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.

Ethical Consciousness

Ethical Consciousness PDF Author: Paul Killebrew
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780984947126
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Poetry. In the "calm and dangerous city" of his second book, ETHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS, Paul Killebrew asks sharp questions in his characteristically warm voice. Can an ethical artist be dishonest? What are the political and duty-creating dimensions that the form of a person's perceptions of the world create? "What would it even mean to be implicit?"

The Ethics of Consciousness

The Ethics of Consciousness PDF Author: Walter Glannon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009085247
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
This Element examines the main ethical aspects of consciousness It argues that consciousness is not intrinsically valuable but has value or disvalue for individuals depending on its phenomenology (what it is like to be aware) and content (what one is aware of). These two components of awareness shape normative judgments about how ordered, disordered, altered, restored, diminished and suppressed conscious states can benefit or harm individuals. They also influence moral judgments about whether intentionally causing these states is permissible or impermissible and how these states can affect behavior. After describing its neurobiological basis, this Element discusses ethical and legal issues in six categories of consciousness: phenomenal and access consciousness; intraoperative awareness; prolonged disorders of consciousness, dissociative disorders, the role of consciousness in determining death; and altering and suppressing awareness near the end of life.

Consciousness and Moral Responsibility

Consciousness and Moral Responsibility PDF Author: Neil Levy
Publisher: Oxford University Press (UK)
ISBN: 0198704631
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Neil Levy presents a new theory of freedom and responsibility. He defends a particular account of consciousness—the global workspace view—and argues that consciousness plays an especially important role in action. There are good reasons to think that the naïve assumption, that consciousness is needed for moral responsibility, is in fact true.

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"--

Animal Consciousness

Animal Consciousness PDF Author: Christopher R. DeFusco
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1462836755
Category : Pets
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
What is it like for my dog to chew on a steak bone? Does he taste the saltiness of the residual meat? Does he feel the sandpaper-like texture of the partial skeletal structure? What does it smell like, for him? When he drinks his water, does he feel the coolness of the liquid? If he bites his tongue, does he experience the same feeling of pain

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.

Is Conscience an Emotion?

Is Conscience an Emotion? PDF Author: Hastings Rashdall
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Conscience
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description


Ethical Life

Ethical Life PDF Author: Webb Keane
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691176264
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
The human propensity to take an ethical stance toward oneself and others is found in every known society, yet we also know that values taken for granted in one society can contradict those in another. Does ethical life arise from human nature itself? Is it a universal human trait? Or is it a product of one's cultural and historical context? Webb Keane offers a new approach to the empirical study of ethical life that reconciles these questions, showing how ethics arise at the intersection of human biology and social dynamics. Drawing on the latest findings in psychology, conversational interaction, ethnography, and history, Ethical Life takes readers from inner city America to Samoa and the Inuit Arctic to reveal how we are creatures of our biology as well as our history—and how our ethical lives are contingent on both. Keane looks at Melanesian theories of mind and the training of Buddhist monks, and discusses important social causes such as the British abolitionist movement and American feminism. He explores how styles of child rearing, notions of the person, and moral codes in different communities elaborate on certain basic human tendencies while suppressing or ignoring others. Certain to provoke debate, Ethical Life presents an entirely new way of thinking about ethics, morals, and the factors that shape them.

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.