Ethics Consultant: Problem Solver or Spiritual Counselor?

The primary goal of ethics consultation should be to provide effective assistance to patients and families in obtaining care that is duly responsive to their rights and their needs. The consultation reported by Mark Bliton fails in this regard because it never ascertains why the consultation was called; makes little attempt to ascertain the motives of those involved; avoids exploration of the ethical concerns of family, attending or staff; makes no connection with institutional policies or practices; uncritically adopts and serves the medical treatment ethos; and substitutes fellowfeeling for compassionate action.     

Ethics and professionalism: what does a resident need to learn?

Training in ethics and professionalism is a fundamental component of residency education, yet there is little empirical information to guide curricula. The objective of this study is to describe empirically derived ethics objectives for ethics and professionalism training for multiple specialties. Study design is a thematic analysis of documents, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups conducted in a setting of an academic medical center, Veterans Administration, and community hospital training more than 1000 residents. Participants were 84 informants in 13 specialties including residents, program directors, faculty, practicing physicians, and ethics committees. Thematic analysis identified commonalities across informants and specialties. Resident and nonresident informants identified consent, interprofessional relationships, family interactions, communication skills, and end-of-life care as essential components of training. Nonresidents also emphasized formal ethics instruction, resource allocation, and self-monitoring, whereas residents emphasized the learning environment and resident-attending interactions. Conclusions are that empirically derived learning needs for ethics and professionalism included many topics, such as informed consent and resource allocation, relevant for most specialties, providing opportunities for shared curricula and resources.     

Should We Take Up the Slack?: Reflections on Non-ideal Theory in Ethics

Philosophia - This article asks whether (and how) our moral duties are created by others’ non-compliance and whether we should fulfill them or not. For example, do we need to donate more of...     

Release of test data under the 2002 Ethics Code and the HIPAA Privacy Rule: a raw deal or just a half-baked idea?

Until quite recently, many psychologists believed themselves ethically bound to fall on their swords before releasing raw test data to anyone but another qualified professional. Under the American Psychological Association Ethics Code (2002), consistent with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 Privacy Rule of 2002 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2002), test materials may still be protected, but documents containing participants' responses are ordinarily subject to disclosure. Although many may lament the cost to test security, the virtues of secrecy regarding testing are often exaggerated and its vices underestimated. Several measures, including appropriate informed consent, sensitive and detailed test feedback, offers of suitable alternatives to raw test data, copyright notices, and the use of protective orders and supervised inspection in forensic matters can still be used to maintain a reasonable degree of test security.     

Becoming a lifer? Unlocking career through metaphor

Despite growing interest in the adoption of metaphor analysis as a method of studying organizational and working life, there have been few, if any, empirical studies of career metaphors. Although career scholars have imposed their own metaphors to help illuminate their conceptions of career, the metaphors employed by those having careers and the conceptual insight this might generate has been all but ignored. This paper seeks to address this gap. Drawing on the career accounts of graduate level employees within a large blue‐chip corporation, the metaphors they employ are analysed. The dominant metaphors contained within the careers literature – spatial, journey, horticultural, and competition metaphors – are drawn on heavily by participants. So too are other groups of metaphors not acknowledged within the literature. These are revealed as imprisonment, military, school‐like surveillance, Wild West and nautical metaphors. An analysis of these metaphors generates fresh insights into the concept of career and leads to the ‘unlocking’ of important, but to date neglected features of career. On the basis of this metaphor analysis, the paper argues that career may be better understood in terms of a politicized process in which discipline and control are key dimensions.     

Response to Aron and Atlas: Cooking Up a Storm—Together

The author agrees with the approach taken by Aron and Atlas in which they utilize the idea of the prospective function to emphasize the positive aspects of enactment that can be understood to promote symbolization much as dream work does. She welcomes their appeal to the future as an important aspect of intersubjectivity. The commentary on the case of Sophie aims to show the importance of the patient’s activity in collaborating with the analyst as another way that mutuality and play expand the notion of the creative illusion first offered by Winnicott. She also shows how this approach fosters a different idea of the Third than that used by neo-Kleinians, a point first made by this author and Aron. Finally, she suggests ways this idea of the prospective function can be integrated into our understanding of the Third.     

Kierkegaard on Imitation and Ethics: Toward a Secular Project?

This essay demonstrates the prominence of imitation in Kierkegaard’s ethics. I move beyond his idea of authentic existence modeled on Christ and explore the secular dimension of Kierkegaard’s insights about human nature and imitation. I start with presenting imitation as key to understanding the ethical dimension of the relationship between the universal and individual aspects of the human self in Kierkegaard. I then show that Kierkegaard’s moral concepts of “primitivity” and “comparison” are a response to his sociological and psychological observations about imitation from an ethical point of view. In the final section of this paper, I briefly engage Friedrich Schleiermacher’s “ethics of individuality” and Gabriel Tarde’s “laws of imitation” to explore Kierkegaard’s consideration of ethics and imitation as situated within the context of a broader conversation on imitation.     

