In 2017, the blockade of Qatar Gulf states caused a plethora of effects on the country. This paper sought to examine the resulting threat effects of this blockade in terms of lowered self-esteem and well-being, and the potential buffering effects of an overarching identity. Using self-report questionnaire data from Qatari secondary school students, multiple moderated mediation models investigated the predictive effects of youngsters’ perceived threat, via self-esteem, on their well-being, and the mitigating roles herein of, respectively, national, Gulf region, and (...) Arab identity. Perceived threat was indeed related to lower well-being via lower self-esteem, and this relationship was equally strong for those low and high in social identity. In terms of the three facets of identity, the overarching Gulf identity seems the most predictive, and it even buffers the negative relationship between threat and reduced self-esteem. (shrink)

Moral philosophy and psychology have sought to define the nature of right and wrong, and good and evil. The industrial turn of the twentieth century fostered increasingly technological approaches that conjoined philosophy to psychology, and psychology to the natural sciences. Thus, moral philosophy and psychology became ever more vested to investigations of the anatomic structures and physiologic processes involved in cognition, emotion and behavior - ultimately falling under the rubric of the neurosciences. Since 2002, neuroscientific studies of moral thought, emotions (...) and behaviors have become known as – and a part of – the relatively new discipline of neuroethics. Herein we present Part 2 of a bibliography of neuroethics from 2002–2013 addressing the “neuroscience of ethics” – studies of putative neural substrates and mechanisms involved in cognitive, emotional and behavioral processes of morality and ethics. (shrink)

This commentary describes some extensions of the Phillips & Singer model of contextual interactions to cater for the contrast- and extent-dependency of surround facilitation and suppression. I also comment briefly on some semantic problems with what exactly the role of synchronization might be: input preprocessing or output postprocessing?

This paper considers whether a physician is criminally liable for administering a dose of painkillers that hastens a patient's death. The common wisdom is that a version of the doctrine of double effect legally protects the physician. That is, a physician is supposedly acting lawfully so long as the physician's primary purpose is to relieve suffering. This paper suggests that the criminal liability issue is more complex than that. Physician culpability can be based on recklessness, and recklessness hinges on whether (...) a physician has taken an unjustifiable risk of hastening death. The authors identify three conditions of justifiability. Their analysis helps to explain the distinction between euthanasia, which is legally banned, and the use of risky analgesics, which is permitted in limited circumstances. (shrink)

I address the question whether Dummetts manifestation challenge to semantic realism can be disarmed by reflection on the compositionality of meaning. Building on work of Dummett and Wright, I develop in §§12 what I argue to be the most formidable version of the manifestation challenge. Along the way I review attempts by previous authors to deploy considerations about compositionality in realisms favour, and argue that they are unsuccessful. The formulation of the challenge I develop renders explicit something which I argue (...) to be implicit in Dummetts and Wrights presentations: that the challenge depends on a contention about the constitution of speakers states of declarative sentence understanding: i.e., that many such states incorporate abilities to recognize whether the associated sentences truth conditions are satisfied. In §3 I argue that reflection on the compositionality of meaning reveals, first, that this contention must be rejected by the realist, and second, that it is unmotivated. This result does not settle the debate over the manifestation challenge, but it implies that the onus of argument does not currently rest with the realist. (shrink)

The paper addresses a prima facie tension between two popular views about concepts. The first is the doctrine that some concepts are constitutively perceptual/experiential, so that they can be possessed only by suitably experienced subjects. This is a classic empiricist theme, but its most conspicuous recent appearance is in literature on phenomenal concepts. The second view is anti-individualism: here, the view that concept possession depends not only on a thinker’s internal states and relations to the concepts’ referents, but also on (...) certain of her relations to sociolinguistic peers. In recent works, Derek Ball and Michael Tye have in effect argued that the doctrines are incompatible, and their conclusion is that no concepts depend on experience. In reply, Bénédicte Veillet endorses those authors’ incompatibilism, but argues that it is anti-individualism that we should reject. I develop an approach to reconciliation that is more promising than any considered by these theorists. Against Veillet, I defend a version of anti-individualism about phenomenal concepts, but against Ball and Tye, I argue that they can be possessed only by suitably experienced thinkers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 12.1 (2002) 103-113 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note Update Searching Across Boundaries: National Information Resource on Ethics and Human Genetics* While indeed an historical moment, the announcement of the mapping of the human genome has been treated in the literature as a beginning—a new way to think about biology and the ways in which biological concepts are applied to medicine. Issues of both (...) Science and Nature magazines celebrated the event by establishing interdisciplinary websites where readers can access essays on aspects of genome mapping and directly link to databases to search for more information on the topics (IV. Genome Gateway 2001; The Human Genome 2001). Since 1994, the National Information Resource on Ethics and Human Genetics (NIREHG), a special project of the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRC), has been providing such an integrated information service on ethics and genetics. Designed to enable a wide range of users to go from annotated bibliographies (Scope Notes) and brief essays (called "enotes") to database searching, NIREHG fosters an interdisciplinary approach to research on ethics and genetics. Links are provided between and among Scope Notes and enotes to information maintained on the NIREHG site as well as to sources found throughout the Internet. In providing the following annotations added to NIREHG materials since 1997, the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (in its online presence through Project Muse) becomes an additional forum for NIREHG links. "It is a rare and wonderful moment when success teaches us humility, and this, I argue, is precisely the moment at which we find ourselves at the end of the twentieth century" (IV. Keller 2000, p. 7). It is with both joy and humility that we celebrate the mapping of the human genome. [End Page 103] I. Genetic Testing Andrews, Lori B. Future Perfect: Confronting Decisions About Genetics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. 264 p.Noting the wide impact of genetic testing, Andrews discusses patient self concept, reproduction decisions, confidentiality, discriminations in health insurance and employment, the need for competent counseling, and the legal, ethical, and social regulations she deems important to help solve dilemmas arising from the tests and their ensuing ramifications. She describes three models, pointing out both advantages and problems: a medical model with physician gatekeepers, a public health model that could provide education as well some testing for those unable to afford tests, and a fundamental rights model that could give greater weight to individuals decisions about the use of health care services. The book has 85 pages of footnotes.American Society of Human Genetics. Social Issues Subcommittee on Familial Disclosure. Professional Disclosure of Familial Genetic Information. American Journal of Human Genetics 62 (2): 474-83, February 1998.The ASHG statement outlines points to consider: the general rule of confidentiality, exceptional circumstances that permit disclosure, and the ethical duty to inform patients about familial implications. Background discussion includes: ethical frameworks for disclosure of otherwise confidential information, the duty to warn under law, and international trends and positions.Boetzkes, Elisabeth. Genetic Knowledge and Third-Party Interests. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 8 (4): 386-92, Summer 1999.Protection from the interests of insurers or prospective employers are discussed from the point of view of the ethical basis of the professional obligation to confidentiality as well as the right to privacy of those tested. However, the author supports family members, saying that "first-party resistance to disclosure may be overcome by weighty third-party claims."Chadwick, Ruth; Shickle, Darren; ten Have, Henk; and Wiesing, Urban, eds. The Ethics of Genetic Screening. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999. 255 p.Twenty-one chapters and 23 authors provide views of genetic testing/screening in different European countries and offer brief discussions of sociological perspectives, moral and philosophical issues, privacy, reconciling liberty and the common good, and questions raised in genetic testing of children.Clayton, Ellen Wright. Genetic Testing in Children. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 22 (3): 233-51, June 1997.Clayton argues that there is room for... (shrink)

