Documenting capacity assessments and identifying substitute decisionmakers in healthcare facilities is ethically required for optimal patient care. Lack of such documentation has the potential to generate confusion and contention among patients, their family members, and members of the healthcare team. An overview of our research at the Ottawa Hospital and issues that influence the consistency of documentation in the Canadian context are presented here, as well as ideas for the mitigation of these issues and ways to encourage better documentation.

Organized around a series of philosophic questions about film,The Philosophy of Film: Introductory Text and Readingsoffers an accessible and engaging overview of the discipline. Provides thorough selection of readings drawn from philosophy,film studies, and film criticism Multiple points of view highlighted in discussion of filmtheory, narration, authorship, film and emotion, and the socialvalues of cinema Presents thought-provoking reading questions as well as clearand helpful introductions for each section More information about this text along with further resourcesare available from the accompanying (...) website at:http://www.mtholyoke.edu/omc/phil-film/index.html. (shrink)

It is becoming widely recognized that dissemination of research results to participants is an important action for the conclusion of a research study. Most research institutions have standardized consent documents or templates that they require their researchers to use. Consent forms are an ideal place to indicate that results of research will be provided to participants, and the practice of inserting statements to this effect is becoming more conventional. In order to determine the acceptance of this practice across Canada we (...) conducted an assessment of 121 institutional consent document templates from 65 institutions looking for language that endorsed results dissemination to participants. About half of the documents we examined had language included which stated that results should be made available. In an era where research participation in hospital settings and universities is becoming ubiquitous there should be a reciprocal expectation that results should be provide... (shrink)

Ethics consultation services provide support to staff, patients, and family members who find themselves in morally difficult situations in healthcare settings. Not unlike other clinical consultation services, ethics consultation activities should be well documented. Good documentation allows for evaluation of the consultation process and the ability to refer back to consults when needed, and provides data for future research in healthcare ethics (HCE).In our exploration of existing HCE documentation systems, we identified two main points of interest. First, HCE information documentation (...) systems are powerful tools for providing information on ethics consultation services. These documentation systems can be used to produce detailed reports on various HCE activities both institutionally and cross-institutionally. Second, our findings indicate greater agreement in the language and terminology of HCE needs to be established. Cultivation of such common language is needed in order to develop a standard healthcare ethicists can use to document and categorize consults. Standardization of language would allow data to be readily comparable and lead to more consistency in documentation of ethics consultations. Ultimately, standardization of documentation can also constitute a standard of practice for HCE in general. The development of such standards is essential for any developing profession, and will be required for HCE as it moves in towards professionalization in Canada. (shrink)

Sin, reconciliation, and the manuals of moral theology -- Thomas Aquinas and the Thomistic tradition -- Natural law -- Papal teaching office -- Second Vatican Council -- Where do we stand today?

Lockdown measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic involve placing huge burdens on some members of society for the sake of benefiting other members of society. How should we decide when these policies are permissible? Many writers propose we should address this question using cost-benefit analysis, a broadly consequentialist approach. We argue for an alternative non-consequentialist approach, grounded in contractualist moral theorising. The first section sets up key issues in the ethics of lockdown, and sketches the apparent appeal of addressing (...) these problems in a CBA frame. The second section argues that CBA fundamentally distorts the normative landscape in two ways: first, in principle, it allows very many morally trivial preferences—say, for a coffee—might outweigh morally weighty life-and-death concerns; second, it is insensitive to the core moral distinction between victims and vectors of disease. The third section sketches our non-consequentialist alternative, grounded in Thomas Scanlon’s contractualist moral theory. On this account, the ethics of self-defence implies a strong default presumption in favour of a highly restrictive, universal lockdown policy: we then ask whether there are alternatives to such a policy which are justifiable to all affected parties, paying particular attention to the complaints of those most burdened by policy. In the fourth section, we defend our contractualist approach against the charge that it is impractical or counterintuitive, noting that actual CBAs face similar, or worse, challenges. (shrink)

The received view in Thomas Hobbes scholarship is that theindividual rights described by Hobbes in his political writings andspecifically in Leviathan are simple freedoms or libertyrights, that is, rights that are not correlated with duties orobligations on the part of others. In other words, it is usually arguedthat there are no claim rights for individuals in Hobbes''s politicaltheory. This paper argues, against that view, that Hobbes does describeclaim rights, that they come into being when individuals conform to thesecond law (...) of nature and that they are genuine moral claim rights, thatis, rights that are the ground of the obligations of others to forebearfrom interfering with their exercise. This argument is defended againstboth Jean Hampton''s and Howard Warrender''s interpretations of rights inHobbes''s theory. The paper concludes that the theory of rightsunderlying Hobbes''s writing is not taken from Natural Law but isprobably closer to a modern interest theory of rights. (shrink)

