Is it ethical to perform a surgery whose purpose is to make a male look like a female or a female to appear male? Is it medically appropriate? Sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) violates basic medical and ethical principles and is therefore not ethically or medically appropriate. (1) SRS mutilates a healthy, non-diseased body. To perform surgery on a healthy body involves unnecessary risks; therefore, SRS violates the principle primum non nocere, “first, do no harm.” (2) Candidates for SRS may believe (...) that they are trapped in the bodies of the wrong sex and therefore desire or, more accurately, demand SRS; however, this belief is generated by a disordered perception of self. Such a fixed, irrational belief is appropriately described as a delusion. SRS, therefore, is a “category mistake”—it offers a surgical solution for psychological problems such as a failure to accept the goodness of one’s masculinity or femininity, lack of secure attachment relationships in childhood with same-sex peers or a parent, self-rejection, untreated gender identity disorder, addiction to masturbation and fantasy, poor body image, excessive anger, and severe psychopathology in a parent. (3) SRS does not accomplish what it claims to accomplish. It does not change a person’s sex; therefore, it provides no true benefit. (4) SRS is a “permanent,” effectively unchangeable, and often unsatisfying surgical attempt to change what may be only a temporary (i.e., psychotherapeutically changeable) psychological/psychiatric condition. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 9.1 (Spring2009): 97–125. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 147-151 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Philosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism Philosophical Meditations on Zen Buddhism. By DaleS.Wright. Cambridge, Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xv +227 pp. In a work brimming with unobtrusive erudition and centered on the figure of Huang Po (d. 850), Dale Wright offers a seasoned account of a topic that is still very much in need of clarification, (...) namely, the roles of language, conceptuality, textuality, interpretation, and historical development in Zen Buddhism. Some recent critics tend to see Zen as incoherent or even hypocritical in that this "special transmission outside the sutras, not dependent on language and texts, pointing directly to mind" (quoted, p. 64) in reality developed complex and varied textual and ritual traditions from [End Page 147] which the supposedly pure enlightenment experience cannot be siphoned out. Wright argues that the critics themselves are often naive, giving an inverted reflection of the naiveté of earlier scholars such as John Blofeld, who saw Zen as centered on an ineffable Supreme Experience, quite independent of the language used to point to it. Nonetheless, Wright himself is in basic agreement with the critics and in radical opposition to Blofeld (and to D. T. Suzuki). But he points out that the early Chinese Zen masters speak in many voices, often anticipating the most sophisticated insights of their critics.Wright's style is very unlike that of Bernard Faure, being slow, serene, reflective, scrupulous, and imbued with the deepest respect for the Zen tradition. Yet his thought rejoins Faure's at many points.The thrust of Wright's argument is to demystify Zen enlightenment by reinserting it in its varied linguistic, social, institutional, and historical contexts. He gives a realistic and holistic account of what Zen experience must have been like for disciples of Huang Po (pp. 187-192). His stress on the linguisticality of all experience certainly illuminates the texture of Huang Po's world. But I am left wondering if there is not another aspect of Zen that is missed here. Modern philosophers have derived much insight from the realization that thought and perception are deeply embedded in language. But I do not know that anyone has proven that there can never be a thinking or perception that is independent of language. Even the supposedly pan-textualist Derrida states somewhere that he does not exclude the possibility of nonlinguistic thought. In most fields of inquiry this abstruse question makes no practical difference, but in the case of Zen it is of crucial import. The presupposition of universal linguisticality, especially if it hardens into a dogma, may block access to the core of Zen experience.Wright argues that though some Zen masters sought prelinguistic immediacy, the majority were deeply aware of the inseparability of experience and the language in which it is grasped. But could it not be that prelinguistic immediacy was so much taken for granted in Zen that the masters scarcely needed to insist on it? Wright says that enlightenment itself is a linguistic event, since it is often occasioned by a verbal statement and given immediate expression in another verbal statement. But to recognize the indispensability of language for conveying experience is not necessarily to imply that the experience itself is dependent on language. Although a certain poem of Huang Po "strives to make its anti-textual point, the master must enter into the textual world to do so, thus abandoning the position of 'no dependence on texts'" (p. 22). Is it really necessary to see a contradiction here, given that, as Wright himself points out, "no unanimity on the meaning of the mandate against 'words and letters' existed" (p. 26)? Let us suppose that the point is nonattachment to texts and a realization of the intrinsic independence of enlightenment from the limited perspectives of textuality, language, and conceptual thought. This is quite compatible with intensive use of texts in practice.Blofeld explains that texts were useful to the learner but cast aside when enlightenment was reached. Wright argues that the enlightened experience must "continue to hold within it, and... (shrink)

