A medical student's ability to present a case history is a critical skill that is difficult to teach. Case histories presented without theatrical engagement may fail to catch the attention of their intended recipients. More engaging presentations incorporate ‘stage presence’, eye contact, vocal inflection, interesting detail and succinct, well organised performances. They convey stories effectively without wasting time. To address the didactic challenge for instructing future doctors in how to ‘act’, the Mayo Medical School and The Mayo Clinic Center for (...) Humanities in Medicine partnered with the Guthrie Theater to pilot the programme ‘Telling the Patient's Story’. Guthrie teaching artists taught storytelling skills to medical students through improvisation, writing, movement and acting exercises. Mayo Clinic doctors participated and provided students with feedback on presentations and stories from their own experiences in patient care. The course's primary objective was to build students' confidence and expertise in storytelling. These skills were then applied to presenting cases and communicating with patients in a fresher, more engaging way. This paper outlines the instructional activities as aligned with course objectives. Progress was tracked by comparing pre-course and post-course surveys from the seven participating students. All agreed that the theatrical techniques were effective teaching methods. Moreover, this project can serve as an innovative model for how arts and humanities professionals can be incorporated for teaching and professional development initiatives at all levels of medical education. (shrink)

We live in an era where our health is linked to that of others across the globe, and nothing brings this home better than the specter of a pandemic. This paper explores the findings of town hall meetings associated with the Canadian Program of Research on Ethics in a Pandemic , in which focus groups met to discuss issues related to the global governance of an influenza pandemic. Two competing discourses were found to be at work: the first was (...) based upon an economic rationality and the second upon a humanitarian rationality. The implications for public support and the long-term sustainability of new global norms, networks, and regulations in global public health are discussed. (shrink)

Moral functioning is a defining feature of human personhood and human social life. Moral Psychology provides an integrative and evaluative overview of the theoretical and empirical traditions that have attempted to make sense of moral cognition, prosocial behavior, and the development of virtuous character.This is the first book to integrate a comprehensive review of the psychological literatures with allied traditions in ethics. Moral rationality and decisionmaking; the development of the sense of fairness and justice, and of prosocial dispositions; as well (...) as the notion of moral self and moral identity and their relation to issues of character and virtue are fully discussed in the rich contexts provided by psychological and philosophical paradigms. Lapsley emphasizes parenting and educational strategies for influencing moral behavior, reasoning, and character development, and charts a line of research for the “post-Kohlbergian era” in moral psychology.This book will be an invaluable text for advanced courses in moral psychology, as taught in departments of psychology, education, and philosophy. It will also prove to be a standard reference work for researchers and ethicists alike. (shrink)

What does the history of Christian views of economic life mean for economic life in the twenty-first century? Here Daniel Finn reviews the insights provided by a large number of texts, from the Bible and the early church, to the Middle Ages and the Protestant Reformation, to treatments of the subject in the last century. Relying on both social science and theology, Finn then turns to the implications of this history for economic life today. Throughout, the book invites the (...) reader to engage the sources and to develop an answer to the volume's basic question. (shrink)

In this book, Daniel K. Miller articulates a new vision of human and animal relationships based on the foundational love ethic within Christianity. Framed around Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan, Animal Ethics and Theologythoughtfully examines the shortcomings of utilitarian and rights-based approaches to animal ethics. By considering the question of animals within the Christian concept of neighbourly love, Miller provides an alternative narrative for understanding the complex relationships that humans have with other animals. This book addresses significant theological (...) questions such as: Does being created in the image of God present a meaningful distinction between humans and other animals? What does it mean for humans to have dominion over animals? Is meat eating a moral problem for Christians? In addition to drawing out the significance of Christian theology for field of animal ethics this book also engages environmental and feminist ethics. Miller brings a theological perspective to such questions as: Should care for animals be distinguished from care for the environment, and what role should human emotions play in our ethical dealings with other animals? As the title suggests, this book provides fresh insight into the theological significance of human relationships with other animals. mental and feminist ethics. Miller brings a theological perspective to such questions as: Should care for animals be distinguished from care for the environment, and what role should human emotions play in our ethical dealings with other animals? As the title suggests, this book provides fresh insight into the theological significance of human relationships with other animals. (shrink)

