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Honorary Professor of Philosophy of Ageing and Consultant in Old Age Psychiatry, Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences (PEALS) Research Centre, Newcastle University

The Presentation can be downloaded here.

My areas of academic interest are: (a) the notion of personhood, especially related to dementia, and the ethical implications that flow from a particular understanding of personhood; (b) palliative care and the consequent ethical issues that arise for people with dementia and their carers; and (c) the underpinning conceptual and ethical bases of legal concepts relevant to clinical practice in old age medicine and psychiatry. My strategy has two main prongs: to build up our understanding of the conceptual underpinning of clinical practice; and to investigate the nature of ethical dilemmas inherent to clinical practice in relation to ageing.

There is relatively little work written by philosophers about dementia. But much of the writing by health and social care researchers and much empirical work in this field throws up philosophical issues. These do not solely concern personal identity, personhood and selfhood, even if the literature frequently refers to these topics. Instead we see, first, that there are other issues (around citizenship, rights, the nature of mind, of normality and of ageing) which deserve further philosophical attention and, secondly, that the discussions about personhood have moved beyond the concern that our persistence over time as individuals depends on memory to encompass a broader view which emphasizes instead the ability of people to continue to construct their life-worlds through their persisting meaningful relationships.

Real interaction with people with dementia creates an increasingly nuanced account of the life-worlds of people with dementia, which should stimulate both philosophical work and clinical practice.