Many contemporary physicalists concede to dualists that conscious subjects have distinctive “phenomenal concepts” of the phenomenal qualities of their experiences. Indeed, they contend that idiosyncratic characteristics of these concepts facilitate responses to influential anti-physicalist arguments. Like some some other critics of this approach, James Tartaglia maintains that phenomenal concepts express contents that conflict with physicalism, but as a physicalist, the moral he distinctively draws from this is that phenomenal concepts misrepresent. He contends further that the contemporary physicalists’ account cannot accommodate (...) this feature, and that in consequence, physicalists should abandon phenomenal concepts and return to the identity theory championed by Place and Smart in the 1950s. I respond to Tartaglia by identifying lacunae in his interpretation of contemporary physicalism and arguing that phenomenal concepts as conceived by the contemporary physicalists do not express content... (shrink)

Arguing About Language presents a comprehensive selection of key readings on fundamental issues in the philosophy of language. It offers a fresh and exciting introduction to the subject, addressing both perennial problems and emerging topics. Classic readings from Frege, Russell, Kripke, Chomsky, Quine, Grice, Lewis and Davidson appear alongside more recent pieces by philosophers or linguists such as Robyn Carston, Delia Graff Fara, Frank Jackson, Ernie Lepore & Jerry Fodor, Nathan Salmon, Zoltán Szabó, Timothy Williamson and Crispin Wright. Organised into (...) clear sections, readings have been chosen that engage with one another and often take opposing views on the same question, helping students to get to grips with the key areas of debate in the philosophy of language, including: sense and reference definite descriptions linguistic conventions language and behaviour descriptivism and rigidity contextualism vagueness rule-following and normativity fictional discourse. Each article selected is clear, thought-provoking and free from unnecessary jargon. The editors provide lucid introductions to each section in which they give an overview of the debate and outline the arguments of the papers. Arguing About Language is an ideal reader for students looking for a balanced yet up-to-date introduction to the philosophy of language. Darragh Byrne is lecturer in philosophy at the University of Birmingham, UK. Max Kölbel is ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona, Spain. He is the author of Truth without Objectivity (Routledge, 2002) and co-editor of Wittgenstein's Lasting Significance (Routledge, 2004) with Bernhard Weiss, as well as Relative Truth (Oxford, 2008) with Manuel García-Carpintero. (shrink)

1 I shall mainly concentrate on Loar (1997, 1999), Tye (1999), Papineau (1998, 2002), Levine (1998, 2001) and Chalmers (2003). Only the first three of these authors endorse the claim that the proposal supports materialism. Levine.

The first half of Mark Quentin Gardiner’s recent book, Semantic Challenges to Realism: Dummett and Putnam, is a sustained, systematic, and, for the most part, novel attempt to demolish the case against semantic realism instigated by Michael Dummett. In this article I reply on the anti-realist’s be-half. I aim to demonstrate that none of Gardiner’s main anti-Dummettian arguments are successful, and moreover that his errors are, in the main, consequences of serious misconstruals of vital aspects of the semantic realist and (...) anti-realist positions. (shrink)

Abstract Empiricist philosophers of mind have long maintained that the possession conditions of many concepts include recognitional abilities. One of Jerry Fodor's recent attacks on empiricist semantics proceeds by attempting to demonstrate that there are no such, ?recognitional? concepts. His argument is built on the claim that if there were such concepts, they would not compose: i.e., they would exhibit properties which are not in general ?inherited? by complex concepts of which they are components. Debate between Fodor and his critics (...) on this issue has focused on his construal of compositionality, the critics in effect advocating a weaker conception than that assumed by Fodor. I argue that the critics' contention is under-motivated, and in the current context ad hoc. But there is something else wrong with Fodor's argument. He misidentifies the notion of recognitionality in which the empiricist should trade. A proper understanding of recognitionality allows us to disarm Fodor's argument without resolving the question about compositionality that divides Fodor and his critics. I end with two very general remarks. First a contention about the motivation for empiricist semantics, and second, a suggestion that my proposal about recognitionality may be extended to disarm a more familiar and influential type of concern about their viability. (shrink)

