A person can be true to oneself even while transforming and even creating the person one is. One's self is not something merely waiting to be discovered, after all. To some extent, part of the human endeavor is deciding and trying to become who we want to be.

As science learns more about how the brain works, and fails to work, the possibility for developing “cognition enhancers” becomes more plausible. And the demand for drugs that can help us think faster, remember more, and focus more keenly has already been demonstrated by the market success of drugs like Ritalin, which tames the attention span, and Prozac, which ups the competitive edge. The new drug Aricept, which improves memory, most likely will join them. Whether such drugs are good for (...) individuals, or for society, is an open question, one that demands far more public discussion. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the questions of how and to what extent new antidepressants (selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs) could possibly affect the self. I do this by way of a phenomenological approach, using the works of Martin Heidegger and Thomas Fuchs to analyze the roles of attunement and embodiment in normal and abnormal ways of being-in-the-world. The nature of depression and anxiety disorders — the diagnoses for which treatment with antidepressants is most commonly indicated — is also explored (...) by way of this phenomenological approach, as are the basic structures of self-being. Special attention is paid in the analysis to the moods of boredom, anxiety and grief, since they play fundamental roles in depression and anxiety disorders and since their intensity and frequency appear to be modulated by antidepressants. My conclusion is that the effect of these drugs on the self can be thought of in terms of changes in self-feeling, or, more precisely, self-vibration of embodiment. I present the idea of a spectrum of bodily resonance, which extends from the normal resonance of the lived body, in which the body is able to pick up a wide range of different moods; continuing over various kinds of sensitivities, preferences and idiosyncrasies, in which certain moods are favored over others; to cases that we unreservedly label pathologies, in which the body is severely out of tune, or even devoid of tune and thus useless as a tool of resonance. Different cultures and societies favor slightly differently attuned self-styles as paradigmatic of the normal and good life, and the popularity of the SSRIs can therefore be explained, not only by defects of embodiment, but also by the presence of certain cultural norms in our contemporary society. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur has been hailed as one of the most important thinkers of the century. Oneself as Another, the clearest account of his "philosophical ethics," substantiates this position and lays the groundwork for a metaphysics of morals.

The eye may be window to the soul, but neuroscientists aim to get inside and measure the interior directly. There's also talk about moving some walls.

Narrative accounts of illness often focus on the sociological construction of illness and neglect the body. This paper explores themes of seeing and being seen in the narrative of an HIV positive man to show the importance of uncovering the psychological and corporeal experience of HIV. Such accounts complement and enhance conventional medical accounts of illness. Poignantly, it is a story of how he understands others as reading his body and writing on it. Further, his story is not one that (...) is in circulation. Accounts of positive heterosexual males are few. This paper seeks to add at least one account to the public record so that others may have narrative resources to draw upon. Narrative analysis provides new perspectives on the lived experience of HIV, which are crucial to appreciate how it might be possible to live a positive life. (shrink)

The field of medicine is generally greeted with great enthusiasm. This can be witnessed in the immense support for medical progress, which is widely hoped to lead to a realization of idealized goals. Indeed, with the help of medicine the human body would be controllable and constructible, human nature perfectible. However, enthusiasm in favor of medical progress is first and foremost a sentiment and, like all sentiments, not necessarily a product of rational contemplation. People are capable of enthusing about the (...) realization of utopian notions, such as life without disease or with the perfect body, without requiring any concrete arguments to back them up. Enthusiasm alone is not a guarantee of ethical desirability, however. Hence, this book takes a closer look at four research fields often referred to in medical utopian literature: 'tissue engineering', 'bioelectronics', 'germ line genome modification' and 'interventions in the biological aging process'. They serve as a basis for analyzing whether ethical arguments can be found to support the euphoric advocacy of the further development of these fields. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the causation of diseases, particularly on the idea of a "genetic cause" taking Alzheimer's Disease as an example. We provide some historical information and a synopsis of the current knowledge on the etiology and pathogenesis of AD, analyse some conceptual problems related to the notion of "genetic disease", elaborate on the alleged cause of AD, and place the discussion on the cause of AD in a broader philosophical context, paying attention to a constructivist perspective, the notions (...) of causal connection and causal selection, and to some practical and normative consequences of our analysis. We conclude that AD is not a specific disease entity with one specific cause, that the idea of a single cause can still function as a heuristic tool in AD research and practice, and that a "belief" in causation can go together with the notions of multicausality and probability. (shrink)