Using a real-life case involving an accidental discovery of misattributed paternity as a springboard for discussion, I reflect on several practical and theoretical issues surrounding truth-telling in the doctor-patient relationship. I present the moral dilemma and identify arguments in favour of and against disclosure. I then examine the theoretical difficulties in balancing conflicting reasons and in establishing what constitutes the 'truth'. I conclude that withholding the information from the patients would be ethically permissible and, more generally, that honesty is not (...) always the best policy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:429 THE HUME LITERATURE FOR 1985 The Hume literature from 1925 to 1976 has been thoroughly covered in my book Fifty Years of Hume Scholarship: A Bibliographical Guide (Edinburgh University Press, 1978; £9.50), which also lists the main earlier writings on Hume. (The book is still in print.) Publications of the years 1977 to 1984 were listed in previous issues of Hume Studies. What follows here will bring the (...) record up to the end of 1985. Readers are invited to inform me of any omissions, and keenly requested to send me offprints of their own articles and reviews. Hardly any do so at present, and it would greatly ease the labour of collection. The intention is to maintain a complete bibliographical record of critical work on Hume, by the regular publication in Hume Studies of this annual bibliography, with addenda consisting of items omitted through ignorance in previous years. References to recently appearing reviews (of books from earlier lists) are given at the end. The following abbreviations of journal titles are used here: APQ American Philosophical Quarterly HPQ History of Philosophy Quarterly JHI Journal of the History of Ideas JHP Journal of the History of Philosophy JP Journal of Philosophy PAS Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society PB Philosophical Books PQ Philosophical Quarterly PR Philosophical Review RIP Revue Internationale de Philosophie RM Review of Metaphysics TLS Times Literary Supplement 430 Other abbreviations should be obvious enough, and mainly follow the British Standard (no. 4148). AGASSI, J. "The Unity of Hume's Thought", Hume Studies (10th Anniv. Issue), 87-109. AUSTIN, W. H. "Philo's Reversal", Phil. Topics 13, no. 2, 103-12. BADIA CABRERA, M. A. "Hume's Natural History of Religion: Positive Science or Metaphysical Vision of Religion", Diálogos 20, 71-8. BAIER, A. Postures of the Mind, ch. 10 ("Promises, Promises, Promises"), ch. 11 ("Civilizing Practices"). London, etc. BEHAN, D. P. "Hume's Labyrinth", HPg 2, 309-22. BENNETT, D. "Hume's Pride", in B. Vermazen, Essays on Davidson, 89-91. Oxford. BIRO, J. L. "Hume and Cognitive Science", HPQ 2, 257-74. BLANDINO, G. "Le causalitate. Discussion sur le criticas de D. Hume" [in Interlingua, with French and English], Aquinas 28, 247-57. BRICKE, J. "Locke, Hume and the Nature of Volitions", Hume Studies (10th Anniv. Issue), 15-51. BROOKS, D. "Hume's Bundle Theory of the Mind", S. African J. Phil. 4, 75-84. BROOKS, D. H. M. "Strawson, Hume, and the Unity of Consciousness", Mind 94, 583-6. CAMPBELL, K. "John Passmore and Hume's Moral Philosophy", Hume Studies 11, 109-24. CAPALDI, N. "The Historical and Philosophical Significance of Hume's Theory of the Self", in A.J. Holland, Philosophy, Its History and Historiography, 271-85, Dordrecht, etc. 431 CARLSON, G. R. "Hume and the Moral Realists", Australas. J. Phil. 63, 407-18. CHAKRABARTI, T. K. "Hume's Definitions of Cause", J. Indian Council Phil. Res., 67-75. CHEN, W. -S. Article (in Chinese) on Hume on personal identity, in Phil. Rev. (Taiwan) 8, 123-42. CLARK, S. R. L. "Hume, Animals and the Objectivity of Morals", P£ 35, 117-33. CLERO, J. P. La philosophie des passions chez David Hume. (301 pp.) Paris. DANIEL, S. C "The Problem of Identity of Objects in Hume's Philosophy", Indian Phil. Q. 12, 1916. DAVIE, W. "Hume on Morality, Action, and Character", HPQ 2, 337-48. DEWITT, R. "Hume's Probability Argument of I, iv, 1", Hume Studies 11, 125-40. DONNICI, R. "Husserl sull' etica di Hume. Dalle lezioni inedite del 1902", Rivista di storia della filosofia 40, 449-70. ENC, B. "Hume on Causal Necessity: A Study from the Perspective of Hume's Theory of Passions", HPQ 2, 235-56. FERREIRA, M.J. "Hume's Naturalism - 'Proof and Practice", P£ 35, 45-57. FLAGE, D.E. "Hume on Memory and Causation", Hume Studies (10th Anniv. Issue), 168-88. [11 (1985) 166-72] FLAGE, D.E. "Perchance to Dream: A Reply to Traiger", Hume Studies 11, 173-82. (on Traiger 1985b) FLAGE, D.E. "Hume's Ethics", Phil. Topics 13, no. 3, 71-88. FLEW, A. "Impressions and Experiences: Public or Private?", Hume Studies 11, 183-91. 432 FOGELIN, R.J. Hume's Skepticism... (shrink)