Neuroethics entails investigations of neurocognitive mechanisms of morality and ethics; and studies and address of the ethical issues spawned by the use of neuroscience and its technologies to investigate cognition, emotion and actions. These two principal emphases, or what have been called “traditions” of neuroethics both mirror traditional bioethical discussions (such as debates about the safety of technological and pharmaceutical advances and ethical implications of new scientific and technological discoveries), and engage discourse about neuroscientific investigations of (proto-moral and moral) cognition, (...) emotions and behaviors, and what such findings may mean for human beliefs and conduct - from the individual to the political levels. (shrink)

BackgroundNeuroethics describes several interdisciplinary topics exploring the application and implications of engaging neuroscience in societal contexts. To explore this topic, we present Part 3 of a four-part bibliography of neuroethics’ literature focusing on the “ethics of neuroscience.”MethodsTo complete a systematic survey of the neuroethics literature, 19 databases and 4 individual open-access journals were employed. Searches were conducted using the indexing language of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. A Python code was used to eliminate duplications in the final bibliography.ResultsThis bibliography (...) consists of 1137 papers, 56 books, and 134 book chapters published from 2002 through 2014, covering ethical issues in neuroimaging, neurogenetics, neurobiomarkers, neuro-psychopharmacology, brain stimulation, neural stem cells, neural tissue transplants, pediatric-specific issues, dual-use, and general neuroscience research issues. These works contain explanations of recent research regarding neurotechnology, while exploring ethical issues in future discoveries and use. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Public Health Ethics: Health by the NumbersMartina Darragh (bio) and Pat Milmoe McCarrick (bio)Hippocrates had nothing to say about public health. Rather, the idea that a government should protect its citizens from disease by maintaining sanitary conditions has its origin in Renaissance humanities texts, and the notion that physicians have public health responsibilities emerged in the works of such Enlightenment authors as Johann Peter Frank, Benjamin Rush, and (...) John Gregory (II, Coughlin and Beauchamp 1996). When the spread of infectious diseases such as typhoid and cholera accompanied the growth of the Industrial Revolution, England was the first to respond by passing the Public Health Act of 1848. The motivation for this reform was not based in humanitarian concerns but in the realization that unsanitary conditions were costly to industry. “... [The] founders of the public health movement were guided by nineteenth century utilitarian moral theories... the greatest good for the greatest number... accompanied by a growing appreciation for the innate value and dignity of mankind... however, the rights and autonomy of individuals have not always been respected in pursuing these important objectives” (I, Coughlin 1995, p. 1).Public health projects have dramatically improved global health status. One measure of their success is that “... most poor people now live longer, on average, than the wealthiest people a century ago” (I, Beaglehole and Bonita 1997, p. 13) These projects are not limited to such activities as disinfecting sewers. “Public health is what we, as a society, do to collectively assure the conditions in which people can be healthy. This requires that continuing and emerging threats to the health of the public be successfully countered. These threats include immediate crises, such as the AIDS epidemic; enduring problems, such as injuries and chronic illness; and impending crises foreshadowed by such developments as the toxic by-products of a modern economy” (I, Institute of Medicine (IOM) 1988, p. 1) The practice of public health has embraced this IOM challenge and includes the subspecialties of epidemiology, health promotion and education, public health administration, international health, maternal and child health, biostatistics, environmental health, and nutrition. This annotated bibliography focuses on epidemiology, [End Page 339] health promotion and education, and public health administration, and includes a wide variety of opinions on each topic.EpidemiologyAt first glance, it is hard to see what ethical issues could arise in population studies of the causes and control of illness. Disclosure of risk information in the clinical encounter is complicated by issues of uncertainty with regard to the data itself. Causation and causal inference may be affected by “wish bias,” leading to studies that use the same data but reach widely varying conclusions (II, Weed 1997). Given the complexity of the statistical calculations used to validate public health recommendations, and mass media’s portrayal of them, the public may be unintentionally deceived by population-based recommendations (V, Seedhouse 1997; II, Lupton 1995). With the addition of genetic screening, another layer of statistical complexity is added to this mix (VI, Stone and Steward 1996).Health Promotion and EducationIncreased life expectancy brought about by advances in public health has raised a new set of problems. With the realization that illness can be promoted in part by individual life-style choices, population-based recommendations about risk factors become important in the clinical encounter. This shift is not without difficulties; one author notes that he has yet to receive any risk information from his physicians, even when he asks “the experts” (V, Dugdale 1998). This may be due in part to the fact that “... public health lacks a vocabulary with which to speak about and identify commonalities among health problems experienced by very different populations” (IV, Mann 1997, p. 8). Furthermore, the mix of disciplines informing health promotion activities (sociology, psychology, recreation medicine, and the like) creates an illusion of shared ethics where none exists, which in turn leads to programs based on value systems that may not be meaningful for the populations they serve (V, Seedhouse 1997).Given these factors, a number of authors are skeptical of introducing public health measures into the clinical encounter. “We might do well to encourage people to live lives of modified hedonism so that they might... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Managed Health Care: New Ethical Issues for All*Martina Darragh (bio) and Pat Milmoe McCarrick (bio)Changes in the way that health care is perceived, delivered, and financed have occurred rapidly in a relatively short time span. The 50-year period since World War II encompasses enormous growth in medical technology, soaring health care costs, and significant fragmentation of the two-party patient- physician relationship. This relationship first grew to include the (...) third-party payer, the health insurance industry, and now “with great speed and relatively little public awareness, a significant change has occurred in the way some decisions are made about a patient’s medical care” (III, Institute of Medicine 1989).The new means of providing health care bring an increasing number of parties into clinical decision-making processes. With this change, ethical issues that once concerned only health care professionals, the physician or the nurse, have expanded to include the patient and the groups who “manage” care—e.g., health maintenance organizations (HMOs), preferred provider organizations (PPOs), point of service groups (POSs), independent practice associations (IPAs), insurance reviewers, hospital administrators, institutional managers, and, the most recent players, purchasers of group health care who base their decisions on competitive pricing.The term “managed care” refers to a variety of continually adapting and developing arrangements that involve four groups. These groups, which have been labeled by the world of business, not health, are the “consumer” (once the patient), the “provider” (the physician and other health care professionals), the “insurer” (the reimburser for any care), and the “purchaser of care” or the primary buyer of health services (the large employer organization). Capitation is a common way to pay for health services in managed care systems. A certain dollar amount is negotiated for health services for a specified number of patients whether the care is delivered or not; the provider shares with the [End Page 189] insurer any financial risk for the actual cost of care (III, Centers for Disease Control 1995).When the Clinton administration’s health care reform movement failed to gain support in the U.S. Congress, the use of managed care to control rising health care costs accelerated. The literature on managed care and its effect on the patient-physician relationship reflects this shift. During the era of health care reform, “debate centered on how managed care could control costs, on the use of technology and patient satisfaction, [and] on access and barriers to care” (IV, Emanuel and Dubler 1995). When managed care organizations began contracting with physicians to provide health care services subject to the plans’ provisions, these plans became agents in clinical decision making on a wide-spread basis. HMO enrollment grew to 51 million persons by 1994 (III, Centers for Disease Control 1995). This “corporatization” of health care has sparked a plethora of articles about the effects of the marketplace on the physician’s ability to do what is best for the patient, and on the patient’s ability to trust the physician to do so.Many authors make it clear that managed care itself is not the problem, but rather the development of for-profit managed care plans by “corporate conglomerates with billions of dollars in assets that compensate their executives as grandly as basketball players” (V, Kassirer 1995) “in a marketplace that is largely unregulated” (I, Zoloth-Dorfman and Rubin 1995). “Some, mostly older plans that were created when cost containment was an unexpected benefit rather than their central purpose, deliver high-quality care economically. Unfortunately, others cut costs by recruiting the healthiest patients, excluding the sickest, rationing care by making it inconvenient to obtain, and denying care by a variety of mechanisms” (V, Kassirer 1995).These cost-containment features now play an intimate role in clinical practice. When a managed care plan contracts with a physician, the doctor becomes a “double agent” with contractual obligations to the plan to provide a preset amount of services and professional responsibilities to each patient to authorize necessary treatment (V, Angell 1993). This duality can undermine the physician’s fiduciary responsibility to the patient wherein the physician “has power over the affairs of [the patient]...and is required by law to act on that person’s... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 13.1 (2003) 53-64 [Access article in PDF] Incentives for Providing Organs Patricia Milmoe McCarrick and Martina Darragh After a contentious debate at its 2002 annual meeting, the American Medical Association's House of Delegates voted to endorse the opinion of its Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs that the impact of financial incentives on organ donation should be studied (Josefson 2002). The shortage of (...) organs for transplantation has been an ongoing problem for more than 20 years. In June1981, Representative Philip Crane (R-IL) introduced legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives proposing a $25,000 income tax deduction and a $25,000 estate tax exclusion for donating an organ (Tax Incentives 1981). Still the National Organ Transplant Act enacted in October 1984 prohibited the offering of any "valuable consideration" in return for organs (United States 1984).The developments of a legal market for tissues in the United States and a black market for organs around the world have raised the question of whether donation without compensation is the only ethically viable option. Some critics of the current system claim reliance on donation actually promotes a black market in organs (Kaserman and Barnett 2002, p. 38; Palmer 1999, p. 36). In addition, a new set of compensation issues has arisen as living kidney donor transplantations begin to rival those performed with cadaveric organs (United States 2001).As a result, current suggestions for incentives go far beyond the traditional death benefit payment to include such ideas as medals of honor for donors, reimbursement for funeral expenses, exchange programs for organ donation, and special medical insurance for living organ donors. Numerous bills introduced into the 107th Congress have proposed such incentives (Delmonico et al. 2002.) In October 2002, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded $5.2 million in grants to study both clinical and behavioral interventions for increasing organ donations that do not involve incentives. The inspiration for some of the funded proposals comes from the successes of Spain's social services and the United Kingdom's clinical administration of organ procurement programs (Robeznieks 2002). [End Page 53]With a nod to evidence-based medicine, the underlying concern expressed in much of the current literature is that no idea for increasing the supply of organs should be discounted before it is studied. This bibliography provides a short introduction to the range of opinions expressed on the issue of incentives for providing organs.al-Mousawi, M.; Samhan, M.; al-Mezairee I.; Razzak, M.A.; and Khawari, F. Cadaver Organ Procurement in Kuwait. Transplantation Proceedings 31 (8): 3375-76, 1999.The authors describe a protocol that significantly increased cadaveric organ donation and credit it with fostering the expansion of an organ sharing program among the Arab Gulf states. Developed by Kuwaiti neurologists and anesthetists after a continuing education course on transplantation, the protocol places a special emphasis on the role of local transplant coordinators who facilitate the investigation of brain death cases by neurologists.Arnold, Robert; Bartlett, Steven; Bernat, James; et al. [Ethics Committee of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons] Financial Incentives for Cadaver Organ Donation: an Ethical Reappraisal. Transplantation 73 (8): 1361-67, 27 April 2002.To prepare for proposed studies of financial incentives for organ donation, the American Society of Transplant Surgeons convened a panel to develop a methodology for evaluating the ethics of such research. Comprised of organ procurement organization executives, physicians, surgeons, and ethicists, the panel generated a list of nine criteria for use in judging any incentives proposal. While opposed to direct payment or tax incentives for organ donation, a majority of the members support funeral expense reimbursement or charitable contributions as incentives that would not violate or undermine the ideal of altruism.Cameron, J. Stewart, and Hoffenberg, Raymond. The Ethics of Organ Transplantation Reconsidered: Paid Organ Donation and the Use of Executed Prisoners as Donors. Kidney International 55 (2): 724-32, February 1999.After reviewing arguments for and against payment for organ procurement, the authors apply these arguments to the specific case of obtaining organs from executed... