Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

The Heinz Dilemma Might Reveal That Morality Is Meaningless

By Esther Inglis-Arkell
io9.com
Originally published April 29, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

But if this finding is true, it seems there are bigger problems with morality. What this experiment seems to say is people can take the same situation, and argue the same principles - social roles, the importance of interpersonal relationships, the likelihood of punishment, and pure humanitarian principles - and come to exactly opposite moral conclusions. And they do this for their whole lives. Sure, it's interesting to see that principles evolve over time, but it's more interesting to see that principles - at least the ones confined solely to the human mind - are irrelevant. There is no method or guiding idea that could possibly allow any group of humanity to come to a consensus. Morality, then, is basically chaos. We can start from the same place, and follow the same principles, and end at diametrically opposite ends of a problem, and there's no way to resolve that.

The entire blog post is here.

Editor's note:

I posted this piece to demonstrate that many struggle to understand morality.  First, moral psychology has moved well past Kohlberg.  Psychologists, especially those who study moral psychology, understand the theoretical and research limitations of Kohlberg.  Please listen to podcast Episode 7 to get a flavor of this.

Second, to believe "morality, then, is basically chaos" is also uninformed.  In moral decision-making, individuals can use different principles to generate different conclusions.  This does not indicate that morality is in chaos, rather, it demonstrates how people use different moral systems to judge and respond to moral dilemmas.

Third, a true moral dilemma involves competing principles.  If it is truly a moral dilemma, then there is no "correct" or "right" answer.  A true dilemma shows how an individual is in a moral or ethical bind and there are cognitive and emotional strategies to generate solutions to sometimes impossible problems. Podcasts 5 and 6 demonstrate how psychologists can knit together possible solutions to ethical dilemmas because, in part, they bring their own moral systems, values, and biases to their work.

The podcasts can be found here.


Is the Doctor-Patient Relationship Turning Into a Business Partnership?

Reports say patients are increasingly asking doctors for drugs by name, and docs are complying. If they don’t write the script, they risk a low rating on one of many doc-ranking sites.

By Russell Saunders
The Daily Beast
Originally posted April 11, 2014

“The customer is always right.” We all know the saying. It’s a truism in business. Businesses need happy customers. Happy customers keep coming back and they tell their friends. Keeping the customer happy is a businessperson’s number one priority.

Except when the business is a medical practice, and the customer is a patient.

That ever-blurring line between patient and customer is one of the most difficult things to walk in medical practice. On the one hand, people need to keep coming through the door in order to keep it open in the first place, and making sure people have a good experience when they come to you for care is important.

The entire article is here.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Raising a Moral Child

By Adam Grant
The New York Times - Opinion
Originally posted April 11, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

By age 2, children experience some moral emotions — feelings triggered by right and wrong. To reinforce caring as the right behavior, research indicates, praise is more effective than rewards. Rewards run the risk of leading children to be kind only when a carrot is offered, whereas praise communicates that sharing is intrinsically worthwhile for its own sake. But what kind of praise should we give when our children show early signs of generosity?

Many parents believe it’s important to compliment the behavior, not the child — that way, the child learns to repeat the behavior. Indeed, I know one couple who are careful to say, “That was such a helpful thing to do,” instead of, “You’re a helpful person.”

The entire article is here.

This will hurt a bit

By David Hunter
BMJ Group Blogs
Originally posted April 11, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

In this piece she describes the case of a Cornell graduate student who carried out a piece of self-experimentation without IRB approval (based on the mistaken belief it wasn’t required) which aimed to assess which part of the body was worst to be stung by a bee on and involved:  ”five stings a day, always between 9 and 10am, and always starting and ending with “test stings” on his forearm to calibrate the ratings. He kept this up for 38 days, stinging himself three times each on 25 different body parts.”

The entire blog is here.

Monday, April 28, 2014

Episode 7: The Moral Self, Moral Injury, and Moral Emotions

In this episode, John interviews Dr. Nina Strohminger about moral psychology and her research on the moral self and moral emotions.  While they discuss her research about the moral self and moral emotions, the discussion leads to clinical examples related to values in psychotherapy, moral injury and other conditions treated by psychologists.  John and Nina also exchange ideas on emotions in decision-making.

At the end of this podcast, the listener will be able to:

1. Describe the moral self,
2. Explain moral injury and how it applies to psychotherapy,
3. Identify how emotions are important to decision-making.



