Slaves,Fetuses, and Animals

This essay is an exploration in ethical rhetoric, specifically, the ethics of comparing the status of fetuses and animals to enslaved Africans. On the view of those who make such comparisons, the fetus is treated as a slave through abortion, reproductive technologies, and stem cell research, while animals are enslaved through factory farming, experimentation, and as laborers, circus performers, and the like. I explore how the apotheosis of the fetus and the humanization of animals represent the flipside of the subjugation and animalization of black people. At their ethical best, those who compare aborted fetuses and abused animals with enslaved black people have laudable ethical goals. The anti‐abortion right and the animal rights left, respectively, wish to abolish abortion (and associated reproductive technologies that harm prenatal life) and the unethical treatment of animals. They seek, respectively, to reimagine the ethical‐political status of the fetus and to criticize the animalization of animals, the practice of constructing them as beasts. While sympathetic to these goals, I worry about the comparative diminution of the historical, literal enslavement of black people. To what extent, I ask, does the comparative ethical rhetoric of fetal slaves and animal slaves affect historical constructions of black people as beastly and disposable?     

An ethically justified framework for clinical investigation to benefit pregnant and fetal patients

Research to improve the health of pregnant and fetal patients presents ethical challenges to clinical investigators, institutional review boards, funding agencies, and data safety and monitoring boards. The Common Rule sets out requirements that such research must satisfy but no ethical framework to guide their application. We provide such an ethical framework, based on the ethical concept of the fetus as a patient. We offer criteria for innovation and for Phase I and II and then for Phase III clinical trials to improve the health of pregnant patients and of fetal patients and also criteria to responsibly manage the transition from investigation to clinical practice. Basing ethical criteria for research involving pregnant women on the ethical concept of the fetus as a patient insulates the proposed ethical framework and therefore research on pregnant women from the divisive and politicized concepts and discourses of personhood, fetal rights, and unborn child.     

Asymmetrical Relations, Identity and Abortion

ABSTRACT In this article I freely use the thought of Charles Hartshorne to defend the ethical permissibility of abortion in the early stages of pregnancy. In the later stages of pregnancy the fetus has an ethical status similar to that of a sentient yet non-rational animal, a status which should generate in us considerable ethical respect. The distinctiveness of this Hartshornian approach lies in the effort to bring metaphysics to bear on a controversial issue in applied ethics. In particular, the metaphysical issue of temporal relations is crucial to consider in the effort to ascertain the ethical status of the fetus. Two symmetrical (immoderate) theories of temporal relations are criticised, one of which provides the basis for opposition to abortion, a theory wherein one is internally related both to one's past and to one's future. An asymmetrical (moderate) theory of temporal relations is defended, a theory wherein one is internally related to one's past yet externally related to the future. This latter theory would permit abortion in the early stages of pregnancy.     

Compounding Vulnerability: Pregnancy and Schizophrenia

The predominant ethical framework for addressing reproductive decisions in the maternal–fetal relationship is respect for the woman's autonomy. However, when a pregnant schizophrenic woman lacks such autonomy, healthcare providers try to both protect her and respect her preferences. By delineating etic (objective) and emic (subjective) perspectives on vulnerability, I argue that options which balance both perspectives are preferable and that acting on etic perspectives to the exclusion of emic considerations is rarely justified. In negotiating perspectives, we balance the etic commitment to protect the vulnerable patient and her fetus from harm with the emic concern to empower a decisionally incapacitated woman. Equilibrium is best achieved by nurturing interdependent relationships that empower and protect the vulnerable woman. The analysis points to the need for better social support for mentally ill patients.     

When Psychotherapy Is Not Working: Ethical Considerations

Evidence-based practice (EBP) models have been developed, in part, to enhance the likelihood that the outcome of health care treatment, including psychotherapy, leads to positive improvement. However, two additional outcomes can occur: no change and poor outcome (e.g., harm, worsening of symptoms). What does the clinician do when psychotherapy is not working? When faced with various treatment decisions, such as this, the EBP model posits that therapists should apply their clinical expertise in considering the “best available research” within the context of various patient characteristics. In part because of various limitations of this approach, I suggest that another important set of principles are important to consider in tandem when faced with this clinical dilemma—that is, ethical concerns. Borrowing from the American Psychological Association’s (2017a) Ethics Code, I discuss how the following issues exist when clinicians wrestle with this question: avoidance of harm, competence, conflicts of interest, and informed consent. I conclude this paper with a list of suggestions that can potentially foster the application of ethical principles when making treatment decisions.     

