on ‘Debating Forced Medical Feeding: A Critical Examination of Israeli Responses to Hunger Strikes’. Continue reading
What is Your Gender? A Friendly Guide to the Public Debate
What is your gender? A friendly guide to the public debate
Brian D. Earp
Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of an informal lecture, based on coursework submitted as part of my Ph.D. It was recorded on Whidbey Island, Washington, and published online on January 15th, 2020. A link to the video is here: https://youtu.be/LZERzw9BGrs.
Video description: I’m a philosopher and cognitive scientist who studies gender, sex, identity, sexuality and related topics and I am offering this video as a friendly guide to the (often very heated) public debate that is going on around these issues. This is my best attempt, not to score political points for any particular side, but to give an introductory map of the territory so you can think for yourself, investigate further, and reach your own conclusions about such controversial questions as “What does mean to be a man or a woman?” This video is not meant to be authoritative; it is not the final word; experts on these topics will find much to quibble with (and perhaps some things to disagree with outright). But for those who would like to take some first steps in getting a sense of the landscape without feeling intimidated, I hope this will be of some use. Continue reading
Politics, Ethics, and Shutting Down in the Face of Covid-19
Written by Stephen Rainey
Recently, I wrote about some possible limits of democratic politics in the context of climate change science. The idea was that politics could owe debts to citizens that might prompt suspension of established, and in themselves desirable, norms under certain circumstances. Coronavirus presents more such circumstances, so it’s worth revisiting those earlier thoughts, and looking at how the responses stack up in light of them.
Viruses are not really organisms in the sense of living things with which we are broadly familiar. Whereas plants are practically self-sufficient, in generating their own energy, and most other life requires the consumption of plant or plant derived materials to thrive, viruses are utterly dependent upon colonising the mechanisms of cells in order to survive.
Covid-19 is a string of ribonucleic acid (RNA), with a fatty coating, and a spiky crown of proteins. Like any other virus, covid-19 requires the cells of other living things in order to generate the proteins it needs in order to multiply. This involves hijacking the mechanisms of the host cells. Covid-19 is what’s called a messenger RNA virus, meaning it fools a host cell into creating not the proteins required by the host organism, but those of the virus.
We all know now that among the host cells amenable to Covid-19’s survival are human cells. As a result of this, thousands have died, thousands more have fallen ill and will fall ill, and we have witnessed a pan-national suspension of socio-political rights and freedoms. It seems remarkable that the protein generating requirements of a string of RNA could so directly impact upon established socio-political norms. But more to the point, it is right that such impacts are evoked by this virus. A response to such emergencies that falls short will be ineffective, and unethical. Continue reading
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