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83Reviving Brain Death: A Functionalist View (review)Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 10 (3): 383-392. 2013.Recently both whole brain death (WBD) and higher brain death (HBD) have come under attack. These attacks, we argue, are successful, leaving supporters of both views without a firm foundation. This state of affairs has been described as “the death of brain death.” Returning to a cardiopulmonary definition presents problems we also find unacceptable. Instead, we attempt to revive brain death by offering a novel and more coherent standard of death based on the permanent cessation of mental processi…Read more
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82Neuroethics and the Ethical Parity PrincipleNeuroethics 7 (3): 317-325. 2014.Neil Levy offers the most prominent moral principles that are specifically and exclusively designed to apply to neuroethics. His two closely related principles, labeled as versions of the ethical parity principle , are intended to resolve moral concerns about neurological modification and enhancement [1]. Though EPP is appealing and potentially illuminating, we reject the first version and substantially modify the second. Since his first principle, called EPP , is dependent on the contention tha…Read more
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75Rational Noncompliance with Prescribed Medical TreatmentKennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 20 (3): 277-290. 2010.Patient noncompliance with physician prescriptions, especially in nonsymptomatic chronic diseases, is frequently characterized in the literature as harmful and economically costly (Miller 1997).1 Nancy Houston Miller views patient noncompliance as harmful because noncompliance can result in continued or new health problems leading to hospital admissions. Further, she places the annual monetary cost of noncompliance at $100 billion.Patient noncompliance with prescribed treatment is considered the…Read more
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51The Problems of Preference Based Morality: A Critique of “Morals by Agreement”Journal of Social Philosophy 20 (3): 77-91. 1989.
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51An economic theory of patient decision-makingJournal of Bioethical Inquiry 2 (3): 153-164. 2005.Patient autonomy, as exercised in the informed consent process, is a central concern in bioethics. The typical bioethicist's analysis of autonomy centers on decisional capacity—finding the line between autonomy and its absence. This approach leaves unexplored the structure of reasoning behind patient treatment decisions. To counter that approach, we present a microeconomic theory of patient decision-making regarding the acceptable level of medical treatment from the patient's perspective. We sho…Read more
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45Toward an Adequate Theory of Applied EthicsInternational Journal of Applied Philosophy 4 (4): 45-51. 1989.
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45Principlism and moral dilemmas: a new principleJournal of Medical Ethics 31 (2): 101-105. 2005.Moral conflicts occur in theories that involve more than one principle. I examine basic ways of dealing with moral dilemmas in medical ethics and in ethics generally, and propose a different approach based on a principle I call the "mutuality principle". It is offered as an addition to Tom Beauchamp and James Childress' principlism. The principle calls for the mutual enhancement of basic moral values. After explaining the principle and its strengths, I test it by way of an examination of three r…Read more
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43Best Interest of the Child: Surrogate Decision Making and the Economics of Externalities (review)Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 8 (3): 289-298. 2011.The case of Twin B involves the decision to send a newborn to a less intensive Level 2 special care nursery (SCN) than to the Level 3 neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) that is considered optimal by the physician. The physician’s acceptance of the transfer is against the child’s best interest and is due to parental convenience. In analyzing the case, we reject the best interest standard. Our rejection is partly supported by the views of Douglas Diekema, John Hardwig, and Lannie Ross. Instead of…Read more
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42Bioethics in Context: Moral, Legal, and Social PerspectivesBroadview Press. 2016.In _Bioethics in Context_, Gary Jones and Joseph DeMarco connect ethical theory, medicine, and the law, guiding readers toward a practical and legally grounded understanding of key issues in health-care ethics. This book is uniquely up-to-date in its discussion of health-care law and unpacks the complex web of American policies, including the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Useful case studies and examples are embedded throughout, and a companion website offers a thorough, curated da…Read more
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42Balancing in ethical deliberation: Superior to specification and casuistryJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 31 (5). 2006.Approaches to clinical ethics dilemmas that rely on basic principles or rules are difficult to apply because of vagueness and conflict among basic values. In response, casuistry rejects the use of basic values, and specification produces a large set of specified rules that are presumably easily applicable. Balancing is a method employed to weigh the relative importance of different and conflicting values in application. We argue against casuistry and specification, claiming that balancing is sup…Read more
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39The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right (review)Teaching Philosophy 1 (2): 212-213. 1975.
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33God, Religion, and Community in the Philosophy of C. S. PeirceModern Schoolman 49 (4): 331-347. 1972.
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33A Functionalist View of Brain DeathAmerican Journal of Bioethics 14 (8): 19-20. 2014.No abstract
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32Dementia, Advance Directives, and Discontinuity of PersonalityCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 25 (4): 674-685. 2016.
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31A fault in the utilitarian theory of conductSouthern Journal of Philosophy 13 (3): 275-279. 1975.Utilitarians take an uncritical attitude toward the sort of individual claims they seek to aggregate. In this way they cannot account for an individual's valid claim against a policy which actually maximizes aggregate satisfaction. We thus claim that utilitarianism properly functions only after conflicting claims have been adjudicated; consequently, Utilitarianism properly maximizes the satisfaction of claims judged to be valid. In such a program, Utilitarianism ceases to be considered a part of…Read more
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31Bioethics: Legal and Clinical Case StudiesBroadview Press. 2017.Bioethics: Legal and Clinical Case Studies is a case-based introduction to ethical issues in health care. Through seventy-eight compelling scenarios, the authors demonstrate the practical importance of ethics, showing how the concerns at issue bear on the lives of patients, health care providers, and others. A range of central topics are covered, including informed consent, medical futility, reproductive ethics, privacy, cultural competence, and clinical trials. Each chapter includes a selection…Read more
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31On Making and Keeping PromisesJournal of Applied Philosophy 13 (2): 199-208. 1996.Do the conditions under which promises are made determine whether they ought to be kept? Philosophers have placed a number of conditions on promising which, they hold, must be met in order to make promise‐keeping obligatory. In so doing, they have distinguished valid promises from invalid promises and justified promises from promises that are not justified. Considering such conditions, one by one, we argue that they are mistaken. In the first place, the conditions they lay down are not necessary…Read more
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30Justice: Simple theories, complex applicationsSouthern Journal of Philosophy 25 (1): 31-38. 1987.
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30Coherence and applied ethicsJournal of Applied Philosophy 14 (3). 1997.In order for a moral theory to support application it must be able to provide determinate answers to actual moral problems or, at the least, to significantly narrow acceptable options. It must also support the development of a genuine consensus, one that is disinterested, reasonable, and unbiased. I argue that theories concentrating on principles, or on rules, or on particular cases fail to meet these standards. A full coherence theory, taking into account principles, rules, practices, and judgm…Read more
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30Expanding autonomy; contracting informed consentAmerican Journal of Bioethics 9 (2). 2009.No abstract
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28New directions in ethics: the challenge of applied ethics (edited book)Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1986.
Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Applied Ethics |
Philosophy of the Americas |