Books by Nils-Frederic Wagner
De Gruyter, Oct 2013
Was bedeutet es und warum ist es für uns wichtig, über die Dauer unseres Lebens als individuelle ... more Was bedeutet es und warum ist es für uns wichtig, über die Dauer unseres Lebens als individuelle Person fortzubestehen? Als Personen in der praktischen Wirklichkeit leben wir in einer sozial relational bestimmten Welt der Begegnungen. Wir sind Wesen, die etwas in qualitativ distinkter Weise wichtig nehmen und die ihr Leben nach bestimmten Wertorientierungen ausrichten. Die in der gegenwärtigen analytischen Philosophie dominierenden Ansätze zu Fragen diachroner Personenidentität verfehlen zumeist diese lebensweltliche Bedeutung. Der Ballast dieser Theorien, der am cartesianischen Substanzdualismus hängt, wird dadurch umgangen, dass Personen als psycho-physische Akteure aufgefasst werden, deren Identität durch die kontingenten faktischen Normen und Strukturen der Handlungswelt bestimmt wird. Im Zentrum des Buches steht ein Kriterium von Personenidentität als graduierbare Relation, die unsere Existenz auf einem Kontinuum zwischen Menschsein und Personsein lokalisiert. Dadurch wird der analytischen Obsession begegnet, die gesamte Debatte auf die metaphysische Frage nach eindeutig bestimmbarer numerischer Identität über die Zeit zu reduzieren und durch den Abgleich personenkonstitutiver Eigenschaften zu verschiedenen Zeitpunkten entscheiden zu wollen.
Book Reviews by Nils-Frederic Wagner
The Philosophical Quarterly 65(258): 140-143, Jan 2015
Polylog Zeitschrift für interkulturelles Philosophieren 31: 121-123, Aug 2014
Book Chapters by Nils-Frederic Wagner
The Changing Scope of Technoethics in Contemporary Society, 2018
Using cognitive enhancement technology is becoming increasingly popular. In another paper, the au... more Using cognitive enhancement technology is becoming increasingly popular. In another paper, the authors argued that using pharmacological cognitive enhancers is detrimental to society, through promoting competitiveness over cooperation, by usurping personal and social identifies and thus changing our narrative and moral character. In this chapter, the authors seek to expand that argument by looking at an emerging technology that is rapidly gaining popularity, that of transcranial stimulation (TS). Here the authors explore TS via two major methods, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial electrical stimulation (TES). In this, the authors seek to demonstrate that artificial cognitive enhancement is detrimental to society. Furthermore, that the argument can be applied beyond the moral dubiousness of using pharmacological cognitive enhancement, but applied to new, emergent technologies as well. In other words, artificial cognitive enhancement regardless of the technology/medium is detrimental to society.
The Routledge Handbook of Neuroethics, 2017
In: Georg Gasser / Martina Schmidhuber (Hrsg.) Personale Identität, Narrativität und Praktische Rationalität: 65-81, 2013
Papers by Nils-Frederic Wagner
Dieser Leitfaden macht auf die wichtigsten ethischen Problemfelder im Zusammenhang mit Gesundheit... more Dieser Leitfaden macht auf die wichtigsten ethischen Problemfelder im Zusammenhang mit Gesundheitsmonitoring aufmerksam. Ziel ist es, berechtigte von unberechtigten Sorgen zu unterscheiden und Losungskonzepte fur reale Risiken im Gesundheitsmonitoring vorzuschlagen.
Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 2022
Thought experiments that concoct bizarre possible world modalities are standard fare in debates o... more Thought experiments that concoct bizarre possible world modalities are standard fare in debates on personal identity. Appealing to intuitions raised by such evocations is often taken to settle differences between conflicting theoretical views that, albeit, have practical implications for ethical controversies of personal identity in health care. Employing thought experiments that way is inadequate, I argue, since personhood is intrinsically linked to constraining facts about the actual world. I defend a moderate modal skepticism according to which intuiting across conceptually incongruent worlds constitutes 'invalid intuitioninferences'-i.e., carrying over intuitions gathered from facts about possible worlds that are at odds with facts about the actual world, for the purpose of making claims about real-life persons and their identity, leads to conceptual incongruences. Such a methodological fallout precludes accurate, informative judgments about personal identity in the actual world, calling into question the adequacy of thought experimental considerations for potential real-world applications in medical ethics.
