This article describes, analyzes, and advocates for management of clinical healthcare conflict by a process commonly referred to as bioethics mediation. Section I provides a brief introduction to classical mediation outside the realm of clinical healthcare. Section II highlights certain distinguishing characteristics of bioethics mediation. Section III chronicles the history of bioethics mediation and references a number of seminal writings on the subject. Finally, Section IV analyzes barriers that have, thus far, limited the widespread implementation of bioethics mediation.

Bioethics mediators manage a wide range of clinical conflict emanating from diverse sources. Parties to clinical conflict are often not fully aware of, nor willing to express, the true nature and scope of their conflict. As such, a significant task of the bioethics mediator is to help define that conflict. The ability to assess and apply the tools necessary for an effective mediation process can be facilitated by each mediator’s creation of a personal compendium of sources that generate clinical conflict, (...) to provide an orientation for the successful management of complex dilemmatic cases. (shrink)

Conscious experience has been said to be outside of, or alien to, physics, and unexplained in a physical world. However, it is argued here that experience is entirely expected in a physical world that can only be defined by its power to determine patterns of experience. Something physical is something with the type of causal power that can contribute to determining the content of an experience if a subject is present at the right place and time. Physical powers also interact (...) with other physical powers, distant from any given subject, to form chains, and it is these interactions that physics handles mathematically. Nevertheless, actual causation is always defined by reference to determination of experience. The apparent puzzle of why there should be a link between experience and the physical may relate in part to the fact that experience is always immediately causally proximal, always 'here and now', at least as far as we can ascertain. Proximality, and with it the potential for mentality, cuts across existential/ ontological categories. Experience also requires a concept of an intrinsic individual, in order for there to be individual points of view. The practical problem for consciousness studies is to identify intrinsically individual causal units with event domains in human brains, that can have points of view and content that could fit with human experiences, in a way consistent with current physics. It is suggested that the 'causal diamond' concept of the here and now explored by Savitt (2015) and Arthur (2019), together with principles of field theory, may provide a useful starting point. (shrink)

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is the guidebook for psychiatric practice in medicine. In the fifth edition, published in 2013, the American Psychiatric Association significantly revised the section on gender identity disorder, which it renamed gender dysphoria. In previous editions, the conviction that one’s sex did not match one’s gender was treated as a mental disorder in need of psychiatric treatment. In DSM-5, the remedy for that same conviction was changed to hormonal and surgical procedures to give (...) the patient the appearance of the opposite sex. A complete reversal of this sort is surprising, as it implies that all previous guidance on this question was in error. The change is even more perplexing given that little evidence shows that hormonal or surgical interventions actually improve the psychological health of the sufferer. (shrink)

The integration of ideas, methods, and data from diverse disciplines has been a transformative force in science and higher education, attracting policy interventions, program innovations, financial resources, and talented people. Much energy has been invested in producing a new generation of scientists trained to work fluidly across disciplines, sectors, and research problems, yet the success of such investments has been difficult to measure. Using the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) program of the U.S. National Science Foundation as a (...) strategic research site, we conducted an experiment to determine whether and how the process and products of research of IGERT-trained scientists differ from those of scientists trained in disciplinary graduate programs. Among scientists in the early years of graduate study we found substantial and consistent differences suggesting that interdisciplinary training improved the quality and process of research, but this pattern was equally strongly reversed among students in the latter years of graduate study. Using systematic observation and other data we suggest why this might be so, then discuss the implications of these results for the design and conduct of graduate education and research. (shrink)

