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Added by: John Baldari
Abstract: Movies like American Sniper and The Hurt Locker hint at the inner scars our soldiers incur during service in a war zone. The moral dimensions of their psychological injuries--guilt, shame, feeling responsible for doing wrong or being wronged-elude conventional treatment. Georgetown philosophy professor Nancy Sherman turns her focus to these moral injuries in Afterwar. She argues that psychology and medicine alone are inadequate to help with many of the most painful questions veterans are bringing home from war. Trained in both ancient ethics and psychoanalysis, and with twenty years of experience working with the military, Sherman draws on in-depth interviews with servicemen and women to paint a richly textured and compassionate picture of the moral and psychological aftermath of America's longest wars. She explores how veterans can go about reawakening their feelings without becoming re-traumatized; how they can replace resentment with trust; and the changes that need to be made in order for this to happen-by military courts, VA hospitals, and the civilians who have been shielded from the heaviest burdens of war. 2.6 million soldiers are currently returning home from war, the greatest number since Vietnam. Facing an increase in suicides and post-traumatic stress, the military has embraced measures such as resilience training and positive psychology to heal mind as well as body. Sherman argues that some psychological wounds of war need a kind of healing through moral understanding that is the special province of philosophical engagement and listening.Sherwin, Susan. No Longer Patient: Feminist Ethics and Health Care1992, Temple University Press.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Introduction: This book attempts to deepen common understandings of what considerations are relevant in discussions of bioethics. It is meant to offer a clearer picture of what morally acceptable health care might look like. I argue that a feminist understanding of the social realities of our world is necessary if we are to recognize and develop an adequate analysis of the ethical issues that arise in the context of health care.Comment:
Slowther, Anne. Truth-telling in health care2009, Clinical Ethics 4 (4):173-175.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: This article is about the description of all the situations in which clinician find difficult to tell the truth to patients regarding their condition. Moral importance of telling the truth is recognized in both moral theory and in the practical reality of everyday living. However, empirical studies continue to show that health- care professional identify the question of truth-telling and disclosure as a source of moral and psychological discomfort in many situations. Other situation creating difficulties for clinicians are not related directly to the patient's wants or needs regarding their illness but to wider issues such as disclosure of medical error and identifying poor performance in colleagues.Comment:
Sommers, Roseanna. Commonsense Consent2020, Yale Law Journal, 2232-
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Added by: Tomasz Zyglewicz, Shannon Brick, Michael GreerAbstract:
Consent is a bedrock principle in democratic society and a primary means through which our law expresses its commitment to individual liberty. While there seems to be broad consensus that consent is important, little is known about what people think consent is. This article undertakes an empirical investigation of people’s ordinary intuitions about when consent has been granted. Using techniques from moral psychology and experimental philosophy, it advances the core claim that most laypeople think consent is compatible with fraud, contradicting prevailing normative theories of consent. This empirical phenomenon is observed across over two dozen scenarios spanning numerous contexts in which consent is legally salient, including sex, surgery, participation in medical research, warrantless searches by police, and contracts. Armed with this empirical finding, this Article revisits a longstanding legal puzzle about why the law refuses to treat fraudulently procured consent to sexual intercourse as rape. It exposes how prevailing explanations for this puzzle have focused too narrowly on sex. It suggests instead that the law may be influenced by the commonsense understanding of consent in all sorts of domains, including and beyond sexual consent. Meanwhile, the discovery of “commonsense consent” allows us to see that the problem is much deeper and more pervasive than previous commentators have realized. The findings expose a large—and largely unrecognized—disconnect between commonsense intuition and the dominant philosophical conception of consent. The Article thus grapples with the relationship between folk morality, normative theory, and the law.Comment (from this Blueprint): Content warning: details of rape. This article presents a series of experimental studies that have an important result for understanding a legal puzzle that has plagued many feminist theorists. Sommers argues that the dominant explanation of the puzzle has been wrongly diagnosed by feminist theorists, and that attention to folk intuitions about the nature of consent can explain the law's inconsistent treatment of consent that is procured by deception.
