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41Professional values, aesthetic values, and the ends of tradeMedicine, Health Care and Philosophy 14 (2): 195-201. 2011.Professionalism is initially understood as a historical process, through which certain commercial services sought to improve their social status by separating themselves from mere crafts or trades. This process may be traced clearly with the aspiration of British portrait painters, in the eighteenth century, to acquire a social status akin to that of already established professionals, such as clerics and doctors. This may be understood, to a significant degree, as a process of gentrification. Th…Read more
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30Enterprise association or civil association? The uk national health serviceJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 20 (6): 669-688. 1995.This paper falls into three parts. In the first part I will briefly review the current process of reform that the United Kingdom National Health Service is undergoing. Two fundamental motivations for reform, the desire for increased efficiency and for an increased responsiveness to patients' needs and preferences will be discussed in greater detail. The second part attempts to provide a perspective on the moral debate concerning health care reform by introducing the distinction between ‘civil as…Read more
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10Bowling, A.: 1997, Measuring Health; a Review of Quality of Life Measurement Scales (2nd ed.)Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 1 (2): 181-182. 1998.
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22Hermeneutics and SportSport, Ethics and Philosophy 10 (4): 343-348. 2016.Hermeneutics is the exploration of the process of textual interpretation. As such, it has long been recognised as an important component within the humanities and social sciences, whether one deals with actual texts or with other the products of meaningful human activity, including social actions and utterances. Here, we offer a brief overview of the contribution that hermeneutics might make to the philosophy of sport. If sports and sporting events are seen to be the results of meaningful human …Read more
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43The Art of Useless SufferingMedicine, Health Care and Philosophy 10 (4): 95-405. 2007.The purpose of this paper is to explore the role that modernism in the arts might have in articulating the uselessness and incomprehensibility of physical and mental suffering. It is argued that the experience of illness is frequently resistant to interpretation, and as such, it will be suggested, to conventional forms of artistic expression and communication. Conventional narratives, and other beautiful or conventionally expressive aesthetic structures, that presuppose the possibility and desir…Read more
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69The dominance of big pharma: power (review)Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 16 (2): 295-304. 2013.The purpose of this paper is to provide a normative model for the assessment of the exercise of power by Big Pharma. By drawing on the work of Steven Lukes, it will be argued that while Big Pharma is overtly highly regulated, so that its power is indeed restricted in the interests of patients and the general public, the industry is still able to exercise what Lukes describes as a third dimension of power. This entails concealing the conflicts of interest and grievances that Big Pharma may have w…Read more
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36Sport as strategic action: A Habermasian perspectiveSport, Ethics and Philosophy 1 (1). 2007.The purpose of this paper is to explore the moral status of sport through a conceptual structure borrowed from Jürgen Habermas's philosophy and social theory. Habermas distinguishes between communicative and strategic action as two ways in which social action may be coordinated. While the former relies on the building of mutual understanding between social agents, the latter entails one agent manipulating others, as if they were mere objects to be treated instrumentally. In an initial model of s…Read more
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85Integrity and the moral complexity of professional practiceNursing Philosophy 12 (2): 94-106. 2011.The paper offers an account of integrity as the capacity to deliberate and reflect usefully in the light of context, knowledge, experience, and information (that of self and others) on complex and conflicting factors bearing on action or potential action. Such an account of integrity seeks to encompass the moral complexity and conflict of the professional environment, and the need for compromises in professional practice. In addition, it accepts that humans are social beings who must respect and…Read more
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1Alexander Broadie, ed., The Cambridge Companion to The Scottish Enlightenment Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 24 (2): 86-89. 2004.
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14The Aesthetics of The Olympic Art CompetitionsJournal of the Philosophy of Sport 39 (2): 185-199. 2012.In the Olympic Art Competitions (1912–1948) Pierre de Coubertin expresses his conception of both sport and art as instruments of moral renewal. In this paper, this conception is criticised for failing to appreciate art and sport as necessary manifestations of modernism. The Art Competitions were informed by a traditionalist aesthetic, and thus played a highly conservative role within Olympism. A modernist art about sport, in contrast, would have been a source of critical reflection, potentially …Read more
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23SportworldSport, Ethics and Philosophy 7 (1). 2013.(2013). Sportworld. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy: Vol. 7, Sport and Art: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Sport, pp. 30-54. doi: 10.1080/17511321.2013.761881
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76Football and the Poetics of SpaceSport, Ethics and Philosophy 9 (2): 153-165. 2015.This paper explores space as a core source of aesthetic pleasure in various codes of football. The paper begins by applying Kant’s distinction between the agreeable and the pleasurable to sport, arguing that the appreciation of sport entails more than just excitement. Pleasure comes from an appreciation of the rules, strategies and history of the game. The significance of the rules of various codes of football in articulating our experience of space will be taken as fundamental to such appreciat…Read more
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11Culture and criticism: AdornoIn Simon Glendinning (ed.), The Edinburgh Encylopedia of Continental Philosophy, Edinburgh University Press. 1999.
