Body, Soul and Cyberspace explores how recent science-fiction cinema addresses questions about the connections between body and soul, virtuality, and the ways in which we engage with spirituality in the digital age. The book investigates notions of love, life and death, taking an interdisciplinary approach by combining cinematic themes with religious, philosophical and ethical ideas. Magerstädt argues how even the most spectacle-driven mainstream films such as Avatar, The Matrix and Terminator can raise interesting and important questions about the human self (...) and our interaction with the world. Apart from these well-known science fiction epics, her analysis also draws on recent works, such as Inception, The Thirteenth Floor, eXistenZ, Aeon Flux, Total Recall (2012), Transcendence and TRON: Legacy. These films stimulate an engaging discussion on what makes us human, the role memory plays in understanding ourselves, and how virtual realities challenge the moral concepts that govern human relationships. (shrink)

This is a philosophical discussion of cinema’s power to create positive illusions and myths, drawing on Nietzsche, Kracauer, and Deleuze.

Case presentations, esthetics, insurance considerations, communicable diseases, referral questions, dental phobia, and legal concerns all play a role in doctor-patient relationships. These topics, and many others, are the subject of this one-of-a-kind resource, designed to show dental students and practitioners how to approach patient relationships.

My aim in this paper is to explore the notion that corporations have moral rights within the context of a constitutive rules model of corporate moral agency. The first part of the paper will briefly introduce the notion of moral rights, identifying the distinctive feature of moral rights, as contrasted with other moral categories, in Vlastos' terms of overridingness. The second part will briefly summarize the constitutive rules approach to the moral agency of corporations (à la French, Smith, Ozar) (...) and pose the question of the paper. The third part will argue that, since the moral agency of corporations is dependent on the choices of those whose acceptence of the relevant rules constitutes the corporation as a moral agent, the rights of corporations are conventional; that is, they exist because they are so created. Thus, as a first answer, corporations do not have moral rights.But this raises a further question which we must explore. Once a corporation has been constituted, by the acceptance of the relevant rules by the relevant persons, does the corporation then have rights which endure? Can those who have constituted a corporation with certain rights morally change or cancel those rights in medias res without doing some sort of moral violence to the corporation? Do corporations at least have a moral right to persist in the conventional rights with which they were constituted? (shrink)

The social ethics of medicine is the study and ethical analysis of social structures which impact on the provision of health care by physicians. There are many such social structures. Not all these structures are responsive to the influence of physicians as health professionals. But some social structures which impact on health care are prompted by or supported by important preconceptions of medical practice. In this article, three such elements of the philosophy of medicine are examined in terms of the (...) negative impact on health care of the social structures to which they contribute. The responsibilities of the medical profession and of individual physicians to work to change these social structures are then examined in the light of a theory of profession. (shrink)

This book presents essays and scientific contributions examining the link between popular media and politics. The essays focus on the question of how political and social change, concepts of power, and utopian elements are reflected in selected films and television series. The book applies a political science perspective, covering theories from political philosophy, political sociology and international relations, and examines a wide range of movies and TV series, such as The Godfather, Fight Club, The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. (...) It will appeal to anyone interested in studying how political ideas, concepts and messages can be illustrated and visualized using the complex media of movies and TV series. (shrink)

This article places the concept of "right to know," which is normally associated with law, in a moral framework. It outlines multiple meanings of the concept, emphasizing the institutional nature of "right to know." Then the article imbeds this understanding in moral thinking, including a discussion of the moral elements of rights, and applies that understanding in specific journalistic situations.

The practice of ascribing dispositions of communicative truthfulness to others is necessary if language-use is to be effective. In this article, through a phenomenological analysis of everyday judgments about the sincerity and honesty of others, the author shows that, in learning to employ these two distinct concepts correctly, users of language are learning that communicative truthfulness is morally significant insofar as it manifests fairness (in the case of honesty) and the goods of affective human connectedness (in the case of sincerity). (...) In so doing, the author identifies important evaluative differences between sincerity and honesty and provides a substantive explanation for how our lived presumption about the communicative truthfulness of others is possible. (shrink)

The word “forgiveness” and its verbal form, “forgiving,” may appear to have one and the same meaning whenever it is used. But the first thesis of this essay is that several distinct kinds of human activity are denominated by this word, and their differences are philosophically important. The second thesis of this essay is that some of the human activities denominated by this word have a close connection with hope, more specifically with hoping-in-a-person. The third thesis of this essay is (...) that, because of this connection, some kinds of forgiving have important communal aspects that are often overlooked. The essay develops its three theses through discussions of the expression “forgive and forgot,” a theme from Charles Bosk’s study, Forgive and Remember, a scene from Jane Austen’s, Emma, and a description of forgiving by theologian and spiritual writer, Louis Every. (shrink)