The term, “bioethics” was coined in 1970 by American cancerologist V. R. Potter. In the few decades since, the field of bioethics has emerged as an important discipline. The field has attained a remarkable degree of public recognition in a relatively short period of time. The “right to die” cases such as In re Quinlan placed bioethical issues on the front pages. Although the discipline is of recent vintage, the past quarter century has witnessed a flurry of scholarly activity, creating (...) a substantial body of bioethical literature. Moreover, the bioethics movement has manifested itself in institutional expressions. Universities and medical schools have added courses in bioethics to their curricula. In 1974, federal legislation and regulations mandated that federal grantees conducting human subjects research establish institutional review boards to safeguard subjects’ welfare, and even absent a legislative mandate numerous hospitals created ethics committees. Centers and institutes, devoted exclusively to the study of bioethical issues, have been founded. (shrink)

In the famous Correspondence with Clarke, which took place during the last year of Leibniz's life, Leibniz advanced several arguments purporting to refute the absolute theory of space and time that was held by Newton and his followers. The main aim of this book is to reassess Leibniz's attack on the Newtonian theory in so far as he relied on the principle of the identity of indiscernibles. The theological side of the controversy is not ignored but isolated and discussed in (...) the last three chapters, which deal with problems connected with the notions of omnipotence and omniscience. (shrink)

Conference Report: Towards a Science of Consciousness, Helsinki 2015.

The materialistic premise supposes that a patient’s reduced brain activity indicates that the mind is beginning to approach nonexistence. Such persons may not be brain dead, but they have a life that is close enough to death to allow us to treat them with a certain disregard. For the Catholic, this overlooks the enduring presence of the soul and its two spiritual powers of intellect and will. St. Thomas Aquinas is our best guide to exploring the implications of this view (...) for patients in states of diminished consciousness. The externally observable activity of the brain, even when dramatically lessened, does not represent any loss of the powers of the soul, which continue to function through a combination of natural and divine influences. (shrink)

This article evaluates the social contract theorizing of Professors Thomas DonaIdson, Thomas Dunfee and Michael Keeley. This theorizing is tested with G.E. Moore’s concept of moral authority, with moral psychology, and by managerial utility. Both strengths and weaknesses are found in the theories and the author concludes that while there is great potential, much work in theory development remains.

A major focus of ethical argumentation is determining the relative merits of proposed ethical systems. Nevertheless, even the demonstration that a given ethical system was the one most likely to be correct would not establish that an agent should act in accord with that system. Consider, for example, a situation in which the ethical system most likely to be valid is modestly supportive of a certain action, whereas a less plausible system strongly condemns the same action. Should the agent perform (...) the action, arguing that the most plausible system supports doing so, or avoid the action, being conservative about the strong condemnation of it from a less plausible system? I argue that, in general, different ethical frameworks see the ethical world in fundamentally different ways, rendering the comparison of degrees of support and opposition of actions between systems intrinsically invalid. One should indeed choose to act in accord with the most defensible system. I believe that this important topic needs more attention than it has gotten to date. (shrink)

Drawing on rare sources, many of which have not previously been translated into English, the view of Piaget and his work that emerges in this book is very different from the atheistic view of Piaget that is commonly held in psychology and transpersonal psychology. In both his early and later career Piaget held to an evolutionary view of spirituality reminiscent of the work of Hegel and Bergson. The spiritual future could be precursed by the individual in this life through the (...) experience of "Immanence."Piaget underwent a spiritual emergency in adolescence, reported in early autobiographical writing, in which he encountered an array of experiences described in Eastern and Western mystical cannons. For reasons discussed in this book, Piaget attempted to conceal his spiritual inclinations while tacitly confirming them in informal exchanges. This book not only describes the spiritual aspects of Piaget's life and work, it also builds bridges to both the contemporary transpersonal project and to contemporary psychology, by extending Piaget's own ideas to shed new light on transpersonal psychology and transpersonal philosophy, and on the future orientation of general psychology. The book validates the transpersonal project by showing its concerns to be germane to psychology's most influential figure. The reader will learn as much about the history, present, and future of transpersonal thought as they do about Piaget. (shrink)