The strongest version of the principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles states that of necessity, there are no distinct things with all their universals in common (where such putative haecceities as being Aristotle do not count as universals: I use 'universal' rather than 'property' here and in what follows for the simple reason that 'universal' is the term of art that most safely excludes haecceities from its instances). It is commonly supposed that Max Black's famous paper 'The identity of indiscernibles' (...) (2) refutes this thesis. (Armstong's [1], chapter 9 is representative here.) Black argues ([2], p. 156) that it is perfectly possible that there be a world consisting solely of two indiscernible spheres at some distance to each other and that this world constitutes a counterexample to the principle above. The strongest version of the bundle theory of substance claims that of necessity, the substances that make up the world are bundles of universals.1 It is commonly supposed that a consequence of Black's defeat of the principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles is that this bundle theory of substance is mistaken. (Again, Armstong's [1] is representative.) I shall argue that Black's thought experiment does not defeat the bundle theory and that, as a result, the bundle theory can be used to salvage the principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles. (shrink)

(1996). Compatibilist semantics in metaphysics: A case study. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 74, No. 1, pp. 117-134. doi: 10.1080/00048409612347101.

After nearly fifty years of mea culpas and explanatory additions, the biopsychosocial model is no closer to a life of its own. Bolton and Gillett give it a strong philosophical boost in The Biopsychosocial Model of Health and Disease, but they overlook the model’s deeply inconsistent position on dualism. Moreover, because metaphysical confusion has clinical ramifications in medicine, their solution sidesteps the model’s most pressing clinical faults. But the news is not all bad. We can maintain the merits of holism (...) as we let go of the inchoate bag of platitudes that is the biopsychosocial model. We can accept holism as the metaphysical open door that it is, just a willingness to recognize the reality of human experience, and the sense in which that reality forces medicine to address biological, psychological, and social aspects of health. This allows us to finally characterize Engel’s driving idea in accurate philosophical terms, as acceptance of consciousness in the context of medical science. This will not entirely pin down medicine’s stance on dualism, but it will position it clearly enough to readily improve patient care. (shrink)

Those who call themselves ‘scientific realists’ have been concerned to defend one or more of the following cluster of theses: The scientific enterprise’s primary goal is to discover a theory that correctly describes a mind-independent reality. Scientists believe that many of the central claims of current scientific theories correctly describe a mind-independent reality. Moreover, in forming such beliefs, they do not take themselves to be going beyond the bounds of science. If scientific activity continues, science will eventually succeed in providing (...) an account of mind-independent reality that is at least approximately true. Many of the central claims of current scientific theories correctly describe reality. Clearly, and are pieces of scientific sociology, in that they express judgements about the attitudes of scientists towards their theories, while and express judgements about the extent to which science is able to discover the way the world is. and the ‘Sociological Theses’ and the ‘Non-Sociological Theses’.) In this paper, I shall discuss what Bas van Fraassen’s work has to tell us about these claims. I shall argue that at best, he has pointed to one important respect in which defenders of scientific realism may have been on the wrong track. Such defenders have, historically, attempted to provide decisive reasons for believing one or more of the above theses. Van Fraassen has given grounds for thinking that no such rationally compelling reasons are to be had. But since that hardly implies that anyone who subscribes to either the Sociological or Non-Sociological Theses is irrational, it follows that van Fraassen’s polemic fails to undermine scientific realism in any serious way. Correspondingly, I shall argue that van Fraassen’s defence of an alternative to scientific realism, his so-called ‘constructive empiricism’, has only limited success. (shrink)

The final book of O'Leary's trilogy, Conventional and Ultimate Truth deals with the nature of theological rationality today, drawing on Buddhist ideology.

