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Tag: philosophy

RTC Research Forum: “Life Before Death: Reframing Reproductive Ethics in the Bioethics Classroom” Trish Grosse Brewer

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Life Before Death: Reframing Reproductive Ethics in the Bioethics Classroom, Trish Grosse Brewer. Graphic for a talk about pregnancy ethics discourse in the undergraduate ethics classroom.

What:

The RTC Research Forum, formerly known as the RTC Brown Bag, is a colloquium series sponsored by the Rhetoric, Theory, and Culture graduate program in the Michigan Tech Department of Humanities. Each month, faculty and students in the program present research on a wide range of topics. The forum offers an opportunity for colleagues and peers to discuss current research, prepare for formal conference presentations, and for students to receive feedback on presentation practices.

Abstract:

Although pregnancy provides the context for many of biomedical ethics’ most enduring controversies, it is often treated primarily as the backdrop for debates about abortion, assisted reproduction, and genetic testing rather than as a morally significant experience in its own right. While most courses devote substantial attention to abortion, assisted reproductive technologies, and genetics, pregnancy is often treated merely as the setting for these debates rather than as a morally significant experience deserving sustained ethical inquiry. Miscarriage and stillbirth, if discussed at all, are usually only discussed through the lens of abortion debates. The order in which we teach reproductive ethics shapes students’ ethical imagination.

This paper offers a transferable curricular model for instructors seeking to broaden how reproductive ethics is taught in their biomedical ethics and medical humanities classrooms through a four-week instructional unit. This unit, “Pregnancy, Life, and Death,” has been developed for undergraduate biomedical ethics courses and begins not with abortion or reproductive technology, but with pregnancy and miscarriage. The opening week introduces pregnancy as a unique bioethical state by examining maternal morbidity and mortality, the ethical significance of the maternal-fetal relationship, informed consent during pregnancy, and the challenges of caring for what clinicians often describe as the maternal-fetal dyad. Students then explore miscarriage and stillbirth through patient narratives and clinical case studies, considering questions of grief, uncertainty, personhood, compassionate care, and justice. In the next three weeks, students move on to the more traditional topics of reproductive technologies, euthanasia, and abortion.

Rather than advancing a new theory of reproductive ethics, this presentation argues that how we sequence topics in the biomedical ethics classroom shapes how students understand them. Beginning with pregnancy rather than with contested moral questions invites students to encounter reproductive ethics first through the lived realities of embodiment, vulnerability, dependence, and care. Only then do they engage the more familiar legal and political debates that dominate public discourse. By centering the lived experience of pregnant people before engaging the more familiar legal and political debates surrounding reproduction, educators can cultivate greater empathy, intellectual humility, and ethical nuance in their students.

Who:

Presented by Trish Grosse Brewer, Assistant Teaching Professor of Philosophy, Department of Humanities

Trish Grosse Brewer is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Michigan Technological University, where she teaches courses in ethics, biomedical ethics, logic, and introductory philosophy.  She earned her PhD in Philosophy from Villanova University in 2017 with a dissertation titled Embodied Love and Extended Desire. Her research interests include biomedical ethics, Early Christian moral philosophy (especially that of Augustine of Hippo), and the philosophy of love and sex. Her most recent publication is a chapter in Augustine and the Frontiers of Pluralism: “Dominating Grief: An Ambiguously Augustinian Approach to Pregnancy Loss.” She has five cats.

All are welcome to attend!

When:

Friday, September 25, 2026

12pm-1pm

Where:

Petersen Library (318), Walker Arts & Humanities Center

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RTC Research Forum: “The Border Is Everywhere: Phenomenological Reflections on Space, Agency, and Democracy” Scott Maratto

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What:

The RTC Research Forum, formerly known as the RTC Brown Bag, is a colloquium series sponsored by the Rhetoric, Theory, and Culture graduate program in the Michigan Tech Department of Humanities. Each month, faculty and students in the program present research on a wide range of topics. The forum offers an opportunity for colleagues and peers to discuss current research, prepare for formal conference presentations, and for students to receive feedback on presentation practices.

Abstract:

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 led to predictions of an increasingly borderless world, or at least to one with fewer border fortifications. In fact, the opposite has happened. Where there were fifteen border walls along international boundaries in 1989, there are over seventy today, with many more planned or under construction. Border fortifications are many nations’ largest infrastructure investments in the twenty-first century. And whereas borders were once understood to mark edges between sovereign nation states, borders today are better understood as diffuse sets of functions, including securitization, interdiction, and surveillance. As philosopher Étienne Balibar has noted, borders have moved from the edges to the very centers of political spaces, including cities far from any international border. Henri Lefebvre famously observed that “there is a politics of space because space is political.” Drawing on phenomenologies of embodied and political agency, I argue that the new global border regime signals a new politics of space, new logics of sovereignty and citizenship, and an unprecedented threat to democratic agency.

Who:

Presented by Scott Marratto, Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Humanities

Scott Marratto is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Michigan Technological University. He is President of the Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy and author of The Intercorporeal Self: Merleau-Ponty on Subjectivity (State University of New York Press, 2012). He is also co-author (with Lawrence E. Schmidt) of The End of Ethics in a Technological Society (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008). Challenging a prevalent modern idea of the self as, essentially, a discrete, interior consciousness, Marratto has argued that self-consciousness emerges on the basis of the living, expressive movement by which our bodies are situated in a world with others. Beginning from this insight into the nature of self-consciousness and cognition, he critically evaluates neoliberal thinking about selfhood, agency, and choice, and proposes new ways of thinking about the spatial and material conditions of political community and human development.    