Bioethics, 2022
Editorial "Promises and Challenges of medical AI"
Deutsches Ärzteblatt, 2021
Mit Zulassung erster Impfstoffe gegen COVID-19 in Deutschland haben Impfpriorisierung, Impfpflich... more Mit Zulassung erster Impfstoffe gegen COVID-19 in Deutschland haben Impfpriorisierung, Impfpflicht und Impfbereitschaft einen zentralen Platz in der Diskussion. Eine szenarienbasierte Onlinebefragung der Universitätsmedizin Mainz gibt Einschätzungen zu den Einstellungen in der Bevölkerung.
Topoi, 2020
Some habits are vital to who we are in that they shape both our self-perception and how we are se... more Some habits are vital to who we are in that they shape both our self-perception and how we are seen by others. This is so, I argue, because there is a constitutive link between what I shall call 'identity-shaping habits' and narrative agency. Identity-shaping habits are paradigmatically acquired and performed by persons. The ontology of personhood involves both synchronic and diachronic dimensions which are structurally analogous to the synchronic acquisition and the diachronic performance of habits, and makes persons distinctly suitable to being shaped by habits. Since habits differ vastly in their scope, I develop a conceptualization that carves out defining features of identity-shaping habits. Such habits, I venture, fundamentally alter a person's embodiment such that the alterations to their psychological and physiological make-up vitally inform their persistence if not metaphysically (as in constituting necessary and jointly sufficient conditions of personal identity over time), then at least practically by crucially shaping one's narrative agency.
Metaphysica, 2020
Standard views of personal identity over time often hover uneasily between the subjective, first-... more Standard views of personal identity over time often hover uneasily between the subjective, first-person dimension (e. g. psychological continuity), and the objective, third-person dimension (e. g. biological continuity) of a per-son's life. Since both dimensions capture something integral to personal identity , we show that neither can successfully be discarded in favor of the other. The apparent need to reconcile subjectivity and objectivity, however, presents standard views with problems both in seeking an ontological footing of, as well as epistemic evidence for, personal identity. We contend that a fresh look at neutral monism offers a novel way to tackle these problems; counting on the most fundamental building blocks of reality to be ontologically neutral with regards to subjectivity and objectivity of personal identity. If the basic units of reality are, in fact, ontologically neutral-but can give rise to mental as well as physical events-these basic units of reality might account for both subjectivity and objectivity in personal identity. If this were true, it would turn out that subjectivity and objectivity are not conflictive dimensions of personal identity but rather two sides of the same coin.
Philosophy & Technology, 2019
Mobile health devices pose novel questions at the intersection of philosophy and technology. Many... more Mobile health devices pose novel questions at the intersection of philosophy and technology. Many such applications not only collect sensitive data, but also aim at persuading users to change their lifestyle for the better. A major concern is that persuasion is paternalistic as it intentionally aims at changing the agent's actions, chipping away at their autonomy. This worry roots in the philosophical conviction that perhaps the most salient feature of living autonomous lives is displayed via agency as opposed to patiency—our lives go well in virtue of what we do, rather than what happens to us. Being persuaded by a device telling us how to conduct our lives seemingly renders the agent passive, an inert recipient of technological commands. This agential bias, however, has led to a marginalization of patiential characteristics that are just as much part of our lives as are agential characteristics. To appreciate the inherent interlocking of acting and being acted upon, it is vital to acknowledge that agency and patiency are correlates, not mutually exclusive opposites. Furthermore, it is unclear whether an action can only count as agential so long as its causes are internal. Drawing on the extended mind and extended will framework, I argue that mHealth applications merely serve as volitional aids to the agent's internal cognition. Autonomously set goals can be achieved more effectively via technology. To be persuaded by an mHealth device does not mainly—let alone exclusively—emphasize patiency; on the contrary, it can be an effective tool for technologically enhancing agency.
AI & Society, 2018
When it comes to improving the health of the general population, mHealth technologies with self-m... more When it comes to improving the health of the general population, mHealth technologies with self-monitoring and intervention components hold a lot of promise. We argue, however, that due to various factors such as access, targeting, personal resources or incentives, self-monitoring applications run the risk of increasing health inequalities, thereby creating a problem of social justice. We review empirical evidence for " intervention-generated " inequalities, present arguments that self-monitoring applications are still morally acceptable, and develop approaches to avoid the promotion of health inequalities through self-monitoring applications.