Engaged scholarship is an intellectual movement sweeping across higher education, not only in the social and behavioral sciences but also in fields of natural science and engineering. It is predicated on the idea that major advances in knowledge will transpire when scholars, while pursuing their research interests, also consider addressing the core problems confronting society. For a workable engaged agenda in science and technology studies, one that informs scholarship as well as shapes practice and policy, the traditional terms of engagement (...) must be renegotiated to be more open and mutual than has historically characterized the nature of inquiry in this field. At the same time, it is essential to protect individual privacy and preserve government confidentiality. Yet there is a scientific possibility for and benefit to introducing more collaborative and deliberative research approaches between scholar and subject in ways that will not violate these first-order ethics. To make the case, this article discusses the possibilities and perils of engaged science and technology scholarship by drawing on our own recent experiences to conduct and apply STS research while embedded in the National Science Foundation. Brief accounts of these experiences reveal the opportunities as well as the challenges of engaged scholarship. They also provide lessons for those fellow travelers who might follow the authors to this or other like host organizations with ambitions of increasing fundamental knowledge about and applying research to the policies, programs, and decisions of the scientific enterprise. (shrink)

The traditional view of tax holds that consumption taxes fail tax the yield to capital, whereas income taxes do, leading to John Stuart Mill's criticism of the income tax as a "double tax" on wealth that is saved. A better analytic understanding illustrates that there are two types of consumption taxes. A prepaid consumption or (equivalently) wage tax indeed ignores the yield to capital. But a consistent progressive postpaid consumption tax gets at such yield, at the individual level, when but (...) only when the returns to capital are used to elevate lifestyles in material terms. Such a tax allows "ordinary" savings that move around labor earnings, in constant dollar terms, to different periods of an individual's life, such as times of retirement or heightened medical or educational needs. Because a progressive postpaid consumption tax falls on the yield to capital at the right time-when its use at the individual level becomes manifest-all other taxes on capital, such as capital gains, gift and estate, and corporate income taxes, can and should be repealed, in the name of fairness. Footnotesa I thank the editors, my research assistants Alex Baskin and Nina Kang, and the other contributors to this volume for their helpful comments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE FATE OF THEISM REVISITED I THEISM SEEMS to be caught in a dilemma. Speaking persuasively to the surrounding culture seems to demand hat theism sacrifice its own integrity as a significantly distinctive world-view; affirming its distinctiveness seems to result in moving itself to the periphery of the culture. Briefly, then, either theism acquires relevance at the price of forfeiting any claim to distinctiveness or it takes seriously precisely (...) those things that make it seem significantly distinctive and thereby isolates itself from the rest of the culture. Such is the fate of theism as portrayed by (friendly?) critics of theism like Jeffrey Stout, Alasdair Macintyre, and Van A. Harvey.1 The main question addressed in this paper is whether or not the theist (or his more specific variant, the Christian theist) has a sound response to this dilemma? How, if at all, can the Christian theist avoid the horns of the dilemma of redundancy and irrelevance? 1 Jeffrey Stout, The Flight from Authority: Religion, Morality, and the Quest for Autonomy (London and Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), especially Part 2. Alasdair Macintyre, "God and the theo· logians," in Against the Self-Images of the Age (London: Duckworth, 1971), pp. 12-26; see also Macintyre's essay, "The Fate of Theism," originally delivered as one of his Bampton Lectures at Columbia University in 1966. Macintyre's lectures were published in The Religious Si,qnificance of Atheism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969). For "The Fate of Theism," see pp. 3-29. Van A. Harvey, The Historian and the Belie1Jer: The Morality of Historical Knowledge and Christian Belief (New York: Macmillan, 1966); see also Harvey's essay, "The Pathos of Liberal Theology," Journal of Religion 56 1976: 382-391. For an illuminating discussion of the fate of theism, see Peter L. Berger, The Heretical Imperatives: Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation (New York: Doubleday 1980). 63~ THE FATE OF THEISM REVISITED 633 The practical relevance of this dilemma for Christian doctrine was recently evidenced in Thomas Sheehan's review of Hans Kiing's latest book in the New York Review of Books.2 After summarizing Kiing's views on the Christian doctrine of eternal life, Sheehan writes: Kiing... has pushed Catholic theology to the limits of its own language. In fact, he has brought it to the point where one can ask what its teachings have to offer that cannot be found outside the scope of its experience and discourse. For example, the hope in immortality he evokes is certainly not peculiar to Catholicism or Christianity. Nor is it an exclusively religious doctrine: we find it in pagan philosophy from the Greeks onward, even in thinkers who did not believe in a personal god.... On a broader scale, it is clear that religious experience is available outside Catholicism and Christianity; and for many people natural human experience, with no religious or transcendent dimension, is satisfying enough. What, then, does Catholicism claim to provide that cannot be found beyond its boundaries? I am not asking about the subjective aspects of experience, be it natural or religious (its felt quality, psychological genesis, personal meaning, and so on). I am asking an objective theological question: what does Catholicism claim that makes it unique, essentially different from non-Catholic religions and non-religious humanisms? 3 Sheehan's answer to this last question is clear. That which makes Christianity unique and essentially distinctive and which traditional believers sought to clarify and defend moves Christianity to the periphery of the culture. By identifying themselves primarily with the tradition in terms of classical Christianity, no one hears what Christians have to say but themselves. The only alternative to this self-imposed isolation, holds Sheehan, is to be intelligible to contemporary educated, secularminded men and women: in which case Christian theism may well have interesting things to say, but these will not be significantly distinctive in any Christian sense. To put this last 2 Thomas Sheehan, "Revolution in the Church," The New York Review of Books, June 14, 1984, pp. 35-39. s Ibid., p. 38. 634 EDWARD J. ECHEVERRIA point another way, the strategy of accommodation raises the question why one should be Christian at all... (shrink)