This book is born out of two contradictions: first, it explores the making of meaning in a musical form that was made to lose its meaning at the turn of the nineteenth century; secondly, it is a history of a music that claims to have no history - absolute music. The book therefore writes against that notion of absolute music which tends to be the paradigm for most musicological and analytical studies. It is concerned not so much with what music (...) is, but with why and how meaning is constructed in instrumental music and what structures of knowledge need to be in place for such meaning to exist. From the thought of Vincenzo Galilei to that of Theodore Adorno, Daniel Chua suggests that instrumental music has always been a critical and negative force in modernity, even with its nineteenth-century apotheosis as 'absolute music'. (shrink)

edited by Tuija Takala and Matti Häyry, welcomes contributions on the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of bioethics.

Daniel K. Gardner explores the major philosophical ideas of the Confucian tradition, showing the profound social and political impact it had and continues to have in China.

In this engaging volume, Daniel Gardner explains the way in which the Four Books--_Great Learning_, _Analects_, _Mencius_, and _Maintaining Perfect Balance_--have been read and understood by the Chinese since the twelfth century. Selected passages in translation are accompanied by Gardner's comments, which incorporate selections from the commentary and interpretation of the renowned Neo-Confucian thinker, Zhu Xi. This study provides an ideal introduction to the basic texts in the Confucian tradition from the twelfth through the twentieth centuries. It guides the (...) reader through Zhu Xi's influential interpretation of the Four Books, showing how Zhu, through the genre of commentary, gave new coherence and meaning to these foundational texts. Since the Four Books with Zhu Xi's commentary served as the basic textbook for Chinese schooling and the civil service examinations for more than seven hundred years, this book illustrates as well the nature of the standard Chinese educational curriculum. (shrink)

Students and teachers of Chinese history and philosophy will not want to miss Daniel Gardner's accessible translation of the teachings of Chu Hsi —a luminary of the Confucian tradition who dominated Chinese intellectual life for centuries. Homing in on a primary concern of our own time, Gardner focuses on Chu Hsi's passionate interest in education and its importance to individual development. For hundreds of years, every literate person in China was familiar with Chu Hsi's teachings. They informed the curricula (...) of private academies and public schools and became the basis of the state's prestigious civil service examinations. Nor was Chu's influence limited to China. In Korea and Japan as well, his teachings defined the terms of scholarly debate and served as the foundation for state ideology. Chu Hsi was convinced that through education anyone could learn to be fully moral and thus travel the road to sagehood. Throughout his life, he struggled with the philosophical questions underlying education: What should people learn? How should they go about learning? What enables them to learn? What are the aims and the effects of learning? Part One of _Learning to Be a Sage_ examines Chu Hsi's views on learning and how he arrived at them. Part Two presents a translation of the chapters devoted to learning in the _Conversations of Master Chu_. (shrink)

The ever-growing acceptance and use of assisted human reproduction techniques has caused demand for “donated” sperm and eggs to outstrip supply. Medical professionals and others argue that monetary reward is the only way to recruit sufficient numbers of “donors”. Is this a clash between pragmatics and policy/ethics? Where monetary payments are the norm, alternative recruitment strategies used successfully elsewhere may not have been considered, nor the negative consequences of commercialism on all participants thought through. Considerations leading some countries to ban (...) the buying and selling of sperm, eggs and embryos are outlined and a case made that the collective welfare of all involved parties be the primary consideration in this, at times heated, debate. (shrink)

Caritas in veritate (Charity in Truth) is the ''social'' encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI, one of many papal encyclicals over the last 120 years that address economic life. This volume, based on discussions at a symposium co-sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, analyzes the situation of the Church and the theological basis for Benedict's thinking about the person, community, and the globalized economy.

