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268Double-effect reasoning: doing good and avoiding evilOxford University Press. 2006.T. A. Cavanaugh defends double-effect reasoning (DER), also known as the principle of double effect. DER plays a role in anti-consequentialist ethics (such as deontology), in hard cases in which one cannot realize a good without also causing a foreseen, but not intended, bad effect (for example, killing non-combatants when bombing a military target). This study is the first book-length account of the history and issues surrounding this controversial approach to hard cases. It will be indispensab…Read more
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84Double Effect and the Ethical Significance of Distinct Volitional StatesChristian Bioethics 3 (2): 131-141. 1997.Much of Roman Catholic discussion concerning bioethical controversies, such as the surgical removal of a life-threatening cancerous uterus when the fetus is not viable, has focused on the employment of double-effect reasoning. While double-effect reasoning has been the subject of much debate, this paper argues first, that there is a distinction between the intended and the foreseen; second, that this distinction applies to the contrasted cases in such a way as to categorize foreseen but not inte…Read more
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68Currently Accepted Practices That Are Known to Lead to Death, and PAS: Is There an Ethically Relevant Difference?Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 7 (4): 375-381. 1998.A number of common and generally noncontroversial practices in the care of patients at the end of life lead to their deaths. For example, physicians honor a patient's refusal of medical intervention even when doing so leads to the patient's death. Similarly, with a patient's or surrogate's consent, physicians administer sedatives in order to relieve pain and distress at the end of life, even when it is known that doing so will cause the patient's death. In contemporary U.S. public policy, these …Read more
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66The Instability of the Standard Justification for Physician-Assisted SuicideCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 10 (1): 103-109. 2001.Proponents commonly justify the legalization of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) in terms of a patient's wanting to die (autonomy) and the patient's having a medically established good reason for suicide. These are the common elements of the standard justification offered for the legalization of PAS. In what follows, I argue that these two conditions exist in significant tension with one another, operating according to distinct dynamics that render the justification for PAS an unstable basis for…Read more
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65Anscombe, Thomson, and Double EffectAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 90 (2): 263-280. 2016.In “Modern Moral Philosophy” Anscombe argues that the distinction between intention of an end or means and foresight of a consequentially comparable outcome proves crucial in act-evaluation. The deontologist J. J. Thomson disagrees. She asserts that Anscombe mistakes the distinction’s moral import; it bears on agent-evaluation, not act-evaluation. I map out the contours of this dispute. I show that it implicates other disagreements, some to be expected and others not to be expected. Amongst the …Read more
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60The intended/foreseen distinction's ethical relevancePhilosophical Papers 25 (3): 179-188. 1996.
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53Temporal indiscriminateness: The case of cluster bombsScience and Engineering Ethics 16 (1): 135-145. 2010.This paper argues that the current stock of anti-personnel cluster bombs are temporally indiscriminate, and, therefore, unjust weapons. The paper introduces and explains the idea of temporal indiscriminateness. It argues that to honor non-combatant immunity—in addition to not targeting civilians—one must adequately target combatants. Due to their high dud rate, cluster submunitions fail to target combatants with sufficient temporal accuracy, and, thereby, result in avoidable serious harm to non-…Read more
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42Double Effect and the End‐Not‐Means Principle: A Response to BennettJournal of Applied Philosophy 16 (2). 1999.Proponents of double‐effect reasoning — relying in part on a distinction between intention and foresight — assert that it is worse intentionally to cause harm than to cause harm with foresight but without intention. They hold, for example, that terror bombing is worse than tactical bombing in so far as terror bombing is the intentional harming of non‐combatants while tactical bombing is not. In articulating the ethical relevance of the intended/foreseen distinction, advocates of double effect em…Read more
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39Double-Effect Reasoning, Craniotomy, and Vital ConflictsThe National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11 (3): 443-453. 2011.By analogy to justifications offered for craniotomy by Catholic moralists (e.g., Germain Grisez and Rev. Martin Rhonheimer), a recent instance of casuistry (by the moral theologian M. Therese Lysaught) attempts to apply double-effect reasoning and, separately, the concept of a vital conflict to justify dilation and curettage in order to preserve the life of a pregnant woman. This paper examines and rejects these bases for justifying craniotomy and D&C. It concludes with a consideration of Pope J…Read more
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39Hippocrates' oath and Asclepius' snake: the birth of the medical professionOxford University Press. 2018.T. A. Cavanaugh's Hippocrates' Oath and Asclepius' Snake: The Birth of the Medical Profession articulates the Oath as establishing the medical profession's unique internal medical ethic - in its most basic and least controvertible form, this ethic mandates that physicians help and not harm the sick. Relying on Greek myth, drama, and medical experience (e.g., homeopathy), the book shows how this medical ethic arose from reflection on the most vexing medical-ethical problem -- injury caused by a p…Read more
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38Expanding BoundariesCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 10 (2): 121-122. 2001.Itself a topic of constant comment, the Internet's implications for healthcare remain unclear even while its boundaries incessantly expand. The WorldWide Web and allied technologies such as telephony are clearly permanent fixtures of our world. These technologies have changed our ways of life and demonstrate further dynamic capacities to do so. They speak of what we shall be, but know not
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36Genetics and fair use codes for electronic informationEthics and Information Technology 2 (2): 121-123. 2000.This paper concerns the deficiencies of currentlyaccepted principles governing the fair use ofelectronically recorded data when applied to geneticinformation. Principles are proposed by which to dealwith the unique group-characteristics of geneticinformation.
