-
1Treating the Brain Dead for the Benefit of the FamilyJournal of Clinical Ethics 2 (1): 53-56. 1991.
-
181To Die or Not to Die (review)Hastings Center Report 27 (6): 4. 1997.Letters commenting on Hardwig, J "Is There a Duty to Die?" with a reply to those letters by the author.
-
24Perspective: Spiritual Issues at the End of Life: A Call for DiscussionHastings Center Report 30 (2): 28. 2000.Physicians face ethical concerns about treatment decisions -- when to offer, withhold or withdraw various treatments -- and treatment decisions have been the focus of bioethics, as well. But the issues that most trouble patients and their families at the end of life are not these. To them, the end of life is a spiritual crisis. ("Spiritual" as used here has to do with the ultimate meaning and values in life. It need not involve a religion, the belief in a God or in any life after death.)
-
26The problem of proxies with interests of their own: toward a better theory of proxy decisionsJournal of Clinical Ethics 4 (1): 20-27. 1992.
-
48Socrates’ Conception of PietyTeaching Philosophy 30 (3): 259-268. 2007.For Socrates, philosophy is self-examination. If the Euthyphro is still to be philosophy in this sense, it must challenge people living now. This paper offers a reading that does this. First, a better case is made for something like the kind of expertise Euthyphro claims and for his position about piety. Second, Socrates and Euthyphro embody different views about the kind of expertise that would be relevant to discovering and engendering piety. Finally, Socrates’ unorthodox conception of piety i…Read more
-
18Donating Your Health Care BenefitsHastings Center Report 18 (2): 8-9. 1988.To encourage altruistic behavior, we need to develop programs in which patients can offer to others the costs of medical care they have a right to claim.
-
What about the family?In Life Choices: A Hastings Center Introduction to Bioethics, . pp. 145--159. 2000.
-
168Privacy, self knowledge, and the commune:Toward an epistemology of the familyIn Hilde Lindemann Nelson (ed.), Feminism and Families, Routledge. pp. 105-115. 1996.Advocates of communal living often urge that life in a commune provides the framework for a deeper knowledge of other people. I believe this is clearly true and because it is true, communal living is also instrumental in promoting self knowledge. The dialogue that is part of the life of a commune enables one to incorporate the insights of the other members into his understanding of himself and his world.
-
112Going to Meet Death: The Art of Dying in the Early Part of the Twenty-First CenturyHastings Center Report 39 (4): 37-45. 2009.Better public health and medicine have given us a new kind of death and with it, a new fear – the fear that death will come too late and take too long. The generation that is dying now is largely unprepared for this new kind of death, for traditionally, people have always tried to avoid or postpone death. But if we are to avoid a bad death – too slow and too late – many of us with access to 21st century medicine will need to develop a very new art, the art of going to meet death. We will need…Read more
-
23Autobiography, biography, and narrative ethicsIn Hilde Lindemann (ed.), Stories and their limits: narrative approaches to bioethics, Routledge. pp. 50--64. 1997.
-
1272The role of trust in knowledgeJournal of Philosophy 88 (12): 693-708. 1991.Most traditional epistemologists see trust and knowledge as deeply antithetical: we cannot know by trusting in the opinions of others; knowledge must be based on evidence, not mere trust. I argue that this is badly mistaken. Modern knowers cannot be independent and self-reliant. In most disciplines, those who do not trust cannot know. Trust is thus often more epistemically basic than empirical evidence or logical argument, for the evidence and the argument are available only through trust. …Read more
-
63Should women think in terms of rights?Ethics 94 (3): 441-455. 1984.W0mcn’s liberation, it is oftcn said, strikes closer t0 home than othcr forms of human liberation. Although basic shifts in attitudes arc required for thc liberation 0f, for example, workers 0r blacks and othcr ethnic minorities, thcsc types of liberation could bc accomplished without fundamental changes in what we call 0ur “privatc" lives or 0ur personal relationships. The liberation 0f blacks 0r workers is largely an affair 0f public roles and institutions, 21 matter 0f socialjusticc, and it i…Read more
-
414Men and Abortion DecisionsHastings Center Report 45 (2): 41-45. 2015.For all their differences, the “pro-choice” and the “pro-life” views of abortion are largely in agreement about one aspect of abortion decisions: where an abortion is morally legitimate, the pregnant woman should be permitted to decide whether or not to have an abortion. But I argue in this paper that if the man who will become the father of the fetus is known, if he believes that he will not be able (or permitted) to simply walk away from his biological offspring, and if he does not think it …Read more
-
764Epistemic dependenceJournal of Philosophy 82 (7): 335-349. 1985.find myself believing all sorts 0f things for which I d0 not possess evidence: that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer, that my car keeps stalling because the carburetor needs LO be rebuilt, that mass media threaten democracy, that slums cause emotional disorders, that my irregular heart beat is premature ventricular contraction, that students} grades are not correlated with success in the ncmacadcmic world, that nuclear power plants are not safe (enough) . . . The list 0f things I believe, t…Read more
-
54The uses of disorder: Personal identity and city life, Richard SennetWorld Futures 13 (3): 271-282. 1973.