Becoming uniquely human? Comparing chimpanzee to human infancy

Does comparing behavioral development between chimpanzees and humans during infancy hold the key to understanding what is uniquely human? Recent work shows that while many behaviors emerge at similar ages in chimpanzees, human infants develop behavioral traits underpinning our prosocial and ultra-cooperative nature at a much accelerated rate.     

Why Should Nanoscience Students be Taught to be Ethically Competent?

During the education of scientists at the university level the students become more and more specialized. The specialization of the students is a consequence of the scientific research becoming specialized as well. In the interdisciplinary field of nanoscience the importance of specialization is also emphasized throughout the education. Being an interdisciplinary field of study the specialization in this area is not focused on scientific disciplines, but on the different branches of the research. Historically ethics has not been a priority in science education, however, in recent years the importance of such teachings has been highly recognize especially in medicine, biotechnology and engineering. The rapid development, the many new and unknown areas and the highly specialized focus of nanotechnology suggest the importance of having ethically competent researchers. In this article the importance of ethical competence in nanoscience research is argued for by an example of a dilemma that could occur in a research project. The dilemma is analyzed using two different ethical views, generating two different choices for action. It is seen that the dilemma can have more than one solution and that ethical competence can help in justifying the choice of solution in a specific situation. Furthermore it is suggested that a way to reach this competence is through education in ethics incorporated into the nanoscience education curriculum.     

Loób and Kapwa: An Introduction to a Filipino Virtue Ethics

This is an introduction to a Filipino virtue ethics which is a relationship-oriented virtue ethics. The concepts to be discussed are the result of the unique history of the Philippines, namely a Southeast Asian tribal and animist tradition mixed with a Spanish Catholic tradition for over 300 years. Filipino virtue ethics is based on two foundational concepts in Filipino culture. The first is loób, which can easily be misunderstood when literally translated into English as ‘inside’ but which is better translated as ‘relational will’, and the second is kapwa, which is literally translated as ‘other person’ but is better understood as ‘together with the person’. These serve as pillars for a special collection of virtues (kagandahang-loób, utang-na-loób, pakikiramdam, hiya, lakas-ng-loób/bahala na) which are not individualistic virtues in the same way as most of the cardinal virtues of the Western tradition (i.e. prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude) but are all directed towards the preservation and strengthening of human relationships. This introduction to a Filipino virtue ethics is articulated and organized through a dialogue with Aristotelian-Thomistic virtue ethics.     

Does Animal Ethics Need a Darwinian Revolution?

A frequent argument is that Darwin’s theory of evolution has or should revolutionize our conception of the relation between humans and animals, though society has yet to take account of that revolution in our treatment of animals. On this view, after Darwin demonstrated the essential continuity of humans and animals, traditional morality must be rejected as speciesist in seeing humans as fundamentally distinct from other animals. In fact, the argument is of dubious merit. While there is plenty of room for improving our treatment of animals, it is unlikely that these shortcomings can be blamed on scientific ignorance, or that knowledge of the theory of evolution has any clear moral implications for our treatment of animals.     

Are University Professors Qualified to Teach Ethics?

In the light of recent talk in Canadian business schools about the importance of teaching courses in business ethics, the authors ask whether business professors have the qualifications required to teach business ethics. They point to various ethical dilemmas that arise in a collegial setting and argue that academics who teach business ethics have to first understand the complex ethical situations in which they find themselves if business ethics is to be taught in a meaningful way.     

Ethics -- perceived or reasoned from principles?: a rejoinder to Korn, Huelsman, and Reed

In response to Korn, Huelsman, and Reed's (1992) question, "Who defines those interests, and how serious must the setback be?" (p. 126), we argue that a wrongful (unjust) harm (a setback of interest) is not equivalent to a hurt (a temporary distressing mental state) and that the interests of importance are welfare interests (general means to our ulterior aims), not just a desire to avoid unpleasant mental states (hurts). To set back a welfare interest is to reverse its course or to impede, thwart, defeat, or doom it. It is the primary responsibility of the investigator to define both welfare interests and the risk of harm. An informed consent -- one with substantial understanding, in substantial absence of control by others, and given intentionally -- allows participants to autonomously authorize participation in research, including their toleration of acts of mental discomfort or distress during an experiment. Not only were our participants not wrongfully harmed, they benefited and were willing to volunteer for future research. No strong evidence has been advanced or linked to guided imagery in a way that would justify its restraint; to so claim evokes a standard of legal paternalism that fails to respect participants' competence and autonomy to choose to participate in research on rape using guided imagery.     

Who is Authorized to Do Applied Ethics? Inherently Political Dimensions of Applied Ethics

A standard view in ethics is that ethical issues concern a different range of human concerns than does politics. This essay goes beyond the long-standing dispute about the extent to which applied ethics needs a commitment to ethical theory. It argues that regardless of the outcome of that dispute, applied ethics, because it presumes something about the nature of authority, rests upon and is implicated in political theory. After internalist and externalist accounts of applied ethics are described, “mixed” approaches are considered that contain inevitable political dimensions. A feminist alternative, Walker’s metaethic of responsibility, shows that authority is best understood as relational and that situations of unequal power are therefore often the places where applied ethics arises. Furthermore, in a democratic society, commitments to democracy should shape the account of authority, and, thus, the nature of applied ethics as well.