Berger (2019) argues effectively that “representativeness is more aptly understood as a variable that is multidimensional and continuous based on relational moral authority,” and also makes some useful suggestions about how taking this observation seriously might require changes in current patterns of practice regarding surrogates. But the essay raises additional important questions about how the Best Interest Standard (BIS) should be used among unrepresented patients and other patients as well because many surrogates besides those who “have no actionable knowledge of (...) a patient’s preferences” find themselves in positions in which they need to determine, with the physician, what is in the patient’s best interests. In this commentary, we therefore provide support for the ethical superiority of BIS judgments made by a multi-stakeholder process (rather than solo decision-makers), and sketch a process by which such judgments might be made. (shrink)

Our society’s professions, including the health professions, have long overlooked the possibility that one might learn something valuable about one’s own profession’s ethics by studying the ethics of other professions. Reflecting on the preceding article by Ritwik, Patterson, and Alfonzo-Echeverri, one can identify important similarities between dentistry’s professional ethics and the ethics of the other health professions. But there are also important differences between these professions’ ethics that should prompt reflection on the reasons for these differences, perhaps challenge something that (...) has been taken for granted in one’s own profession, and in any case facilitate better mutual understanding and more effective inter-professional collaboration. (shrink)

This essay presents an integrated account of Michael Wyschogrod's Zionism as a function of his broader theological anthropology, eschatology, and carnal interpretation of Israel's election. Against Leora Batnitzky, I show that Wyschogrod's Zionism, while definitively messianic, is decidedly not fanatical or fundamentalist. Against Meir Soloveichik, I show that Wyschogrod has maintained this non-fanatical messianism consistently throughout his career, and so his pacific political prescriptions are organically at one with his vigorous calls for Jewish sovereignty over the land.

This article seeks to explain and debunk some of the most common ways citizens in developed countries rationalize their failure to reduce carbon emissions by showing how our culturally inherited conception of individual responsibility conspires with certain ordinary moral intuitions to preclude judgments of complicitous accountability. I argue that accountability for climate change can be made intelligible by understanding each individual’s responsibility to be rooted in our shared capacity for collective action.

In this paper I clarify the distinction between actions performed under a social rule and a mere pattern of behavior through an examination of two distinctive features of actions performed under a social rule. Developing an argument proposed by H.L.A. Hart in The Concept of Law, I first argue that, where a social rule exists, there nonconformity/conformity to the pattern of behavior set down in the rule count as good reasons for criticism/commendation of actions covered by the rule. Secondly I (...) argue that, where a social rule exists, nonconformity/conformity to the pattern set down in the rule must be taken account of (at the risk of self-contradiction) in judging actions covered by the rule commendable or subject to criticism. This in turn means that, where a social rule exists, there can be no genuine exceptions to the rule because the notion of a genuine exception to a social rule makes no sense. (shrink)

In the field of contemporary metaethics, discontinuity theories that also want to defend the objectivity of moral claims tend to be broadly Kantian.While several such theories have made good use of what William Hosmer Smith labels a “narrow phenomenology” of ‘what it is like’ for agents to be confronted with what appear to be objective, categorical demands, he rightly observes that “they haven’t yet fully articulated the experiences that make this moral deliberation possible and to which it is beholden” (p. (...) xiii). Drawing contemporary moral philosophers into conversation with the “broad” phenomenological philosophy of Husserl, Heidegger, and Levinas, The Phenomenology of Moral Normativity presents an original and insightful alternative to the Kantian theories that have dominated this corner of the metaethical landscape, and in so doing, sheds new light on the value of transcendental phenomenology for metaethics more generally. (shrink)

Trust is a crucial component of the relationship between a professional and those whom the professional serves because those served often lack the past experience and specialized training necessary to adequately assess the reliability of the professional’s judgments on their behalf. This article is an attempt to enhance our understanding of the conditions under which client trust of a professional is plausible. Trust, I will explain, is an emotional attitude with a unique evaluative dimension that can lead the one who (...) trusts to anticipate that the one trusted will not betray her even when she cannot adequately assess evidence of the trusted’s reliability. It is, however, precisely because evaluating someone’s trustworthiness differs in important respects from assessing their reliability that substantive trust of a professional is implausible in cases where those served by a particular profession, for example, medicine or journalism, conceive of it as merely a commercial enterprise. (shrink)

One of the distinguishing features of late-modern democratic politics is the extent to which the media, voting public, and politicians are preoccupied with the personal sincerity of political leaders. This chapter explores the role such a preoccupation has played in reshaping our understanding of political accountability. Through a philosophical investigation of the rhetorical force of sincerity in verbal responses to terrorist acts, I show how an excessive concern with the sincerity of political leaders limits the role of truth in political (...) discourse and, thereby, the possibility for responsible political action. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between teaching and consulting in clinical ethics teaching and the role of the ethics teacher in clinical decision-making. Three roles of the clinical ethics teacher are discussed and illustrated with examples from the authors' experience. Two models of the ethics consultant are contrasted, with an argument presented for the ethics consultant as decision facilitator. A concluding section points to some of the challenges of clinical ethics teaching.