This book is a comprehensive and unique text and reference in medical ethics. By far the most inclusive set of primary documents and articles in the field ever published, it contains over 100 selections. Virtually all pieces appear in their entirety, and a significant number would be difficult to obtain elsewhere. The volume draws upon the literature of history, medicine, philosophical and religious ethics, economics, and sociology. A wide range of topics and issues are covered, such as law and medicine, (...) truth-telling by the physician, research, population policy, genetics, abortion, dying, and individual rights in medical care. The selections span the centuries, beginning with material from the works of Hippocrates, continuing through Thomas Percival, John Stuart Mill, and Claude Bernard, down to modern commentators like Henry K. Beecher, Walsh McDermott, David L. Bazelon, Paul Freund, H. L. A. Hart, John Rawls, Paul Ramsey, Richard McCormick, Rashi Fein, and Bernard Barber. The text has eight major divisions, beginning with sections on the ethical dimensions of the physician-patient relationship in history; the moral bases of medical ethics; and regulation, compulsion, and protection of the consumer in clinical medicine and public health. Each of these sections includes key essays that appear for the first time. All of the book's major divisions contain primary documents: codes such as the Hippocratic Oath, Medieval Law for the Regulation of Medicine, and the first as well as the most recent code of the American Medical Association; court decisions, including those on Karen Quinlan and on abortion in the United States and West Germany; government documents such as the statement of the National Commission on the Protection of Human Subjects, the Tuskegee Syphilis Report, the British Parliamentary debate on euthanasia, and the Council of Europe on rights of the sick and dying; and various published guidelines such as the Harvard Medical School brain death criteria, the American Hospital Association on patient's rights, and Pope Pius XII on the prolongation of life. Cases that illustrate moral dilemmas are provided for discussion purposes. Each section is preceded by a succinct editor's introduction. The documents and essays are of practical value for practitioners and students in medicine, law, ethics, and counselling, and for individual patients and groups concerned with medical care. Through encompassing divergent viewpoints, the essays and primary documents were selected to encourage humane practices and deepen understanding of the multiple traditions that shaped and do shape the development of medicine. (shrink)

