Latest additions
-
Expand entry
-
Publisher’s Note: Publisher: This book is a concise overview of the relevance and application of moral philosophy to all those involved in business and employment. It is the ideal introduction for beginning students of applied philosophy, business or management ethics.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Simon FoktAbstract: Are doctors and nurses bound by just the same constraints as everyone else in regard to honesty? What, anyway, does honesty require? Telling no lies? Avoiding intentional deception by whatever means? From a utilitarian standpoint lying would seem to be on the same footing as other forms of intentional deception: yielding the same consequences. But utilitarianism fails to explain the wrongness of lying. Doctors and nurses, like everyone else, have a prima facie duty not to lie - but again like everyone else, they are not duty-bound to avoid intentional deception, lying apart; except where it would involve a breach of trust.
Comment: Useful in teaching on applied ethics issues related to trust, and general values in normative ethics. To provide an interesting narrative and selection of views, this text can be used alongside Jennifer Saul's 'Just go ahead and lie' and Clea Rees' 'Better lie!'
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Simon FoktIntroduction: Dworkin puts forth two main arguments to justify adhering to the wishes the patient expressed before becoming demented. As he sees it, this course of action both promotes the patient’s well-being and is required in order to respect the patient’s autonomy. In each argument, while I consider most of the ideas well-founded, I challenge the crucial premise. In the argument focused on the patient’s well-being, I dispute the claim that demented patients are no longer capable of generating what Dworkin calls “critical interests.” In the argument concerning autonomy, I question the premise that demented patients no longer possess the “capacity for autonomy.”7 In each case, I will trace how the problematic premise arises within Dworkin’s argument and then develop an alternative account of the relevant capacity.
Comment: Jaworska asks: 'Should we, in our efforts to best respect a patient with dementia, give priority to the preferences and attitudes this person held before becoming demented, or should we follow the person’s present preferences?' (p. 108). The article offers a useful critical overview of the views expressed by Rebecca Dresser and Ronald Dworkin. It is best used as a primary reading in ethics classes focusing directly on medical ethics or autonomy, or as further reading in general ethics teaching on autonomy.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Simon FoktAbstract: This article critically examines the constitution of impairment in prenatal testing and screening practices and various discourses that surround these technologies. While technologies to test and screen (for impairment) prenatally are claimed to enhance women's capacity to be self-determining, make informed reproductive choices, and, in effect, wrest control of their bodies from a patriarchal medical establishment, I contend that this emerging relation between pregnant women and reproductive technologies is a new strategy of a form of power that began to emerge in the late eighteenth century. Indeed, my argument is that the constitution of prenatal impairment, by and through these practices and procedures, is a widening form of modern government that increasingly limits the field of possible conduct in response to pregnancy. Hence, the government of impairment in utero is inextricably intertwined with the government of the maternal body.
Comment: Most useful in teaching on ethical issues at the beginning of life. It can be also used in teaching on the ethics of autonomy, freedom of choice, and feminism in general.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Simon FoktAbstract:
Comment: This text offers an introduction to ecofeminism. It discusses the history of associating maleness with culture and femaleness with nature and identifies some of the issues which led to the current ecological crisis. The text has the potential to challenge received views and inspire a lively discussion, and as such it is best used as an introductory text in classes on environmental ethics and on feminist ethics.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Simon FoktPublisher’s Note:
Comment: This volume addresses issues concerning the rights of patients. Particular issues examined include the patient's right to consent to or refuse treatment, and issues related to valid consent and its dependence on information, including full details regarding the risks associated with a particular course of treatment. Useful as further reading in applied ethics classes, or in any moral or political philosophy teaching related to consent. Additionally, can be useful in discussions on the differences and similarities between the moral and legal approaches to the issue of consent.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Simon FoktDiversifying Syllabi: Justice requires us to acknowledge the claims of morally or philosophically unreasonable persons, as long as they are politically reasonable; such people must be tolerated and considered part of the social contract. Toleration as wide public justification is the proper response to the pluralism characteristic of modern democratic societies.
Comment: This text is useful as a commentary or response to the debate about (un)reasonableness and legitimacy sparked by Rawls. More specifically, it offers a distinction between political and philosophical reasonableness, which the authors use to argue against interpreting or developing Rawls's political liberalism in a less tolerant direction. The section on Barbara Herman's 'Pluralism and the Community of Moral Judgment' helpfully distils a major faultline within liberal political philosophy.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: John BaldariPublisher’s Note: Publisher: This book examines some of the primary questions for the impassibility debate through the lens of contemporary philosophy of emotion: is the property of being able to experience emotions a susceptibility and a weakness, or a capacity and a strength? What does it mean to experience emotions, and what sort of being is able to experience them? In examining these questions, it explores the relationship between emotions, body, will and intelligence, addressing questions concerning whether emotions are essentially physiological or cognitive, whether emotions detract from intelligence or may actually contribute towards it, and whether (and to what extent) emotions can be controlled and/or cultivated. The book moves away from some of the artificially extreme accounts of emotion towards a more subtle account that sees most emotions as on a spectrum between cognitive and physiological, voluntary and non-voluntary.
Comment: This book will be of interest to those working within contemporary philosophy of emotion, its primary value lies in applying these insights to the impassibility debate within theology and philosophy of religion.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Carl FoxContent: Tsai argues that offering another agent reasons can sometimes count as paternalism when it is motivated by distrust of the other's agency, conveys this lack of confidence, and intervenes in the target's sphere of agency.
Comment: Best suited as further or specialised reading on paternalism and agency.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Carl FoxAbstract: Well-being in the broadest sense is what we have when we are living lives that are not necessarily morally good, but good for us. In philosophy, well-being has been an important topic of inquiry for millennia. In psychology, well-being as a topic has been gathering steam very recently and this research is now at a stage that warrants the attention of philosophers. The most popular theories of well-being in the two fields are similar enough to suggest the possibility of interdisciplinary collaboration. In this essay I provide an overview of three of the main questions that arise from psychologists’ work on well-being, and highlight areas that invite philosophical input. Those questions center on the nature, measurement, and moral significance of well-being. I also argue that the life-satisfaction theory is particularly well suited to meet the various demands on a theory of well-being.
Comment: Tiberius provides a nice exposition of the key approaches to well-being in the philosophical tradition and briefly argues for the 'life-satisfaction' account, but the main thrust of the paper is to introduce areas of overlap with research in psychology and to flag up ways in which philosophy could make a contribution. Some sections could certainly serve as introductory reading to either the philosophical or psychological literature, and the paper as a whole would work well in an applied or inter-disciplinary module.
Comment: This is an excellent introduction to business ethics for undergraduate students, presented mostly from a virtue ethics perspective. It is written in a very accessible way and chapters are concluded with sets of study questions. The book can be used as a textbook in applied and business ethics modules, though it might be useful to supplement it with some more general introduction to ethical theory and other readings which are not embedded in virtue ethics.