How careproviders can acquire and apply greater wisdom

In this issue of JCE, Baum-Baicker and Sisti present senior psychoanalysts' views of wisdom. Although views on wisdom differ widely, there is agreement that when ethical conflicts arise, wisdom may be critical in bringing about an optimal result. Here I will present recent empirical findings on wisdom and the ways careproviders may acquire and apply it, especially in ethical conflicts.The findings are not well-known and may seem counterintuitive; I selected them, in large part, for those reasons. A core challenge may be to decide when to give patients standard care and when to make exceptions. In this issue of JCE, Baum-Baicker and Sisti discuss exceptions and Bursztajn and colleagues consider how these exceptions may be further validated as evidence-based treatments.     

Is Nanotechnology Giving Rise to New Ethical Problems?

In this paper I focus on the question of whether nanotechnology is giving rise to new ethical problems rather than merely to new instances of old ethical problems. Firstly, I demonstrate how important it is to make a general distinction between new ethical problems and new instances of old problems. Secondly, I propose one possible way of interpreting the distinction and offer a definition of a “new ethical problem”. Thirdly, I examine whether there is good reason to claim that nanotechnology is giving or will give rise to new ethical problems. My conclusion is that there are no new ethical problems in nanotechnology but merely new occurrences of certain well-known types of ethical problems. Fourthly, I consider three arguments by van de Poel (NanoEthics 2:25–28, 2008) which contradict my conclusion. I argue that my negative conclusion is consistent with the claim that certain ethical issues arising in nanotechnology may require new normative standards or new analytical tools. I conclude that it is likely that a number of ethical issues arising in nanotechnology will have a considerable impact on our ethical theories and values – and that ethical reflection on nanotechnology will be one of the mother lodes of future ethical research – in spite of the fact that no ethical problem in nanoethics will actually be “new”.     

Compounding vulnerability: pregnancy and schizophrenia

The predominant ethical framework for addressing reproductive decisions in the maternal-fetal relationship is respect for the woman's autonomy. However, when a pregnant schizophrenic woman lacks such autonomy, healthcare providers try to both protect her and respect her preferences. By delineating etic (objective) and emic (subjective) perspectives on vulnerability, I argue that options which balance both perspectives are preferable and that acting on etic perspectives to the exclusion of emic considerations is rarely justified. In negotiating perspectives, we balance the etic commitment to protect the vulnerable patient and her fetus from harm with the emic concern to empower a decisionally incapacitated woman. Equilibrium is best achieved by nurturing interdependent relationships that empower and protect the vulnerable woman. The analysis points to the need for better social support for mentally ill patients.     

Prisoners on the Fireline: The Application of Ethical Principles and Guidelines to Prison Fire Camps

Our society gives certain rights and protections to those who are punished and incarcerated, deeming them a vulnerable group in need of additional protections because they are under state control. Despite these protections, prisoners are still susceptible to mistreatment and abuse. This paper delves into one area in which prisoners are particularly vulnerable—the use of prison labor to fight wildfires in the western United States. In this paper, I first broadly discuss prison labor, before going into the current ethical principles and guidelines in the field of corrections that address the treatment of prisoners and prison labor. I argue that these principles and guidelines should be augmented to help those in corrections to make decisions about what is ethical; suggesting that how researchers evaluate proposed research projects could serve as a model for decision-making. I then introduce prison fire camps, considering whether they are ethical by research ethics principles, and suggesting how they can be changed to better reflect the values professed by our society.     

It cannot be fitting to blame God

This paper argues that it cannot be fitting to blame God. I show that divine immutability, even on a weak conception, implies that God's ethical character cannot change. I then argue that blame aims at a change in the ethical character of the one blamed. This claim is directly intuitive, explains a wide set of intuitions about when blame is unfitting, and is implied by most of the theories blame offered in the philosophical literature. Since blame targeted at God aims to change God's ethical character, an impossibility, such blame is not fitting. I then draw on this conclusion to sketch a new theodicy. I argue that a necessary condition on being blameworthy is that one can be blamed under some possible condition. So, God cannot be blameworthy. Further, I argue that if someone cannot be blameworthy, then they cannot do wrong. Wrong actions tend to make us blameworthy, but since God cannot be blameworthy nothing can tend to make him blameworthy – God cannot do wrong.     

