Research
My research agenda consists of four areas:- Investigating silence as a social practice
- Applying theories of justice to vulnerable populations
- Feminist perspectives on the distribution and recognition of caregiving work
- Accommodating students with disabilities in the classroom
1.Reflections on Silence as a Social Practice
A wide range of human activities involve the purposeful practice of silence. Here are some of the topics that interest me:
Silence, Respect and Community: Practicing silence in the company of others leads to more attentive listening. Such listening can be the foundation for tolerance of others, willingness to engage in dialogue, and making room for divergent attitudes in the public space by refraining from commenting or criticizing others’ views. Is the practice of silent listening what makes mutually respectful conversation possible?
Silence and Moral Responsibility: Many inter-personal relationships depend upon the tacit agreement to remain silent about certain truths. What are the ethics of keeping secrets, refraining from exposing another’s secrets, and telling the whole truth?
Silence, Solitude and Self-Knowledge: Practicing silence is a necessary component of meditation and other spiritual pursuits. Many believers claim that practicing silence leads to self-knowledge that is difficult (even impossible) to attain amidst the constant chatter of daily life. I have been exploring the benefits of withdrawing from various sorts of media (print, TV, Internet, recorded music, advertising) periodically as a means of clearing my perceptions and readying myself for more disciplined thinking free of distractions.
Silence, Voluntary Solitude and Solitary Confinement: I have long been fascinated by the paradox that solitary confinement is used as a punishment, which often drives prisoners to mental breakdown, while many spiritual leaders choose to go into seclusion for long periods of time in which their lives outwardly resemble those of prisoners. It seems that the crucial factor is the role of will: when chosen voluntarily, silence liberates the mind; when imposed oppressively upon an unwilling subject, silence literally destroys the mind.
Silence, Sound, and Music: Philip Glass, John Cage, Steve Reich and many others have explored the relationship between silence and music. As a former musician and vocalist I am interested in the phenomenology of silence within the context of music.
Silence, Language and Non-Verbal Communication: After spending time practicing silence, many insights about language and words emerge. People who speak different languages often communicate better non-verbally than with rudimentary secondary language skills. So much of our word-exchanges are simply ritualistic and without content. Does non-verbal communication count as a practice of silence, or should it be conceptualized in a different way?
Silence, Sound Environments, and Disability: Many people with disabilities live in silence for much of the time, or at the other extreme, surrounded by noise and chatter. Much of what I have learned about people with cognitive disabilities (not only the non-verbal ones) was learned only by silently sharing moments with them. This insight has important implications for caregiving practices and educational policies. A rigid emphasis on acquiring language skills, for example, may be a way of imposing non-disabled ways of communicating on people who already have sufficient means of communicating. Silence can be either oppressive and liberating (or both) to people with disabilities, depending on the social environment. What do non-verbal people with disabilities need in terms of silences and sounds? Is the lack of attention to their soundscapes a kind of silence that harms their well-being?
Silence, Pain, and the Body’s Knowledge: Having experienced years of chronic pain in various forms, I have come to think of pain as the body’s silent means of communicating emotional disturbances. Some medical research supports this claim. Many pharmaceutical drugs are used to “silence” bodily and mental pains, which sometimes results in suppressing symptoms without addressing root causes. I propose a philosophical investigation of holistic health practices, clarifying how the intentional practice of silence is related to grounding concepts of well-being that are shared across cultures.
Silence, Learning and Pedagogy: Over my years of teaching, I’ve noticed many benefits from remaining silent in the classroom, allowing students to speak freely, and refraining from interrupting or re-interpreting their utterances. The practice of silence in teaching embodies an ethical stance in which the teacher is willing to learn from the student, to learn about the different ways in which students learn, and to learn about one’s own learning process. How might silence be incorporated into philosophy classrooms?
2. Applying Theories of Justice to Vulnerable Populations
Recent advances in medical technology raise many ethically complex situations in the health care professions. For example, many people with cognitive disabilities such as autism, mental retardation, and dementia are living longer and at higher levels of functioning than previously anticipated. Although positive for the individual, these advances pose new challenges to families and society.
Many philosophers and bioethicists base their theories on the ideal notion that moral persons must possess a certain minimal level of rationality. On this traditional view, people with cognitive disabilities do not count as moral persons. Nonetheless, they are among the most vulnerable members of society because they depend on daily care to keep them safe and healthy and often lack sufficient capacity to report and protest harms of abuse, neglect, and exploitation. Contemporary political theories fail to recognize such harms as injustices, and thus provide an inadequate model for the care of people with cognitive disabilities.