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63Prospects for Flourishing in Contemporary Health CareHealth Care Analysis 24 (2): 101-104. 2016.This special issue of Health Care Analysis originated in an conference, held in Birmingham in 2014, and organised by the group Think about Health. We introduce the issue by briefly reviewing the understandings of the concept of ‘flourishing’, and introducing the contributory papers, before offering some reflections on the remaining issues that reflection on flourishing poses for health care provision
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122The Hermeneutic Challenge of Genetic Engineering: Habermas and the TranshumanistsMedicine, Health Care and Philosophy 12 (2): 157-167. 2009.The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that developments in transhumanist technologies may have upon human cultures, and to do so by exploring a potential debate between Habermas and the transhumanists. Transhumanists, such as Nick Bostrom, typically see the potential in genetic and other technologies for positively expanding and transcending human nature. In contrast, Habermas is a representative of those who are fearful of this technology, suggesting that it will compound the delet…Read more
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The health service as civil associationIn Michael Parker (ed.), Ethics and Community in the Health Care Professions, Routledge. pp. 15. 1999.
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22Sport, Rules and Values: Philosophical Investigations Into the Nature of Sport By Graham McFee. Published 2004 by Routledge, London and New York (review)Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 32 (1): 119-121. 2005.
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118A Hermeneutics of SportSport, Ethics and Philosophy 7 (1). 2013.(2013). A Hermeneutics of Sport. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy: Vol. 7, Sport and Art: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Sport, pp. 140-167. doi: 10.1080/17511321.2012.761893
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20Three ways of watching a sports videoSport, Ethics and Philosophy 10 (4): 403-415. 2016.It does not typically seem to be worthwhile rewatching a sport match, for example, in a video recording, once the result is known. Sports matches are like detective stories. Once one knows ‘whodunit’, there seems little point in revisiting the tale. By drawing on an argument from musicologist Edward T. Cone, this paper argues that certain sports matches may be revisited with profit. The initial experience of a game may be of a series of events that are often ambiguous or confusing as to their me…Read more
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60The Beauty of SportSport, Ethics and Philosophy 7 (1). 2013.(2013). The Beauty of Sport. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy: Vol. 7, Sport and Art: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Sport, pp. 100-120. doi: 10.1080/17511321.2013.761886
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60Sport and PhilosophySport, Ethics and Philosophy 7 (1). 2013.(2013). Sport and Philosophy. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy: Vol. 7, Sport and Art: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Sport, pp. 10-29. doi: 10.1080/17511321.2013.761882
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74Flourishing in Health CareHealth Care Analysis 24 (2): 161-173. 2016.The purpose of this paper is to offer an account of ‘flourishing’ that is relevant to health care provision, both in terms of the flourishing of the individual patient and carer, and in terms of the flourishing of the caring institution. It is argued that, unlike related concepts such as ‘happiness’, ‘well-being’ or ‘quality of life’, ‘flourishing’ uniquely has the power to capture the importance of the vulnerability of human being. Drawing on the likes of Heidegger and Nussbaum, it is argued th…Read more
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49A Response to Nordenfelt's “The Varieties of Dignity”Health Care Analysis 12 (2): 83-89. 2004.I respond to Lennart Nordenfelt's analysis of dignity by questioning his attempt to establish an objective standard by which dignity can be determined. I approach this by considering the way in which claims to dignity may be contested and defended. This leads, in the cases of dignity of merit and dignity of moral status, to an apparent relativism. This relativism is checked by further consideration of dignity of identity, and in particular by consideration of the nature of the processes that ser…Read more
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4The philosophy of physical education: a new perspectiveBritish Journal of Educational Studies 63 (1): 107-108. 2015.
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Continental Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Social and Political Philosophy |
Continental Philosophy |