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283How Catherine does go on: Northanger Abbey and moral thoughtPhilosophy and Literature 34 (1). 2010.A certain pupil with the vaguely Kafkaesque name B has mastered the series of natural numbers. B's new task is to learn how to write down other series of cardinal numbers and right now, we're working on the series "+2." After a bit, B seems to catch on, but we are unusually thorough teachers and keep him at it. Things are going just fine until he reaches 1000. Then, quite confounding us, he writes 1004, 1008, 1012."We say to him: 'Look what you've done!'—He doesn't understand. We say: 'You were …Read more
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48Dealing death and retrieving organsJournal of Bioethical Inquiry 6 (3): 285-291. 2009.It has recently been argued by Miller and Truog (2008) that, while procuring vital organs from transplant donors is typically the cause of their deaths, this violation of the requirement that donors be dead prior to the removal of their organs is not a cause for moral concern. In general terms, I endorse this heterodox conclusion, but for different and, as I think, more powerful reasons. I end by arguing that, even if it is agreed that retrieval of vital organs causes the deaths of those who pro…Read more
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Trusting bioethicistsIn Lisa A. Eckenwiler & Felicia Cohn (eds.), The Ethics of Bioethics: Mapping the Moral Landscape, Johns Hopkins University Press. 2007.
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21Respecting boundaries, disparaging valuesAmerican Journal of Bioethics 8 (12). 2008.No abstract
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26Utility, fairness, and what really matters in organ provisionAmerican Journal of Bioethics 4 (4). 2004.This Article does not have an abstract
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31Two essays in public philosophy: Callahan'sthe troubled dream of life and dworkin'slife's DominionTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 16 (1): 115-123. 1995.
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38Trust and transplantsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 5 (4). 2005.This Article does not have an abstract
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20Making peace in gestational conflictsTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 13 (4). 1992.Mary Anne Warren's claim that there is room for only one person with full and equal rights inside a single human skin ([1], p. 63) calls attention to the vast range of moral conflict engendered by assigning full basic moral rights to fetuses. Thereby, it serves as a goad to thinking about conflicts between pregnant women and their fetuses in a way that emphasizes relationships rather than rights. I sketch out what a care orientation might suggest about resolving gestational conflicts. I also arg…Read more
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54Knowledge, authority and identity: A prolegomenon to an epistemology of the clinicTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 22 (2): 107-122. 2001.Disputes about theory in bioethics almost invariablyrevolve around different understandings of morality or practicalreasoning; I here suggest that the field would do well to becomemore explicitly contentious about knowledge, and start the taskof putting together a clinical epistemology. By way of providingsome motivation for such a discussion, I consider two cases ofresistance to shifts in clinical practice that are, by and large,not ethically controversial, highlighting how differentconceptions…Read more
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37The baroness's committee and the president's council: Ambition and alienation in public bioethicsKennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 15 (3): 251-267. 2005.: The President's Council on Bioethics has tried to make a distinctive contribution to the methodology of such public bodies in developing what it has styled a "richer bioethics." The Council's procedure contrasts with more modest methods of public bioethical deliberation employed by the United Kingdom's Warnock Committee. The practices of both bodies are held up against a backdrop of concerns about moral and political alienation, prompted by the limitations of moral reasoning and by moral disse…Read more
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69The meaning of the act: Reflections on the expressive force of reproductive decision making and policiesKennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 8 (2): 165-182. 1998.: Prenatal and preconceptual testing and screening programs provide information on the basis of which people can choose to avoid the birth of children likely to face disabilities. Some disabilities advocates have objected to such programs and to the decisions made within them, on the grounds that measures taken to avoid the birth of children with disabilities have an "expressive force" that conveys messages disrespectful to people with disabilities. Assessing such a claim requires careful attent…Read more
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104Prenatal diagnosis, personal identity, and disabilityKennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10 (3): 213-228. 2000.: A fascinating criticism of abortion occasioned by prenatal diagnosis of potentially disabling traits is that the complex of test-and-abortion sends a morally disparaging message to people living with disabilities. I have argued that available versions of this "expressivist" argument are inadequate on two grounds. The most fundamental is that, considered as a practice, abortions prompted by prenatal testing are not semantically well-behaved enough to send any particular message; they do not fun…Read more
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44Measured fairness, situated justice: Feminist reflections on health care rationingKennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 6 (1): 53-68. 1996.: Bioethical discussion of justice in health care has been much enlivened in recent years by new developments in the theory of rationing and by the emergence of a strong communitarian voice. Unfortunately, these developments have not enjoyed much in the way of close engagement with feminist-inspired reflections on power, privilege, and justice. I hope here to promote interchange between "mainstream" treatments of justice in health care and feminist thought
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13Cutting Motherhood in Two: Some Suspicions Concerning SurrogacyIn Helen B. Holmes & Laura Purdy (eds.), Feminist Perspectives in Medical Ethics, Indiana University Press. pp. 257. 1992.
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7Meaning and medicine: a reader in the philosophy of health care (edited book)Routledge. 1999.Most available resources for teachers and students in biomedical ethics are based on a notion of medicine and of how to understand and illuminate its ethical problems that is at least two decades old. Meaning and Medicine dramatically expands the repertoire of resources for teachers and students of bioethics. In addition to providing fresh perspectives on both traditional and emerging questions in bioethics, this Reader focuses on questions in social philosophy, epistemology, and metaphysics as …Read more
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45Testing, Terminating, and DiscriminatingCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 16 (4): 462. 2007.In my previous thinking about the considerations that go under the heading of the “expressivist argument,” I have been fascinated chiefly by two of its features: its semantic commitments and its independence from disputes about the moral standing of fetuses. Abortions prompted by prenatal testing are undertaken because of indications that the fetus has physical features that would be configured as disabilities in the social world into which it would otherwise emerge. The expressivist argument's …Read more
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24The Surrogate's AuthorityJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 39 (2): 161-168. 2014.The authority of surrogates—often close family members—to make treatment decisions for previously capacitated patients is said to come from their knowledge of the patient, which they are to draw on as they exercise substituted judgment on the patient’s behalf. However, proxy accuracy studies call this authority into question, hence the Patient Preference Predictor (PPP). We identify two problems with contemporary understandings of the surrogate’s role. The first is with the assumption that knowl…Read more
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9What Families Say about Surrogacy: A Response to “Autonomy and the Family as (In)appropriate Surrogates for DNR Decisions”Journal of Clinical Ethics 18 (3): 219-226. 2007.
East Lansing, Michigan, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |