Virtue Ethics Framework Research Articles

Virtue ethics and rural professional healthcare roles

Because rural populations are at risk not only for clinically disparate care but also ethically disparate care, there is a need to enhance scholarship, research, and teaching about rural health care ethics. In this paper an argument for the applicability of a virtue ethics framework for professionals in rural healthcare is outlined. The argument serves as an illustration for how philosophical analysis of the ethical dimensions of rural healthcare can contribute practical solutions to rural health problems. An interprofessional multidisciplinary understanding of rural healthcare ethics must go beyond the distinct professional role morality that already develops within different professions. Such an understanding will better explain professional responses to the particular nuances of rural healthcare. Analysis of the distinct ethical nature of rural professional roles offers the potential to capture and explain the complex ethical dimensions of rural situations where access, multiple overlapping relationships, confidentiality, cultural safety, team practice, and/or small community clinician stress are issues. Here the framework is primarily applied to rural dual and multiple overlapping relationships. A key aim is to encourage healthcare professionals to think carefully before avoiding rural practice because of a fear of being unable to meet the ethical challenges associated with the demands of rural overlapping relationships.

Moral Aspirations and Ideals

My aim is to vindicate two distinct and important moral categories –idealsandaspirations– which have received modest, and sometimes negative, attention in recent normative debates. Anidealis a conception of perfection or model of excellence around which we can shape our thoughts and actions. Anaspiration, by contrast, is an attitudinal position of steadfast commitment to, striving for, or deep desire or longing for, an ideal. I locate these two concepts in relation to more familiar moral concepts such asduty,virtue, andthe goodto demonstrate, amongst other things, first, that what is morally significant about ideals and aspirations cannot be fully accommodated within a virtue ethical framework that gives a central role to the Virtuous Person as a purported model of excellence. On a certain interpretation, the Virtuous Person is not a meaningful ideal for moral agents. Second, I articulate one sense in which aspirations are morally required imaginative acts given their potential to expand the realm of practical moral possibility.

Marital virtues and their relationship to individual functioning, communication, and relationship adjustment

Extant research has documented both individual well-being and couple communication as important predictors of marital adjustment. In the recent years, researchers have looked beyond problem-based predictors, shifting the focus from pathology and communication to include positive actions and ways of being. This study used Fowers’ [(2005) Virtue and psychology: Pursuing excellence in ordinary practices. Washington, DC: APA Press] framework of virtue ethics to test additional potentially important linkages. This framework posits that characteristics, such as compassion and generosity, which are foundational to relationship adjustment. This study examined the direct and indirect links among individual functioning, marital virtues, communication, and marital adjustment. Data were collected from a sample of 422 married and cohabitating individuals using a self-report survey. Individual well-being significantly and consistently predicted virtues, communication, and relationship functioning. Marital virtues and communication were found to mediate the relationship between individual well-being and relationship adjustment. In addition, communication was found to mediate the relationship between marital virtues and relationship adjustment. Findings provide support for the notion that character strengths – enacted as marital virtues – influence communication and relationship adjustment.

VIRTUE ETHICS AND THE SELECTION OF CHILDREN WITH IMPAIRMENTS: A REPLY TO ROSALIND MCDOUGALL

In 'Parental Virtues: A New Way of Thinking about the Morality of Reproductive Actions' Rosalind McDougall proposes a virtue-based framework to assess the morality of child selection. Applying the virtue-based account to the selection of children with impairments does not lead, according to McDougall, to an unequivocal answer to the morality of selecting impaired children. In 'Impairment, Flourishing, and the Moral Nature of Parenthood,' she also applies the virtue-based account to the discussion of child selection, and claims that couples with an impairment are morally justified in selecting a child with the same impairment. This claim, she maintains, reveals that the flourishing of a child should be understood as requiring environment-specific characteristics. I argue that McDougall's argument begs the question. More importantly, it does not do justice to virtue ethics. I also question to what extent a virtue ethics framework can be successfully applied to discussions about the moral permissibility of reproductive actions.

Is biotechnology the new alchemy?

