Consciousness and Moral Status

Consciousness and Moral Status PDF Author: Joshua Shepherd
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315396327
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
It seems obvious that phenomenally conscious experience is something of great value, and that this value maps onto a range of important ethical issues. For example, claims about the value of life for those in Permanent Vegetative State (PVS); debates about treatment and study of disorders of consciousness; controversies about end-of-life care for those with advanced dementia; and arguments about the moral status of embryos, fetuses, and non-human animals arguably turn on the moral significance of various facts about consciousness. However, though work has been done on the moral significance of elements of consciousness, such as pain and pleasure, little explicit attention has been devoted to the ethical significance of consciousness. In this book Joshua Shepherd presents a systematic account of the value present within conscious experience. This account emphasizes not only the nature of consciousness, but also the importance of items within experience such as affect, valence, and the complex overall shape of particular valuable experiences. Shepherd also relates this account to difficult cases involving non-humans and humans with disorders of consciousness, arguing that the value of consciousness influences and partially explains the degree of moral status a being possesses, without fully determining it. The upshot is a deeper understanding of both the moral importance of phenomenal consciousness and its relations to moral status. This book will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics, bioethics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science.

Consciousness and Moral Status

Consciousness and Moral Status PDF Author: Joshua Shepherd
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315396327
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 150

Get Book Here

Book Description
It seems obvious that phenomenally conscious experience is something of great value, and that this value maps onto a range of important ethical issues. For example, claims about the value of life for those in Permanent Vegetative State (PVS); debates about treatment and study of disorders of consciousness; controversies about end-of-life care for those with advanced dementia; and arguments about the moral status of embryos, fetuses, and non-human animals arguably turn on the moral significance of various facts about consciousness. However, though work has been done on the moral significance of elements of consciousness, such as pain and pleasure, little explicit attention has been devoted to the ethical significance of consciousness. In this book Joshua Shepherd presents a systematic account of the value present within conscious experience. This account emphasizes not only the nature of consciousness, but also the importance of items within experience such as affect, valence, and the complex overall shape of particular valuable experiences. Shepherd also relates this account to difficult cases involving non-humans and humans with disorders of consciousness, arguing that the value of consciousness influences and partially explains the degree of moral status a being possesses, without fully determining it. The upshot is a deeper understanding of both the moral importance of phenomenal consciousness and its relations to moral status. This book will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics, bioethics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science.

The Ethics of Uncertainty

The Ethics of Uncertainty PDF Author: L. Syd M. Johnson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190943645
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
"Consciousness isn't a thing you can poke a stick at. It's not a natural kind, like a bit of quartz, or quarks, or water. Like "life," which can be attributed to many entities, but is not a thing with reality apart from living entities, consciousness can be attributed to conscious entities without being some further thing or fact, some mysterious, mentalizing "force" that can exist without conscious entities. It is manifested in conscious states and creatures, but isn't a thing in and of itself. One of the enduring puzzles about consciousness and conscious states is how they, as apparently mental, nonphysical states, can manifest in a physical entity like a brain. We can point to a physical bit of brain, to a neuron, or a structure like the thalamus, but we can't locate the consciousness within that bit of brain or its neural cells"--

Rights Come to Mind

Rights Come to Mind PDF Author: Joseph Fins
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 052188750X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
Joseph J. Fins calls for a reconsideration of severe brain injury treatment, including discussion of public policy and physician advocacy.

Reasons of Conscience

Reasons of Conscience PDF Author: Stefan Sperling
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226924319
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
In this volume, Stefan Sperling considers the bioethical debates surrounding embryonic stem cell research in Germany at the turn of the 21st century, highlighting how the country's ongoing struggle to come to terms with its past informs the decisions it makes today.