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Perspectives on Bioethics*Pat Milmoe McCarrick (bio) and Martina Darragh (bio)The literature of feminist bioethics has flourished in the last decade. Women’s health care, women’s role both as patient and health care professional, the many new reproductive technologies, the exclusion of women as research subjects, as well as the broader topic of feminist contributions to ethical theory itself, have all become topics of interest for feminist bioethical writers.Although (...) feminism is anything but a monolithic enterprise, Karen Lebacqz’ essay on feminism in the new, revised Encyclopedia of Bioethics (II A, 1995) says that “all feminists agree that women are oppressed and this oppression is wrong.” Rosemarie Tong refines this statement to include variations of feminism: “... feminist theory is not one, but many theories or perspectives and... each feminist theory or perspective attempts to describe women’s oppression, to explain its causes and consequences, and to prescribe strategies for women’s liberation” (VII, Tong 1989). She describes different feminist views in Feminine and Feminist Ethics (II A, 1993), labelling them liberal, Marxist, radical, psychoanalytic, socialist, existentialist, and postmodern. Alison Jaggar critiques these different forms of feminism in Feminist Politics and Human Nature, and Susan Sherwin applies these perspectives to the field of bioethics in No Longer Patient: Feminist Ethics and Health Care.One of the central activities in current feminist bioethics is a revisitation of ethical theory itself. There is a distinction between “feminine” and “feminist” ethics in this field (II A, Tong 1993). “A feminine approach to ethics consists of observations of how the traditional approaches to ethics fail to fit the moral experiences and intuitions of women. In contrast, a feminist approach to ethics applies a specifically political perspective and offers suggestions of how ethics must be revised if it is to get at the patterns of dominance and oppression as they affect women” (IV, Sherwin 1992). Carol Gilligan’s two books, In a Different Voice and Mapping the Moral Domain, Nel Noddings’s Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education, and Virginia Held’s Feminist Morality: [End Page 85] Transforming Culture, Society, and Politics can be thought of as feminine critiques of contemporary ethics.Gilligan’s notion of the “ethics of care” has served as a point of departure for a discussion of a type of relational ethics that focuses on concrete experiences, pairs emotions with reason, and balances justice with care. This “ethics of care” has been both celebrated and criticized. The concept of “care” in ethics dates back to the “cura” tradition of care in ancient Rome and was further developed by philosophers Soren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger and psychologists Rollo May and Erik Erikson. Nursing theorists have built on this tradition both in theory and in practice (II A, Reich, Care, Encyclopedia of Bioethics, 1995). “Care” often is discussed in opposition to the liberal notion of “justice” (III, Sterba, Justice, Encyclopedia of Bioethics, 1995).Gilligan’s theory was developed to provide a counter model to Lawrence Kohlberg’s six steps in the development of a human moral nature: (1) acting to avoid punishment, (2) acting to promote reciprocity, (3) conforming to get approbation, (4) respecting authority to maintain social order, (5) acting freely if others are not harmed, and (6) following self-legislated, self-imposed, universal principles of justice, reciprocity, and respect for the dignity of humans as individuals. In contrast, Gilligan holds that the moral self is an individual working with other individuals to identify mutually agreeable solutions to thorny human relations problems. Gilligan called Kohlberg’s the male moral point of view as an ethics of justice and hers the female moral view as an ethics of care. Her levels are (1) inward-directed care, (2) other-directed care subjugating personal wants and needs to others (eventually leading to anger), (3) a philosophy of care that balances egoism and altruism, recognizing the women’s connection to others and theirs to her.According to Jocelyn Downie and Susan Sherwin (IV, 1993), oppression, as used by feminists, is understood as an interlocking series of restrictions and barriers that reduce the options available to members of a group defined by morally insignificant characteristics, here gender. The literature itself can be... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Just Share: Justice and Fairness in Resource Allocation*Pat Milmoe Mccarrick (bio) and Martina Darragh (bio)Each of us has some basic sense of what the words “fair” or “just” or “fairness” or “justice” mean. Each of us probably also has an idea of what is “fair” in health care. The attempt by the state of Oregon in the mid-1980s to quantify this notion made a previously private exercise (...) a public one. This transition has been chronicled in the bioethics literature that focuses on resource allocation. These works examine both theories of justice and concepts of “health”; the fair distribution of health resources has been of continuing interest since the beginning of bioethics in the 1960s. Early writing on justice includes authors Tom L. Beauchamp, Robert H. Blank, James F. Childress, H. Tristram Engelhardt, Paul T. Menzel, Paul Ramsey, and Robert M. Veatch (VII).During the 1980s, bioethicists such as Daniel Callahan and Norman Daniels proposed thinking of health care decisions not as moments of personal crisis but as choices that span a lifetime, possibly involving tradeoffs in other areas of one’s life, e.g., education. The Oregon experience added another dimension to the discussion. The initial rank-ordering of health services by cost produced a skewed list—for example, surgery for life-threatening conditions ranked below minor, elective procedures. For the project to make sense, the ranking algorithm could not be based on cost alone, but rather on a combination of costs and benefits both to individuals and to the community—“concatenations of individual and group goods” (I, Jecker and Jonsen 1995). Various metaphors have been used in the literature to facilitate discussion of this shift from individual to individual/community trade-offs: medical