Should Christians support the view that one’s psychological continuity is the main criterion of personal identity? Is the continuity of one’s brain or memory states necessary and sufficient for the identicalness of the person? This paper investigates the plausibility of the psychological continuity theory of personal identity, which holds that the criterion of personal identity is certain psychological continuity between persons existing at different times. I argue that the psychological continuity theory in its various forms suffers from interminable problems. Then, I introduce an alternate account of personal identity, according to which personal identity is not further analyzable in terms of qualitative properties (“suchnesses”) of persons. Rather, persons are individuated by their primitive thisnesses (haecceities), which are nonqualitative properties of immaterial substances (or souls). This alternate conception of personal identity would be of particular relevance to those who believe in the immortality of the soul and are looking for a nonphysicalist account of personal identity.
{"title":"Brain Transplant and Personal Identity","authors":"Kevin Jung","doi":"10.1093/cb/cbz018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/cb/cbz018","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Should Christians support the view that one’s psychological continuity is the main criterion of personal identity? Is the continuity of one’s brain or memory states necessary and sufficient for the identicalness of the person? This paper investigates the plausibility of the psychological continuity theory of personal identity, which holds that the criterion of personal identity is certain psychological continuity between persons existing at different times. I argue that the psychological continuity theory in its various forms suffers from interminable problems. Then, I introduce an alternate account of personal identity, according to which personal identity is not further analyzable in terms of qualitative properties (“suchnesses”) of persons. Rather, persons are individuated by their primitive thisnesses (haecceities), which are nonqualitative properties of immaterial substances (or souls). This alternate conception of personal identity would be of particular relevance to those who believe in the immortality of the soul and are looking for a nonphysicalist account of personal identity.","PeriodicalId":416242,"journal":{"name":"Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality","volume":"150 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115898081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
It is commonly held that Christian ethics generally and Christian bioethics particularly is the application of Christian moral systems to novel problems engaged by contemporary culture and created by contemporary technology. On this view, Christianity adds its moral vision to a technology, baptizing it for use. In this essay, I show that modern technology is a metaphysical moral worldview that enacts its own moral vision, shaping a moral imaginary, shaping our moral perception, creating moral subjects, and shaping what we imagine as moral intentions. In fact, modern technics has its own liturgics, which is foreign to Christian Divine Liturgy. Divine Liturgy is world forming, showing us a different world than the one that comes into relief in the ersatz liturgy of modern medical technics.
{"title":"Technics and Liturgics","authors":"J. Bishop","doi":"10.1093/cb/cbz016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/cb/cbz016","url":null,"abstract":"It is commonly held that Christian ethics generally and Christian bioethics particularly is the application of Christian moral systems to novel problems engaged by contemporary culture and created by contemporary technology. On this view, Christianity adds its moral vision to a technology, baptizing it for use. In this essay, I show that modern technology is a metaphysical moral worldview that enacts its own moral vision, shaping a moral imaginary, shaping our moral perception, creating moral subjects, and shaping what we imagine as moral intentions. In fact, modern technics has its own liturgics, which is foreign to Christian Divine Liturgy. Divine Liturgy is world forming, showing us a different world than the one that comes into relief in the ersatz liturgy of modern medical technics.","PeriodicalId":416242,"journal":{"name":"Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality","volume":"74 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128080810","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Traditionally, healthcare workers have had the right to refuse to participate in abortions or physician-assisted suicide, but more recently there has been a movement in white Evangelical circles to expand these rights to include the refusal of any treatment at all to same-sex couples or their children, transgender individuals, or others who offend the provider’s moral sensibilities. Religious freedom of conscience exists in an uneasy tension with laws protecting equal rights in a liberal polity, and it is a particularly fraught question in the context of medicine, where providers’ consciences must be balanced against patients’ rights to access appropriate care. This article examines the refusal of care to classes of people, usually classes defined by various sexual issues with which the caregivers disagree. This expands conscientious refusals from the traditional concept of responses to actions and instead directs it at specific types of people. The article draws on Reformed thought to argue that such refusals are not justified and are, in fact, both a profound misreading of Christian morality and a new and dangerously expansive account of the right to conscientious refusal in medicine.
