Rightly or for Ill: the Ethics of Remembering and Forgetting

Forgetting a birthday, a wedding anniversary, a beloved child\u27s school play or a dear colleague\u27s important accomplishments is often met with blame, whereas remembering them can engender praise. Are we in fact blameworthy or praiseworthy for such remembering and forgetting? When ought we to remember, in the ethical sense of \u27ought\u27? And ought we in some cases to allow ourselves to forget? These are the questions that ground this philosophical work. In fact, we so often unreflectively assign moral blame and praise to ourselves and others for memory behaviors that this faculty, and moral responsibility for it, deserve careful philosophical attention. These questions of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness for memory do not pertain only to individual memory behaviors. Collective memory behaviors may also be morally blameworthy or praiseworthy. Consider the matters of how South Africans go about remembering apartheid, how Bosnian Serbs and Albanian Muslims go about remembering their conflicts, or whether and how Americans never forget September 11, 2001. In fact, individual and collective memory are not as separate as you might think. Though individual memory is based in the individual\u27s biology—the functions of the brain—individuals are members of collectives; our individual memories are both shaped by social interaction to a surprising degree and major loci of collective memory. Thus, determining moral blameworthiness or praiseworthiness for memory behaviors is a complicated philosophical endeavor. To address these issues, I set myself three tasks. First, to analyze the nature of both individual and collective memory using philosophical, neuropsychological, sociological sources. This reveals that both individual and collective memory are best conceived as constructions, not necessarily inaccurate, but certainly not perfect recordings of events. Individual memory constructions are influenced not only by our choices, but also by neurological and social determinants. Individuals are one locus for collective memory storage—others include memorials, books, songs, and national holidays—and are agents for collective memory construction. My second task is to analyze moral responsibility, specifically what makes us praiseworthy and blameworthy. Ultimately, I reject libertarian conceptions of moral responsibility and adopt Nomy Arpaly\u27s influential reasons-responsiveness which holds that the moral worth of an agent depends on the moral desirability of an action and the degree of moral concern with which she pursues it. My third task is to apply this analysis to both individual and collective memory behaviors. In doing so, I generate a preliminary set of twelve rules for both individual and collective memory behaviors, each defeasible under conditions that change whether, and the degree to which, moral agents should be held praiseworthy or blameworthy. I intend that these twelve rules and their attendant considerations of application and defeasibility provide not only philosophers but moral agents more generally with useful tools for a reflective ethics of memory. By such means may we all remember and forget rightly, and not for ill

In Conversation: Ruth Macklin, Alison Reiheld, Robyn Bluhm, Sidney Callahan, and Frances Kissling Discuss the Marlise Munoz Case, Advance Directives, and Pregnant Women

Feminist bioethicists of a variety of persuasions discuss the 2013 case of Marlise Munoz, a pregnant woman whose medical care was in dispute after she became brain dead

“What if There's Something Wrong with Her?”‐How Biomedical Technologies Contribute to Epistemic Injustice in Healthcare

While there is a steadily growing literature on epistemic injustice in healthcare, there are few discussions of the role that biomedical technologies play in harming patients in their capacity as knowers. Through an analysis of newborn and pediatric genetic and genomic sequencing technologies (GSTs), I argue that biomedical technologies can lead to epistemic injustice through two primary pathways: epistemic capture and value partitioning. I close by discussing the larger ethical and political context of critical analyses of GSTs and their broader implications for just and equitable healthcare delivery