For medical interventions there is a gap between what clinical scientific research has established as likely to carry clinical benefit and what the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) has judged as cost-effective. This gap is the affordability gap. It is created by a value judgement made by NICE and affirmed by the Secretary of State for Health. This value judgement operates to affect other value judgements made in actual clinical situations where at least one choice of treatment falls into (...) the affordability gap. This paper considers how the creation of this affordability gap impacts upon actual clinical decisions. It explores these issues in the context of the choice between a drug-eluting stent and a bare metal stent for elective coronary angioplasty. It also argues that the option of an NHS procedure with a top-up fee to cover the cost of the affordability gap is a genuine one; that this option could improve clinical outcomes; that it is morally acceptable; and that the rules that prevent the utilization of this option should be relaxed. (shrink)

Most psychology begins with a distinction between organism and environment, where the two are implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) conceptualized as flipsides of a skin-severed space. This paper examines that conceptualization. Dewey and Bentley's (1949) account of firm naming is used to show that psychologists have, in general, (1) employed the skin as a morphological criterion for distinguishing organisms from backgrounds, and (2) equated background with environment. This two-step procedure, which in this article is named the morphological conception of organism, is (...) shown to inform the writings of the well-known psychologist B. F. Skinner. A review of difficulties with the morphological conception is followed with a review and preliminary integration of four attempts at an alternative conception of organism, and thus environment. Together, these four attempts converge on an analysis of living systems as transdermal (through and across skin) processes only within which organism and environment are distinguishable as complementary phases. The notion of a biological total process, or bioprocess, is employed to clarify this alternative analysis, in which an organism is an ongoing organization rather than a skin-bound body. (shrink)

Psychologists sometimes discuss the need to refine clear designations of the observable units comprising their subject matter. This paper links such discussions to (a) Dewey and Bentley's (1949) account of specification as relatively accurate unit-designation, and (b) the logical base of scientific classifications and abstractions in observable particulars. The paper then reviews, clarifies, evaluates, and contrasts the psychological units proposed by Kantor (behavior segment), Skinner (operant), and Lee (deed). Overall, Lee's deed is found to be the sharpest, least ambiguous designation, (...) and the only specification. Deeds, fields of contributors, and contingencies are then used to selectively integrate aspects of all three units. The resulting integration is consistent with field-based approaches to causal relations within and among units, where the noun cause is synonymous with one of many contributors. It is also applicable to the analysis of feedback loops, which are designated as circular networks of dependency among subclasses of deeds. (shrink)

This volume provides a new account of business ethics from the perspective of Catholic social thought. Focusing on the sense of agency of the business person and the interests of business firms, this volume addresses business from both "the outside" (with questions about economic life in Catholic social thought) and "the inside" (with attention to the internal dynamics of business firms). The result is a creative account of fundamental issues confronting the moral business leader and any firm committed to responsible (...) business practice. This volume is unique in the depth of the questions from Catholic social thought that it brings to bear on business. It begins with interviews of three CEOs to ensure a grounding in experience and a consideration of the intellectual history of business issues in Christianity. Most importantly, it deals with fundamental moral concerns: the character of agency, autonomy, practical wisdom, and the technocratic paradigm, along with other elements of Catholic social thought. The book then applies these concepts to assess management science, the motivations of business leaders, the role of luck in personal success, the traditional moral justifications of business, and more. (shrink)

Workers in distant nations who produce the products we buy frequently suffer from accidents, managerial malfeasance, and injustice. Are consumers who bought the products made by these workers in any way morally responsible for those injustices? And what about the far more frequent, less severe injustices, such as the withholding of wages, the denial of bathroom breaks, forced overtime, and harassment of various sorts? Could buying a shirt at the local department store create for you some responsibility for the horrendous (...) death in a factory fire of the women who sewed it half a planet away? (shrink)

Distant Harms, Distant Markets looks at moral complicity in markets, employing resources from sociology, early Christian history, feminism, legal theory, and Catholic moral theology today. The authors skillfully explore the causal and moral responsibilities which consumers bear for the harms that markets cause to distant others.