‘Ought’ and Control

Ethical theorists often assume that the verb ‘ought’ means roughly ‘has an obligation’; however, this assumption is belied by the diversity of ‘flavours’ of ought-sentences in English. A natural response is that ‘ought’ is ambiguous. However, this response is incompatible with the standard treatment of ‘ought’ by theoretical semanticists, who classify ‘ought’ as a member of the family of modal verbs, which are treated uniformly as operators. To many ethical theorists, however, this popular treatment in linguistics seems to elide an important distinction between agential and non-agential ought-statements. The thought is that ‘ought’ must have at least two senses, one implicating agency and connected to obligations, and another covering other uses. In this paper, I pursue some resolution of this tension between semantic theory and ethical theory with respect to the meaning of ‘ought’. To this end, I consider what I believe to be the most linguistically sophisticated argument for the view that the word ‘ought’ is ambiguous between agential and non-agential senses. This argument, due to Mark Schroeder, is instructive but based on a false claim about the syntax of agential ought-sentences—or so I attempt to show by first situating Schroeder's argument in its proper linguistic background and then discussing some syntactic evidence that he fails to appreciate. Then, I use the failure of this argument to motivate some more general reflections on how the standard treatment of ‘ought’ by theoretical semanticists might be refined in the light of the distinction important to ethical theory between agential and non-agential ought-statements, but also on how ethical theory might benefit from more careful study of the dominant treatment of modals as operators in theoretical semantics.     

Ethical androcentrism and maternal substance addiction

In this paper, I argue that bioethics suffers from a masculinist approach--what I call "ethical androcentrism." Despite the genesis of other legitimate approaches to ethics (such as feminist, narrative, and communicative ethics), this masculinist tradition persists. The first part of my paper concerns the problem of ethical androcentrism, and how it is manifest in our typical ways of "doing" bioethics (as teachers, ethicists, policymakers, and medical practitioners). After arguing that bioethics suffers from a masculinist ethic, I consider the case of maternal substance addiction to show how this ethic negatively affects the treatment of pregnant addicts. I argue that by treatment maternal substance addiction from an androcentric approach, we fail to serve both pregnant addicts and their fetuses; furthermore, we misrepresent the intentional state of pregnant substance addicts and label them "prenatal abusers." If maternal substance addiction is to be ethically addressed--and if pregnant substance addicts are to be effectively treated--we cannot tacitly accept an androcentric ethic.     

Ethical considerations in neuroimaging and its impact on decision-making for neonates

Neuroimaging can now provide information about structure and function. Despite new and improved neuroimaging technologies applicable to the newborn, predictions about later cognition, learning, social and emotional behavior, and neuromuscular capabilities, based on images of a fetus inside or a newborn outside the womb, are fraught with difficulties that go beyond technical ones. The interpretation of neuroimages may be necessary but it is not sufficient for decision-making related to the withholding or withdrawing of medical support for neonates. As the explanatory reach of neuroimaging increases, there will still need to be consideration of ethical issues as they relate to the best interests of the neonate and the neonate's parents, the quality of life of the neonate and non-beneficial treatment. Once this is appreciated, the boundary between the technical and the ethical will be less often disputed.     

Objectivity in ethics

In this paper I have tried to clarify the meaning of two very different sets of characteristics which philosophers have had in mind when they claimed that ethical terms were objective. I gave a very tentative answer to the question whether it is true to say that, in any of the distinguished senses, ethical statements are objective. Lastly, I indicated how the failure to make the distinction I draw was responsible for a number of confusions and unnecessary difficulties. More precisely, in (1) I defined the first set of the characteristics in question, which together I have called solidity; in (2) I give reasons why it is misleading to claim that ethical statements are solid and also misleading to claim they are not; in (3) I defined the second set of these characteristics, namely, proper contentiousness and proper complexity; in (4) I explained what I thought were the fundamental differences between these two sets of characteristics; in (5) I suggested that the solidity of an expression is normally a good reason for holding that the expression is properly contentious and properly complex; in (6) I claim that the failure to understand (4) and, therefore, also (5) leads to the following errors: (a) that, if an expression is solid, it must be properly contentious and properly complex; that, if an expression is non-solid, it must be either properly contentious and properly simple, or properly non-contentious. (5) That, if an expression is properly contentious and properly complex, it must be solid; if it is properly contentious and properly simple or if it is properly non-contentious, then it must be non-solid; and lastly in (7) I have mentioned some common reasons for holding that ethical expressions have one or the other of the above-mentioned characteristics.     

Toward Honest Ethical Pluralism

I give the label “ethical pluralism” to the meta-ethical view that competing moral views are valid. I assume that validity is conferred on a moral view by its satisfying the relevant meta-ethical criteria in a maximally satisfactory way. If the relevant meta-ethical criteria are based on something roughly like the wide reflective equilibrium model, then ethical pluralism is likely to be correct. Traditional moral views do not grant exemptions from their own binding rules or principles to agents – should any exist – who adhere to a competing valid moral view. Given the usual conception of accepting a moral view, an ethical pluralist cannot honestly accept a traditional moral view. Consequently, I argue, an ethical pluralist is committed to the view that all traditional moral views are invalid. Given the likelihood of ethical pluralism, this conclusion is alarming. I set forth a weak conception of accepting a moral view that is designed to allow an ethical pluralist honestly to accept a traditional moral view. In particular, my conception is designed to explain how someone can (a) be guided by the view that she accepts; (b) accept her own moral view while rationally not accepting competing views that she thinks are equally valid; and (c) not be prepared to prescribe morally to those who are following other valid views. Central to my formulation are what I call a stance of modest respectful disapproval toward other people’s wrong behavior, together with acceptance of decisive moral reasons for oneself that are generated by the valid moral view that one accepts.     