In this article I examine similarities between the science and ethics of biotechnology on the one hand, and those of alchemy on the other, and show that the understanding of nature and naturalness upon which many contemporary ethical responses to biotechnology are predicated is, in fact, significantly similar to the understanding of nature that was the foundation of the practice of alchemy. In doing so I demonstrate that the ethical issues and social responses that are currently arising from advances in the field of biotechnology are interestingly similar to those that arose in reaction to the practice and prevalence of alchemy from its inception in Europe in the mid-twelfth century until at least the early modern period. I argue that a proper conception of the ethical issues and a sensible interpretation of the power and the promise of the science of biotechnology are most likely if we understand such attitudes to nature, and to the ethical issues surrounding technological and scientific developments, in terms of an historical and cultural continuum. That is, we should regard biotechnology as merely the latest in a string of technological and scientific developments rather than, as is often alleged, as something entirely new, requiring its own special ethical response. Finally, I suggest that examining the parallels between the ethical issues generated by alchemy and by biotechnology show us that such issues are best situated and discussed within a framework of virtue ethics, as it allows us to think seriously about the relationship between art and nature and the proper role of humans in relation to their technology.

Professional boundaries and the ethics of dual and multiple overlapping relationships in psychotherapy

The moral status of professional boundaries and the ethical nature of dual and multiple overlapping human relationships in contemporary clinical practice remain enduring problems in all health care disciplines. In this paper I explore the ethics of dual or multiple overlapping relationship and apply a virtue ethics framework to the case of psychotherapy. After clarifying the context and meaning of commonly used terminology, and considering what some of the key Australian codes of ethics relevant to psychotherapy advise about dual relationships, I identify some commonly occurring situations where overlapping relationships are unavoidable. A case study from a rural context where size, isolation, and community expectations profoundly impact on the capacity of a psychotherapist to maintain clearly defined professional therapeutic relationship boundaries is analysed. The rural example is pertinent. A virtue ethics approach goes some way toward alleviating perceptions about the nature of dual relationships that contribute to an enduring reticence amongst psychotherapists (and other professionals) to practice in rural settings. Clearly, if a dual relationship involves exploitation then that relationship is a boundary crossing that should rightly be categorised as a boundary violation. Boundary violations are exploitative and unethical. However, some dual relationships may involve boundary crossings that are not necessarily boundary violations. Despite their general prohibition by Australian (and many other countries') codes of ethics relevant to psychotherapy, I argue that in certain situations, if a psychotherapist (who crosses a professional relationship boundary) acts with professional integrity from the distinct professional role-related virtues and/or regulative ideals that ensure the goals of psychotherapy (to increase autonomy and psychological wellbeing) are met, then a dual or multiple overlapping relationship in psychotherapy will be ethical.

An Examination of the Ethics of Submissiveness

This paper examines the trait of submissiveness within the framework of virtue ethics. Submissiveness is generally regarded as a vice, particularly when evaluated in reference to patriarchal systems. This paper argues that there is something valuable about the trait of submissiveness—when it functions as a virtue—that is lacking in secular contexts, and this lack detracts from the possibilities of a good life.

Integrity and Leadership:: Clearing the Conceptual Confusion

Integrity is frequently used in management literature as a normative descriptor, especially with regard to leadership. The study of integrity, however, suffers from three significant problems: too many definitions, too little theory, and too few rigorous empirical studies. The purpose of this article is to attempt to address the first problem by (1) presenting a review of the definitions and uses of integrity in the management literature and (2) proposing a specific conceptualization of integrity (i.e., the consistency of an acting entity’s words and actions) based on a virtue-ethics framework.

A Common Body of Care: The Ethics and Politics of Teamwork in the Operating Theater are Inseparable

In the operating theater, the micro-politics of practice, such as interpersonal communications, are central to patient safety and are intimately tied with values as well as knowledge and skills. Team communication is a shared and distributed work activity. In an era of "professionalism," that must now encompass "interprofessionalism," a virtue ethics framework is often invoked to inform practice choices, with reference to phronesis or practical wisdom. However, such a framework is typically cast in individualistic terms as a character trait, rather than in terms of a distributed quality that may be constituted through intentionally collaborative practice, or is an emerging property of a complex, adaptive system. A virtue ethics approach is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a collaborative bioethics within the operating theater. There is also an ecological imperative-the patient's entry into the household (oikos) of the operating theater invokes the need for "hospitality" as a form of ethical practice.

BOOK REVIEW: edited by Ronald Sandler and Philip Cafaro.ENVIRONMENTAL VIRTUE ETHICS. New York and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.