Bioethics in a Liberal Societ By Max Charlesworth, Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. 172. ISBN 0?521?44952?9. £9.95 pbk. The Logical Universe: The Real Universe By Noel Curran Avebury, 1994. Pp. 158. ISBN 1?85628?863?3. £32.50. Beyond Postmodern Politics: Lyotard, Rorty, Foucault By Honi Fern Haber Routledge, 1994. Pp.viii + 160. ISBN 0?415?90823?X. $15.95. Baudrillard's Bestiary: Baudrillard and Culture By Mike Gane Routledge, 1991, Pp. 184. ISBN 0?415?06307?8. £10.99 pbk. Truth, Fiction and Literature: A Philosophical Perspective By Peter Lamarque and Stein (...) Haugom Olsen Clarendon Press, 1994. Pp. 456. ISBN 0?19?824082?1. £45.00. Milton and the Drama of History: Historical Vision, Iconoclasm, and the Literary Imagination By David Loewenstein Cambridge University Press, 1990. Pp. x + 197. ISBN 0?521?37253?4. £25.00. Philosophy and Knowledge: A Commentary on Plato's Theaetetus Ronald M. Polansky Associated University Presses, 1992. Pp. 260. ISBN 0?8387?5215?2. £29.95. Heidegger and French Philosophy: Humanism, Antihumanism and Being By Tom Rockmore Routledge, 1995. Pp. xx + 250. ISBN 0?415?11181?1. £14.99 pbk. Living Poetically: Kierkegaard's Existential Aesthetics By Sylvia Walsh The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. Pp. 294. ISBN 0?271?01328?1. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Development of Moral Theology: Five Strands by Charles E. CurranChristopher LibbyThe Development of Moral Theology: Five Strands Charles E. Curran washington, dc: georgetown university press, 2013. 306 pp. $29.95At least two entwined questions dominate Charles Curran’s The Development of Moral Theology: first, what differentiates Catholic moral theology from other approaches to Christian ethics, and second, how we should understand, evaluate, and appropriate that tradition in (...) light of its own pluralism and that of the broader society? Curran engages both of these concerns by critically tracing five historical strands that have shaped moral theology: sin, reconciliation, and the manuals of moral theology; Thomas Aquinas and the Thomistic tradition; natural law; the papal teaching office; and the Second Vatican Council.The bulk of Curran’s discussion consists of chapter-length treatments of each of these strands. This approach lends analytical clarity to a tradition with a varied, [End Page 219] complex history, and provides the foundation for his later synthetic, evaluative discussion. The first chapter is characteristic of the manner in which subsequent chapters proceed: Curran begins with biblical treatments of the rupturing effects of sin before moving on to the emergence of formalized approaches to dealing with sin via penitential processes and, later, the manuals of moral theology. Incorporated into this historical discussion are evaluative and prescriptive claims. For example, in contrast to the dynamic and rich biblical understanding of the nature of sin, Curran suggests that the manuals of moral theology both possess an insufficiently full understanding of the reality of sin and conversion and distort the meaning of sin by focusing on the objective act alone (24).The second through fourth chapters proceed in similar fashion, with critical readings of the varied history of each strand that underscore the internal pluralism of Catholic moral theology. Thus, chapter 2 shows that, while there is but one Thomas Aquinas, there are numerous Thomisms, and chapter 3 denies the presence of a unified, coherent theory of natural law, closing by arguing that this lack of coherence is synchronically discernible in contrasts between recent papal social and sexual teachings.Following a similar treatment of the papal teaching office in chapter 4, Curran discusses the significance of Vatican II in chapter 5 before offering a broad evaluation of his historical surveys in the conclusion. There he calls for Church hierarchy to be more forthright in its recognition of the tradition’s internal diversity, more open to dissent and disagreement, and receptive to the power of the Holy Spirit as the primary force enabling the Church as a people to live hopefully as mediating God’s presence in the world.There is much to be learned from Curran’s impressive knowledge of his tradition. This is a text that will be especially valuable to graduate students and scholars and teachers of Christian ethics; the chapters on Aquinas and the Thomistic tradition, natural law, and Vatican II will have a particularly wide appeal. Nevertheless, I fear the book is less than the sum of its very informative parts. The lack of an initial chapter establishing the meaning and significance of Curran’s study or of a conceptual framework to guide the reader in navigating deep and what are sure to many to be unfamiliar historical waters may leave some readers disoriented. Such a chapter would have been helpful in establishing a broader context for the study and identifying themes that arise repeatedly in the course of the discussion, for example: the nature of authority and dissent, the relationship between philosophy and theology, the relationship between truth and historical consciousness, and the nature of tradition as “living,” to name a few. As it is, such themes emerge only gradually for the reader, rendering engagement with the text as a whole a less rewarding experience than it might otherwise be. [End Page 220]Christopher LibbyMissouri Valley CollegeCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This book examines the reception of the works of the baron d'Holbach throughout francophone Europe. It insists that d'Holbach's historical importance has been understated, argues the case for the existence of a significant 'Christian Enlightenment', and much more.

Preface -- Which risk society, and for whom? -- The sociology of risk and the ineliminability of realism -- Risk society and systematic social theory -- Thinking with Bourdieu, Marx, and Weber to analyse contemporary inequalities and class -- Risk society and the distribution of bads -- Risk illusion and organized irresponsibility in contemporary finance -- Conclusion: beyond the quiet politics of risk.

Unfolding as a series of materially oriented studies ranging from chairs, machines and doors to trees, animals and food, this book retells the story of Renaissance personhood as one of material relations and embodied experience, rather than of emergent notions of individuality and freedom. The book assembles an international team of leading scholars to formulate a new account of personhood in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one that starts with the objects, environments and physical processes that made personhood legible.

Hobbes says a great deal about the rights of subjects, particularly in Leviathan, and yet, despite his apparent insistence on the importance of the rights of the subject, the prevailing view amongst modern Hobbes scholars has been that rights of Hobbesian subjects are weak. The dominant view of Hobbesian rights as weak and insignificant is the view of modern Hobbes scholarship, which analyses Hobbes's political theory at great distance from his intellectual milieu and from the dramatic political events of the (...) time. Hobbesian absolutism is understood to rule out rights of any strength or significance on the part of Hobbesian subjects and particularly, any rights held against the sovereign. The significance of defining subjects' rights as Hohfeldian liberty rights is that liberty rights lack any correlative duties on the part of others. The sovereign's authority and right to rule are made dependent on his ability and willingness to protect the subjects' aggregate right to self‐preservation. (shrink)

In this book, T. M. Scanlon offers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other.

