Patients who experience difficulty making medical decisions are often referred to as “ambivalent.” However, the current lack of attention to the nuances between a cluster of phenomena that resemble...

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is typically viewed as a time-limited intervention—a bridge to recovery or transplant—not a destination therapy. However, some patients with decision-making capacity request continued ECMO support despite a poor prognosis for recovery and lack of viability as a transplant candidate. In response, critical care teams have asked for guidance regarding the ethical permissibility of unilateral withdrawal over the objections of a capacitated patient. In this article, we evaluate several ethical arguments that have been made in favor of (...) withdrawal, including distributive justice, quality of life, patients’ rights, professional integrity, and the Equivalence Thesis. We find that existing justifications for unilateral withdrawal of ECMO support in capacitated patients are problematic, which leads us to conclude that either: (1) additional ethical arguments are necessary to defend this approach or (2) the claim that it is not appropriate to use ECMO as a destination therapy should be questioned. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 6, Page 613-620, July 2022.

‘Why Not Common Morality?’ revisits an important and enduring question: is medical ethics distinct from ‘everyday’ ethics? In her paper, Rosamond Rhodes undertakes the ambitious project of answering this question, in addition to clarifying what constitutes a profession, how professions differ from ‘roles’ and how medical ethics relates to medical professionalism. Rhodes aims to challenge the status quo within medical ethics by departing from the views of certain giants within the field. The paper’s central contention is that the ethics of (...) everyday life and medical ethics are indeed distinct—the latter cannot be derived from the former and we consequently need a new theory of medical ethics. While I am sympathetic to the aims of the project and took no small delight in Rhodes’s gumption, the paper suffers from a number of issues. Putting aside the issue of whether Rhodes accurately represents the theories she critiques—and that is no small thing to set aside—first, many scholars have interrogated in great depth, and from many angles, the relationship between common morality and medical ethics.1–4 Scholarship from the philosophy of medicine, virtue ethics, role-differentiated ethics, narrative and care ethics has made a significant contribution to the projects of clarifying what is distinct about medical professionalism and understanding how we might subsequently treat ethical issues that arise in healthcare with due sensitivity to these myriad differences.5–10 Yet, Rhodes largely ignores this literature …. (shrink)

Clinical ethics services are increasingly receiving case referrals regarding requests for access to experimental therapies. Sometimes, patients or families seek access to an experimental therapy that has not been subsidised by any government scheme, and for which no local clinical trial is underway. All else being equal, a patient may benefit from receiving an experimental therapy without making any other patient worse off. However, within public healthcare systems, treating only one patient with an experimental therapy, when others might also benefit (...) from it, evokes a troubling sense of inequity. In this paper, I examine the relevance of Pareto principles and the ‘levelling down’ objection to ethical deliberation about patient or family-initiated requests for experimental therapies. While facilitating access to an experimental therapy may benefit a patient without making any other patients worse off, this does not dispel ethically relevant considerations concerning equity. When deliberating about cases i... (shrink)

In this paper, we examine healthcare organizations’ responses to high profile cases of doctor–parent disagreement. We argue that, once a conflict crosses a certain threshold of public interest, the stakes of the disagreement change in important ways. They are no longer only the stakes of the child’s interests or who has decision‐making authority, but also the stakes of public trust in healthcare practitioners and organizations and the wide scale spread of medical misinformation. These higher stakes call for robust organization‐level responses. (...) There are responsible and thoughtful ways for healthcare organizations to directly engage with these cases. Hospitals should seek an alliance with the parents around the goal of public discussion and utilize web‐based platforms to provide the public with information about medical conditions, experimental treatments, and how clinical ethics deliberation in hospitals works. We outline five important lessons for healthcare organizations to keep in mind when responding to such cases. Approached with care, these cases could become “teachable moments” for both healthcare organizations and society. (shrink)

In this article, I sort through some of the confusion surrounding what constitutes the controversial notion of a “good death” for children. I distinguish, first, between metaphysical and practical disagreements about the notion of a good death, and, second, between accounts of a good death that minimally and maximally promote the dying child’s interests. I propose a narrowed account of the dying child’s interests, because they differ from the interests of non-dying children. Importantly, this account illustrates how disagreements at the (...) end of a child’s life are sometimes the result of a shift from a future to a present-oriented understanding of the child’s interests on the part of some stakeholders but not others, and sometimes the result of a values-based disagreement about how different interests should be weighted. This brings into sharper focus the questions of for whom, and in what way, a child’s death might be considered good. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 1, Page 42-50, January/February 2022.