{"title":"Reformed Theology and Conscientious Refusal of Medical Treatment","authors":"R. Groenhout","doi":"10.1093/cb/cbaa001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/cb/cbaa001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Traditionally, healthcare workers have had the right to refuse to participate in abortions or physician-assisted suicide, but more recently there has been a movement in white Evangelical circles to expand these rights to include the refusal of any treatment at all to same-sex couples or their children, transgender individuals, or others who offend the provider’s moral sensibilities. Religious freedom of conscience exists in an uneasy tension with laws protecting equal rights in a liberal polity, and it is a particularly fraught question in the context of medicine, where providers’ consciences must be balanced against patients’ rights to access appropriate care. This article examines the refusal of care to classes of people, usually classes defined by various sexual issues with which the caregivers disagree. This expands conscientious refusals from the traditional concept of responses to actions and instead directs it at specific types of people. The article draws on Reformed thought to argue that such refusals are not justified and are, in fact, both a profound misreading of Christian morality and a new and dangerously expansive account of the right to conscientious refusal in medicine.","PeriodicalId":416242,"journal":{"name":"Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134431157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In his 1917 lecture “Science as a Vocation,” Max Weber challenged current and aspiring scholars to abandon any pretense that science (Wissenschaft) bears within itself any meaning. In a disenchanted age, he argued, science could at best offer “knowledge of the techniques whereby we can control life . . . through calculation,” and any meaning or moral direction to scientific research—including religious meaning—must be imposed on it from without. Weber presciently anticipated that many present-day health care practitioners would struggle to find meaning for their work within complex “state-capitalist” health care systems, along with predictable quasi-religious responses. But how are Christian practitioners to practice faithfully in a disenchanted age? The authors of this special issue lean deeply into the loci of Christian theology and Christian practice, some challenging the views of the body and of nature that informed Weber’s theory of disenchantment, and all offering resources and paths by which practitioners might “look the fate of the age full in the face” with courage and wisdom.
在1917年的演讲《科学作为一种职业》(Science as a Vocation)中,马克斯·韦伯(Max Weber)向当时有抱负的学者提出挑战,要求他们放弃任何认为科学本身具有任何意义的伪装。他认为,在一个幻灭的时代,科学最多只能提供“我们控制生命的技术知识……“通过计算”,科学研究的任何意义或道德方向——包括宗教意义——都必须从外部强加给它。韦伯有先见之地预见到,许多当今的医疗保健从业者将在复杂的“国家资本主义”医疗保健系统中,以及可预见的准宗教反应中,努力寻找工作的意义。但是,在一个不抱幻想的时代,基督徒信徒如何忠实地实践呢?本期特刊的作者深入探讨了基督教神学和基督教实践的脉络,其中一些人挑战了韦伯祛魅理论中关于身体和自然的观点,所有人都提供了资源和途径,通过这些资源和途径,实践者可能会以勇气和智慧“直面时代的命运”。
{"title":"Health Care as Vocation? Practicing Faithfully in an Age of Disenchantment","authors":"Warren A. Kinghorn","doi":"10.1093/cb/cbz009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/cb/cbz009","url":null,"abstract":"In his 1917 lecture “Science as a Vocation,” Max Weber challenged current and aspiring scholars to abandon any pretense that science (Wissenschaft) bears within itself any meaning. In a disenchanted age, he argued, science could at best offer “knowledge of the techniques whereby we can control life . . . through calculation,” and any meaning or moral direction to scientific research—including religious meaning—must be imposed on it from without. Weber presciently anticipated that many present-day health care practitioners would struggle to find meaning for their work within complex “state-capitalist” health care systems, along with predictable quasi-religious responses. But how are Christian practitioners to practice faithfully in a disenchanted age? The authors of this special issue lean deeply into the loci of Christian theology and Christian practice, some challenging the views of the body and of nature that informed Weber’s theory of disenchantment, and all offering resources and paths by which practitioners might “look the fate of the age full in the face” with courage and wisdom.","PeriodicalId":416242,"journal":{"name":"Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130100312","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment in reference to modern medicine’s view of the body. Before considering Weber’s enchantment paradigm, I question some core assumptions regarding sociology as methodologically scientific and value-free. Furthermore, I draw on Jenkins who helps to illustrate the difficulty of rooting terms such as enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment; the question remains “which” historical and cultural period is employed as the basis for such sociological terms. Such questions are critical, but not entirely dismissive of modern medicine as “disenchanted”; with some more explicit foundational and presuppositional context, disenchantment can be a helpful notion for approaching questions of the “new body.” St. Gregory Palamas’ Christian materialism and mystical anthropology present such an explicit foundation. Moreover, this Patristic foundation moves past the postmodern aporia of emphasizing either immanence or transcendence—two polar attractions that factor heavily in the way modern medicine views the body.
