Practical Philosophy

Patient support tools have drawn on a variety of disciplines, including psychotherapy, social psychology, and social care. One discipline that has not so far been used to support patients is philosophy. This paper proposes that a particular philosophical approach, phenomenology, could prove useful for patients, giving them tools to reflect on and expand their understanding of their illness. I present a framework for a resource that could help patients to philosophically examine their illness, its impact on their life, and its meaning. I explain the need for such a resource, provide philosophical grounding for it, and outline the epistemic and existential gains philosophy offers. Illness often begins as an intrusion on one’s life but with time becomes a way of being. I argue that this transition impacts on core human features such as the experience of space and time, human abilities, and adaptability. It therefore requires philosophical analysis and response. The paper uses ideas from Husserl and Merleau-Ponty to present such a response in the form of a phenomenological toolkit for patients. The toolkit includes viewing illness as a form of phenomenological reduction, thematizing illness, and examining illness as altering the ill person’s being in the world. I suggest that this toolkit could be offered to patients as a workshop, using phenomenological concepts, texts, and film clips to reflect on illness. I conclude by arguing that examining illness as a limit case of embodied existence deepens our understanding of phenomenology.

People with depression often report alterations in their experience of time, a common complaint being that time has slowed down or stopped. In this paper, I argue that depression can involve a range of qualitatively different changes in the structure of temporal experience, some of which I proceed to describe. In addition, I suggest that current diagnostic categories such as "major depression" are insensitive to the differences between these changes. I conclude by briefly considering whether the kinds of temporal experience associated with depression are specific to depression.

In this paper, changes in identity and selfhood experienced through organ transplantation are analyzed from a phenomenological point of view. The chief examples are heart and face transplants. Similarities and differences between the examples are fleshed out by way of identifying three layers of selfhood in which the procedures have effects: embodied selfhood, self-reflection, and social-narrative identity. Organ transplantation is tied to processes of alienation in the three layers of selfhood, first and foremost a bodily alienation experienced through illness or injury and in going through and recovering from the operation. However, in cases in which the organ in question is taken to harbor the identity of another person, because of its symbolic qualities (the heart) or its expressive qualities (the face), the alienation process may also involve the otherness of another person making itself, at least imaginatively, known.

This paper defends an account of compassion and argues for the centrality of compassion to the proper practice of medicine. The argument proceeds by showing that failures of compassion can lead to poor medical treatment and disastrous outcomes. Several case studies are discussed, exemplifying the difference between compassionate and noncompassionate responses to patients seeking help. Arguments are offered in support of approaching reports of persistent pain with a trusting attitude, rather than distrust or skepticism. The article concludes by suggesting educational improvements to encourage compassion.

Cultural differences in end-of-life care and the moral disagreements these sometimes give rise to have been well documented. Even so, cultural considerations relevant to end-of-life care remain poorly understood, poorly guided, and poorly resourced in health care domains. Although there has been a strong emphasis in recent years on making policy commitments to patient-centred care and respecting patient choices, persons whose minority cultural worldviews do not fit with the worldviews supported by the conventional principles of western bioethics face a perpetual struggle in getting their care needs met in a meaningful, safe, and healing way. In this essay, attention is given to exploring why cultural differences exist, why they matter, and how health care providers should treat them in order to reduce the incidence and impact of otherwise preventable harmful moral outcomes in end-of-life care. In addressing these questions, a novel application of the renowned terror management theory will be made.

It is well-recognized that uncertainty is an endemic feature and limitation of clinical judgment and practice that cannot be eliminated in many cases. Among the tasks of clinical ethics is the responsible management of uncertainties, first articulated in E. Haavi Morreim’s very nice concept of the "moral management of medical uncertainty." The papers in the 2012 Clinical Ethics issue of the Journal provide philosophically innovative and clinically applicable accounts of the varieties of uncertainty in clinical medicine and therefore in clinical ethics: epistemic uncertainty, metaphysical uncertainty, and relational uncertainty.

This article explores the question of how scientific uncertainty can be managed in medical decision making using the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices as a case study. It concludes that where a high degree of technical consensus exists about the evidence and data, decision makers act according to a clear decision rule. If a high degree of technical consensus does not exist and uncertainty abounds, the decision will be based on a variety of criteria, including readily available resources, decision-process constraints, and the available knowledge base, among other things. Decision makers employ a variety of heuristic devices and techniques, thereby employing a pragmatic approach to uncertainty in medical decision making. The article concludes with recommendations for managing scientific uncertainty in medical decision making.

Physicians and other medical practitioners make untold numbers of judgments about patient care on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. These judgments fall along a number of spectrums, from the mundane to the tragic, from the obvious to the challenging. Under the rubric of evidence-based medicine, these judgments will be informed by the robust conclusions of medical research. In the ideal circumstance, medical research makes the best decision obvious to the trained professional. Even when practice approximates this ideal, it does so unevenly. Judgments in medical practice are always accompanied by uncertainty, and this uncertainty is a fickle companion—constant in its presence but inconstant in its expression. This feature of medical judgments gives rise to the moral responsibility of medical practitioners to be epistemically humble. This requires the recognition and communication of the uncertainty that accompanies their judgment as well as a commitment to avoiding intuitive innovations.

I challenge the idea that the argument from potential (AFP) represents a valid moral objection to abortion. I consider the form of AFP that was defended by Hare, which holds that abortion is against the interests of the potential person who is prevented from existing. My reply is that AFP, though not unsound by itself, does not apply to the issue of abortion. The reason is that AFP only works in the cases of so-called same number and same people choices, but it falsely presupposes that abortion is such a kind of choice. This refutation of AFP implies that (1) abortion is not only morally permissible but sometimes even morally mandatory and (2) abortion is morally permissible even when the potential person’s life is foreseen to be worth living.

The personal identity problem expresses the worry that due to disrupted psychological continuity, one person’s advance directive could be used to determine the care of a different person. Even ethicists, who strongly question the possibility of the scenario depicted by the proponents of the personal identity problem, often consider it to be a very potent objection to the use of advance directives. Aiming to question this assumption, I, in this paper, discuss the personal identity problem’s relevance to the moral force of advance directives. By putting the personal identity argument in relation to two different normative frameworks, I aim to show that whether or not the personal identity problem is relevant to the moral force of advance directives, and further, in what way it is relevant, depends entirely on what normative reasons we have for respecting advance directives in the first place.

When a patient fails to follow the advice or prescription of a physician, she is termed to be "noncompliant" by the medical community. The medical community’s response to and understanding of patient noncompliance fails to acknowledge noncompliance as either a relational failure between physician and patient or as a patient choice. I offer an analysis of Immanuel Kant and Emmanuel Levinas that refocuses the issue of noncompliance by examining the physician role, the doctor–patient relationship, and the nature of responsibility.