This volume compiles writings by leading moral theologians and ethicists on an important, emerging topic in the field of ethics. As spirituality asserts its broad humanistic interdisciplinarity, and moral theology emerges from its fixation on sin to address broader questions of human formation and Christian discipleship, the need for the two disciplines to be in dialogue is clear.

Two philosophers, Robert Spaemann and Henri Gouhier, have identified a similarity between Fénelon and Kant in the prominence of motive in their thought: disinterestedness in Fénelon's pure love and in Kant's good will. Spaemann emphasizes their common detaching of the ethical in terms of motivation from the context of happiness. In this article I explore further similarities and differences under the topics of perfectionism, pure love, good will, happiness, and disinterestedness, as these are pertinent to their thought. On perfectionism there (...) appears a stark contrast; on pure love over against good will, on happiness, and on disinterestedness, however, there seems a balance between likenesses and differences. Finally I point out a qualification set on pure love by Fénelon and on the good will by Kant. (shrink)

This volume brings together for the first time a significant number of Reid's manuscript papers on natural history, physiology and materialist metaphysics. An important contribution not only to Reid studies but also to our understanding of eighteenth-century science and its context.

In Curran's latest book, Diverse Voices in Modern US Moral Theology, he presents the twelve leading voices of Catholic Moral Theology (CMT) from the early twentieth century to the present. (One could argue that Curran, himself, should be in this book.) The book discusses key individuals, and one movement that included multiple people, in the development of the field to show how it has evolved. The New Wine, New Wineskins movement was included because the movement was led by (...) lay people, showing how dramatically the face of CMT changed. The book provides overviews of the major figures in CMT without offering critique in order to foster a dialogue between liberal and conservative approaches to MT, and demonstrates that one's approach to CMT is very rooted in one's historical circumstances--called Sitz-im-Leben in the field. It is the last aim that provides the main argument for the book; that CMT has changed and each of these theologians have shifted thinking largely because of the historical context in which they wrote. Curran also shows that those on opposing sides of the debates in moral theology have become more divided and urges in his conclusion that they have more conversations with each other and not just discussions within each side. (shrink)

A vivacious biography of the prophetic and sympathetic philosopher who along with Voltaire and Rousseau built the foundations of the modern world, and travelled as far as Russia to enlighten the Tsarina Catherine the Great. Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world's first comprehensive Encyclopédie into existence. But his most compelling and personal writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his most daring books (...) for posterity-for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings that he left behind after his death, Diderot dreamed of natural selection before Darwin, the Oedipus complex before Freud, and genetic manipulation centuries before Dolly the Sheep was born. Even more audaciously, the writer challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of slave trade, to the limits of human sexuality. He was also keenly aware of the dangers of absolute power, about which he wrote so persuasively that it led Catherine the Great not only to support him financially but also to invite him to St. Petersburg. In this thematically organized biography, Andrew Curran vividly describes Diderot's tormented relationship with Rousseau, his feud with Voltaire, his tortured marriage, his passionate affairs, and his often-paradoxical stand on art, morality, and religion. But what this book brings out most brilliantly is how a man's character flaws and limitations are often the flip side of his genius and his ability to break taboos, dogmas, and conventions. (shrink)

After a run of over forty years, the series Readings in Moral Theology comes to a close with this retrospective volume by one of the original editors, Charles E. Curran.

Memory, funerals, and the communion of the saints: growing old and practices of remembering / M. Therese Lysaught -- God bends over backward to accommodate humankind...while the Civil Rights Acts and the Americans with Disabilities Act require [only] minimum effort / Mary Jo Iozzio -- Radical solidarity: migration as challenge ofr contemporary Christian ethics / Kristin E. Heyer -- Catholic lesbian feminist theology / Mary E. Hunt -- Theology of whose body? Sexual conplementarity, intersex conditions, and La Virgen de Guadalupe (...) / Katie M. Grimes -- Social conscience and politics in the United States of America: reflections / Mary Jo Bane -- Pope Francis, women, and the church for the poor / Lisa A. Fullam -- Floodwaters and the ticking clock: the systematic oppression and stigmatization of poor, single mothers in American and Christian theological responses / Julie A. Mavity Maddalena --What causes inequity? / Dean Baker -- Engaging the U.S. Bishops' pastoral on crime and criminal justice: from atomism to community justice / Robert DeFina and Lance Hannon -- Reconstructing the moral claim of racially unjust mass incarceration / Alison Benders -- The systemic erasure of the Black/dark-skinned body in Catholic ethics / Bryan Massingale -- Anti-blackness and white supremacy in the making of American Catholicism / M. Shawn Copeland -- White privilege / Charles E. Curran -- The Black Lives Matter Movement: justice and health equity / Michael P. Jaycox -- Mujerista theology: a challenge to traditional theology / Ada María Isasi-Díaz -- Faith of our mothers; Catholic womanist God-talk / Diana L. Hayes. (shrink)

