Tuesday, 17th of September 2024, 10.00 – 12.00, via Zoom

Recent meta studies show that no known risk factors for suicide can reliably predict suicidal behavior, challenging traditional notions of high and low risk. In this talk, René suggests a new framework, the Normic account of suicide risk, which suggests that the normalcy of an event, based on practical rationality, determines suicide risk rather than probability. In this view, individuals with weak or no life-sustaining reasons are at higher risk, offering a new way to distinguish between high and low suicide risk without relying on prediction.

René Baston completed his PhD in Philosophy in 2019, focusing on the nature of implicit prejudices. He works as a research associate (Postdoc) at Ruhr University Bochum and will soon move to TU Dortmund. René’s research focuses on the philosophy of psychology, where he applies philosophical methods to address theoretical issues in the research literature on implicit biases and suicide studies. He leads a research network on suicidal ambivalence, which involves 9 philosophers and 2 clinical psychologists, funded by the DFG. As a DiMEN fellow, René investigates to what extent AI can be trusted for suicide risk assessments, specifically exploring what justifies or undermines such trust.

The DiMEN Fellowship aims to give outstanding young researchers the freedom to explore new topics in digital health ethics. In doing so, fellows are free to choose the goals of their stay. Be it the completion of a chapter for a new book, the first steps towards a new topic area, the search for new cooperation partners for the next proposal or the proposal itself. As part of their fellowship, DiMEN Fellows give a public lecture, reporting on their work during their stay in Potsdam or Tübingen.