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223The Role of Hospice and Palliative Medicine in the Ars MoriendiJournal of Medicine and Philosophy. forthcoming.There is disagreement among physicians and medical ethicists on the precise goals of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (HPM). Some think that HPM's goals should differ from those of other branches of medicine and aim primarily at lessening pain, discomfort, and confusion; while others think that HPM's practices should, like all other branches of medicine, aim at promoting health. I take the latter position: using the ars moriendi to set a standard for what it means to die well, I argue that if HPM…Read more
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38When Can Physicians Fire Patients with Opioid Use Disorder for Nonmedical Use of Prescription Medications?Journal of Clinical Ethics 35 (1): 65-69. 2024.The opioid crisis has greatly increased the number of patients who are illegally injecting drugs while hospitalized for other conditions. Physicians face a difficult decision in these circumstances: when is it appropriate to involuntarily discharge or “fire” a patient with opioid use disorder for their continued nonmedical use of opioids? This commentary analyzes physicians’ responsibilities to their patients and argues that physicians should fire non-adherent patients only when every other opti…Read more
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251The Father of Faith Rationally ReconstructedFaith and Philosophy 39 (2): 272-290. 2022.There is a tension for those who want to simultaneously hold that Abraham’s disposition to sacrifice Isaac is epistemically justified and yet hold that a contemporary father would not be justified in believing that God is commanding him to sacrifice his son. This paper attempts to resolve that tension. While some commentators have correctly pointed out that one must take Abraham’s long relationship with God into account when considering Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his son, they do not enter…Read more
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2122Beauty as a Guide to Truth: Aquinas, Fittingness, and Explanatory VirtuesProceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association. forthcoming.Many scientists and philosophers of science think that beauty should play a role in theory selection. Physicists like Paul Dirac and Steven Weinberg explicitly claim that the ultimate explanations of the physical world must be beautiful. And philosophers of science like Peter Lipton say that we should expect the loveliest theory to also be the most likely. In this paper, I contend that these arguments from loveliness bear a striking similarity to Thomas Aquinas’ arguments from fittingness; both …Read more
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231Review of “Against Indifference Objections to the Fine-Tuning Argument” (review)Southwest Philosophy Review 38 (2): 47-49. 2022.
APA Central Division
Waco, Texas, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Religion |
Biomedical Ethics |