While experience often affords important knowledge and insight that is difficult to garner through observation or testimony alone, it also has the potential to generate conflicts of interest and unrepresentative perspectives. We call this tension the paradox of experience. In this paper, we first outline appeals to experience made in debates about access to unproven medical products and disability bioethics, as examples of how experience claims arise in bioethics and some of the challenges raised by these claims. We then motivate (...) the idea that experience can be an asset by appealing to themes in feminist and moral epistemology, distinguishing between epistemic and justice-based appeals. Next, we explain the concern that experience may be a liability by appealing to empirical work on cognitive biases and theoretical work about the problem of partial representation. We conclude with preliminary recommendations for addressing the paradox and offer several questions for future discussion. (shrink)

Tim Wardle’s 2018 documentary film Three Identical Strangers is an exploration of identity, family, and loss. It’s also about nature versus nurture and the boundaries of ethically permissible research, particularly research involving children. The film tells the story of identical triplets who were separated soon after birth in 1961. A different family adopted each boy, without being told that their son had two identical brothers. The adoption agency responsible for finding the families was collaborating with a group of researchers working (...) on a study about … something. Three Identical Strangers details the boys’ fight to obtain information about the study and for closure. But while the film may have received rave reviews, it left us feeling uneasy. We came away with two sets of questions, one having to do with the story that the film documents and the second with the ethics of filmmaking itself. (shrink)

Patients and families are increasingly turning to crowdfunding to help them cover the cost of medical care. The ethics of crowdfunding has garnered some attention in the bioethical literature. In this paper I examine an ethical aspect of medical crowdfunding (MCF) that has received limited attention: the role of donors. I defend a virtue ethical approach to analyzing the role of donors in MCF. Vicious donation, where donors do not exercise the relevant virtues, can compound some of the ethical risks (...) associated with MCF, as seen in the several recent, high‐profile cases. My primary contention in this paper is that encouraging donors to think about how donating to a particular campaign would measure against the virtues I outline could help to discourage acts of ethically problematic donation to MCF campaigns. (shrink)

Given the enduring debate over what constitutes quality, and therefore appropriate training, in clinical ethics consultation, it is unsurprising that there is variation in the structure and content of clinical ethics fellowship programs. However, this variation raises questions about the value of fellowship training when the ethicists that emerge from these programs might be quite different. The specifics of fellowship programs are largely internal. As such, the extent of variation and whether such variation is problematic remains unclear. In this article, (...) we summarize lessons learned from discussions between fellows, their mentors and program directors at the 2020 Clinical Ethics UnConference, and outline some possible ways to advance the conversation about variation in fellowship programs and training. We argue for the more open sharing of training specifics in order to help break down the siloed nature of fellowship programs. Greater transparency could, firstly, allow for more robust reflection on and refinement of training practices and, secondly, allow us to better balance professionally appropriate consistency with unavoidable or desirable variation based on local norms, culture and leadership. (shrink)

The moral status of the emotion of grief has garnered little recognition in philosophical literature. Existing inquiry has consisted for the most part of deontological and virtue ethical approaches to evaluating grief. In my paper I build upon established understandings of the morality grief and move beyond them, towards an understanding of what I call “eros-transformative grief” as a gateway or intermediary emotion that enables a powerful reassessment and revaluation of the self’s relation to the world. This fundamental moral revaluation (...) is a result of the phenomenological absence of the relational self. The nature of grief reveals something vital about the way in which we relate to those around us—it is a fundamental reaffirmation of the inescapable separateness of the self, which can never truly be accepted without experiencing deep loss, but it is also a fundamental reaffirmation of the relationship that existed, and ultimately, of love. In eros-transformative grief, part of the grieving process involves accepting the permanency of our loss and moving past it through assimilating an intangible part of the lost loved one into the self. Thus, in addition to strengthening deontological and virtue ethical normative understandings of grief, I provide an account of eros-transformative grief that links it to the concept of love, allowing for a positive reading of an oft-neglected emotion. (shrink)