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35Anscombe, Thomson, and Double EffectAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 90 (2): 263-280. 2016.In “Modern Moral Philosophy” Anscombe argues that the distinction between intention of an end or means and foresight of a consequentially comparable outcome proves crucial in act-evaluation. The deontologist J. J. Thomson disagrees. She asserts that Anscombe mistakes the distinction’s moral import; it bears on agent-evaluation, not act-evaluation. I map out the contours of this dispute. I show that it implicates other disagreements, some to be expected and others not to be expected. Amongst the …Read more
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34Proportionate palliative sedation and the giving of a deadly drug: the conundrumTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 39 (3): 221-231. 2018.Among the oldest extant medical ethics, the Hippocratic Oath prohibits the giving of a deadly drug, regarding this act as an egregious violation of a medical ethic that is exclusively therapeutic. Proportionate palliative sedation involves the administration of a deadly drug. Hence it seems to violate the venerable Hippocratic promise associated with the dawn of Western medicine not to give a deadly drug. Relying on distinctions commonly employed in the analysis and evaluation of human actions, …Read more
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27Act Evaluation, Willing and Double EffectProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 71 243-253. 1997.
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27Carlos Aldana-Valenzuela, MD, is Chief of the Department of Neonatology at the Hospital de Ginecopediatria of the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social in Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico. He is also a member of the Center for Studies in Bioethics at the University of GuanajuatoCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 10 3-5. 2001.
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25Mary HM Bach is a student in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Washington, Seattle. Keith A. Bauer, MSW, is a graduate student in the Department of Philosophy/Medical Ethics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His dissertation addresses the ethics and social dimensions of home-based telemedicine, the use of infor (review)Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 10 123-124. 2001.
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25Aristotle’s Voluntary / Deliberate Distinction, Double-Effect Reasoning, and Ethical RelevanceInternational Philosophical Quarterly 54 (4): 367-378. 2014.In this essay I articulate Aristotle’s account of the voluntary with a view to weighing in on a contemporary ethical debate concerning the moral relevance of the intended / foreseen distinction. Natural lawyers employ this distinction to contrast consequentially comparable acts with different intentional structures. They propose, for example, that consequentially comparable acts of terror and tactical bombing morally differ, based on their diverse structures of intention. Opponents of double-eff…Read more
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23Double-effect Reasoning Defended: A Response to ScanlonProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 86 267-279. 2012.Common morality endorses some form of an exceptionless prohibition against killing innocents. Natural lawyers employ double-effect reasoning to address hard cases involving deaths of the innocent. Current deontologists criticize DER-proponents as conflating act-with agent-evaluations. Scanlon develops this critique extensively. I respond to his criticism. He maintains that the DER-advocate tells a badly-motivated agent to refrain from an obligatory act. Thus, he asserts, the natural lawyer who e…Read more
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20Double-effect Reasoning Defended: A Response to ScanlonProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 86 267-279. 2012.Common morality endorses some form of an exceptionless prohibition against killing innocents. Natural lawyers employ double-effect reasoning to address hard cases involving deaths of the innocent. Current deontologists criticize DER-proponents as conflating act-with agent-evaluations. Scanlon develops this critique extensively. I respond to his criticism. He maintains that the DER-advocate tells a badly-motivated agent to refrain from an obligatory act. Thus, he asserts, the natural lawyer who e…Read more
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20Permissible Killing (review)Review of Metaphysics 49 (2): 444-445. 1995.Suzanne Uniacke has written an adventurous and philosophically elegant work in which she justifies the intentional use of necessary and proportionate lethal force in private homicidal self-defense. Her contribution will interest those engaged in discussions concerning the ethics of homicide.
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19“I Swear”. A Précis of Hippocrates’ Oath and Asclepius’ Snake: The Birth of the Medical ProfessionPhilosophia 49 (3): 897-903. 2020.This is a condensed description of the contents and overarching argument found in Hippocrates’ Oath and Asclepius’ Snake: The Birth of the Medical Profession. In that work, I maintain that the basic medical ethical problem concerns iatrogenic harm. I focus particularly on what I refer to as ‘role-conflation’. This most egregious form of iatrogenic harm occurs when a physician deliberately adopts the role of wounder. A contemporary practice such as physician-assisted suicide exemplifies a doctor’…Read more
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18Double-Effect Reasoning: Doing Good & Avoiding EvilOxford University Press UK. 2006.T. A. Cavanaugh defends double-effect reasoning, also known as the principle of double effect. DER plays a role in anti-consequentialist ethics, in hard cases in which one cannot realize a good without also causing a foreseen, but not intended, bad effect. This study is the first book-length account of the history and issues surrounding this controversial approach to hard cases. It will be indispensable in theoretical ethics, applied ethics, and moral theology. It will also interest legal and pu…Read more
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17Relating Hippocratic and Christian Medical EthicsChristian Bioethics 26 (1): 81-94. 2020.This article articulates the Hippocratic medical ethic found in the Oath and the Christian medical ethic as exemplified in the parable of the Good Samaritan. It proposes that the Oath has a natural-law-based deontological character (as understood by Aquinas) that governs friendships of utility (as understood by Aristotle) between student and teacher and physician and patient. The article elaborates on the Samaritan’s conduct as exemplifying Christian agapeic-love. It contrasts agapeic-love with …Read more
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16Cause for Thought: An Essay in Metaphysics by John Burbridge (review)Review of Metaphysics 69 (1): 122-123. 2015.
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15DER and PolicyAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 89 (3): 539-556. 2015.If viable, DER justifies certain individual acts that—by definition—have two effects. Presumably, it would in some fashion justify policies concerning the very same acts. By contrast, acts that sometimes have a good effect and sometimes have a bad effect do not have the requisite two effects such that DER can justify them immediately. Yet, a policy concerning numerous such acts would have the requisite good and bad effects. For while any one such act would lack the relevant two effects, a series…Read more
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13Lawrence Masek, Intention, Character, and Double EffectJournal of Moral Philosophy 18 (2): 194-197. 2021.
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