Christian ethics has from the beginning been concerned with moral agency and culture, and Christian social ethics has acknowledged the power of social structures for the last 150 years. But ethics has yet to employ extensively the resources of that discipline that specializes in understanding structure and culture: sociology. Out of a concern to defend human freedom, Catholic social teaching has employed an individualistic approach that misdescribes the characteristics of social evil as little more than the sum of individual choices (...) and proposes individual conversion as a remedy. This book presents a refined sociological understanding of social structures and culture: critical realist sociology. It briefly describes the roots of critical realism in the natural sciences, its understanding of social structure and culture, and how structure and culture have causal impact on human decisions - through freedom, not cancelling it. It makes clear how, in most cases, people "go along" with the restrictions and opportunities offered them but, when there is sufficient frustration with these, how decisions can transform both structure and culture. The analysis is then applied in more detail to provide needed illumination in three areas: the ecological crisis, economic life, and virtue ethics. The core claims of the volume, offering an explanatory account of moral-agency-amidst-structure-and-culture for use in social ethics, would be of great interest to all those working in the field, both Catholic and Protestant. (shrink)

ALL SCHOLARSHIP OCCURS IN CONTEXT, AND ACADEMIC SILOS—WHERE scholars interact with only a narrow circle of specialists like themselves—too often eclipse the biases of academic disciplines. This essay recommends interdisciplinary work by Christian ethicists, reviews some fruits available from substantive engagement with mainstream economics, and urges graduate programs in Christian ethics to encourage and enable students to do substantive coursework in another discipline to broaden and deepen Christian ethical engagement with contemporary moral problems.

ABSTRACT Cybernetic attacks have been wrongly perceived as weapons of physical destruction rather than of disruption. Because modern, post‐industrial societies have become critically dependent on computer networks to function on a day‐to‐day basis, disruption of those networks could have serious social and economic consequences. In order to better protect society, policymakers will have to re‐orient their approach toward cyber security so as to emphasize the genuine cybernetic threat, which is network disruption rather than physical destruction.

We report on the case of a 2-year-old female, the youngest person ever to undergo ovarian tissue cryopreservation (OTC). This patient was diagnosed with a rare form of sickle cell disease, which required a bone-marrow transplant, and late effects included high risk of future infertility or complete sterility. Ethical concerns are raised, as the patient's mother made the decision for OTC on the patient's behalf with the intention that this would secure the option of biological childbearing in the future. Based (...) on Beauchamp and Childress's principlism approach of respect for autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice, pursing OTC was ethically justified. (shrink)

This article argues that killing animals for food represents an extreme case within Christian moral thinking comparable to Karl Barth's Grenzfall argument against such violent acts as suicide, abortion, killing in self‐defense, capital punishment, and war. This position is in contrast to the view of many environmental philosophers who hold human hunting to be comparable to animal predation. It also disputes the language of substitutionary sacrifice prevalent in some Christian discussions of meat eating.

Is it right for a wife to take sperm from a dying husband in order to create a child posthumously? Daniel Sokol discusses a recent case.

Is a suitable basis for making moral decisions?

In preparing for a lecture on the ethics of surgical complications, it became apparent that confusion exists about the definition of a ‘‘surgical complication.’’ Is it, as one medical website states, ‘‘any undesirable result of surgery?’’ [1]. In the European Journal of Surgery, Veen et al. [2] provide a more elaborate definition: ‘‘every unwanted development in the illness of the patient or in the treatment of the patient’s illness that occurs in the clinic’’ [2]. An esteemed historian of science suggests (...) yet another definition in a recent volume on surgical complications: ‘‘a complication, in any sphere of endeavour, is something out of the norm, and the product of extraneous and unexpected factors’’ [3]. Such is the discrepancy in definitions that Rampersaud et al. [4] declared in 2006 that ‘‘presently, there is no clear or consistent definition of a complication in the surgical literature.’’ Much research in surgery aims to reduce the risk of surgical complications. However, until we have a stable and agreed definition of what counts as a surgical complication, we cannot reliably compare different studies to discover what best reduces the chance of surgical complications [5]. Therefore, the topic is more than mere pedantry; defining surgical complications will help us with the broader question of how to improve surgical practice. A basic PubMed search returned nearly 800 articles with the phrases ‘‘surgical complications’’ or ‘‘surgical complication’’ in the title. But unlike the sources above. (shrink)

From the early days of European settlement in North America, Christianity has had a profound impact on American law and culture. This volume profiles nineteen of America's most influential Christian jurists from the early colonial era to the present day. Anyone interested in American legal history and jurisprudence, the role Christianity has played throughout the nation's history, and the relationship between faith and law will enjoy this worthy and unique study. The jurists covered in this collection were pious men and (...) women, but that does not mean they agreed on how faith should inform law. From Roger Williams and John Cotton to Antonin Scalia and Mary Ann Glendon, America's great Christian jurists have brought their faith to bear on the practice of law in different ways and to different effects. (shrink)