Dominic Wilkinson suggests that one of Schubert’s songs has relevance for neonatologists today. In the song, Schubert suggests that death sometimes comes as a friend. Wilkinson ponders whether the song has a message for doctors and parents, who sometimes struggle to figure out whether death is an enemy or a friend to a dying baby. Wilkinson reflects on the case of baby ‘Hal’, who was born with serious cardiomyopathy. Hal’s parents and doctors disagree about whether to withdraw life-support. Through his (...) recreations of their discussions, Wilkinson shows how hard it is to confront—and maybe even welcome—death for a child. While adults often frame their own decision to forego life-sustaining treatment with thoughts that they have lived a good life, death in childhood can seem unfair because it robs the child of their opportunity to live a good or completed life. Much as we try, we cannot really imagine what a critically ill neonate experiences or desires. We have very little insight into Hal’s interests or subjective experience. Without direct access to the child’s experience, it is impossible to know whether, like an adult, a child would choose to allow death to occur. We cannot verify the claim that the child’s death was good in the sense that it was good for them. Wilkinson proposes that a prolonged dying process …. (shrink)

In their article, ‘The Two Front War on Reproductive Rights,’ Minkoff, Vullikanti, and Marshall (2024) highlight the challenges faced by pregnant persons following the overturn of Roe v. Wade (Dobb...

While it is not explicitly included in capacity assessment tools, “consistency” has come to feature as a central concern when assessing patients’ capacity. In order to determine whether inconsistency indicates incapacity, clinicians must determine the source of the inconsistency with respect to the process or content of a patient’s decision-making. In this paper, we outline common types of inconsistency and analyze them against widely accepted elements of capacity. We explore the question of whether inconsistency necessarily entails a deficiency in a (...) patient’s capacity. While inconsistency may count as _prima_ _facie_ evidence of incapacity—enough evidence to justify a closer look—when making such determinations, it is important for clinicians to slow down, inquire about the reasons underlying the inconsistency and clearly show which of the elements of capacity the patient fails to satisfy. (shrink)

In pediatric health care, parents and clinicians sometimes have competing ideas of what should be done for a child. In this article, we explore the idea that notions of what should be done for a child partly depend on one's perception of one's role in the child's life and care. Although role‐based appeals are common in health care, role‐differentiated approaches to understanding parent‐clinician conflicts are underexplored in the pediatric bioethics literature. We argue that, while the parental role is recognized as (...) having social content or value, and sometimes legal force, it is not always recognized as having ethical content or value, as the clinician's role is. We draw together key insights from the normative and empirical literature on parental roles to show how a role‐based lens might inform clinicians’ and clinical ethicists’ approach to cases in which parents and clinicians disagree. (shrink)

In “Acquiescence Is Not Agreement: The Problem of Marginalization in Pediatric Decision Making,” Caruso Brown argues that clinicians and ethicists should attend to voices marginalized by hie...

While it is not explicitly included in capacity assessment tools, “consistency” has come to feature as a central concern when assessing patients’ capacity. In order to determine whether inconsistency indicates incapacity, clinicians must determine the source of the inconsistency with respect to the process or content of a patient’s decision-making. In this paper, we outline common types of inconsistency and analyze them against widely accepted elements of capacity. We explore the question of whether inconsistency necessarily entails a deficiency in a (...) patient’s capacity. While inconsistency may count as prima facie evidence of incapacity—enough evidence to justify a closer look—when making such determinations, it is important for clinicians to slow down, inquire about the reasons underlying the inconsistency and clearly show which of the elements of capacity the patient fails to satisfy. (shrink)

I had been on the phone with Madeleine's mother for fifteen minutes, and she had sobbed throughout. She pleaded with me, “You won't even let our family visit her together. If you really want to help my daughter, you will let us stay with her.” Madeleine, who was twenty‐four years old, was dying of end‐stage acute myeloid leukemia and was intubated in one of our intensive care units. Her intensivist had requested a clinical ethics consultation for potentially inappropriate medical treatment—in (...) my world of clinical ethics consultation, routine stuff. Except that, in March 2020, nothing was routine anymore. The Covid‐19 pandemic calls for creative thinking about ad hoc and post hoc bereavement efforts, and it may result in efforts to revise existing accounts of what constitutes a good death in order to accommodate patients’ and families’ experiences at the end of life during a pandemic. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 2, February 2020, Page 66-68.