{"title":"Beyond Re-enchantment: Christian Materialism and Modern Medicine","authors":"M. Vest","doi":"10.1093/cb/cbz011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/cb/cbz011","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article explores enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment in reference to modern medicine’s view of the body. Before considering Weber’s enchantment paradigm, I question some core assumptions regarding sociology as methodologically scientific and value-free. Furthermore, I draw on Jenkins who helps to illustrate the difficulty of rooting terms such as enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment; the question remains “which” historical and cultural period is employed as the basis for such sociological terms. Such questions are critical, but not entirely dismissive of modern medicine as “disenchanted”; with some more explicit foundational and presuppositional context, disenchantment can be a helpful notion for approaching questions of the “new body.” St. Gregory Palamas’ Christian materialism and mystical anthropology present such an explicit foundation. Moreover, this Patristic foundation moves past the postmodern aporia of emphasizing either immanence or transcendence—two polar attractions that factor heavily in the way modern medicine views the body.","PeriodicalId":416242,"journal":{"name":"Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117184608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In “Science as a Vocation,” Max Weber identifies a trajectory within modernity of increased rationalization, which results in a dangerous loss of meaning, a marginalization of religion, and a disenchanted view of the world. Weber’s misunderstanding of religion as premodern and “magical” results in his underestimating how religion can contribute to “re-enchanting” a field of knowledge, specifically medicine. This article proposes to turn to a theology of the Holy Spirit as “giver of life” for resources to “re-enchant” medicine. Re-enchantment does not require returning to a magical view of the world but retrieving a real sense of God at work in the world, thereby enabling the health care worker and scientist to arrive at a deeper understanding of vocation.
{"title":"The Spirit, Giver of Life: Pneumatology and the Re-Enchantment of Medicine","authors":"D. Fuente","doi":"10.1093/cb/cbz013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/cb/cbz013","url":null,"abstract":"In “Science as a Vocation,” Max Weber identifies a trajectory within modernity of increased rationalization, which results in a dangerous loss of meaning, a marginalization of religion, and a disenchanted view of the world. Weber’s misunderstanding of religion as premodern and “magical” results in his underestimating how religion can contribute to “re-enchanting” a field of knowledge, specifically medicine. This article proposes to turn to a theology of the Holy Spirit as “giver of life” for resources to “re-enchant” medicine. Re-enchantment does not require returning to a magical view of the world but retrieving a real sense of God at work in the world, thereby enabling the health care worker and scientist to arrive at a deeper understanding of vocation.","PeriodicalId":416242,"journal":{"name":"Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117131330","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Modern concepts of vocation often refer to some ambiguous understanding of personal occupation or religious life. These interpretations appear to be in tension with the Christian understanding of vocation as the call of God given to a community to a certain way of living. Christian physicians live into this communal vocation when they remain present to the suffering as a sign of God’s faithfulness. This vocational practice of medicine is threatened by a distorted understanding of the body that stems from what Max Weber called the “disenchantment” of the world. By bringing an understanding of the medicine that stems from Weber’s disenchantment into conversation with the language and beliefs of the church, this essay will seek to explore practices that might serve to re-enchant an understanding of the body and the practice of medicine as a form of Christian vocation.
{"title":"A Re-enchanted Response to a Communal Call: Toward a Christian Understanding of Medicine as Vocation","authors":"T. Couch","doi":"10.1093/cb/cbz008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/cb/cbz008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Modern concepts of vocation often refer to some ambiguous understanding of personal occupation or religious life. These interpretations appear to be in tension with the Christian understanding of vocation as the call of God given to a community to a certain way of living. Christian physicians live into this communal vocation when they remain present to the suffering as a sign of God’s faithfulness. This vocational practice of medicine is threatened by a distorted understanding of the body that stems from what Max Weber called the “disenchantment” of the world. By bringing an understanding of the medicine that stems from Weber’s disenchantment into conversation with the language and beliefs of the church, this essay will seek to explore practices that might serve to re-enchant an understanding of the body and the practice of medicine as a form of Christian vocation.","PeriodicalId":416242,"journal":{"name":"Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality","volume":"2 2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116940952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay argues that an account of vocation that ties one’s work with divine calling stands counter to the biblical witness of calling in the New Testament. Rather than calling to a particular profession, the biblical account of calling is to a unique way of living that is to exemplify the followers of Christ. Therefore, the re-enchantment of medicine is not accomplished when one makes the practice itself sacred simply by imagining it as one’s divine calling. Rather, the sacredness of medicine is rooted in the character of the physician whose daily decisions and patient interactions are the outcomes of virtues inculcated in worship, prayer, Bible study, and all other practices that mark the life of faith. Thus, the practitioner avoiding burnout asks not “Am I called to be a physician?” but “How as a physician in the daily practice of medicine might I exemplify my calling to Christ-likeness?”
