Nicolae Morar

The Porosity of Autonomy: Social and Biological Constitution of the Patient in Biomedicine

The nature and role of the patient in biomedicine comprise issues central to bioethical inquiry. Given its developmental history grounded firmly in a backlash against 20th-century cases of egregious human subjects abuse, contemporary medical bioethics has come to rely on a fundamental assumption: the unit of care (and the unit of value) is the autonomous self-directing patient. In this article we examine first the structure of the feminist social critique of autonomy. Then we show that a parallel argument can be made against relational autonomy as well, demonstrating how this second concept of autonomy fails to take sufficiently into account an array of biological determinants, particularly those from microbial biology. Finally, in light of this biological critique, we question whether or to what extent any relevant and meaningful view of autonomy can be recovered in the contemporary landscape of bioethics.

Biodiversity at Twenty-Five Years: Revolution Or Red Herring?

A quarter of a century ago, a group of scientists and conservationists introduced ‘biodiversity’ as a media buzzword with the explicit intent of galvanizing public and political support for environmental causes. AsDavid Takacs summarizes this on the basis of his interviews with many of those involved, ‘Scientists who love the natural world forged the term biodiversity as a weapon to be wielded’ in battles over biological resources (Takacs, 1996, p. 3; cf. p. 37). The resulting conception of biodiversity, and the image of nature that it suggests, has subsequently dominated public perceptions, political discourse, and empirical research in the fields of ecology and resource management. For instance, David Tilman refers to the last several decades of ecological research as the ‘biodiversity revolution’ (Tilman, 2012, p. 109), and the goal of Conservation Biology as an interdisciplinary research program has been understood since its inception in terms of biodiversity conservation and restoration.Within the policy arena, the concept’s influence is international, from the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, signed as a legally binding treaty in 1992, which specifies the ‘conservation of biological diversity’ as one of its main goals, to the UN’s declaration of 2011–2020 as the Decade on Biodiversity, with a strategic plan that aims to integrate the values of biodiversity into government decision-making at all levels and to ‘mainstream’ biodiversity across government, society, and the economy. In short, since gaining broad attention quickly in the late 1980s and early 1990s, biodiversity has remained a focal point for scientific research and environmental policy, with consequences for how significant research and management resources have been distributed and invested over this period. Notably, environmental ethicists have also eagerly embraced biodiversity as a natural value, and whereas they have debated whether this value is intrinsic or merely instrumental, they have rarely questioned either its descriptive basis or its prescriptive import. Critical scrutiny of the concept of biodiversity is nevertheless long overdue, and we argue that there are good reasons to doubt whether it provides any guidance for environmental decision-makers or has any clearly established relationship with those

Against the Yuck Factor: On the Ideal Role of Disgust in Society

The view we defend is that in virtue of its nature, disgust is not fit to do any moral or social work whatsoever, and that there are no defensible uses for disgust in legal or political institutions. We first describe our favoured empirical theory of the nature of disgust. Turning from descriptive to normative issues, we address the best arguments in favour of granting disgust the power to justify certain judgements, and to serve as a social tool, respectively. Daniel Kahan advances a pair of theses that suggest disgust is indispensable (Moral Indispensability Thesis), and so has an important part to play in the functioning of a just, well-ordered society (Conservation Thesis). We develop responses and show how they rebut the arguments given in support of each thesis. We conclude that any society free of social disgust would be more just, reasonable and compassionate.

Toward an Ecological Bioethics

ISSN: 1526-5161 (Print) 1536-0075 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uajb20 Toward an Ecological Bioethics Nicolae Morar & Joshua August Skorburg To cite this article: Nicolae Morar & Joshua August Skorburg (2016) Toward an Ecological Bioethics, The American Journal of Bioethics, 16:5, 35-37, DOI: 10.1080/15265161.2016.1159756 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2016.1159756

Nudging and the Ecological and Social Roots of Human Agency

ISSN: 1526-5161 (Print) 1536-0075 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uajb20 Nudging and the Ecological and Social Roots of Human Agency Daniel Kelly & Nicolae Morar To cite this article: Daniel Kelly & Nicolae Morar (2016) Nudging and the Ecological and Social Roots of Human Agency, The American Journal of Bioethics, 16:11, 15-17, DOI: 10.1080/15265161.2016.1222018 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2016.1222018

Interconnectedness and Interdependence: Challenges for Public Health Ethics

An increasing number of contemporary voices in both bioethics and environmental ethics have grown dissatisfied with the schisms, abysses, and raging torrents that continue to flow between those two...

Bioethics and the Hypothesis of Extended Health

ABSTRACT:Dominant views about the nature of health and disease in bioethics and the philosophy of medicine have presumed the existence of a fixed, stable, individual organism as the bearer of health and disease states, and as such, the appropriate target of medical therapy and ethical concern. However, recent developments in microbial biology, neuroscience, the philosophy of cognitive science, and social and personality psychology have produced a novel understanding of the individual and its fluid boundaries. Drawing on converging evidence from these disciplines, and following recent research in public health, we argue that certain features of our biological and social environment can be so tightly integrated as to constitute a unit of care extending beyond the intuitive boundaries of skin and skull. This paper develops and defends the Hypothesis of Extended Health (HEH), which denies the claim that health and disease states are predicated solely on the internal functioning of an organism. If this is correct, then the targets of medical invention and ethical concern are wider and more diverse than is usually assumed.

The epistemic and ethical onus of ‘One Health’

This paper argues that the practical reach and ethical impact of the One Health paradigm is conditional on satisfactorily distinguishing between interconnected and interdependent factors among human, non-human, and environmental health. Interconnection does not entail interdependence. Offering examples of interconnections and interdependence in the context of existing One Health literature, we demonstrate that the conversations about One Health do not yet sufficiently differentiate between those concepts. They tend to either ignore such distinctions or embrace bioethically untenable positions. We conclude that careful conceptual differentiation can prevent One Health stakeholders either from over-reaching or under-reaching the practical and ethical boundaries of this developing paradigm.

Relational Agency: Yes—But How Far? Vulnerability and the Moral Self

Goering, Klein, Dougherty, and Widge (2017) have done an important service in bringing feminist philosophical theories of self, identity, autonomy, and agency into a meaningful dialogue with the bioethical debates surrounding the next generation of therapeutic neuroprosthetics. We share many of the theoretical commitments expressed by the authors, and we are broadly sympathetic to their project (Morar and Skorburg 2016; Beever and Morar 2016; Kelly and Morar 2016; Alfano and Skorburg 2017). We agree that relational models provide powerful theoretical frameworks for understanding the many ways in which agents

The Porosity of Autonomy: (Some) Replies to Open Peer Commentaries on “The Porosity of Autonomy: Social and Biological Constitution of the Patient in Biomedicine”

The Porosity of Autonomy: (Some) Replies to Open Peer Commentaries on “The Porosity of Autonomy: Social and Biological Constitution of the Patient in Biomedicine” Jonathan Beever & Nicolae Morar To cite this article: Jonathan Beever & Nicolae Morar (2016) The Porosity of Autonomy: (Some) Replies to Open Peer Commentaries on “The Porosity of Autonomy: Social and Biological Constitution of the Patient in Biomedicine”, The American Journal of Bioethics, 16:4, W4-W6, DOI: 10.1080/15265161.2016.1145757 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2016.1145757