My review of Cordelia Fine's new book, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference: The gender wars take no prisoners. In 2005, suggesting that there might indeed be innate differences between men and women derailed the career of Harvard president Larry Summers. He reemerged, years later, as President Obama’s sometime finance guru). Meanwhile, a host of neuroscientists report differences between the brains of men and women that, they say, account for different abilities and career choices. Psychologist (...) and author Cordelia Fine disagrees with the neuroscientists. In Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, she has no time for the "special powers" that pop brain science currently imputes to the female brain, reminding us that such claims were made long before the magnetic resonance imaging machine was invented. (shrink)

Towards the end of Analyze This , during a shoot-out, the psychotherapistplayed by Billy Crystal falls in front of the mobster played by Robert de Niro andtakes a bullet in his shoulder. De Niro thanks him for taking the bullet, but Crystalprotests that he just tripped up. De Niro replies, ‘No Doc, you tripped on yourunconscious!’ In this observation, the mobster not only provides the key to thisfilm, he also opens up a way of understanding something essential about TheGodfather . (...) One of the central and, for me, unexplained problems in TheGodfather is the motivation for Michael Corleone’s transformation from modelcitizen and war-hero into the ruthless Don who takes his father’s place at thehead of one of New York’s mafia families. In this paper, I will use Analyze This –and Freud – to explain this transformation as a form of ‘tripping over theunconscious’. My suggestion is that Analyze This, in its self-consciously popFreudian fashion, actually gives us the basis for a more serious Freudianinterpretation of Michael’s transformation. If we approach Coppola’s film as atragedy in which the ostensible rise to power of Michael is, in effect, hisdownfall, then we are faced with the question of how to understand the natureof the forces that bring him to that end. Against the idea that Michael is simply destined to take over his father’s position, I will give an account of the underlying psychological forces that bring him to that culmination. (shrink)

This book is of interest to those working at the intersection of contemporary debates in philosophy, ethics, politics and cultural studies.

Biomedical diagnostic science is a great deal less successful than we've been willing to acknowledge in bioethics, and this fact has far-reaching ethical implications. In this article I consider the surprising prevalence of medically unexplained symptoms, and the term's ambiguous meaning. Then I frame central questions that remain answered in this context with respect to informed consent, autonomy, and truth-telling. Finally, I show that while considerable attention in this area is given to making sure not to provide biological care to (...) patients without a need, comparatively little is given to the competing, ethically central task of making sure never to obstruct access to biological care for those with diagnostically confusing biological conditions. I suggest this problem arises from confusion about the philosophical value of vagueness when it comes to the line between biological and psychosocial needs. (shrink)

Recent accounting scandals involving the collapse of large corporate firms have brought into question the adequacy of ethics education within accounting programs. This paper investigates the ethical decisions of accountancy students and in particular analyses the effect of group (as opposed to individual) decision-making on ethical decisions. Final year accountancy students (sample size of 165) were randomly allocated into two experimental conditions. The participants were then presented with five (5) ethical vignettes. One experimental condition involved completing the ethical decisions as (...) individuals (60). The other involved completing the ethical decision-making as a group of 3–4 participants (34). A consistent pattern of behaviour was observed in the analysis of individual versus group responses. Individuals displayed stronger tendencies than groups to take the extreme actions of acting either unethically or ethically (whistleblowing), whereas groups displayed stronger tendencies to take the safer (neutral) options. It was concluded that groups reached consensus decisions, in an ethical context, probably as a result of peer pressure. The significant implication of this finding is in relation to the emphasis accounting programs place on group work. Group work may enhance students’ abilities to work as a team. However, as revealed in this study’s results, group work may not be an effective means of producing the optimal decision in all subject matter areas, especially complex areas such as ethical decision-making. (shrink)

This paper canvasses the various dimensions along which theories of truth may disagree about the extent to which truth is minimal.

