Philosophy Discussion Club
Hanna Pickard (Johns Hopkins)
Title: Addiction and the Good

Abstract: Addiction science is at an impasse. Rates of addiction are rising. Translational results from decades of research conducted within the dominant brain disease paradigm are next to nil. Meanwhile theories of addiction multiply and compete, fomenting disagreement about something as apparently simple as how addiction should be defined. How to move forward? I will propose a Carnapian-style explication of addiction as a foundation for a new paradigm. Addiction is a pattern of drug use that persists despite evident and severe costs such that it counts profoundly against a person’s own good. I will show how this explication naturally arises by considering what is puzzling about addiction and overcomes the impasse. I will also argue that, in practice, there is no way of determining what is in a person’s own good without taking their sincerely self-reported conception of it into account. The new paradigm is therefore as humanistic as it is scientific, putting values at the heart of addiction, and dialogue with people about their values at the heart of diagnosis.
 

Discussion Club is a lecture series hosted by the Sage School of Philosophy