Conscientious Objection in Health Care

Conscientious Objection in Health Care PDF Author: Mark R. Wicclair
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139500198
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Historically associated with military service, conscientious objection has become a significant phenomenon in health care. Mark Wicclair offers a comprehensive ethical analysis of conscientious objection in three representative health care professions: medicine, nursing and pharmacy. He critically examines two extreme positions: the 'incompatibility thesis', that it is contrary to the professional obligations of practitioners to refuse provision of any service within the scope of their professional competence; and 'conscience absolutism', that they should be exempted from performing any action contrary to their conscience. He argues for a compromise approach that accommodates conscience-based refusals within the limits of specified ethical constraints. He also explores conscientious objection by students in each of the three professions, discusses conscience protection legislation and conscience-based refusals by pharmacies and hospitals, and analyzes several cases. His book is a valuable resource for scholars, professionals, trainees, students, and anyone interested in this increasingly important aspect of health care.

On Conscience

On Conscience PDF Author: Joseph Ratzinger
Publisher: Ignatius Press
ISBN: 1681493608
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 92

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Book Description
Prepared and co-published by the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, this book is a combination of two lengthy essays written by Cardinal Ratzinger and delivered in talks when he was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Both talks deal with the importance of conscience and its exercise in particular circumstances. Ratzinger's reflections show that contemporary debates over the nature of conscience have deep historical and philosophical roots. He says that a person is bound to act in accord with his conscience, but he makes it clear that there must be reliable, proven sources for the judgment of conscience in moral issues, other than the subjective reflections of each individual. The always unique and profound insights that the new Pope Benedict XVI brings to perennial problems reminds the reader of his strong warning before the recent Papal conclave of the great dangers today of the "dictatorship of relativism."

Bioethics and Disability

Bioethics and Disability PDF Author: Alicia Ouellette
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521110300
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
This book provides the tools for understanding the concerns, fears and biases people with disabilities and bioethicists have.

Pragmatic Neuroethics

Pragmatic Neuroethics PDF Author: Eric Racine
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026201419X
Category : Bioethics
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
A survey of the emerging field of neuroethics that calls for a multidisciplinary, pragmatic approach for tackling key issues and improving patient care. Today the measurable health burden of neurological and mental health disorders matches or even surpasses any other cluster of health conditions. At the same time, the clinical applications of recent advances in neuroscience are hardly straightforward. In Pragmatic Neuroethics, Eric Racine argues that the emerging field of neuroethics offers a way to integrate such specialties as neurology, psychiatry, and neurosurgery with the humanities and social sciences, neuroscience research, and related healthcare professions, with the goal of tackling key ethical challenges and improving patient care. Racine provides a survey of the often diverging perspectives within neuroethics, offers a theoretical framework supported by empirical data, and discusses the neuroethical implications of such issues as media coverage of neuroscience innovation and the importance of public concerns and lay opinion; nonmedical use of pharmaceuticals for performance enhancement; and the discord between intuitive notions about consciousness and behavior and the scientific understanding of them. Racine proposes a pragmatic neuroethics that combines pluralistic approaches, bottom-up research perspectives, and a focus on practical issues (in contrast to other more theoretical and single-discipline approaches to the field). [He discusses ethical issues related to powerful neuroscience insights into the mechanisms underlying moral reasoning, cooperative behavior, and such emotional processes as empathy.] In addition, he outlines a pragmatic framework for neuroethics, based on the philosophy of emergentism, which identifies conditions for the meaningful contribution of neuroscience to ethics, and sketches new directions and strategies for meeting future challenges for neuroscience and society. Basic Bioethics series

Bioethics

Bioethics PDF Author: Marianne Talbot
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521888336
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 479

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Book Description
This book clearly explains bioethical issues and their philosophical foundations to science students, encouraging critical thinking about the ethics of biotechnology.

Bioethics and Consciousness

Bioethics and Consciousness PDF Author: Alberto García Gómez
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527573370
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 110

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Book Description
The study of consciousness and its psychological and neuroscientific correlates is of major importance for all scientists and clinicians today. However, only a multidisciplinary study can make us understand the ultimate reality of consciousness. This book not only reviews the neuroscientific and psychological foundations and phenomena of consciousness, awareness, self-consciousness and neurobioethics, but also provides a new, interdisciplinary model of the current scientific studies and definitions of consciousness. As such, it offers a multidisciplinary bridge between the brain, mind, philosophy, the introspective self-consciousness, the human identity and free will.