In past research I have examined how philosophical views of moral personhood apply to bioethical considerations of prenatal genetic testing, sex selection and single embryo transfer. In investigating the comparison between gender and mental retardation as disadvantaged categories, I have argued that both are socially constructed to some extent, and that both categories affect quality of life and health outcomes.
I assisted Eva Kittay and Licia Carlson in organizing the first international conference on the philosophy of cognitive disability on September 18-20, 2008 at Stony Brook University. A podcast of my presentation is available here.
Future Plans: I am developing an extension of John Rawls's theory of justice that accommodates vulnerable populations who are traditionally placed on the margins of moral personhood. My ultimate goal is to develop a theoretical framework for health policy that recognizes vulnerability and dependence (along with rationality) as traits that characterize moral persons. This framework will distinguish between two kinds of harms to vulnerable populations: some harms may be unavoidable elements of their lives, while other harms can be identified as foreseeably and preventably caused by features of the health policies that serve them. It will also provide a conceptual foundation for specifying the content of rights held by members of vulnerable populations. This will clarify whether the content of rights held by people with cognitive disabilities differ substantially from the content of rights held by people with physical disabilities.
3. Feminist perspectives on the distribution and recognition of caregiving work
Feminist theorists characterize the concept of care as thoughtful, intentional work that requires considerable time, attention, energy and financial resources. Research has shown that many caregivers experience a decline in overall health when compared with their peers. In Canada and in the US, care for the chronically ill, the frail elderly, and individuals with physical and cognitive disabilities is often provided by unpaid family members, or by underpaid and underprivileged workers on the margins of society. Compared to their (relatively unburdened) neighbors, these caregivers have less time, less energy, and hence fewer opportunities to participate in their social, cultural, and political communities. Although they have valuable perspectives to share, their voices are absent from public discussions about health policy because they are on the front lines of care. Furthermore, caregivers are often too busy looking after their charges to speak up for their own interests, which often diverge (or may run counter to) the interests of those they serve.
Future Plans: I seek to explain why those engaged in the work of caring for people with disabilities consistently find themselves at a distinct disadvantage when interacting with those unburdened by these and other comparable caregiving responsibilities. I investigate whether the fact that caregivers do not have equal opportunities to participate is merely a matter of bad luck for which no one is responsible. My working hypothesis is that this is no accident; rather, specific features of health and social policies are key factors in the many disadvantages experienced by caregivers.
My book project examines the complex lifelong relationships between siblings when one becomes caregiver to the other. These caregiving relationships shape the agency of both the caregiver and the receiver of care. My analysis of interviews with siblings of people with intellectual disabilities will demonstrate how they understand and balance their role as caregivers with their adult career and family plans.
4. Accommodating students with disabilities in the classroom
This project is an ongoing collaboration with Klaudia Rivera and Susan Baglieri in the School of Education at Long Island University, which serves a diverse student body in undergraduate and graduate education. The goal of our project is to create alliances and have conversations about developing more inclusive practices across the fields of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), Special Education, and Philosophy. We interpret our experiences in relation to multiple facets of postsecondary education. We address program design, classroom teaching, and ways of evaluating our students toward a vision of university teaching that acknowledges and values the spectrum of diverse students. We first presented our work at the Disability Studies in Education conference in New York in March 2008.
As my contribution to this project I explore the following question: When a student's disability prevents her from successfully performing a necessary learning objective, should instructors waive this requirement? An intrinsic feature of good teaching is requiring students to attempt tasks more difficult than what they have so far accomplished, but making accommodations for students with disabilities may have the unintended negative effect of lowering the instructor's expectations. As instructors, we want to avoid self-fulfilling prophecies in which these students end up performing below their potential. Acquiescing to students' perceived limitations by allowing them to opt out of whatever they "cannot" do may reinforce their internalized self-doubt as students with disabilities. The instructor must therefore find ways of making accommodations that maintain high standards and continue to challenge students to perform as well as they can.
Work in Progress: I argue that rather than waiving specific course requirements for students with disabilities, instructors should instead use the concept of universal design to structure all course requirements to accommodate a variety of learning approaches. For example, students' learning can be effectively assessed using oral interviews as well as written exams. I continue to test and develop innovative teaching methods that enhance all students' potential for learning philosophy, regardless of their disability status.