services as a “commons” (I, Asch 1995, Jecker and Jonsen 1995, Michels 1994); resource allocation as a “lifeboat” (I, Campbell 1995; III, Kaveny 1994); medical care as “shares” in a community health (III, Nelson 1992, Ford and Kissick 1995; II, Anderson 1993); and rationing as traveling through the desert with one jug of water for two people (a story from the Halachah literature) (I, Zoloth-Dorfman 1995). [End Page 81]Such metaphors do not promote any one “theory of justice” but rather draw from the work of a number of bioethicists as well as from theological, sociological, economic, and business literature. The five major conceptions of justice that are referenced most frequently are: “(1) a libertarian conception, which takes liberty to be the ultimate political ideal; (2) a socialist conception, which takes equality to be the ultimate political ideal; (3) a welfare liberal conception, which takes contractual fairness or maximal utility to be the ultimate political ideal; (4) a communitarian conception, which takes the common good to be the ultimate political ideal; and (5) a feminist conception, which takes a gender-free society to be the ultimate political ideal” (I, Sterba 1995).The use of new metaphors also draws on expanded concepts of “health.” “As health care is currently practiced, the most powerful symbols for public and professional alike are those that promise the defeat of time” (I, Campbell 1995). When medical care is perceived as an unrelated series of individual cures, the fact that health care resources are finite cannot be addressed.Reflections concerning the difficulties in limiting the use of health care resources have an ancient lineage and reveal a tight bond with the obsession to postpone death at all costs. Plato in Book 3 of the Republic recognizes the quandary of infinite expectations and finite resources that characterizes the challenge of health care choices. (I, Engelhardt 1996)The proliferation of expensive medical technologies and the loss of autonomy by health care professionals further complicates perceptions of the crucial issues at hand. Some have said that Americans place too much emphasis on individualism to address these issues. Daniels et al. believe that this is too pessimistic a view and that the American commitment to protecting equal opportunity for all provides a firm basis for developing a public consensus on what is fair in health care (III, Daniels, Light, and Caplan 1996). Finally, several authors suggest that the nature of all four principles of medical ethics, not justice alone, must be... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Organizational Ethics and Health Care: Expanding Bioethics to the Institutional Arena **Laura Jane Bishop (bio), M. Nichelle Cherry (bio), and Martina Darragh* (bio)In 1995, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) expanded its patient rights standards to include requirements for assuring that hospital business practices would be ethical. Renamed “Patient Rights and Organization Ethics,” these standards are based on the realization that a hospital’s obligation to (...) its patients is derived from two relationships: the patient-provider relationship governed by “clinical ethics,” and the customer-supplier relationship governed by “business ethics.” “[This] boundary between ‘clinical’ ethics and ‘business’ ethics is not clear and in many cases is nonexistent. While marketing and admission practices are seen as issues related to ‘business’ ethics, they can lead to unneeded admissions or demand for unneeded services, both of which can unnecessarily expose the patient to the risk of side effects or complications. Likewise, underutilization of needed services is likely to lead to less than optimal health outcomes” (I. Schyve 1996, p. 17). “These new standards arose out of well-publicized concerns about abuses in which patients were admitted to hospitals unnecessarily and were discharged or transferred only after their insurance expired” (I. Schyve 1996, pp. 15–16).These abuses also sparked eloquent protests against threats to patient well-being and to the nature of the patient-provider relationship in the bioethics literature. The fiduciary responsibility of the provider to inform and to protect the patient was fragmented by insurer business practices such as gag clauses and economic credentialing of providers (VII. Scope Note 31, 1996). The background role that the institution plays, though poorly articulated historically, has been brought sharply into focus by the explosive growth of the managed practice of medicine. The context of medical ethics is no longer limited to the resolution of individual cases, but instead encompasses the adoption of institutional structures to protect and promote patient welfare (IV. Emanuel 1995, p. 335). In this new configuration, the institution and the providers are co-fiduciaries for populations [End Page 189] of patients, and the medicine that is practiced is “appropriately economically disciplined.” The expression “My patient always comes first” is no longer “... intellectually serious or morally responsible.” But, “... to be sure, both conceptually and in practice, being an economically disciplined fiduciary professional or institution is ethically unstable.... The task is to identify the boundaries outside of which institutional policy and behavior will not count as an ethically defensible form of being... [a] fiduciary.” (IV. McCullough 1997, pp. 143–44). This process of delimiting and enforcing boundaries requires the development of “... a language for talking about the ethical values of the organization. If such a language does not exist, discussions about ethics become cumbersome and unlikely to occur” (IV. Cleveland Clinic Foundation 1998, p. 2).As with bioethics generally, the literature addressing organizational ethics is multidisciplinary. JCAHO’s compliance guide for its revised standards, Ethical Issues and Patient Rights, draws on a wealth of ideas from both clinical ethics and business ethics. This is often an awkward alliance. “Because the study of organizational ethics is in its infancy compared to other areas of healthcare ethics, discussions about it often seem like hot air with no palpable payoff” (I. Boyle 1998, p. 2). The fact that “... there is an ancient history that reflects widespread doubt about the moral probity of business” (II. Frederick 1995, p. 209) does not help. To begin, “Aristotle had rude things to say about business” (II. Jackson 1998, p. 401). A brief review of introductions to several of the business ethics textbooks cited in this bibliography reveals that a rebuttal of “business ethics as an oxymoron” is the standard opening paragraph. This stigma is unfounded, and “increased stability” has characterized the state of business ethics literature during the 1990s (II. Beauchamp and Bowie 1997, p. ix). Significant attention has been given to elaborating two often overlapping theories—stakeholder and social contractarian.Originating in the 1960s as a pun on “stockholder,” proponents of stakeholder theory claim that a corporation’s fiduciary responsibility extends beyond increasing its profitability to protecting the rights of individuals or groups affected by its actions. Popular as a strategic planning tool in the... (shrink)

: This paper considers whether a physician is criminally liable for administering a dose of painkillers that hastens a patient's death. The common wisdom is that a version of the doctrine of double effect legally protects the physician. That is, a physician is supposedly acting lawfully so long as the physician's primary purpose is to relieve suffering. This paper suggests that the criminal liability issue is more complex than that. Physician culpability can be based on recklessness, and recklessness hinges on (...) whether a physician has taken an unjustifiable risk of hastening death. The authors identify three conditions of justifiability. Their analysis helps to explain the distinction between euthanasia, which is legally banned, and the use of risky analgesics, which is permitted in limited circumstances. (shrink)

Drawing on a survey of over 4000 students and 1300 faculty members at the University of Maryland Global Campus, we find evidence for a reconceptualization of the use of commercialized websites offering access to “tutors” or “study help” as a type of collaborative cheating. Past studies have examined this behavior as an extension of contract cheating, but we find that students perceive the use of these sites very differently than they perceive contract cheating behaviors. In this paper we will discuss (...) how “tutor” or “study helper” websites combine the phenomena of collaborative cheating with internet-driven shifts in cultural and social perceptions to create a new type of cheating behavior that is viewed differently by students and faculty. (shrink)

This study examines how the self-reported cheating behaviors of students from a single large institution serving primarily adult students in online courses differ from those previously reported in large-scale studies of academic integrity among traditional-age college students. Specifically, the research presented here demonstrates that students at a large online university are no more likely to engage in most forms of cheating than the traditional-age students in residential institutions studied by Donald McCabe in his seminal research on academic integrity. Relatedly, our (...) study finds that students’ age decreases the likelihood of engaging in cheating behaviors. Moreover, traditional-age undergraduates in our study were no more likely to engage in cheating behaviors than the undergraduate students McCabe surveyed. Our study offers a unique contribution to the extant literature on academic integrity, as we believe this is the largest survey of student attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors from a single institution. The research presented here confounds the common perception that cheating is more prevalent and easier to accomplish in online learning and assessment. (shrink)

The four-year wrangle over the ownership of what was then thought to have been the largest known meteorite, recognized near Melbourne in 1860, provides a fine-grained example of the interaction between scientific internationalism, metropolitan appetite for specimens, and colonial civic pride.

BackgroundAs a discipline, neuroethics addresses a range of questions and issues generated by basic neuroscientific research, and its use and meanings in the clinical and social spheres. Here, we present Part 4 of a four-part bibliography of the neuroethics literature focusing on clinical and social applications of neuroscience, to include: the treatment-enhancement discourse; issues arising in neurology, psychiatry, and pain care; neuroethics education and training; neuroethics and the law; neuroethics and policy and political issues; international neuroethics; and discourses addressing "trans-" (...) and "post-" humanity.MethodsTo complete a systematic survey of the literature, 19 databases and 4 individual open-access journals were employed. Searches were conducted using the indexing language of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. A Python code was used to eliminate duplications in the final bibliography.ResultsWhen taken with Parts 1-3, this bibliography aims to provide a listing of international peerreviewed papers, books, and book chapters published from 2002 through 2016. While seeking to be as comprehensive as possible, it may be that some works were inadvertently and unintentionally not included. We therefore invite commentary from the field to afford completeness and contribute to this bibliography as a participatory work-in-progress. (shrink)