Apocalyptic expectations of Armageddon and a New Age have been a fixture of the American cultural landscape for centuries. With the approach of the year 2000, such millennial visions seem once again to be increasing in popularity. Stephen O'Leary sheds new light on the age-old phenomenon of the End of the Age by proposing a rhetorical explanation for the appeal of millennialism. Using examples of apocalyptic argument from ancient to modern times, O'Leary identifies the recurring patterns in apocalyptic texts and (...) movements and shows how and why the Christian Apocalypse has been used to support a variety of political stances and programs. The book concludes with a critical review of the recent appearances of doomsday scenarios in our politics and culture, and a meditation on the significance of the Apocalypse in the nuclear age. Arguing the Apocalypse is the most thorough examination of its subject to date: a study of a neglected chapter of our religious and cultural history, a guide to the politics of Armageddon, and a map of millennial consciousness. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Two Concepts of Experience The Matrix of Experience The Work of Thought Re‐Making Experience References.

We generally accept that medicine’s conceptual and ethical foundations are grounded in recognition of personhood. With patients in vegetative state, however, we’ve understood that the ethical implications of phenomenal consciousness are distinct from those of personhood. This suggests a need to reconsider medicine’s foundations. What is the role for recognition of consciousness (rather than personhood) in grounding the moral value of medicine and the specific demands of clinical ethics? I suggest that, according to holism, the moral value of medicine is (...) secured when conscious states are recognized in everyday medical science. Moreover, consciousness fully motivates traditional principles of clinical ethics if we understand respect for autonomy as respect for the dominion of an experiencer in the private, inescapable realm of bodily experience. When medicine’s foundations are grounded in recognition of consciousness, we understand how patients fully command respect even when they lack capacity to exercise their bodily dominion through decision-making. (shrink)

Nervous systems are formidably complex networks of nonlinear interacting components that self organise and continually adapt to enable flexible behaviour. Robust and reliable function is therefore non-trivial to achieve and requires a number of dynamic mechanisms and design principles that are the subject of current research in neuroscience. A striking feature of these principles is that they resemble engineering solutions, albeit at a greater level of complexity and layered organisation than any artificial system. I will draw on these observations to (...) argue that biological robustness in the nervous system remains a deep scientific puzzle, but not one that demands radically new concepts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 315-318 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Contemplation et Dialogue: Quelques Exemples de Dialogue Entre Spiritualitiés Après le Concile Vatican II The Ground We Share: Everyday Practice, Buddhist and Christian Contemplation et Dialogue: Quelques Exemples de Dialogue Entre Spiritualitiés Après le Concile Vatican II. By Katrin Amell. Studia Missionalia Upsaliensia LXX. Uppsala: The Swedish Institute of Missionary Research, 1998. 245 pp. ISBN 91-85424-50-1. The Ground (...) We Share: Everyday Practice, Buddhist and Christian. By Robert Aitken and David Steindl-Rast. Edited by Nelson Foster. Boston and London: Shambala, 1996. xviii + 233 pp. ISBN 1-57062-219-1. $15.00. Here are two meritorious and well-produced works devoted to the dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity. They also have in common a certain desultoriness which left me reflecting on the limits of the rhetoric of 'dialogue.' Having taken over from 'liberation' as a theological buzzword, 'dialogue' seems by now to have exhausted its usefulness. William James remarked that everything genuine will somewhere become a sham. Lip service to a vague ideal of dialogue becomes a substitute for the unmet challenge of Buddhist-Christian thought, and the less the dialogue is practiced the more its importance is verbally celebrated. The retention of the word 'dialogue' may even serve to keep the religious other at a comfortable distance: it is more reassuring to say, "Of course we are in dialogue with the Buddhists" than to say "We are facing up to the challenge Buddhist thought poses to Christian theology," for in the former statement the Buddhists remain conveniently located others, sitting across the table, rather than a troublesome, potentially subversive presence within our own intellectual world. [End Page 315]In their submission to the recent Roman synod of Asian bishops, the Japanese bishops made much of their commitment to interreligious dialogue, and this was acclaimed with enthusiasm. But the impression left by Karin Amell's book (a doctoral thesis in missiology) is that not very much is going on in this area in Japan, the country seen as "the promised land of dialogue" after Vatican II (p. 119). "One has the impression that it is an activity for a few specialists" (p. 145), leaving the ordinary faithful largely untouched. Amell apparently does not read Japanese, so there may be much that she has missed, yet for my part I can think of nothing to add to the factual content of her account. For the spiritual side of the encounter she focuses on three Japanese pioneers, now in their seventies (pp. 150-191): Kadowaki Kakichi, SJ, Okumura Ichiro, OCD, and Oshida Shigeto, OP. To what extent these men have succeeded in creating a widespread Catholic Zen culture remains unclear, but Amell believes the "dialogue of religious experience" is the most widespread form of Buddhist-Catholic interaction in Japan (p. 146). As to scholarship, which is not Amell's direct concern, one has the impression that everyone is too busy with church and university affairs to devote their time to this. The scholarly labors of Heinrich Dumoulin, for example, have not been continued by anyone else. Despite the work of a powerful Catholic foundation, the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture (p. 141), Buddhism does not seem to excite Catholic intellectuals in Japan. Japanese Catholics are a small community, numbering about half a million. But given the high number of theologians, clergy and religious (p. 137), one would expect a more intensive interaction with local religious traditions. Instead the focus of theological interest remains fixed on Western sources. It is not so much that the situation of a small church in the midst of secularized-polytheistic-Buddhist Japan fails to give food for thought as that people seem afraid to think out its implications. Those engaged in contemplative sharing with Buddhists seem to avoid intellectual issues. Amell is uneasy with the insistence on intuition and the latent anti-intellectualism she finds in the intermonastic dialogue (discussed in the first half... (shrink)