{"title":"Calling, Virtue, and the Practice of Medicine","authors":"Jason D. Whitt","doi":"10.1093/cb/cbz012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/cb/cbz012","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This essay argues that an account of vocation that ties one’s work with divine calling stands counter to the biblical witness of calling in the New Testament. Rather than calling to a particular profession, the biblical account of calling is to a unique way of living that is to exemplify the followers of Christ. Therefore, the re-enchantment of medicine is not accomplished when one makes the practice itself sacred simply by imagining it as one’s divine calling. Rather, the sacredness of medicine is rooted in the character of the physician whose daily decisions and patient interactions are the outcomes of virtues inculcated in worship, prayer, Bible study, and all other practices that mark the life of faith. Thus, the practitioner avoiding burnout asks not “Am I called to be a physician?” but “How as a physician in the daily practice of medicine might I exemplify my calling to Christ-likeness?”","PeriodicalId":416242,"journal":{"name":"Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117217201","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Responding to Max Weber’s modern diagnosis of nature, science, and medicine as disenchanted, this article aims to reenvision nature and medicine with a sense of enchantment drawing from the Christian themes of creation, Christology, suffering, and redemption. By reenvisioning nature as enchanted with these theological themes, the vocation of medicine might be revitalized in terms of suffering presence, healing care, and works of mercy toward the neighbor in need.
{"title":"Re-Enchanting Nature and Medicine","authors":"A. Ridenour","doi":"10.1093/cb/cbz010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/cb/cbz010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Responding to Max Weber’s modern diagnosis of nature, science, and medicine as disenchanted, this article aims to reenvision nature and medicine with a sense of enchantment drawing from the Christian themes of creation, Christology, suffering, and redemption. By reenvisioning nature as enchanted with these theological themes, the vocation of medicine might be revitalized in terms of suffering presence, healing care, and works of mercy toward the neighbor in need.","PeriodicalId":416242,"journal":{"name":"Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123809537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this essay, I outline fundamental anthropological and moral principles related to human sexuality and gender identity and then apply these principles to analyze and evaluate the views of several authors who attempt to carve out a “middle way” between liberal and traditionalist approaches to these issues. In doing so, I engage especially with the claim that gender dysphoria, rather than being a psychological issue, is a type of biological intersex condition in which one’s “brain sex” is out of line with one’s genital and chromosomal sex. I argue that understanding the human person as a unity of body and soul and recognizing human sexuality as ordered toward the human good of marriage understood as inseparably unitive and procreative reveals the flaws in this position and helps to show why hormonal or surgical gender reassignment therapy is not a medically or ethically appropriate response to gender dysphoria. I also offer an alternative characterization of gender dysphoria and suggestions for responding with true compassion to those who suffer from it.
{"title":"Sexual Identity, Gender, and Human Fulfillment: Analyzing the “Middle Way” Between Liberal and Traditionalist Approaches","authors":"Melissa Moschella","doi":"10.1093/CB/CBZ005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/CB/CBZ005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In this essay, I outline fundamental anthropological and moral principles related to human sexuality and gender identity and then apply these principles to analyze and evaluate the views of several authors who attempt to carve out a “middle way” between liberal and traditionalist approaches to these issues. In doing so, I engage especially with the claim that gender dysphoria, rather than being a psychological issue, is a type of biological intersex condition in which one’s “brain sex” is out of line with one’s genital and chromosomal sex. I argue that understanding the human person as a unity of body and soul and recognizing human sexuality as ordered toward the human good of marriage understood as inseparably unitive and procreative reveals the flaws in this position and helps to show why hormonal or surgical gender reassignment therapy is not a medically or ethically appropriate response to gender dysphoria. I also offer an alternative characterization of gender dysphoria and suggestions for responding with true compassion to those who suffer from it.","PeriodicalId":416242,"journal":{"name":"Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124836152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}