The ethical group psychotherapist: a coda

This concluding article of a two-part special section on the ethical group psychotherapist are highlighted: (1) the importance of the cultivation of the skill and knowledge base of the group psychotherapist in terms of pertinent legal statutes and ethical guidelines; (2) the criticalness of certain personality features related to the concept of virtue; (3) a therapist's self-awareness contributes to the capacities to think and respond ethically; (4) ethical decision making is most likely to occur when the group psychotherapist attends comprehensively to all dimensions that define the setting in which a dilemma emerges; and (5) that in the service of positive ethics, attention to the ethical dimensions of group psychotherapy practice should be continuously present. In agreement with other contributions to this section, I conclude that the commitment to the ethical practice of group psychotherapy must be made not only by the individual practitioner but also by educational and training programs and professional organizations.     

Beyond the Classroom Wall: Theorist-Practitioner Relationships and Extra-Mural Ethics

In this paper I investigate the theory-practice relationship in ethics by using the lens of theorist-practitioner relationships. In particular I discuss the contrasts between theorist-practitioner relationship inside and outside the classroom, the ‘extra-mural’ expertise of theorists, and the ethical issues which arise when theorists act as co-practitioners. I argue that understanding these social and ethical issues is essential to understanding the relationship between theory and practice in ethics, and shows the need for more emphasis on practice-oriented forms of ethical theorising.     

Foucault and ethical universality

Foucault's resistance to a universalist ethics, especially in his later writings, is well-known. Foucault thinks that ethical universalism presupposes a shared human essence, and that this presupposition makes it a straitjacket, an attempt to force people to conform to an externally imposed 'pattern'. Foucault's hostility may be warranted for one - perhaps the usual - conception of ethical universality. But there are other conceptions of ethical universality that are not vulnerable to Foucault's criticism, and that are ethically and culturally important. I set out one such conception, and show why it matters. Paul Patton has argued that Foucault is best read as grounding his analyses of power in a 'conception of human being' traceable to Nietzsche. I explain why this does not amount to the ethical universalism that I sketch below.     

Predictive genetic testing for conditions that present in childhood

There is a general consensus in the medical and medical ethics communities against predictive genetic testing of children for late onset conditions, but minimal consideration is given to predictive testing of asymptomatic children for disorders that present later in childhood when presymptomatic treatment cannot influence the course of the disease. In this paper, I examine the question of whether it is ethical to perform predictive testing and screening of newborns and young children for conditions that present later in childhood. I consider the risks and benefits of (1) predictive testing of children from high-risk families; (2) predictive population screening for conditions that are untreatable; and (3) predictive population screening for conditions in which the efficacy of presymptomatic treatment is equivocal. I conclude in favor of parental discretion for predictive genetic testing, but against state-sponsored predictive screening for conditions that do not fulfill public health screening criteria.     

Framing Ethical Acceptability: A Problem with Nuclear Waste in Canada

Ethical frameworks are often used in professional fields as a means of providing explicit ethical guidance for individuals and institutions when confronted with ethically important decisions. The notion of an ethical framework has received little critical attention, however, and the concept subsequently lends itself easily to misuse and ambiguous application. This is the case with the ??ethical framework?? offered by Canada??s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), the crown-corporation which owns and is responsible for the long-term management of Canada??s high-level nuclear fuel waste. It makes a very specific claim, namely that it is managing Canada??s long-lived radioactive nuclear fuel waste in an ethically responsible manner. According to this organization, what it means to behave in an ethically responsible manner is to act and develop policy in accordance with its ethical framework. What, then, is its ethical framework, and can it be satisfied? In this paper I will show that the NWMO??s ethical and social framework is deeply flawed in two respects: (a) it fails to meet the minimum requirements of a code of ethic or ethical framework by offering only questions, and no principles or rules of conduct; and (b) if posed as principles or rules of conduct, some of its questions are unsatisfiable. In particular, I will show that one of its claims, namely that it seek informed consent from individuals exposed to risk of harm from nuclear waste, cannot be satisfied as formulated. The result is that the NWMO??s ethical framework is not, at present, ethically acceptable.