Erkenntnis, 2019
The present paper unravels ontological and normative conditions of personhood for the purpose of ... more The present paper unravels ontological and normative conditions of personhood for the purpose of critiquing 'Cognitivist Views'. Such views have attracted much attention and affirmation by presenting the ontology of personhood in terms of higher-order cognition on the basis of which normative practices are explained and justified. However, these normative conditions are invoked to establish the alleged ontology in the first place. When we want to know what kind of entity has full moral status, it is tempting to establish an ontology that fits our moral intuitions about who should qualify for such unique normative standing. But this approach conflates personhood's ontology and normativity insofar as it stresses the primacy of the former while implicitly presupposing the latter; it thereby suffers from a 'Normative Fallacy' by inferring from 'ought' to 'is'. Following my critique of Cognitivism, I sketch an alternative conception, contending that, whereas the Cognitivist ontology of personhood presupposes the normative, a social ontology is constituted by it. In due consideration of evidence from developmental psychology, the social embeddedness of persons—manifested in the ability of taking a 'second-person stance'—is identified as a key feature of personhood that precedes higher-order cognition, and is directly linked to basic normative concerns.
Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, Feb 2017
In this article we critically review the neural mechanisms of moral cognition that have recently ... more In this article we critically review the neural mechanisms of moral cognition that have recently been studied via electroencephalography (EEG). Such studies promise to shed new light on traditional moral questions by helping us to understand how effective moral cognition is embodied in the brain. It has been argued that conflicting normative ethical theories require different cognitive features and can, accordingly, in a broadly conceived naturalistic attempt, be associated with different brain processes that are rooted in different brain networks and regions. This potentially morally relevant brain activity has been empirically investigated through EEG-based studies on moral cognition. From neuroscientific evidence gathered in these studies, a variety of normative conclusions have been drawn and bioethical applications have been suggested. We discuss method-ological and theoretical merits and demerits of the attempt to use EEG techniques in a morally significant way, point to legal challenges and policy implications, indicate the potential to reveal biomarkers of psycho-pathological conditions, and consider issues that might inform future bioethical work.
Think, 2018
Persons are widely believed to be rational, planning agents that are both author and main charact... more Persons are widely believed to be rational, planning agents that are both author and main character of their life stories. A major goal is to keep these narratives coherent as they unfold, and part of a fulfilled life allegedly stems from this coherence. My aim is to challenge these convictions by considering two related claims about persons and their lives. (1) Contrary to the widespread theoretical conviction in philosophy of mind and action, persons are fundamentally emotional and affective rather than rational and deliberative beings. And so, (2) on a practical level, persons need not constantly aspire to integrate their past, present, and future into a coherent whole in order to live fulfilled lives. Needless to say, I cannot hope to defend these claims and their relation in great detail with a few brief strokes. In addition to theoretical reflections, I discuss some practical implications and potential benefits that come with discarding the daunting task of continuously keeping track of one's life story. Drawing on insights from a contemplative Buddhist tale, I venture that the practice of letting go can break the spell, and give rise to an alleviating source of liberation from life's troubles.
South African Journal of Philosophy, Jul 2016
I am very grateful to Simon Beck for his thoughtful response to my paper “Transplanting Brains?” ... more I am very grateful to Simon Beck for his thoughtful response to my paper “Transplanting Brains?” (2016). Needless to say, he raises more issues than I can hope to answer in a brief response. While Beck seemingly feels that the deck has been stacked against him, I think that the majority of his criticisms result from misconceptions and misunderstandings that I intend to straighten out in what follows. Before proceeding, I would like to draw attention to a worry that is lurking in the shadows. Perhaps Beck and I talk at cross purposes. While Beck is concerned with a metaphysical theory of personal identity that supposedly holds across all possible worlds—and as such places heavy importance on counterfactuals and intuitions—I am concerned only with the natural world with the aim of generating empirically substantiated hypotheses about how things really are when it comes to persons persisting through time. Now, here is a disclaimer: If the natural world does not exhaust reality, then my discussion is only partial. It goes without saying that most contemporary philosophers given a choice between going with science and going with intuitions, go with science.
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Books by Nils-Frederic Wagner
Book Reviews by Nils-Frederic Wagner
Book Chapters by Nils-Frederic Wagner
Papers by Nils-Frederic Wagner