-
28To be old is to face the end of life. This is not to say that young people never die. Nor that the old have nothing else to do, no valuable contribution still to make. But after old age comes death. That=s simply a biological fact. It will remain a fact regardless of the medical technologies.
-
34Robin hoods and good samaritans: The role of patients in health care distributionTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 8 (1). 1987.There are good reasons — both medical and moral — for wanting to redistribute health care resources, and American hospitals and physicians are already involved in the practice of redistribution. However, such redistribution compromises both patient autonomy and the fiduciary relationship essential to medicine. These important values would be most completely preserved by a system in which patients themselves would be the agents of redistribution, by sharing their medical resources. Consequently, …Read more
-
244Is there a duty to die?: and other essays in bio-ethicsRoutledge. 2000.Amid the controversies surrounding physician-assisted suicides, euthanasia, and long-term care for the elderly, a major component in the ethics of medicine is notably absent: the rights and welfare of the survivor's family, for whom serious illness and death can be emotionally and financially devastating. In this collection of eight provocative and timely essays, John Hardwig sets forth his views on the need to replace patient-centered bioethics with family-centered bioethics. Starting with a cr…Read more
-
152Action from duty but not in accord with dutyEthics 93 (2): 283-290. 1982.In thc Foundations, Kant draws a distinction bctwccn action which is in accord with duty and action which is done from the motive of duty. This is 21 famous distinction, of course, and thcrc arc many interesting issues concerning it and its implications for ethical thcory. In this paper, I wish t0 focus on just 0nc noteworthy feature of K2mt’s usc of this distinction. Likc any distinction bctwccn logical compatiblcs, this 0nc yields four logically possible classes of action: (1) actions which ar…Read more
-
117What about the Family?Hastings Center Report 20 (2): 5. 1990.We are beginning to recognize that the prevalent ethic of patient autonomy simply will not do. Since demands for health care are virtually unlimited, giving autonomous patients the health care they want will bankrupt our health care system. We can no longer simply buy our way out of difficult questions of justice by expanding the health care pie until there is enough to satisfy the wants and needs of everyone. The requirements of justice and the needs of other patients must temper the claims of …Read more
-
82Most professions rest on the expertise of their members. Professionals are professionals primarily because they know more than most of us about something of importance to our society or to many members of it. Professionals are given power, respect, prestige, and above average incomes. If professionals are worthy of this status, it is largely because of their special knowledge and the way they use it. And if professionals have special rights and responsibilities, it is also primarily because of t…Read more
-
418Ownership, Possession, and Consumption: On the Limits of Rational ConsumptionJournal of Social Philosophy 46 (3): 281-296. 2015.We need to understand, and on a philosophical level, our consumer mentality. For ours is a consumer society. Yet (pace environmental philosophers) philosophers have had almost nothing to say. This paper is a start toward a normative philosophy of consumption. It explores a distinction which, if viable, has far-reaching implications — the distinction between ownership and what I call “possession.” This distinction marks two different senses in which a good or service can be mine. I argue tha…Read more
-
86Evidence, testimony, and the problem of individualism — a response to SchmittSocial Epistemology 2 (4). 1988.
-
23The Problem of Proxies with Interests of Their Own: Toward a Better Theory of Proxy DecisionsJournal of Clinical Ethics 4 (1): 20-27. 1993.A 78 year old married woman with progressive Alzheimer's disease was admitted to a local hospital with pneumonia and other medical problems. She recognized no one and had been incontinent for about a year. Despite aggressive treatment, the pneumonia failed to resolve and it seemed increasingly likely that this admission was to be for terminal care. The patient's husband (who had been taking care of her in their home) began requesting that the doctors be less aggressive in her treatment and, as t…Read more
-
58Rural health care ethics: What assumptions and attitudes should drive the research?American Journal of Bioethics 6 (2). 2006.This Article does not have an abstract
Knoxville, Tennessee, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Social and Political Philosophy |