ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE AND SOCIALLY EXTENDED MENTATION

Abstract: The leading accounts of the ethics of proxy decision making implicitly draw on internalist conceptions of the philosophy of mind, or so this essay tries to demonstrate. Using the views of Ronald Dworkin as its jumping-off point, the essay argues that accepting the sort of externalism associated with writers such as Putnam and Burge would alter Dworkin's conclusions concerning how we should respond to the current or precedent decisions of people suffering from dementia. Building on the views of Agnieszka Jawarska, it argues that accepting "active" externalism à la Clark and Chambers would provide currently competent people with new resources for establishing the authority of their present values over inconsistent values they might come to entertain should they become demented.     

HOLDING ONE ANOTHER (WELL, WRONGLY, CLUMSILY) IN A TIME OF DEMENTIA

Abstract: This essay takes a close look at a species of care that is particularly needed by people with progressive dementias but that has not been much discussed in the bioethics literature: the activity of holding the person in her or his identity. It presses the claim that close family members have a special responsibility to hold on to the demented person's identity for her or him, and offers some criteria for doing this morally well or badly. Finally, it considers how even those with dementia can hold others in their identities, and suggests that this kind of holding too can have great moral worth.     

The effect of culture and self‐construals on predispositions toward verbal communication

This study tested the effects of culture and self‐construals (i.e., independence and interdependence) on predispositions toward verbal communication. For the purpose of this study, we focused on two main areas of verbal communication predispositions: (a) communication apprehension and (b) argumentativeness. In our path model, we expected that culture‐level individualism increases one's construal of self as independent, which, in turn, leads to a higher degree of argumentativeness and a lower level of communication apprehension. We also expected that culture‐level individualism decreases one's construal of self as interdependent, which, in turn, leads to a lower degree of argumentativeness and a higher level of communication apprehension. Data to test the model were drawn from undergraduates (N=539) studying in Korea, Hawaii, and mainland U.S. The data were partially consistent with the theoretical predictions made. The implications of the results for theory and practice are discussed.     

Cutting Motherhood in Two: Some Suspicions Concerning Surrogacy

Surrogate motherhood—at least if carefully structured to protect the interests of the women involved—seems defensible along standard liberal lines which place great stress on free agreements as moral bedrocks. But feminist theories have tended to be suspicious about the importance assigned to this notion by mainstream ethics, and in this paper, we develop implications of those suspicions for surrogacy. We argue that the practice is inconsistent with duties parents owe to children and that it compromises the freedom of surrogates to perform their share of those duties. Standard liberal perspectives tend to be insensitive to such considerations; we propose a view which takes more seriously the moral importance of the causal relationship between parents and children, and which therefore illuminates rather than obscures the stake that women and children have in surrogacy.