Health care is not merely a matter of individual encounters between patients and physicians or other health care personnel. For patients and those who provide health care come to these encounters already possessed of learned habits of perception and judgment, valuation and action, which define their roles in relation to one another and affect every aspect of their encounter. So the presuppositions of these encounters must be examined if our understanding of patients' autonomy is to be complete. In this paper (...) I sketch three models of what is presupposed in the relationship between the health care professional and the lay patient; and I discuss the ways in which patients' autonomy is preserved and/or compromised under each of the three models. The models discussed are the Guild Model, the Commercial Model, and the Interactive Model. (shrink)

The concept of basic healt.h care has grown steadily in importance in recent years as more and more of those who reflect on the issue of a right to health care conclude that we need to distinguish between kinds of health care to which people do have a right and others to which they do not have a right. There is little consensus on where to draw this line. But there does seem to be general agreement that, if this distinction (...) is valid, it is so because some kinds of health care are less important, less essential, less something than others, and because the right to health care (if there is such a thing) extends only to those kinds of health care that are more important, more essential, more whatever-it-is. A number of authors have used the term 'basic' to represent this something and this is the term which I shall use. In this article, I shall offer a theory of what we mean by basic health care. I shall do this by developing, in Section 1 of the paper, a general theory of kinds of needs. In Section 2 I will give a brief account of the special moral significance of the levels of need which I designate as basic. In Sections 3-4 1 shall try to identify, in the context of the health care resources available in our society, the health care needs which fall into the previously developed categories of basic need. (shrink)

Concerns of public responsibility and professional certification may sometimes mean it is unethical to teach ethics.

The word “forgiveness” and its verbal form, “forgiving,” may appear to have one and the same meaning whenever it is used. But the first thesis of this essay is that several distinct kinds of human activity are denominated by this word, and their differences are philosophically important. The second thesis of this essay is that some of the human activities denominated by this word have a close connection with hope, more specifically with hoping-in-a-person. The third thesis of this essay is (...) that, because of this connection, some kinds of forgiving have important communal aspects that are often overlooked. The essay develops its three theses through discussions of the expression “forgive and forgot,” a theme from Charles Bosk’s study, Forgive and Remember, a scene from Jane Austen’s, Emma, and a description of forgiving by theologian and spiritual writer, Louis Every. (shrink)

Whether one believes that the embryo has rights from the instant of conception, or that the embryo has no moral rights at all, the conclusion about the fate of unused frozen embryos is the same: they ought to be preserved in their frozen state until they are implanted in a woman's womb or are no longer able to survive implantation.

The notion of group responsibility has received some very fruitful examination in recent years. But there still remains an important commonsense objection to this notion. Moral responsibility for an action is ordinarily linked to and held to depend upon the action's being the product of an act of choice on the part of the agent. The thrust of the objection here is that it is extremely difficult to understand how intentional acts like acts of choice can be properly attributed to (...) a group. The notion of a group "consciousness" does not seem a very satisfactory resolution of this problem. In this paper I shall propose that there are actually three distinct processes, as well as many hybrid combinations of them there, by which groups "make choices." That is, when we look at the activities of groups, we discover three different kinds of analogues to the act of choice of the individual person. I shall be illustrating each of these models with examples of health care decisions. In addition, I shall also try to illustrate how the level of personal moral responsibility of each of the individuals making up the group, i.e., each one's responsibility for the group's action, can be seen to flow from the particular role that an individual plays within the process of "group choice" that is involved. In this way, I hope to shed light not only on the topics of group choice, group responsibility, and the interplay of personal and group responsibility, but also to show concretely the valuable role that these themes can play in our understanding of the moral elements of the health care setting. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This article demonstrates the unique value of a Husserlian phenomenological account of the affective (or “feeling”) dimension of emotional experience for realizing Aristotle’s vision of the cultivation of virtue. Through an analysis of envy, the author defends the claim that the affective dimension of self-assessment is central to the process of conceptualization by which we learn to apprehend our own emotional responses. Analytic conceptual analyses that dismiss the subjective, affective correlate of emotional experiences, therefore, fail to take seriously what is (...) involved in learning from one's mistakes. (shrink)

Based on the Fifty-fifth Annual Meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, held at the Chase-Park Plaza Hotel in St. Louis, April 3-5, 1981. Includes bibliographical references.