Overview
In this new initiative, Philosophy PhD student Alex Conway analyses and discusses various aspects of our society, and how they are structured, in terms of how they relate to the underserved discipline of neuro-ethics. This is essentially how the lack of inclusion of neurodiverse individuals present in several aspects of our society causes major ethical problems. Though this area will be looked at from a largely philosophical perspective, the aim here is to be much more accessible than academic philosophy, in order to appeal to a wide audience of non-specialists.
About Alex Conway
Alex Conway is a Philosophy PhD student at the University of Southampton, whose major research interests concern an array of issues in ethics and epistemology, but in particular in terms of how these two areas relate to neurodiversity. A major focus will be on epistemic injustice, that is, the ways in which individuals from certain minority groups (in this case neurodiverse individuals) are discredited either as a source of testimony, or in terms of how they are (not) talked about by others. Epistemic injustice has wide-reaching real-world applications: whilst the PhD itself will largely focus on the theoretical side, this website will discuss some of the more pressing real-world concerns.
Many of the ethical issues discussed here will have epistemic injustice at their heart, since it is the root cause of most marginalisation that is experienced by neurodiverse individuals. But the reason why this area is so complex, and the ethical problems that are caused so profound, is because it is unconscious. Though most social inequalities today have a tangible aspect, epistemology doesn’t have that luxury. Furthermore, issues with bidirectional empathy in neurodivergent-neurotypical interactions means that neurodiversity-based inequalities are even harder to resolve. This all motivates the need for a new discipline: neuroethics.
Alex holds a distinction-level Master’s degree in Philosophy and has a wealth of experience writing about neurodiversity as part of that degree. In particular, his dissertation on the ethics of neurodiversity diagnosis broke new ground as it analysed some of the most pressing ethical failings of the DSM-5, a diagnostic system thought by many medical professionals to be infallible. These ethical concerns ranged from the DSM-5’s failure to accurately define what constitutes ‘normal’, ‘abnormal’ or ‘unusual’, to the concerns over autonomy that the diagnostic system posed – both during and after diagnosis.
Neuroethics
This is the ethical area in which most of the content of this site will fall – and it will split into three main sections: organisations, education, and society. The field has wide-reaching occurrences in each of these three areas, many of which have been discussed on social media, but haven’t really progressed much further (in particular relating to employment). The intention is to take those complaints and form solutions which could satisfy them.
Neuroethics is best defined as the ethical and moral issues that occur as we come to better understand our psychology. This occurs on two levels: the first is the ethics of the research itself, but the second level, the one this site will focus on, concerns the real-world implications of this research in terms of the societal inequalities that it reveals.
It is so important that these inequalities are considered because they may not even have been seen as inequalities, or as even remotely flawed previously. Furthermore, it is a severe ethical failing to become aware of potential inequalities yet do nothing about them. At the end of the day, it is the existence of these inequalities at the roots of society’s epistemic landscape that leads to the ethical challenges that this site will consider.
