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PHI332 : The Class : Background Info : Why
This class will prepare you for leadership roles in health care ethical decisions,
whether as health care patient, nurse, doctor, or other health care professional.
The goal is not to give you ethical rules to follow in health care settings.
There are such rules: see the "Hippocratic Oath" in the text, p. 55,
or the latest code of conduct for health care employees where you work. Such
rules can be helpful, and a dutiful person will follow the rules that apply
to their station in life.
The goal is to give you the skill needed to make rules and decisions in cases
where the available code of conduct needs to be applied to a difficult case,
or does not apply, or needs interpretation or revision in your judgment. That
skill is the power, so far as human beings possess this power, to determine
what is right and wrong. For human beings, this is the power of rational thought,
that is, the process of working step by step from reasons to conclusions.
What are the alternatives to rational thought? There are brute force, authority
(perhaps including direct divine inspiration for some of you!), tradition, and
habit, including my attitudes and how "my heart feels about things.".
Ethics is a critical, reflective process. It considers all of these factors,
and any other it can find, using rational thought. You may choose not to use
ethical reasoning in your personal decisions, but whenever you share your insights
with any other person or group or community you will (unless you can work miracles
or become a dictator!) need to fall back on the techniques of rational thought
which we all share: the ability to give and examine reasons for the conclusions
we draw. That is why this course will train you in logic as a necessary part
of ethics.
Once you have completed this excercise you should:
Go on to Topic 2: Will this course threaten my core values?
or
Go back to Background Information
E-mail George Rudebusch at George.Rudebusch@nau.edu
or call (520) 523-7091
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