Resources


Nina Strohminger and Shaun Nichols

Nina Strohminger, Richard L. Lewis, and David D. Meyer

John Gavazzi and Sam Knapp

Morality, Disgust and Countertransference in Psychotherapy
John Gavazzi and Sam Knapp

Shira Maguen and Brett Litz

Scrupulosity: Where OCD Meets Religion, Faith and Belief
Kevin Foss, The OCD Center of Los Angeles

Sunday, April 27, 2014

With Guns, Suicide Is the Biggest Problem

By Sarah Wickline
MedPage Today
Originally posted April 11, 2014

Every day, 88 people die from firearm-related injury; two-thirds of those deaths are suicides, a high proportion of which are committed by seniors and individuals living in rural areas, researchers reported here.

"Mass shooting episodes are obviously horrible," Molly Cooke, MD, president of the American College of Physicians (ACP), told reporters in a press briefing. "But one of the points we make in the paper is that every day there are 88 firearms-related deaths."

The entire article is here.

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Practitioner Pointer: Does the use of Skype raise HIPAA compliance issues?

Practitioners should be aware of the risk involved.

By Legal and Regulatory Affairs staff
American Psychological Association - Practice Central
Originally published April 24, 2014

Given the growing use of technology for communication, many practitioners are interested in knowing whether popular options are compatible with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirements. Skype, whose basic features are free and easy to use, is one such option of interest to practicing psychologists.

HIPAA does not specify the kinds of technologies that covered entities should use for creating, receiving, storing or transmitting electronic patient health information (ePHI). Under the HIPAA Security Rule, covered entities must conduct individual risk assessments about the technologies (hardware, software, etc.) they use that store or transmit ePHI.

The entire story is here.

Philosophy of biology

Peter Godfrey-Smith interviewed by Richard Marshall
3AM Magazine
Originally published April 11, 2014

Peter Godfrey-Smith is the go-to guy in the philosophy of biology. He is forever evolving his thoughts on externalism, complexity and why we shouldn’t expect a settled outcome, the contribution of pragmatists to philosophy of biology, why Fodor gets it wrong, on how best to understand what science is, on Darwinian theory, Darwinian populations, on why Richard Dawkins and David Hull are wrong and on the contribution of philosophy to biology. Like Cool Hand Luke, this one bites like a ‘gator!

(cut)

PGS: It’s fine with me if the biologists (and other scientists) get on with their scientific work without input from philosophers. Philosophy does often contribute ideas and theory-sketches to science, which then acquire a life of their own in the new setting, but this “incubator” role is a secondary role for philosophy. The same applies to the “clarification” of scientific concepts by philosophers. It happens, and sometimes it’s helpful for scientists, and that’s a good thing, but it’s not central to philosophy. I don’t think of philosophy as essentially a field that contributes to other fields. Philosophy is, roughly speaking, its own field, though it has a special status because it’s so integrative – because the aim of philosophy is to get a coherent and defensible picture of everything going on. I very much like the one-line description of philosophy given by Sellars: philosophy is about “how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.” If we take this view on board, it implies that philosophy will always be interacting with the sciences and drawing on them, but it won’t be swallowed up by them.

So I have no problem with scientists who do their scientific work while ignoring philosophy. It’s a different matter when scientists start trying to answer philosophical questions, or trying to distill philosophical messages from their work. Sometimes they do this well, sometimes badly. Either way, then they are part of the philosophical conversation.

The entire article is here.

Friday, April 25, 2014

U.S. Prisons Becoming De Facto Home of the Mentally Ill

A new study reveals that prisons in America house ten times as many mentally ill as the state-run psychiatric wards that could actually treat them.

By Abby Haglage
The Daily Beast
Originally published April 10, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

While TAC’s study—titled The Treatment of Persons With Mental Illness in Prisons and Jails—isn’t the first of its kind, it’s notable for two reasons: it’s the first to analyze the data by state, and it’s the most recent illustration that the problem is growing more acute. One of the worst offenders is New York, where the law mandates mentally ill inmates be sent to psychiatric hospitals (which—given the lack of available beds—is mostly useless). A 2011 study estimated that of the 12,200 inmates at Riker’s Island, ⅓ of the men and ⅔ of the women are mentally ill.

The entire article is here.