Reviewed by: Environmental Virtue Ethics Christopher Freiman (bio) Environmental Virtue Ethics, edited by Ronald Sandler and Philip Cafaro. New York and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, pp. 240. ISBN 0-7425-3389-1 (hardback), $75.00; ISBN 0-7425-3390-5 (paperback) $28.95. For most of its life, environmental ethics has been the province of consequentialism and deontology. But a growing number of environmental ethicists have found these act-centered theories too thin and limited to attend to the complexity of ecological problems. Some see virtue ethics as promising a richer and more muscular approach to environmental ethics. The new anthology Environmental Virtue Ethics delivers on this promise. The book, edited by Ronald Sandler and Philip Cafaro, features fourteen selections—ten original contributions and four reprints of classic papers. The basic theme of environmental virtue ethics as a theory and Environmental Virtue Ethics as a volume is not that the environment is a bearer of rights or source of intrinsic value, but that an appreciation of nature is an ingredient in a happy and flourishing life. Virtue ethics considers character to be a central ethical concern and a critical part of living well. Rather than ask, as deontologists and utilitarians might, "What should I do?," virtue ethicists ask, "What should I be?" According to the first section of the book, environmental ethicists have implicitly been asking themselves this question for years. The first [End Page 133] two articles form a virtual genealogy of environmental virtue ethics, as Louke van Wensveen and Philip Cafaro examine virtue ethics' hidden role in the development of modern environmental ethics. Cafaro presents an account of historical exemplars of environmental virtue. Wensveen argues that the seeming poverty of "ecological virtue language" is partly due to environmental ethics' evolution within a specific cultural niche. Environmental ethics traditionally grappled with questions of practical political and legal import. As a result, the discipline adapted to the problems of rights and costs and benefits rather than character and human flourishing. Wensveen quips, "I imagine that appealing to a chemical company's love of nature in a court of law would be as effective as appealing to an ex-spouse's love of his or her children in a child custody case" (17). Nonetheless, Wensveen chronicles how virtue language has crept, largely unnoticed, into the environmental ethical dialogue. The second part focuses on the theoretical dimensions of environmental virtue ethics. The authors explore the ways in which virtue ethics can offer a fresh perspective on perennial environmental ethical questions. Thomas Hill's seminal "Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving Natural Environments" is a welcome inclusion. Hill inspires the movement to environmental virtue theorizing when he advises us to ask not simply, "What interests or rights are at stake when one destroys the natural environment?" but also, "What sort of person would do such a thing?" Indeed, we might view this entire volume as an extended attempt to answer to Hill's question. The next part of the book investigates the problems of defining environmental virtue and distinguishing it from anthropocentric virtue. The fourth and final section applies environmental virtue theory to specific ecological problems. The two articles, written by Peter Wenz and Ronald Sandler, use the virtue ethical framework to interrogate the morality of consumerism and genetically modified crops, respectively. This final section helps to allay an enduring criticism of virtue ethics as a whole: that it cannot be applied to real world problems. Sandler's piece in particular profitably uses the tools of virtue ethics to critically reflect upon both the moral problems raised by genetically modified crops and their proposed resolutions. The role of enlightened self-interest in environmental ethics is a recurrent theme. Against a public dialogue that pits human interests and [End Page 134] ecological interests in conflict, this book is refreshing reminder that human flourishing and ecological flourishing are not enemies. Human interests, properly understood, are in harmony with the interests of the environment. We ought to view our relationship with nature as positive-sum. This positive-sum outlook permeates Philip Cafaro's piece, "Gluttony, Arrogance, Greed, and Apathy: An Exploration of Environmental Vice." Cafaro forcefully argues that the vices that hinder human flourishing also hinder...

Android arete: Toward a virtue ethic for computationalagents

Traditional approaches to computer ethics regard computers as tools, and focus, therefore, on the ethics of their use. Alternatively, computer ethics might instead be understood as a study of the ethics of computational agents, exploring, for example, the different characteristics and behaviors that might benefit such an agent in accomplishing its goals. In this paper, I identify a list of characteristics of computational agents that facilitate their pursuit of their end, and claim that these characteristics can be understood as virtues within a framework of virtue ethics. This framework includes four broad categories – agentive, social, environmental, and moral – each of which can be understood as a spectrum of virtues ranging between two extreme subcategories. Although the use of a virtue framework is metaphorical rather than literal, I argue that by providing a framework for identifying and critiquing assumptions about what a `good' computer is, a study of android arete provides focus and direction to the development of future computational agents.