-
526Just caring for the elderlyInternational Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 6 (2): 36-40. 2013.Midway in Martha Holstein’s article, these words occur: “[P]eople [should] get the help they need, when they need it, in the way that they would like to receive it, without exploiting family members or imperiling their dignity or self-respect” (24). In an essay that brims over with worrisome news, that this seemingly anodyne sentence appears in the section devoted to utopian thinking is perhaps the most dispiriting thought it conveys. Not that there isn’t keen competition for the role. Holstein …Read more
-
281How 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
-
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
-
74Donation by default? Examining feminist reservations about opt-out organ procurementInternational Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 3 (1): 23-42. 2010.There is reason to believe that procuring organs from recently dead people who did not explicitly refuse to provide them—here referred to as “opt-out” arrangements—would ease growing shortages, thus extending the lives of many who otherwise would die soon. There is also a simple, apparently powerful argument—the “easy rescue requirement”—for believing that many people have strong moral reason to provide such life-extending support to others, thus bolstering the case for implementing opt-out syst…Read more
-
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
-
68Cutting Motherhood in Two: Some Suspicions Concerning SurrogacyHypatia 4 (3): 85-94. 1989.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 com…Read more
-
60Internal organs, integral selves, and good communities: opt-out organ procurement policies and the 'separateness of persons'Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 32 (5): 289-300. 2011.Most people accept that if they can save someone from death at very little cost to themselves, they must do so; call this the ‘duty of easy rescue.’ At least for many such people, an instance of this duty is to allow their vital organs to be used for transplantation. Accordingly, ‘opt-out’ organ procurement policies, based on a powerfully motivated responsibility to render costless or very low-cost lifesaving aid, would seem presumptively permissible. Counterarguments abound. Here I consider, in…Read more
-
59The Romance of the FamilyHastings Center Report 38 (4): 19-21. 2008.We should not always expect parents to put their children first.
-
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
-
51A Comment on Fry's "The Role of Caring in a Theory of Nursing Ethics"Hypatia 5 (3): 153-158. 1990.Our response to Sara Fry's paper focuses on the difficulty of understanding her insistence on the fundamental character of caring in a theory of nursing ethics. We discuss a number of problems her text throws in the way of making sense of this idea, and outline our own proposal for how caring's role may be reasonably understood: not as an alternative object of value, competing with autonomy or patient good, but rather as an alternative way of responding toward that which is of value
-
48Odd Complaints and Doubtful Conditions: Norms of Hypochondria in Jane Austen and Catherine BellingJournal of Bioethical Inquiry 11 (2): 193-200. 2014.In her final fragmentary novel Sanditon, Jane Austen develops a theme that pervades her work from her juvenilia onward: illness, and in particular, illness imagined, invented, or self-inflicted. While the “invention of odd complaints” is characteristically a token of folly or weakness throughout her writing, in this last work imagined illness is also both a symbol and a cause of how selves and societies degenerate. In the shifting world of Sanditon, hypochondria is the lubricant for a society be…Read more
-
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
-
45Alzheimer's disease and socially extended mentationMetaphilosophy 40 (3-4): 462-474. 2009.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 A…Read more
-
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
-
44Forming Professional Bioethicists: The Program at the University of Tennessee, KnoxvilleCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 9 (3): 418-423. 2000.As a way of contributing to bioethics' understanding of itself, and, more particularly, to invigorate conversation about how we can best educate future colleagues, we present here a sketch of the quarter-century-old graduate concentration in medical ethics housed in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Our hope is to incite other programs to share their histories, strategies, problems, and aspirations, so as to help the field as a whole get a clearer sense of h…Read more
-
44Parental obligations and the ethics of surrogacy: a causal perspectivePublic Affairs Quarterly 5 (1): 49-61. 1991.
-
43Measured 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
-
43Synecdoche and StigmaCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 16 (4): 475. 2007.In the portion of their reply directed to me, Professor Asch and Dr. Wasserman helpfully develop the synecdoche argument by highlighting its connections to stigma. I understand them to distinguish the situation of a woman making a decision concerning her pregnancy informed by prenatal testing from a woman making a similar decision informed by considerations of, for example, poverty, like so: In testing contexts, it will characteristically be the case that the woman's decision will be distorted b…Read more
-
40Hurts, insults and stigmas: a comment on MurphyJournal of Medical Ethics 37 (2): 66-67. 2011.Both of the main points in Professor Murphy's paper seem to me clearly and effectively argued.1 It is incontrovertible that some people find hurtful the use of medical technologies to avoid the birth of children who, in the present order of things, would be disabled. No result from the philosophy of language, or anywhere else for that matter, can plausibly show otherwise. Indeed, even to speak of ‘legitimately interpreting’ events that cause one pain as ‘hurtful’, as Murphy does, seems a shade t…Read more
-
39Still Quiet After All These Years: Revisiting “The Silence of the Bioethicists”Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 9 (3): 249-259. 2012.Some 14 years ago, I published an article in which I identified a prime site for bioethicists to ply their trade: medical responses to requests for hormonal and surgical interventions aimed at facilitating transgendered people’s transition to their desired genders. Deep issues about the impact of biotechnologies and health care practices on central aspects of our conceptual system, I argued, were raised by how doctors understood and responded to people seeking medical assistance in changing thei…Read more
-
38Trust and transplantsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 5 (4). 2005.This Article does not have an abstract
-
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
-
35Moral Psychology: Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2004.Moral psychology studies the features of cognition, judgement, perception and emotion that make human beings capable of moral action. Perspectives from feminist and race theory immensely enrich moral psychology. Writers who take these perspectives ask questions about mind, feeling, and action in contexts of social difference and unequal power and opportunity. These essays by a distinguished international cast of philosophers explore moral psychology as it connects to social life, scientific stud…Read more
-
35Health and Disease as 'Thick' Concepts in Ecosystemic ContextsEnvironmental Values 4 (4). 1995.In this paper, I consider what kind of normative work might be done by speaking of ecosystems utilising a 'medical' vocabulary – drawing, that is, on such notions as 'health', 'disease', and 'illness'. Some writers attracted to this mode of expression have been rather modest about what they think it might purchase. I wish to be bolder. Drawing on the idea of 'thick' evaluative concepts as discussed by McDowell, Williams and Taylor, and resorting to a phenomenological argument for a kind of moral…Read more
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 |