Questions about when to limit unhelpful treatments are often raised in general medicine but are less commonly considered in psychiatry. Here we describe a survey of U.S. psychiatrists intended to characterize their attitudes about the management of suicidal ideation in patients with severely treatment-refractory illness. Respondents (n = 212) received one of two cases describing a patient with suicidal ideation due to either borderline personality disorder or major depressive disorder. Both patients were described as receiving all guideline-based and plausible emerging (...) treatments. Respondents rated the expected helpfulness and likelihood of recommending each of four types of intervention: hospitalization, additional medication changes, additional neurostimulation, and additional psychotherapy. Across both cases, most respondents said they were likely to provide each intervention, except for additional neurostimulation in borderline personality disorder, while fewer thought each intervention would be helpful. Substantial minorities of respondents indicated that they would provide an intervention they did not think was likely to be helpful. Our results suggest that while most psychiatrists recognize the possibility that some patients are unlikely to be helped by available treatments, many would continue to offer such treatments. (shrink)

Abstract“Suffering” is a central concept within bioethics and often a crucial consideration in medical decision making. As used in practice, however, the concept risks being uninformative, ambiguous, or even misleading. In this paper, we consider a series of cases in which “suffering” is invoked and analyze them in light of prominent theories of suffering. We then outline ethical hazards that arise as a result of imprecise usage of the concept and offer practical recommendations for avoiding them. Appeals to suffering are (...) often getting at something ethically important. But this is where the work of ethics begins, not where it ends. (shrink)

How should clinical ethicists be trained? Scholars have stated that clinical ethics fellowships create well-trained, competent ethicists. While this appears intuitive, few features of fellowship programs have been publicly discussed, let alone debated. In this paper, we examine how fellowships can foster effective mentoring relationships. These relationships provide the foundation for the fellow’s transition from novice to competent professional. In this essay, we begin by discussing our pedagogical commitments. Next, we describe the structures our program has created to assist our (...) fellows in becoming competent ethicists. We then outline the kinds of knowledge, skills, and professional attributes mentors should possess. Following this, we focus on the knowledge, skills, and professional attributes that fellows develop as they co-create effective mentoring relationships. We will not prescribe a single approach to fellowship training; instead, our perspective will, we hope, become a catalyst for further conversation on training and mentoring clinical ethics fellows. (shrink)

In their paper exploring patient ambivalence in the context of medical decision-making Bryanna Moore, et al. state, “While bioethicists have not paid much attention to ambivalence and related menta...

Current work in language models (LMs) helps us speed up or even skip thinking by accelerating and automating cognitive work. But can LMs help us with critical thinking -- thinking in deeper, more reflective ways which challenge assumptions, clarify ideas, and engineer new concepts? We treat philosophy as a case study in critical thinking, and interview 21 professional philosophers about how they engage in critical thinking and on their experiences with LMs. We find that philosophers do not find LMs to (...) be useful because they lack a sense of selfhood (memory, beliefs, consistency) and initiative (curiosity, proactivity). We propose the selfhood-initiative model for critical thinking tools to characterize this gap. Using the model, we formulate three roles LMs could play as critical thinking tools: the Interlocutor, the Monitor, and the Respondent. We hope that our work inspires LM researchers to further develop LMs as critical thinking tools and philosophers and other 'critical thinkers' to imagine intellectually substantive uses of LMs. (shrink)

For Kant, the human cognitive faculty has two sub-faculties: sensibility and the understanding. Each has pure forms which are necessary to us as humans: space and time for sensibility; the categories for the understanding. But Kant is careful to leave open the possibility of there being creatures like us, with both sensibility and understanding, who nevertheless have different pure forms of sensibility. They would be finite rational beings and discursive cognizers. But they would not be human. And this raises a (...) question about the pure forms of the understanding. Does Kant leave open the possibility of discursive cognizers who have different categories? Even if other discursive cognizers might not sense like us, must they at least think like us? We argue that textual and systematic considerations do not determine the answers to these questions and examine whether Kant thinks that the issue cannot be decided. Consideration of his wider views on the nature and limits of our knowledge of mind shows that Kant could indeed remain neutral on the issue but that the exact form his neutrality can take is subject to unexpected constraints. The result would be an important difference between what Kant says about discursive cognizers with other forms of sensibility and what he is in a position to say about discursive cognizers with other forms of understanding. Kantian humility here takes on a distinctive character. (shrink)

A comprehensive introduction to the Classical Greek sophists, placing them afresh in their cultural context. These public figures, such as Protagoras and Gorgias, were wide-ranging experts before discipline-specialization, and represent the flourishing of linguistic, historical, and philosophical reflection in the time of Socrates.

