(No abstract is available for this citation).

This article is a reflection on the use of case study material in the teaching of ethics to nursing students. Given the main aims of a course in ethics for nurses and the limited effectiveness of formal moral theory, it seems inevitable that the mainstay of nursing ethics courses will continue to be case study material. This approach has recently been criticized on a number of grounds. The author suggests here that disquiet over teaching ethics in this way should motivate (...) a concern not with whether, but how, teaching by cases is to be undertaken. (shrink)

The point of Pragmatic Bioethics is to view bioethics through the lens of American pragmatism. The book is in three parts. The papers in part one look at the “pragmatic method” and bioethics in general; those in part two are intended to suggest that bioethical debates can be informed by parts of the canon of classical American pragmatism; those in part three apply aspects of pragmatism to specific bioethical issues more overtly. This structure is odd in two related respects: the (...) difference between the papers in parts two and three is unclear, and papers dealing in similar ways with similar bioethical issues are placed in each of these parts.My view of how philosophy does, and should, apply to bioethics is at odds with that implied by Pragmatic Bioethics. I think bioethics can be informed by philosophy in two ways. Firstly, specific bioethical problems can be elucidated by substantive philosophical data . Secondly, and more pervasively, bioethics would benefit from acquiring certain intellectual habits distinctive of philosophy . The different view taken in this book is that bioethics might look to the methodology implied by American pragmatism, and specific bioethical issues might be addressed by reference to American pragmatist writings. I feel that this different view was only partially convincing. There are two main sets …. (shrink)