In mid-Victorian Britain, reconciling elite mathematical expertise with practical mechanical experience presented both engineering and social challenges. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the construction of the Westminster Clock at Britain’s Houses of Parliament. Realizing this scheme engendered the collaboration between Cambridge mathematicians George Biddell Airy and Edmund Beckett Denison, and the clockmaker Edward John Dent. Transforming theoretical mathematical drawings into physical apparatus challenged existing relations between conveyors of privileged scientific knowledge and those with practical experience of what (...) was, and what was not, mechanically possible. My article demonstrates how, within this project, physical models and devices provided material solutions to ambiguities over authority and social disorder in Victorian Britain. (shrink)

Climate change represents a significant challenge to the entire planet and its inhabitants. While few, if any, will be able to escape totally the effects of climate change, it will fall most heavily, at least initially, on the poor, regardless of where they reside. We may observe already possible scenarios. The tragic situation in Darfur may be less an ethnic conflict and more a clash between marginal farmers and herdsmen in an increasingly more arid local climate. More powerful storms on (...) the scale of hurricane Katrina, which affected the poor more than other economic groups, may become commonplace. The alteration of the maple sugar cycle may be a harbinger of stress on the world’s flora and fauna that humanity depends upon. Mainstream climatologists have concluded that human behavior, primarily the effects of industrialization, causes human-induced climate change. Left unchecked climate change will have serious consequences for humanity, especially the poor. Business, the primary agent of industrialization, is both the problem and the solution. This paper will apply the ethics of philosophers John Rawls (the difference principle), Robert Nozick (the Lockean Proviso, climate is a natural resource), and Aristotle, along with the work of strategist Michael Porter. Understanding how climate change management fits into a firm’s strategic opportunity will contribute to the ability of business to develop the technologies and business processes necessary to cope with climate change. The paper will conclude with a brief discussion of GE’s Ecomagination program as an example of a promising moral response to climate change. (shrink)

(2013). Matching bias in syllogistic reasoning: Evidence for a dual-process account from response times and confidence ratings. Thinking & Reasoning: Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 54-77. doi: 10.1080/13546783.2012.735622.