Developmental origins of health and disease and epigenetics have expanded understanding of how the environment affects the health of women before and during pregnancy—with lifelong health consequences for the fetus. This has translated to a narrow focus on women’s lifestyle during pregnancy, especially for women classified as obese. In this study, we show that psychosocial harms such as distress or shame felt by pregnant women are rarely countenanced in these endeavors. To demonstrate this, we examine published documents about a large (...) set of trials of lifestyle interventions united through an international consortium. Yet there is now a literature in which pregnant women with large bodies report feeling humiliated and a wider literature on the stigma of obesity. We argue that shame is produced and reproduced through the discursive and material knowledge-making scientific practices of DOHaD translation. Interventions that intensify the shame of large body size in pregnancy may be stressful, and neurophysiological stress pathways are well-known within DOHaD to have consequences for fetal development, so these interventions potentially undermine the very processes they set out to protect. A feminist response may protect women from shame and redirect attention to the social and structural determinants of health. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

It is sometimes claimed that Gricean communication is necessarily a form of cooperative or ‘joint’ action. A consequence of this Cooperative Communication View is that Gricean communication could not itself contribute to an explanation of the possibility of joint action. I argue that even though Gricean communication is often a form of joint action, it is not necessarily so—since it does not always require intentional action on the part of a hearer. Rejecting the Cooperative Communication View has attractive consequences for (...) our theorising about human cognitive development, since it opens up the possibility of appealing to communicative interaction to explain the emergence of joint action in phylogeny. (shrink)

Bodily privacy, understood as a right to control access to one’s body, capacities, and powers, is one of our most cherished rights − a right enshrined in law and notions of common morality. Informational privacy, on the other hand, has yet to attain such a loftily status. As rational project pursuers, who operate and flourish in a world of material objects it is our ability control patterns of association and disassociation with our fellows that afford each of us the room (...) to become distinct individuals. Privacy, whether physical or informational, is valuable for beings like us. Establishing the truth this claim will be the primary focus of this article. Providing reasons, evidence, and support for this claim will take us into the historical and cultural dimensions of privacy. (shrink)

In a series of writings, James Sterba introduces several novel arguments from evil against the existence of God (Sterba, 2019; Sterba Sophia 59, 501–512, 2020; Sterba International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 87, 203–208, 2020b; Sterba International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 87, 223–228, 2020c; Sterba Religions 12, 536, 2021). According to one of these arguments, the problem of natural evil, God must necessarily prevent the horrendous evil consequences of natural evil such as diseases and hurricanes; however, these horrendous evil (...) consequences of natural evils still occur, so God does not exist. In this paper, I reply to Sterba’s argument from natural evil by introducing a naturalistic theodicy, and then demonstrating how it overcomes Sterba’s problem of natural evil. This paper is divided into five sections. First, I unpack Sterba’s problem of natural evil into three parts (Section 1), namely, Sterba’s moral obligation claim about humans, Sterba’s moral obligation claim about non-human life, and Sterba’s arguments from analogy. I then introduce a general naturalistic theodicy to the problem of natural evil (Section 2): naturalists grant that natural forces (entropy, evolutionary pressures, tectonic plate movements, etc.) cause horrendous consequences of natural evil, yet still consider human life in the universe a good better than humans are entitled to, so, if God made this naturalistic universe, God made human life in the universe a good better than humans are entitled to. I then use this naturalistic theodicy to reply to Sterba’s moral obligation claim about humans (Section 3), before bolstering the case by appeal to Sterba’s moral obligation claims about non-human life (Section 4). I then reply to Sterba’s arguments from analogy (Section 5). (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultants face a wide range of ethical dilemmas that require broad knowledge and skills. Although there is considerable overlap with the approach to adult consultation, ethics consultants must be aware of differences when they work with infant, pediatric, and adolescent cases. This article addresses unique considerations in the pediatric setting, reviews foundational theories on parental authority, suggests practical approaches to pediatric consultation, and outlines current available resources for clinical ethics consultants who wish to deepen their skills in this (...) area. (shrink)

Orang-utans played a communication game in two studies testing their ability to produce and comprehend requestive pointing. While the ‘communicator’ could see but not obtain hidden food, the ‘donor’ could release the food to the communicator, but could not see its location for herself. They could coordinate successfully if the communicator pointed to the food, and if the donor comprehended his communicative goal and responded pro-socially. In Study 1, one orang-utan pointed regularly and accurately for peers. However, they responded only (...) rarely. In Study 2, a human experimenter played the communicator’s role in three conditions, testing the apes’ comprehension of points of different heights and different degrees of ostension. There was no effect of condition. However, across conditions one donor performed well individually, and as a group orang-utans’ comprehension performance tended towards significance. We explain this on the grounds that comprehension required inferences that they found difficult – but not impossible. The finding has valuable implications for our thinking about the development of pointing in phylogeny. (shrink)