As a discipline, neuroethics addresses a range of questions and issues generated by basic neuroscientific research, and its use and meanings in the clinical and social spheres. Here, we present Part 4 of a four-part bibliography of the neuroethics literature focusing on clinical and social applications of neuroscience, to include: the treatment-enhancement discourse; issues arising in neurology, psychiatry, and pain care; neuroethics education and training; neuroethics and the law; neuroethics and policy and political issues; international neuroethics; and discourses addressing "trans-" (...) and "post-" humanity. To complete a systematic survey of the literature, 19 databases and 4 individual open-access journals were employed. Searches were conducted using the indexing language of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. A Python code was used to eliminate duplications in the final bibliography. When taken with Parts 1-3, this bibliography aims to provide a listing of international peerreviewed papers, books, and book chapters published from 2002 through 2016. While seeking to be as comprehensive as possible, it may be that some works were inadvertently and unintentionally not included. We therefore invite commentary from the field to afford completeness and contribute to this bibliography as a participatory work-in-progress. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 16.4 (2006) 379-396MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Pharmacists and Conscientious Objection *In March 2005, a Wisconsin pharmacist's act of conscience garnered headlines across the United States. After a married woman with four children submitted a prescription for the morning-after pill, the pharmacist, Neil Noesen, not only refused to fill it, but also refused to transfer the prescription to another pharmacist or to return the prescription (...) to the customer. As more such incidents occurred, many states "... decided to consider and enact laws setting the bounds of pharmacists' and other health care workers' professional obligations" (III, Grady 2006, p. 327). Discussions of objector legislation, also referred to as "conscience clauses," "refusal clauses," and "abandonment laws" (III, Appel 2005, p. 279), are not limited to professional ethics, but also draw from philosophical, theological, and legal perspectives. The purpose of this Scope Note is to present a wide variety of viewpoints on the health provider's right to conscience.More than 40 years ago the development of "The Pill" as the first reliable method of birth control not only ushered in a feminist revolution, but also provided a new focus for concerns of conscience for those who were part of the anti-abortion movement based on religious belief in the sanctity of life. Similarly, in the past ten years, worldwide, and seven years (1999) since the emergency contraception "morning after" pill first became available as a prescription item, there has been an upsurge in the number of medical personnel who refuse to prescribe or dispense it on grounds of personal conscience, whether for religious reasons or not. Their actions bring into play issues of power and control for health care personnel and for patients—in this case women, which also raises women's rights issues. Ironically, studies in France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have shown that emergency contraception does not reduce the abortion rate—it is too infrequently used (II, Glasier 2006).It is important to underline the difference between the "morning-after" pill or "Plan B," which is made up of two progestin pills containing levonorgestrel (a synthetic derivative of the female hormone progesterone), and RU-486 (Mifiprex [End Page 379] or mifipristone with misoprostol). Plan B, if taken within 72 hours post-coitus prevents implantation, and therefore pregnancy, by suppressing the output of luteinizing hormone, the hormone that triggers the ovulation process. Scientists have been unable to determine whether this action could destroy already fertilized eggs, but even if it does, it uses the same mechanism as occurs with the birth-control pill, that was developed some 45 years ago. By contrast, RU-486 acts up to 49 days after implantation by blocking the action of progesterone in order to terminate the pregnancy and as such is an abortifacient (II, US FDA 1).On 24 August 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced approval of the Plan B pill for over-the-counter (OTC ) sales (II, US FDA 2). Although this action makes the drug more widely available, it remains to be seen whether pharmacists who are conscientious objectors and who refuse to dispense it also will refuse to provide it OTC.A survey article by Rebecca Dresser (II, 2005, p. 9) succinctly sums up the problem for conscientious objectors: "Because emergency contraception can act to block implantation of a fertilized egg, people who believe in protection of human life after conception find it morally objectionable."When conscientious objections are raised over abortion or birth control services performed, prescribed, or dispensed, they affect not only the health professionals—physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and health technicians—who may object, as well as their colleagues and/or managers, but also the consumers: the female patients who are then forced to reconsider or to seek an alternative supplier, as well as their spouses or partners. Alta Charo (II, 2005, p. 2473) makes the point that the patient needs to have access to a system of counseling and referral "so... (shrink)

Background As a discipline, neuroethics addresses a range of questions and issues generated by basic neuroscientific research, and its use and meanings in the clinical and social spheres. Here, we present Part 4 of a four-part bibliography of the neuroethics literature focusing on clinical and social applications of neuroscience, to include: the treatment-enhancement discourse; issues arising in neurology, psychiatry, and pain care; neuroethics education and training; neuroethics and the law; neuroethics and policy and political issues; international neuroethics; and discourses addressing (...) "trans-" and "post-" humanity. Methods To complete a systematic survey of the literature, 19 databases and 4 individual open-access journals were employed. Searches were conducted using the indexing language of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. A Python code was used to eliminate duplications in the final bibliography. Results When taken with Parts 1-3, this bibliography aims to provide a listing of international peerreviewed papers, books, and book chapters published from 2002 through 2016. While seeking to be as comprehensive as possible, it may be that some works were inadvertently and unintentionally not included. We therefore invite commentary from the field to afford completeness and contribute to this bibliography as a participatory work-in-progress. (shrink)

I begin by summarizing my view of the progression that occurred from the 1950s to the 1990s on the topic of physicalism and, in terms of this, present an overview of the reconciliation I was attempting in “Conceptualizing Physical Consciousness.” I then address Byrne’s two main arguments. In the case of the first, I show that his argument turns on a third-person conception of appearance which is not the one addressed in the debates in question, and argue that functionalism is (...) not relevant to physicalism about consciousness in the manner Byrne thinks. In the case of the second, I argue that Byrne’s attempt to prize metaphysics apart from science shows a misunderstanding of the physicalist agenda. In conclusion I indicate how my views have moved on. My misrepresentation thesis, like any form of conventional physicalism, ultimately entails eliminativism; and I reject eliminativism. (shrink)

A wide variety of concepts are nowadays considered to be hyperintensional, and some of them do not seem to involve our representational attitudes. This led some philosophers to identify and defend a notion of worldly hyperintensionality: the idea that some hyperintensional phenomena derive from features of objective reality, independently of how we represent it. Against this view, Darragh Byrne and Naomi Thompson argue that the correct understanding of such phenomena must be conceptualist in nature, and claim that hyperintensionality always (...) derives from features of representations. In the present work I defend the genuine distinction between worldly and representational hyperintensionality through a new framing of the issue: the comparison with worldly intensionality. I argue that locating the sources of hyperintensionality should not be affected by preferences towards any specific semantic framework, and reject Byrne and Thompson's argument against worldly hyperintensionality. (shrink)

Farrell, Marie Review(s) of: A thinker's guide to sin: talking about wrongdoing today, by Neil Darragh ed. (Auckland, N.Z.: Accent Publications, 2010), pp.228, $35.