Ethics in Today's
Policy Choices
Cutting-Edge Thinking on Philosophy
Geared toward the general public, as well as academic philosophers
St. Thomas' Episcopal Church Hall • Friday, July 24, 2009
Featured speakers and their topics: Compassion in Medicine:
What is it and can it be cultivated? Prof. Michael Grodin
Boston UniversityEthics and the New Eugenics:
Evaluating Our Autonomy-Based Public PolicyProf. Greg Fahy
University of Maine, Augusta Environmental Justice:
Sharing the Burdens of Climate ChangeProf. Michael Howard
University of Maine, Orono Also featuring a panel discussion by the three speakers with questions from the audience.
A donation of $15 is requested.
This conference is sponsored by:
The Camden Philosophical Society and the Camden Public Library
| Registration at 9 am Conference begins at 9:15 am Conference concludes at 4 pm Buffet Lunch available for $10 | Please register in advance by sending your name, address and an indication of whether you want lunch to Info@PhilosophyEdge.com |
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Speakers and Topics
Prof. Michael Grodin -- Compassion in Medicine: What is it and can it be cultivated
This multimedia presentation will be a historical, philosophical, religious, sociological and psychological investigation of the nature of compassion in medicine. The aim is to relate the practice of compassion to trust, explore the integration of competence and compassion, and help the audience develop practice skills to enhance and cultivate spontaneous compassion.
Dr. Grodin is a Professor of Health Law, Bioethics and Human Rights at the School of Public Health; Professor of Socio-Medical Sciences and Community Medicine and Psychiatry at the School of Medicine; and Professor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences, all at Boston University. He is also the Medical Ethicist at Boston Medical Center. He has edited or co-edited books including The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code; Human Rights in Human Experimentation; Children as Research Subjects: Science, Ethics and Law; Meta-Medical Ethics: The Philosophical Foundations of Bioethics; and Perspectives on Health and Human Rights. He is presently working on two books, Medical Ethics in the Shadow of the Holocaust and After the Shoah: Rebuilding the Lives of Holocaust Survivors. He is, in addition, the Director of the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights, a program that cares for survivors of torture from over 50 countries. This spring he discussed his experiences treating Tibetan monks with post traumatic stress disorder on Fresh Air, on National Public Radio.
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Prof. Greg Fahy -- Ethics and the New Eugenics: Evaluating our autonomy-based public policy
Eugenics, or deliberately selecting genetically-based traits for our offspring, raises a variety of ethical concerns. This talk will address the history of the US failure to adequately address these concerns as a matter of public policy and the biological possibilities and current practical limitations of genetic engineering. Current de facto public policy in the area of reproductive technology is based upon the principle of individual autonomy. While a policy of autonomy rectifies the excesses of earlier eugenics policies, it neglects many important ethical concerns about eugenics, including disability rights, gender selection, natural law and parental expectations. Dr. Fahy will explore these competing ethical claims with an eye to understanding the proper role for public policy in the area of eugenic practice.
Dr. Fahy is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maine at Augusta. His main areas of interest include moral psychology, the relation between ethical ideals and the lived environment, and American pragmatism. His publications include “The Idea of the Good in Aristotle and John Dewey” in Essays in Philosophy and “The Quality of Confusion: Pragmatist Ideals and Aporia” in Teaching Philosophy. He has won the Douglas Greenlee prize at the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, as well as the William James Prize at the American Philosophical Association for the best paper in American Philosophy. He serves on the Maine General Medical Center Ethics Committee and facilitates discussions for the Maine Humanities Council.
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Prof. Michael Howard -- Environmental Justice: Sharing the burdens of climate change
In this talk, Dr. Howard will argue that cutting global emissions in order to avoid dangerous climate change will require transfers of wealth, both in the US and between the affluent and the developing world, on a scale that will be infeasible unless national wealth and income inequalities are addressed. In both national and international cases, he maintains, the “polluter pays” principle should be qualified by an “ability to pay” principle.
Dr. Howard is Chairperson and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maine in Orono. He teaches courses on justice, political and economic democracy, the history of philosophy (ancient and modern) and formal logic. His research interests also include global justice, basic income and workplace democracy. In his book Self-Management and the Crisis of Socialism, he defends a form of worker-managed market socialism as preferable to both centrally planned state socialism and capitalism, on grounds of justice and efficiency. His second book is an anthology entitled Socialism. He has been involved with various peace and justice organizations and has travelled and given talks on such spots as Cuba and the former Yugoslavia. He is Treasurer of the International Institute for Self-Management, which is concerned with cooperatives and other forms of economic democracy.
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The Camden Philosophical Society, of Camden Maine, meets as a reading and discussion group on the fourth Thursday of every month at the Camden Public Library and sponsors lectures on the second Thursday of most months. For details on these meetings, as well as on our upcoming Philosophy at the Edge 2008 conference, contact us at Info@PhilosophyEdge.com.