This is a book about the philosophy of Henri Bergson which shows how relevant Bergson is to much contemporary philosophy. The book takes as its point of departure Bergson's insistence on precision in philosophy. It then discusses a variety of topics including laughter, the nature of time as experienced, how intelligence and language should be construed as a pragmatic product of evolution, and the antinomies of reason represented by magic and religion. This is not just another exposition of Bergson's work. (...) It offers an account of why Bergson commanded such a massive reading public in his own day and why he deserves to be read now. Written in a terse and clear style, this book will prove appealing to teachers and students of philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, religious studies and literature. (shrink)

For decades, aged care facility residents at risk of pressure ulcers have been repositioned at two-hour intervals, twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week. Yet, PUs still develop. We used a cross-sectional survey of eighty randomly selected medical records of residents aged ≥ 65 years from eight Australian Residential Aged Care Facilities to determine the number of residents at risk of PUs, the use of two-hourly repositioning, and the presence of PUs in the last week of life. Despite 91 per cent of residents identified as (...) being at risk of PUs and repositioned two-hourly 24/7, 34 per cent died with one or more PUs. Behaviours of concern were noted in 72 per cent of residents of whom 38 per cent were restrained. Dementia was diagnosed in 70 per cent of residents. The prevalence of behaviours of concern displayed by residents with dementia was significantly greater than by residents without dementia. The rate of restraining residents with dementia was similar to the rate in residents without dementia. Two-hourly repositioning failed to prevent PUs in a third of at-risk residents and may breach the rights of all residents who were repositioned two-hourly. Repositioning and restraining may be unlawful. Rather than only repositioning residents two-hourly, we recommend every resident be provided with an alternating pressure air mattress. (shrink)

The communicative interactions of very young children almost always involve language, gesture and directed gaze. In this study, ninety-six children were asked to determine the location of a hidden toy by understanding a communicative act that contained none of these familiar means. A light-and-sound mechanism placed behind the hiding place and illuminated by a centrally placed switch was used to indicate the location of the toy. After a communicative training session, an experimenter pressed the switch either deliberately or accidentally, and (...) with or without ostension. In no condition did she orient towards the hiding place. When the switch was pressed intentionally, children used the light-and-sound cue to find the toy – and tended to do so even in the absence of ostensive eye contact. When the experimenter pressed the switch accidentally, children searched randomly – demonstrating that they were tracking her communicative intent, and not merely choosing on the basis of salience. The absence of an effect of ostension contradicts research that ostension helps children to interpret the communicative intentions underlying unfamiliar signs. We explain this by concluding that while it may play a role in establishing a communicative interaction, it is not necessary for sustaining one; and that even with a highly novel communicative act – involving none of the means of communication on which children typically rely – three-year-olds can comprehend the communicative intentions behind an intentionally produced act. (shrink)

Little is known about the aims and impact of university-based ethics centers. Less is known about how centers leverage their unique campus positions to engage undergraduates in transformative ethics education. This article provides a foundation for future research on university-based ethics centers. First, this article addresses the history of ethics education in higher education, the rise of university ethics centers, and the factors necessary for successful ethics programs. Next, this piece shows the geographic distribution of ethics centers and which centers (...) provide undergraduate-focused ethics education. Finally, this article enables future research on effective ethics center structure, leadership, and outreach. (shrink)

There is a difference between having reasons for believing and believing for reasons. This difference is often fleshed out via an epistemic basing relation, where an epistemic basing relation obtains between beliefs and the actual reasons for which those beliefs are held. The precise nature of the basing relation is subject to much controversy, and one such underdeveloped issue is whether beliefs can be based on brain processing. In this paper I answer in the negative, providing reasons that the basing (...) relation must be a specific psychological level relation between mental states, rather than being a brain process. (shrink)

Libertarian free will is, roughly, the view that the same agential states can cause different possible actions. Nonreductive physicalism is, roughly, the view that mental states cause actions to occur, while these actions also have sufficient physical causes. Though libertarian free will and nonreductive physicalism have overlapping subject matter, and while libertarian free will is currently trending at the same time as nonreductive physicalism is a dominant metaphysical posture, there are few sustained expositions of a nonreductive physicalist model of libertarian (...) free will – indeed some tell against such an admixture. This paper concocts such a blend by articulating and defending, with some caveats, a nonreductive physicalist model of libertarian free will. (shrink)