This book provides a concise, clear summary of the history of the "free will" vs. determinism controversy and offers a discussion of the basic differences of view.

Curran F. Douglass ABSTRACT: This paper confronts two questions: How is it possible to be free if causal determinism is true?; and relatedly, How then is the practice of holding persons responsible for their actions to be justified? On offer here is a compatibilist account of freedom, tying it to control; the relation – argued ….

This paper confronts two questions: How is it possible to be free if causal determinism is true?; and relatedly, How then is the practice of holding persons responsible for their actions to be justified? On offer here is a compatibilist account of freedom, tying it to control; the relation – argued to be a necessary connection – is considered in some detail. Then the question of ability to ‘do otherwise’ is discussed, which has held a fascination for many in regard (...) to free choice. Our ability to learn to choose rationally is key here, to becoming able to choose well and (hence) freely, freedom being understood realistically. A developed rationality is necessary for maximal free choice, and (as argued here) is also key to the justification of the practice of holding persons responsible for their actions – a practice which is both necessary (socially indispensable) and capable of being justified, on both moral and pragmatic grounds. There is nothing in determinism that threatens that justification, but rather enables it. (shrink)

Thomas Reid was a philosopher who founded the Scottish school of 'common sense'. Much of Reid's work is a critique of his contemporary, David Hume, whose empiricism he rejects. In this work, written after Reid's appointment to a professorship at the university of Glasgow, and published in 1785, he turns his attention to ideas about perception, memory, conception, abstraction, judgement, reasoning and taste. He examines the work of his predecessors and contemporaries, arguing that 'when we find philosophers maintaining that (...) there is no heat in the fire, nor colour in the rainbow … we may be apt to think the whole to be only a dream of fanciful men, who have entangled themselves in cobwebs spun out of their own brain'. Written by one of the Scottish Enlightenment's most important thinkers, this work brings to life the intellectual debates of the time. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas produced a voluminous body of work on moral theory, and much of that work is on virtue, particularly the status and value of the virtues as principles of virtuous acts, and the way in which a moral life can be organized around them schematically. Thomas Osborne presents Aquinas's account of virtue in its historical, philosophical and theological contexts, to show the reader what Aquinas himself wished to teach about virtue. His discussion makes the complexities of Aquinas's (...) moral thought accessible to readers despite the differences between Thomas's texts themselves, and the distance between our background assumptions and his. The book will be valuable for scholars and students in ethics, medieval philosophy, and theology. (shrink)

The development of technologies for gene editing in the wild has the potential to generate tremendous benefit, but also raises important concerns. Using some form of public deliberation to inform decisions about the use of these technologies is appealing, but public deliberation about them will tend to fall back on various forms of heuristics to account for limited personal experience with these technologies. Deliberations are likely to involve narrative reasoning—or reasoning embedded within stories. These are used to help people discuss (...) risks, processes, and fears that are otherwise difficult to convey. In this article, we identify three forms of collective narrative that are particularly relevant to debates about modifying genes in the wild. Our purpose is not to privilege any particular narrative, but to encourage people involved in deliberations to make these narratives transparent. Doing so can help guard against the way some narratives—referred to here as “crafted narratives”—may be manipulated by powerful elites and concentrated economic interests for their own strategic ends. (shrink)

Many popular business strategies, such as re-engineering, core competency, and value engineering, may achieve short-term profits by antagonizing workers and alienating customers. We contend that self-actualized companies must create an ethical business environment grounded in three ethical principles. To suggest these principles, which characterize all "volitionist companies", we first review two typical problems and the questionable ways that some companies resolved them. Then, we discuss these principles and compare "volitionism" to three well- known normative ethical theories. Finally, we show that (...) these principles form the core of at least four popular management theories. (shrink)