Spencer, Quayshawn. A radical solution to the Race problem2014, Philosophy of Science 81 (5):1025-1038-
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Anonymous
Abstract: It has become customary among philosophers and biologists to claim that folk racial classification has no biological basis. This paper attempts to debunk that view. In this paper, I show that ‘race’, as used in current U.S. race talk, picks out a biologically real entity. I do this by, first, showing that ‘race’, in this use, is not a kind term, but a proper name for a set of human population groups. Next, using recent human genetic clustering results, I show that this set of human population groups is a partition of human populations that I call ‘the Blumenbach partition’.
Comment: This is a great paper to use for teaching metaphysics of race
Srinivasan, Amia. Does Anyone Have the Right to Sex?2018, London Review of Books, 40 (6): 5-10.-
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Added by: Andrea Blomqvist, Contributed by: Nadia MehdiAbstract:
Srinivasan attempts to address the question of how we are able to dwell in the ambivalent place where we acknowledge that no one is obligated to desire anyone else, that no one has a right to be desired, but also that who is desired and who isn’t is a political question, a question usually answered by more general patterns of domination and exclusion.Comment: This text is an insightful call to bring discussions of sexual consent back to a politics of desire. It would make a great addition to syllabi covering the philosophy of sex.
Steinbock, Bonnie. The Intentional Termination of Life1979, In Steinbock, Bonnie and Alastair Norcross (eds.), Killing and Letting Die. Fordham University Press.-
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Added by: Carl Fox
Content: Steinbock argues that cessation of treatment can be for reasons other than the ending of life, specifically respecting a patient's right to refuse treatment and when treatment would not be a net benefit. She concludes that the AMA can consistently reject intentional killing and hold that it is sometimes permissible to withdraw treatment without relying on the controversial passive/active euthanasia distinction.Comment: Very useful chapter for discussion in a module about ethical issues at the end of life.
Steinbock, Bonnie. Speciesism and the Idea of Equality1978, Philosophy 53 (204): 247-256.-
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Added by: Rochelle DuFord
Abstract: Most of us believe that we are entitled to treat members of other species in ways which would be considered wrong if inflicted on members of our own species. We kill them for food, keep them confined, use them in painful experiments. The moral philosopher has to ask what relevant difference justifies this difference in treatment. A look at this question will lead us to re-examine the distinctions which we have assumed make a moral difference.Comment: This journal article is a response to Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, though you need not have read Animal Liberation in order to understand this article, as Steinbock provides a clear overview of Singer's main claims. The text would be useful for rebutting Singer's arguments in a course on animal ethics or environmental ethics. It would also be of use in a course on moral theory that involved questions of moral consideration or moral equality.
Steinbock, Bonnie. The Logical Case for “Wrongful Life”1986, The Hastings Center Report 16 (2): 15-20.-
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Added by: Rochelle DuFord
Summary: In this article, Steinbock solves the logical problem with torts based on wrongful life. She argues that a wrongful life suit need not show that it would have been better for the infant to have never been born, but merely that the infant is impaired to such a degree that the infant has no capacity for fulfilling even very basic human interests. She claims that this criteria is capable of serving as the basis for a tort claim concerning the recovery of extraordinary medical care and specialized training.Comment: This journal article would be a good addition to a course on medical ethics that covered some legal questions or questions about serverely impaired infants. Steinbock presents overviews of a number of wrongful life suits brought in the United States and provides a philosophical analysis of the possibility of the harm of being born.
Steinbock, Bonnie. Life Before Birth: The Moral and Legal Status of Embryos and Fetuses1994, Ethics 104 (2):408-410.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: This book provides a coherent framework for addressing bioethical issues in which the moral status of embryos and fetuses is relevant. It is based on the 'interest view,' which ascribes moral standing to beings with interests, and connects the possession of interests with the capacity for conscious awareness or sentience. The theoretical framework is applied to up-to-date ethical and legal topics, including abortion, prenatal torts, wrongful life, the crime of feticide, substance abuse by pregnant women, compulsory cesareans, assisted reproduction, and stem cell research. Along the way, difficult philosophical problems, such as identity and the nonidentity problem are thoroughly explored.Comment:
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Sherman, Nancy. Afterwar: Healing the Moral Wounds of our Soldiers
2015, New York: Oxford University Press.
Comment: Use this text as an easy-reader alongside more rigorous texts to shore up arguments from case studies and example.