All are welcome to attend!

When:

Friday, February 13, 2026

Where:

Petersen Library (Walker 318), Walker Arts & Humanities Center

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RTC Research Forum: “Rediscovering Ownership and Agency: Shifting from Private to Public Performance” Lior Rosenfeld

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What:

The RTC Research Forum, formerly known as the RTC Brown Bag, is a colloquium series sponsored by the Rhetoric, Theory, and Culture graduate program in the Michigan Tech Department of Humanities. Each month, faculty and students in the program present research on a wide range of topics. The forum offers an opportunity for colleagues and peers to discuss current research, prepare for formal conference presentations, and for students to receive feedback on presentation practices.

Abstract:

The claims made by technology companies regarding the advancement of autonomous machines raise significant concerns about their implications for democratic governance. A machine that is capable of independent thought and action poses a potential threat to democratic judicial and political systems, as it undermines the autonomy of the people. Drawing on phenomenological insights, I will first clarify why some of these concerns may be misplaced by emphasizing that autonomy must be achieved rather than presupposed. I will then argue that the recent deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems highlights that ownership and agency are constituted through public speaking rather than being intrinsically tied to autonomy or self-rule. While the former gives the power to begin anew, the latter is marked by territoriality, exploitation, and coercion.

An autonomous entity supposedly possesses an identity, always returns to itself since it thinks—calculates the world independently of social-political engagements. As such, it remains unaffected by contingency, allowing it to justify its beliefs and actions through established rules. Additionally, autonomy presupposes agency, as a self-ruling entity is necessarily the cause of its own actions. And as Jacques Derrida explains, since the people in a democracy are autonomous or self-rulers, they have the force to determine the law (Derrida, 2025, p.13). In contrast, in our liberal tradition, which dates back to John Locke, democratic citizens are seen as individuals or natural entities, and therefore free from legal constraints. This freedom grants them the right to own property and other natural rights, empowering them to resist any claims of ownership made by authorities. However, with the rise of AI systems, individuals in democratic nations are increasingly losing their natural rights. The reduction of experience to thinking—calculating across all sectors by AI systems violates individual rights, for instance, by scraping texts without the authors’ consent. Moreover, due to the widespread use of AI systems, nation-states can no longer effectively protect copyrights. As Derrida argues in the context of cloning, techno- scientific reason undermines today its foundation—the nation-state, which is responsible for distributing rights and protecting the dignity of its citizens (Derrida, 2005, p. 146).

The deployment of AI systems increasingly blurs the distinctions between nation-states and private technology companies. This phenomenon indicates a potential erosion of the nation-state’s power in contemporary governance and social organization. Nevertheless, the support that nation-states extend to technology companies developing artificial intelligence systems that exploit and oppress their citizens is not merely a historical phenomenon; rather, it reflects an intrinsic characteristic of any entity that claims autonomy. As the political writings of Derrida and Hannah Arendt illustrate, autonomy is constituted by private performances within the household, which can therefore be authoritative, ethnic, and exploitative. However, Derrida’s deconstruction of democracy illustrates that citizens can achieve democratic autonomy by responding to the imperative of justice and, thereby, superseding familial, natural, and irrational laws.

According to Derrida, the conflict between the rule of law and freedom within modern democracy is irreconcilable. The question of what a democratic citizen is — whether a subject of the law or a free individual — remains undecided. This undecidability allows citizens to face one another, constituting an ultra-political experience. Within this pluralistic and uncertain realm of meaning, complete autonomy—independence from contingency is unattainable. As a result, the concept of equality under the law, the meaning of justice in a democracy, turns unfounded, uncovering justice as fundamental. Since justice cannot be ruled, justice calls democratic citizens to rule, thereby achieving autonomy.

However, claims for justice lack the necessary political power to effectively resist an AI regime. According to Arendt, public speaking or public performances enact intersubjective political experiences which are fundamental to selfhood and agency, and therefore the meaning of the power of the demos. Public speaking is non-territorial, allowing citizens to appear before others unconditionally and to act uniquely. Moreover, since public performances are contextual, the self always appears anew, simultaneously generating the past and the future. The temporality of shared existence, which Arendt refers to as natality, constitutes the process of narration, calling to keep a record. Thus, public performance is agonistic—pluralistic, giving rise to new senses of self and agency, in contrast to private performance, which constitutes self-mastery and, therefore, is antagonistic—divisive.

Who:

Presented by RTC PhD canditate Lior Rosenfeld.

Lior Rosenfeld obtained an M.A. in Philosophy from the New School in 2020. Currently, Lior is a fourth-year Ph.D. Candidate at Michigan Technological University. In his research, Lior investigates how the phenomenological description of the life-world alleviates the tension between democracy and science as illustrated by contemporary examples such as climate change denial and vaccine skepticism.

All are welcome to attend!

When:

Friday, December 5, 2025

Where:

Petersen Library, Walker Arts & Humanities Center

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