Ilora Finlay and Robert Preston: Death by appointment: a rational guide to the assisted dying debate
(Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics)
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - January 3, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
What is morally at stake when using algorithms to make medical diagnoses? Expanding the discussion beyond risks and harms
AbstractIn this paper, we examine the qualitative moral impact of machine learning-based clinical decision support systems in the process of medical diagnosis. To date, discussions about machine learning in this context have focused on problems that can be measured and assessed quantitatively, such as by estimating the extent of potential harm or calculating incurred risks. We maintain that such discussions neglect the qualitative moral impact of these technologies. Drawing on the philosophical approaches of technomoral change and technological mediation theory, which explore the interplay between technologies and morality...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - January 1, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Pain priors, polyeidism, and predictive power: a preliminary investigation into individual differences in ordinary thought about pain
We describe a preliminary empirical study and present a small number of findings, which will be explored further in future work. The results we discuss are part of a larger programme of work which seeks to integrate philosophical pain research into clinical practice. For example, we hypothesise that variations in how patients with chronic pain are thinking about pain could help predict their responses to treatment. (Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics)
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - December 17, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
A plea for an experimental philosophy of medicine
(Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics)
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - December 17, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Transposon dynamics and the epigenetic switch hypothesis
AbstractThe recent explosion of interest in epigenetics is often portrayed as the dawning of a scientific revolution that promises to transform biomedical science along with developmental and evolutionary biology. Much of this enthusiasm surrounds what we call the epigenetic switch hypothesis, which regards certain examples of epigenetic inheritance as an adaptive organismal response to environmental change. This interpretation overlooks an alternative explanation in terms of coevolutionary dynamics between parasitic transposons and the host genome. This raises a question about whether epigenetics researchers tend to overl...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - December 17, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Experimental philosophy of medicine and the concepts of health and disease
AbstractIf one had to identify the biggest change within the philosophical tradition in the twenty-first century, it would certainly be the rapid rise of experimental philosophy to address differences in intuitions about concepts. It is, therefore, surprising that the philosophy of medicine has so far not drawn on the tools of experimental philosophy in the context of a particular conceptual debate that has overshadowed all others in the field: the long-standing dispute between so-called naturalists and normativists about the concepts of health and disease. In this paper, I defend and advocate the use of empirical methods ...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - December 1, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Why bother the public? A critique of Leslie Cannold ’s empirical research on ectogenesis
AbstractCan discussion with members of the public show philosophers where they have gone wrong? Leslie Cannold argues that it can in her 1995 paper ‘Women, Ectogenesis and Ethical Theory’, which investigates the ways in which women reason about abortion and ectogenesis (the gestation of foetuses in artificial wombs). In her study, Cannold interviewed female non-philosophers. She divided her participants into separate ‘pro-life’ and ‘p ro-choice’ groups and asked them to consider whether the availability of ectogenesis would change their views about the morality of dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. The women i...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - November 30, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Experimental philosophical bioethics and normative inference
AbstractThis paper explores an emerging sub-field of both empirical bioethics and experimental philosophy, which has been called “experimental philosophical bioethics” (bioxphi). As an empirical discipline, bioxphi adopts the methods of experimental moral psychology and cognitive science; it does so to make sense of the eliciting factors and underlying cognitive processes that shape people’s moral judgments, particularl y about real-world matters of bioethical concern. Yet, as a normative discipline situated within the broader field of bioethics, it also aims to contribute to substantive ethical questions about what ...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - November 17, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Cross-cultural bioethics: lessons from the Sub-Saharan African philosophy of ubuntu
(Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics)
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - November 14, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Erwin B. Montgomery: Medical reasoning: the nature and use of medical knowledge
(Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics)
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - September 15, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Patient confidentiality, the duty to protect, and psychotherapeutic care: perspectives from the philosophy of ubuntu
AbstractThis paper demonstrates howubuntu relational philosophy may be used to ground beneficial coercive care without necessarily violating a patient ’s dignity. Specifically, it argues thatubuntu philosophy is a useful theory for developing necessary conditions for determining a patient ’s potential dangerousness; setting reasonable limits to the duty to protect; balancing the long-term good of providing unimpeded therapy for patients who need it with the short-term good of protecting at-risk parties; and advancing a framework for future case law and appropriate regulations in th e care of psychotherapy patients. Is...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - September 15, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Telling it like it was: dignity therapy and moral reckoning in palliative care
This article offers a conceptual analysis of self-respect and self-esteem that informs the ethics of psychotherapy in palliative care. It is focused on Chochinov ’s Dignity Therapy, an internationally recognized treatment offered to dying patients who express a need to bolster their sense of self-worth. Although Dignity Therapy aims to help such patients affirm their value through summarized life stories that are shared with their survivors, it is not grou nded in a robust theory of self-respect. There is reason to be skeptical about deathbed narratives, and Dignity Therapy can unintentionally encourage distorted represe...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - August 11, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Why bother the public? A critique of Leslie Cannold s empirical research on ectogenesis
AbstractCan discussion with members of the public show philosophers where they have gone wrong? Leslie Cannold argues that it can in her 1995 paper Women, Ectogenesis and Ethical Theory, which investigates the ways in which women reason about abortion and ectogenesis (the gestation of foetuses in artificial wombs). In her study, Cannold interviewed female non-philosophers. She divided her participants into separate pro-life and p ro-choice groups and asked them to consider whether the availability of ectogenesis would change their views about the morality of dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. The women in Cannolds ...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - August 1, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Diagnosing death: the “fuzzy area” between life and decomposition
AbstractThis paper aims to determine whether it is necessary to propose the extreme of putrefaction as the only unmistakable sign in diagnosing the death of the human organism, as David Oderberg does in a recent paper. To that end, we compare Oderberg ’s claims to those of other authors who align with him in espousing the so-called theory of hylomorphism but who defend either a neurological or a circulatory-respiratory criterion for death. We then establish which interpretation of biological phenomena is the most reasonable within the metaphysi cal framework of hylomorphism. In this regard, we hold that technology does n...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - April 13, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Patient confidentiality, the duty to protect, and psychotherapeutic care: perspectives from the philosophy of ubuntu
AbstractThis paper demonstrates howubuntu relational philosophy may be used to ground beneficial coercive care without necessarily violating a patient s dignity. Specifically,it argues thatubuntu philosophy is a useful theory for developing necessary conditions for determining a patient s potential dangerousness; setting reasonable limits to the duty to protect; balancing the long-term good of providing unimpeded therapy for patients who need it with the short-term good of protecting at-risk parties; and advancing a framework for future case law and appropriate regulations in th e care of psychotherapy patients. Issues ...
Source: Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - April 1, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
