Pei-hua Huang
My research lies in where bioethics and political philosophy intersect. I am especially interested in ethical and philosophical issues raised by human enhancement technology. While most of my publications are about moral bioenhancement (i.e. using biomedical means for the purpose of improving morality), I am also interested in philosophical and ethical issues related to treating morally relevant psychiatric conditions, personalised medicine, and self-nudging.
https://sites.google.com/site/phhuang215/home For preprints of my paper, please visit my personal website.
Supervisors: Robert Simpson , Justin Oakley, and Toby Handfield
https://sites.google.com/site/phhuang215/home For preprints of my paper, please visit my personal website.
Supervisors: Robert Simpson , Justin Oakley, and Toby Handfield
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Papers by Pei-hua Huang
In this chapter, I use the case of vaccination to argue that while a liberal state has a general duty to protect its people’s health, there is a limit to the measures this duty can be used to justify. First, I argue that since every available option involves different risks and benefits, the incommensurability of the involved risks and benefits forbids the prioritisation of a particular vaccine. Second, I argue that given epistemic limitations and uncertainty, policies that favour certain vaccines are not only epistemically ill-founded but also morally unacceptable. I conclude that in a highly uncertain situation such as the unfolding pandemic, the duty a liberal state ought to uphold is to properly communicate the knowns and unknowns to the general public and help people decide which option to choose for themselves. I call this duty the duty to facilitate risk-taking.
Drafts by Pei-hua Huang
This attempt, however, cannot be sustained for three reasons. First, recent studies of the nature of the BST show that one of the key notions of the BST, the reference class, may not be justified by a value-free argument. This renders that theories built on the BST will not be value-free, either. Second, even if we suppose that the BST were entirely value-free, a closer look at the case of homosexuality would reveal its incongruence with Buchanan et al.’s normal function model. While BST views homosexuality as a disease, Buchana’s model doesn’t. This undermines Buchanan et al.’s claim that their normal function model is based on the objective notion of health defined by the BST. Third, the BST’s concerns are biological conditions, not equal opportunities of persons in a society. Traits benefiting the opportunity of prosperity in modern society do not necessarily correspond to those that contribute to survival and reproduction. The BST, unfortunately, does not provide us with much useful guidance for improving equal opportunities. In conclusion, using the BST to construct an objective theory of genetic redistribution is a futile try.
In this chapter, I use the case of vaccination to argue that while a liberal state has a general duty to protect its people’s health, there is a limit to the measures this duty can be used to justify. First, I argue that since every available option involves different risks and benefits, the incommensurability of the involved risks and benefits forbids the prioritisation of a particular vaccine. Second, I argue that given epistemic limitations and uncertainty, policies that favour certain vaccines are not only epistemically ill-founded but also morally unacceptable. I conclude that in a highly uncertain situation such as the unfolding pandemic, the duty a liberal state ought to uphold is to properly communicate the knowns and unknowns to the general public and help people decide which option to choose for themselves. I call this duty the duty to facilitate risk-taking.
This attempt, however, cannot be sustained for three reasons. First, recent studies of the nature of the BST show that one of the key notions of the BST, the reference class, may not be justified by a value-free argument. This renders that theories built on the BST will not be value-free, either. Second, even if we suppose that the BST were entirely value-free, a closer look at the case of homosexuality would reveal its incongruence with Buchanan et al.’s normal function model. While BST views homosexuality as a disease, Buchana’s model doesn’t. This undermines Buchanan et al.’s claim that their normal function model is based on the objective notion of health defined by the BST. Third, the BST’s concerns are biological conditions, not equal opportunities of persons in a society. Traits benefiting the opportunity of prosperity in modern society do not necessarily correspond to those that contribute to survival and reproduction. The BST, unfortunately, does not provide us with much useful guidance for improving equal opportunities. In conclusion, using the BST to construct an objective theory of genetic redistribution is a futile try.
We offer two active cases that highlight in/compatibilities between biomedical ethics and ethics of technology. The first case, a collaborative research project between an academic medical university and a technology university, demonstrated that ethics may foster co-creation of digital healthcare innovation. The second describes a multidisciplinary workshop at a technology university, which developed an ethical framework for sustainable artificial intelligence in biomedical technologies.
Advances in medical technologies disrupt traditional conceptions of ethics in technology and simultaneously pose challenges for biomedical ethics, which comments on such advances. We identified significant conceptual and practical barriers in applying the ethical convergence of these two fields and offer a convergent ethic that maintains ethical fortitude and practical translatability to emerging medical technologies.