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106Beyond the Goods-Services ContinuumProceedings of the International Conference on Biomedical Ontologies (Icbo). 2023.Governments standardly deploy a distinction between goods and services in assessing economic health and tracking national income statistics, of which medical goods and services carry significant importance. In what follows we draw on Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) to introduce a third kind of entity called patterns, which help capture the various ways in which goods and services are intertwined and help also to show how many services generate a new kind of non-goods-related products. Patterns are a…Read more
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6What’s the Harm in Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation?Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 48 (6): 603-612. 2023.In clinical ethics, there remains a great deal of uncertainty regarding the appropriateness of attempting cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for certain patients. Although the issue continues to receive ample attention and various frameworks have been proposed for navigating such cases, most discussions draw heavily on the notion of harm as a central consideration. In the following, I use emerging philosophical literature on the notion of harm to argue that the ambiguities and disagreement abou…Read more
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25Ambiguous Interests: Maternal Desires and Fetal InterestsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 16 (2): 31-33. 2016.
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23Comfort Care Request for Preterm Infant: Prescriptive AnalysisAmerican Journal of Bioethics 17 (1): 84-86. 2017.
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170What is a service?The Eighth Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO’22), August 15-19, 2022, Jönköping University, Sweden. 2022.When governments collect data relating to economic activity they commonly employ a distinction between goods and services. Both goods and services have economic value. Goods (cars, houses, bottles of milk) are, very roughly, independent continuants which can be alienated (sold, gifted, rented, and so forth). Services (hairdressing, gardening, teaching) are, again very roughly, occurrents. They are occurrents which are further often said to be marked by the fact that production and consumption co…Read more
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8Goals- and Burdens-based DMC as Expressions of Value Rather than Manifestations of DMCAmerican Journal of Bioethics 22 (11): 94-96. 2022.In “Three Kinds of Decision-Making Capacity for Refusing Medical Interventions,” Navin et al. (2022) propose two additional kinds of decision-making capacity that ought to be recognized in cases of...
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8Conceptual Compatibility and Transparency in Capacity AssessmentsAmerican Journal of Bioethics 22 (10): 51-53. 2022.In “Harmful Choices, the case of C, and decision making competence,” Pickering et al. offer a thought-provoking interpretation of the relationship between harm and capacity assessments by an...
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159A Capabilities-Based Account of Patient WelfareDissertation, SUNY @ Buffalo. 2016.The promotion of patient welfare is a central goal of medical professionals and serves as a fundamental principle of medical professionalism. Despite its importance, however, it is unclear what is meant by patient welfare. In my dissertation, I explore patient welfare by analyzing the ordinary notion of welfare and applying this analysis to the patient population. I argue that welfare is best understood and expressed in terms of capabilities, which I define using the structure and vocabulary of …Read more
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800We propose a definition of capability as a class intermediate between function and disposition as the latter are defined in Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). A disposition inheres in a material entity and is realized in a certain kind of process. An example is the disposition of a glass to break when struck, which is realized when it shatters. A function is a disposition which is (simply put) the rationale for the existence of its bearer. To say for example that a water pump has the function to pump …Read more
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31Ontology: A Bridge between Bioethics and Data-Driven InquiryAmerican Journal of Bioethics 21 (6): 51-53. 2021.Pavarini et al. argue for the potential benefits of using games and other technologies to collect empirical data to enhance bioethics research. They propose a methodology called “design bioe...
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10Prospective Benefit plus Moral Status: A Hybrid ModelAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 12 (2-3): 146-148. 2021.
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5How Should Ethics Consultants Weigh the Law (and other Authoritative Directives)?Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 48 (4): 768-777. 2020.In the continuing debate about the role of the Clinical Ethics Consultant in performing clinical ethics consultations, it is often assumed that consultants should operate within ethical and legal standards. Recent scholarship has focused primarily on clarifying the consultant's role with respect to the ethical standards that serve as parameters of consulting. In the following, however, I wish to address the question of how the ethics consultant should weigh legal standards and, more broadly, how…Read more
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3The Failure of an Ideal: Autonomy and Previously Expressed WishesAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 7 (1): 79-81. 2016.
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16What’s in a Name? How “Deep Brain Stimulation” May Influence Patients’ PerceptionsAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 9 (4): 241-243. 2018.
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4Welfare in the Medical Profession: A Response to Graham and ColleaguesAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 6 (2): 51-53. 2015.
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22Analysis From a Fourth Perspective: ProfessionalismAmerican Journal of Bioethics 16 (8): 26-27. 2016.
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30Why We Should Not Let the Cheerfully Demented DieAmerican Journal of Bioethics 20 (8): 96-98. 2020.Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 96-98.
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16The Paradox of Consent for Capacity AssessmentsJournal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 47 (4): 751-757. 2019.The use of decision-making capacity assessments in clinical medicine is an underdeveloped yet quickly growing practice. Despite the ethical and clinical importance of these assessments as a means of protecting patient autonomy, clinicians, philosophers, and ethicists have identified a number of practical and theoretical hurdles which remain unresolved. One ethically important yet largely unaddressed issue is whether, and to what extent physicians ought to inform and obtain consent from patients …Read more
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18Changing the Conversation: A Capabilities Approach to Disordered ConsciousnessAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 8 (3): 149-151. 2017.
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35We don’t need unilateral DNRs: taking informed non-dissent one step furtherJournal of Medical Ethics 45 (5): 314-317. 2019.Although shared decision-making is a standard in medical care, unilateral decisions through process-based conflict resolution policies have been defended in certain cases. In patients who do not stand to receive proportional clinical benefits, the harms involved in interventions such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation seem to run contrary to the principle of non-maleficence, and provision of such interventions may cause clinicians significant moral distress. However, because the application of the…Read more
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19Building a Vibrant Clinical Ethics Consultation ServiceThe National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 18 (1): 29-38. 2018.The authors work in a variety of clinical ethics consultation services (CECSs) that employ a range of methods and approaches. This article discusses the approach to ethics consultation at the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine and describes the development and transformation of the authors’ CECSs. It discusses how one CECS shifted from a nascent program with only fifty consultations a year to a vibrant, heavily staffed service with five hundred ethics consu…Read more
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32A Capabilities-Based Account of WellbeingAmerican Journal of Bioethics 20 (3): 85-87. 2020.Volume 20, Issue 3, March 2020, Page 85-87.
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19Reason in ContextProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 83 89-98. 2009.In this paper I will provide a hylomorphic critique of Jeff McMahan’s “An Alternative to Brain Death.” I will evaluate three puzzles—the dicephalus, the braintransplant, and the split-brain phenomenon—proposed by McMahan which allow him to deny that a human being is identical to an organism. I will contend thatMcMahan’s solution entails counterintuitive consequences that pose problems to organ transplant cases. A Thomistic hylomorphic metaphysics not only avoids these unwelcome consequences and …Read more
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84An Alternative to an Alternative to Brain DeathProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 83 89-98. 2009.In this paper I will provide a hylomorphic critique of Jeff McMahan’s “An Alternative to Brain Death.” I will evaluate three puzzles—the dicephalus, the braintransplant, and the split-brain phenomenon—proposed by McMahan which allow him to deny that a human being is identical to an organism. I will contend thatMcMahan’s solution entails counterintuitive consequences that pose problems to organ transplant cases. A Thomistic hylomorphic metaphysics not only avoids these unwelcome consequences and …Read more
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Villanova UniversityAssistant Professor
Areas of Specialization
Biomedical Ethics |
Value Theory |
Metaphysics |
Legal Authority and Obligation |