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107Do corporations have moral rights?Journal of Business Ethics 4 (4). 1985.My aim in this paper is to explore the notion that corporations have moral rights within the context of a constitutive rules model of corporate moral agency. The first part of the paper will briefly introduce the notion of moral rights, identifying the distinctive feature of moral rights, as contrasted with other moral categories, in Vlastos' terms of overridingness. The second part will briefly summarize the constitutive rules approach to the moral agency of corporations (à la French, Smith, Oz…Read more
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70Natural Law and the Right to Know in a DemocracyJournal of Mass Media Ethics 20 (2-3): 121-138. 2005.This article places the concept of "right to know," which is normally associated with law, in a moral framework. It outlines multiple meanings of the concept, emphasizing the institutional nature of "right to know." Then the article imbeds this understanding in moral thinking, including a discussion of the moral elements of rights, and applies that understanding in specific journalistic situations.
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69Patients' autonomy: Three models of the professional-lay relationship in medicineTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 5 (1). 1984.Health care is not merely a matter of individual encounters between patients and physicians or other health care personnel. For patients and those who provide health care come to these encounters already possessed of learned habits of perception and judgment, valuation and action, which define their roles in relation to one another and affect every aspect of their encounter. So the presuppositions of these encounters must be examined if our understanding of patients' autonomy is to be complete. …Read more
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54Forgiving and HopingProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 82 163-172. 2008.The word “forgiveness” and its verbal form, “forgiving,” may appear to have one and the same meaning whenever it is used. But the first thesis of this essay is that several distinct kinds of human activity are denominated by this word, and their differences are philosophically important. The second thesis of this essay is that some of the human activities denominated by this word have a close connection with hope, more specifically with hoping-in-a-person. The third thesis of this essay is that,…Read more
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49Teaching ethics on Rounds: The ethicist as teacher, consultant, and decision-MakerTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 7 (1). 1986.This paper explores the relationship between teaching and consulting in clinical ethics teaching and the role of the ethics teacher in clinical decision-making. Three roles of the clinical ethics teacher are discussed and illustrated with examples from the authors' experience. Two models of the ethics consultant are contrasted, with an argument presented for the ethics consultant as decision facilitator. A concluding section points to some of the challenges of clinical ethics teaching.
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41Three models of group choiceJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 7 (1): 23-34. 1982.The notion of group responsibility has received some very fruitful examination in recent years. But there still remains an important commonsense objection to this notion. Moral responsibility for an action is ordinarily linked to and held to depend upon the action's being the product of an act of choice on the part of the agent. The thrust of the objection here is that it is extremely difficult to understand how intentional acts like acts of choice can be properly attributed to a group. The noti…Read more
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36Cost containment and physicians' decisions: Rethinking the philosophy of medicineTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 8 (1): 81-84. 1987.
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34Reproductive Ethics and Frameworks for Ethics Education (review)Teaching Philosophy 14 (3): 305-311. 1991.
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34Ethics Across the Curriculum—Pedagogical PerspectivesSpringer Verlag. 2018.Late in 1990, the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at Illinois Institute of Technology (lIT) received a grant of more than $200,000 from the National Science Foundation to try a campus-wide approach to integrating professional ethics into its technical curriculum.! Enough has now been accomplished to draw some tentative conclusions. I am the grant's principal investigator. In this paper, I shall describe what we at lIT did, what we learned, and what others, especially phil…Read more
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33Social ethics, the philosophy of medicine, and professional responsibilityTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 6 (3). 1985.The social ethics of medicine is the study and ethical analysis of social structures which impact on the provision of health care by physicians. There are many such social structures. Not all these structures are responsive to the influence of physicians as health professionals. But some social structures which impact on health care are prompted by or supported by important preconceptions of medical practice. In this article, three such elements of the philosophy of medicine are examined in term…Read more
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32What should count as basic health care?Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 4 (2). 1983.The concept of basic healt.h care has grown steadily in importance in recent years as more and more of those who reflect on the issue of a right to health care conclude that we need to distinguish between kinds of health care to which people do have a right and others to which they do not have a right. There is little consensus on where to draw this line. But there does seem to be general agreement that, if this distinction is valid, it is so because some kinds of health care are less important,…Read more
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30The Case Against Thawing Unused Frozen EmbryosHastings Center Report 15 (4): 7-12. 1985.Whether one believes that the embryo has rights from the instant of conception, or that the embryo has no moral rights at all, the conclusion about the fate of unused frozen embryos is the same: they ought to be preserved in their frozen state until they are implanted in a woman's womb or are no longer able to survive implantation.
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29The Ethics of Teaching EthicsHastings Center Report 20 (4): 17-21. 1990.Concerns of public responsibility and professional certification may sometimes mean it is unethical to teach ethics.
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25A Review of: “Charlotte McDaniel, Organizational Ethics: Research and Ethical Environments”: Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2004. 198 pp. $79.95, hardback (review)American Journal of Bioethics 6 (4): 77-78. 2006.No abstract
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24Book Review:The Philosophy of Law: An Introduction. Thomas Morawetz (review)Ethics 92 (3): 572-. 1982.
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23Social rules and the actions of groups: Control of physical objects (review)Journal of Value Inquiry 18 (1): 23-34. 1984.
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20Social Rules and Patterns of BehaviorPhilosophy Research Archives 3 879-895. 1977.In this paper I clarify the distinction between actions performed under a social rule and a mere pattern of behavior through an examination of two distinctive features of actions performed under a social rule. Developing an argument proposed by H.L.A. Hart in The Concept of Law, I first argue that, where a social rule exists, there nonconformity/conformity to the pattern of behavior set down in the rule count as good reasons for criticism/commendation of actions covered by the rule. Secondly I a…Read more
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19From Solo Decision Maker to Multi-Stakeholder Process: A Defense and RecommendationsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 20 (2): 53-55. 2020.Berger (2019) argues effectively that “representativeness is more aptly understood as a variable that is multidimensional and continuous based on relational moral authority,” and also makes some useful suggestions about how taking this observation seriously might require changes in current patterns of practice regarding surrogates. But the essay raises additional important questions about how the Best Interest Standard (BIS) should be used among unrepresented patients and other patients as well …Read more
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16Taking the Lead in Developing Institutional PoliciesIn D. Micah Hester (ed.), Ethics by Committee: A Textbook on Consultation, Organization, and Education for Hospital Ethics Committees, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 249. 2008.
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16""The characteristics of a valid" empirical" slippery-slope argumentJournal of Clinical Ethics 3 (4): 301-302. 1992.
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15Forgiving and HopingProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 82 163-172. 2008.The word “forgiveness” and its verbal form, “forgiving,” may appear to have one and the same meaning whenever it is used. But the first thesis of this essay is that several distinct kinds of human activity are denominated by this word, and their differences are philosophically important. The second thesis of this essay is that some of the human activities denominated by this word have a close connection with hope, more specifically with hoping-in-a-person. The third thesis of this essay is that,…Read more
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14Dental Ethics at Chairside: Professional Principles and Practical ApplicationsMosby Elsevier Health Science. 1994.Case presentations, esthetics, insurance considerations, communicable diseases, referral questions, dental phobia, and legal concerns all play a role in doctor-patient relationships. These topics, and many others, are the subject of this one-of-a-kind resource, designed to show dental students and practitioners how to approach patient relationships.
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