中国当前的医疗危机与医护人员的专业责任和使命

分析了导致当前国内医患关系恶化的种种宏观与微观的因素,认为其中最重要的原因是医患关系中出现不应存在的利益冲突,最终导致医患关系出现一种诚信危机.以此为讨论起点,分析了西方国家的信托模式的七种特征,论证医患关系的本质为何是一种信托关系,并指出忠诚与守信是信托关系和医疗专业精神的核心价值.在结论中特别指出,这种认知明确了医疗专业在当前的医患危机中应该扮演的角色和担当的责任.     

中国当前的医疗危机与医护人员的专业责任和使命

分析了导致当前国内医患关系恶化的种种宏观与微观的因素,认为其中最重要的原因是医患关系中出现不应存在的利益冲突,最终导致医患关系出现一种诚信危机。以此为讨论起点,分析了西方国家的信托模式的七种特征,论证医患关系的本质为何是一种信托关系,并指出忠诚与守信是信托关系和医疗专业精神的核心价值。在结论中特别指出,这种认知明确了医疗专业在当前的医患危机中应该扮演的角色和担当的责任。     

Justice,Health, and Healthcare

Healthcare (including public health) is special because it protects normal functioning, which in turn protects the range of opportunities open to individuals. I extend this account in two ways. First, since the distribution of goods other than healthcare affect population health and its distribution, I claim that Rawls's principles of justice describe a fair distribution of the social determinants of health, giving a partial account of when health inequalities are unjust. Second, I supplement a principled account of justice for health and healthcare with an account of fair process for setting limits or rationing care. This account is provided by three conditions that comprise "accountability for reasonableness."     

Responsibility, Control, and Omissions

Previously, I have argued that moral responsibility for actions is associated with guidance control. This sort of control does not necessarily involve the freedom to do otherwise. In this paper I extend the view to apply to omissions. That is, moral responsibility for an omission is associated with guidance control of that omission. This helps to provide a systematic, unified account of moral responsibility.     

Genetics,Faith, and Responsibility

The Battle of Dover is now concluded; and Charles Darwin's theory of evolution has won the legal day. The Theory of Evolution in the Darwainian and neo-Darwinian form is a very fertile theory; it generates hypotheses and research programs that lead to new knowledge. Even as a secular pursuit of knowledge, Christians appreciate science.

What the Christian community cannot tolerate is second-rate science; and it especially eschews pseudo-science. We ask for a general commitment; support the best science in our schools and laboratories as an expression of our Christian faith. In light of the public controversy regarding alternatives to teaching Darwinian science in our public schools, we offer six recommendations.     

Ruin,Repair, and Responsibility

'Ruin, Repair, and Responsibility' explores and Arendtean conceptualization of the three and their interrelations. At issue is how to understand (a) ruin in its socio-historical specificity but also in terms of what it is that breaks down in the weave of human relations, (b) the possibility or impossibility of repair, and (c) what responsibility may mean when repair is impossible since the very conditions for its possibility have been destroyed.     

Responsibility,Reaction, and Value

Many writers accept the following thesis about responsibility: (R) For one to be responsible for something is for one to be such that it is fitting that one be the object of some reactive attitude with respect to that thing. This thesis bears a striking resemblance to a thesis about value that is also accepted by many writers: (V) For something to be good (or neutral, or bad) is for it to be such that it is fitting that it be the object of some pro-attitude (or indifference, or some contra-attitude). V has been the subject of intense debate in recent years, in part because of its incorporation into what has come to be called the “buck-passing” account of value. In particular, V is open to three challenges: that it is not necessarily the case that whatever is good is the fitting object of a pro-attitude; that it is not necessarily the case that whatever is the fitting object of a pro-attitude is good; and that, even if there is a strict equivalence between what is good and what is the fitting object of a pro-attitude, still the former is not to be analyzed in terms of the latter. The resemblance between V and R has not been previously commented on, but, once it is recognized, it is clear that R is open to challenges that resemble those to which V is vulnerable. This paper explores both the challenges to V and the parallel challenges to R and discusses responses that may be given to these challenges. The interrelation between V and R is then examined, and a general lesson is drawn concerning how to adjudicate disputes about the nature of moral responsibility.     

Obligation,Responsibility, and History

I argue that, each of the following, appropriately clarified to yield a noteworthy thesis, is true. (1) Moral obligation can affect moral responsibility. (2) Obligation succumbs to changes in responsibility. (3) Obligation is immune from changes in responsibility.     

Freedom, Responsibility, and Agency

This paper first distinguishes three alternative views that adherents to both incompatibilism and PAP may take as to what constitutes an agent's determining or controlling her action (if it's not the action's being deterministically caused by antecedent events): the indeterministic-causation view, the agent-causation view, and "simple indeterminism." The bulk of the paper focusses on the dispute between simple indeterminism - the view that the occurrence of a simple mental event is determined by its subject if it possesses the "actish" phenomenal quality and is undetermined by antecedent events - and Timothy O'Connor's agent-causation view. It defends simple indeterminism against O'Connor's objections to it and offers objections to O'Connor's view.     

Openness, Accidentality and Responsibility

In this paper, I present a novel argument for scepticism about moral responsibility. Unlike traditional arguments, this argument doesn’t depend on contingent empirical claims about the truth or falsity of causal determinism. Rather, it is argued that the conceptual conditions of responsibility are jointly incompatible. In short, when an agent is responsible for an action, it must be true both that the action was non-accidental, and that it was open to the agent not to perform that action. However, as I argue, an action is only non-accidental in those cases where it isn’t open to the agent not to perform it.