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Past
Courses:
Course
Descriptions:
- Phi
337 Social & Ethical Values in Medicine
This course is about ethical dilemmas that
arise in a medical setting. The class will be divided into three
parts. The first will deal with the ethics of ending life. We
will analyze pro and con articles about abortion, physician-assisted
suicide, euthanasia and the brain death criterion. The second
part of the course is concerned with ethically problematic acquisitions.
We will discuss articles in favor and against acquiring babies
through commercial surrogacy and human cloning. We will study
whether we come into existence at fertilization or not until the
occurrence of later physiological developments in order to better
appreciate the ethical dimensions of acquiring embryonic stem
cells. The final issue of this section will have to do with increasing
the supply of organs for transplantation. We will read articles
opposed to and in support of providing financial incentives for
transplantable organs. We will also look at the debate over presumed
consent which is the policy that presumes individuals have consented
to become organ donors if they have not explicitly opted out.
The final part of the course deals with professional ethics. The
issues to be studied are deceiving patients when the truth could
be harmful to them, the nature and process of obtaining patients'
informed consent for medical procedures, the ethics of experimental
trials, and what to do about incompetent colleagues. The student's
grade will be the result of a number of true-false quizzes, a
short paper and a rewrite of the same paper.
- Phi
634 The Metaphysics of Identity
The course will contrast the psychological
approach to personal identity with the biological approach to
personal identity. We will take up the following questions: Is
the human organism identical to the person or distinct but spatially
coincident? If the organism and the person are identical, are
their essential properties and persistence conditions of a biological
or psychological nature? If they are not identical, does one constitute
the other? What problems plague spatially coincident entities
standing in a constitution relation to each other? What is the
relation of the body to the organism? When do we come into and
go out of existence?. Can an informative criterion for identity
across time be formulated?
The
two texts will be Lynn Rudder Baker's "Persons and Bodies:
A Constitution Approach" and Eric Olson's "The Human
Animal: Identity Without Psychology." We are also likely
to look at articles by Locke, Shoemaker, Nathan Salmon Trenton
Merricks, Olson, Peter Unger, Derek Parfit, David Mackie, and
William Carter. The articles will be put on reserve in the department
office.
For
the first day of class, students should read Locke's "Of
Identity and Diversity." It is chapter 27 in his An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding.
- Phi
637 Philosophy of Biology & Medicine
The first part of the course will deal with
mostly conceptual questions about the nature of disease and health.
Much of this discussion will center around Christopher Boorse's
seminal articles on defining disease in value-free terms of physiological
proper functions. We will also look at his account of mental health
and his distinction between disease and illness. The conceptual
coherence and the moral significance of the distinction between
treatments and enhancements will be examined with an eye towards
future dilemmas that may arise as consequences of the genetic
revolution.
In
the second part of the course we will read competing accounts
about when we come into and go out of existence. We shall discuss
whether we originate at fertilization or perhaps later with
the occurrence of other physiological developments. Debates
about the proper criterion for death will be examined. We will
briefly touch upon the ethical implications for abortion, stem
cell research and organ procurement that arise from the different
metaphysical views about our origins and endings.
Explored
in the third section are theoretical accounts of harm and the
badness of death. Theories about the nature of pain will be
examined as well. The distinction between pain and suffering
and its moral significance will also be discussed. We will examine
whether withdrawing aid should be classified as killing or letting
die and if there is a moral difference between the two. Also
analyzed will be the concept of dignity and how it bears on
the issues of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia.
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