This paper provides a detailed study of fraud in practice through an empirical investigation of B.P.Sayers, a family-owned stockbroking firm that had been in existence for over 100 years and that collapsed due to the fraudulent activities of the firm's junior partner. An interpretive narrative methodology has been employed which has resulted in the development of a detailed understanding of fraud and moral breakdown in organizations, resulting from a failure of responsibility that arises from a dysfunctional work identification and its (...) moral implications. In developing this account of fraud, the conceptual framework utilized is drawn from the moral philosophical work of Emmanuel Levinas who explicated how the breakdown of social relations of responsibility results, in turn, in moral breakdown. (shrink)

In this article, Joseph S. O’Leary recounts the origin and inspirations behind the 1979 Colloquium Heidegger et la Question de Dieu, and reflects on why it became such a key moment in the development of many of those who took part in it. In addition to the contingent factors of a particular time and place, and the deep personal and intellectual significance that Heidegger bore for many of them, O’Leary identifies the perennial philosophical questions which the participants were (...) able to address in original and controversial ways. O’Leary also reflects on the way this Colloquium served as a subsequent influence on his own original work as well as the critical dialogue he engaged in with many of the other participants, culminating in his most recent work on interreligious dialogue which further amplifies the central problematics here concerning the nature of the quest for truth. (shrink)

The repeal of the Eighth Amendment was a turning point in Irish social history, especially in relation to the Catholic Church. But abortion is not a settled matter and it will continue to generate controversy. Likewise, issues such as surrogacy and assisted dying will give rise to sharp differences of opinion. Legislation that seeks to address bioethical issues such as these will inevitably provoke demands for amendments or repeal. By examining developments in biomedical science, Irish law and some central aspects (...) of Catholic moral teaching, Don O'Leary builds a thorough analysis of the controversies relating to: contraception, abortion, IVF, surrogacy, human embryonic stem cell research, assisted suicide, church control of healthcare services. Biomedical Controversies in Catholic Ireland is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the historical background, ethical arguments and scientific advances that will inform debates about morality and social policy in the coming years. -- (from amazon.com). (shrink)

In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre argues that in modern ethical discourse, moral principles have been replaced by “fragments” that only partially represent their original meaning as derived from theological contexts. Today’s debates surrounding physician assisted suicide (PAS) and abortion highlight that the “fragment” of autonomy has been championed over principles such as justice, beneficence, and nonmaleficence with little justification. This acceptance of patient autonomy as the ultimate good distracts from societal ills that drive contentious medical decisions, further muddles society’s image (...) of the human person, and subliminally redefines the medical profession. Medical professionals who oppose these practices must commit themselves to forming physician-patient covenants of trust, rather than accepting consumeristic models of patient care that foster an inappropriate focus on self-determination. (shrink)